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Bipin Joshi was in Israel for 23 days before Oct. 7. This week, he was buried in his native Nepal.
This story was excerpted and adapted from the book “10/7: 100 Human Stories,” winner of the National Jewish Book Awards’ 2024 Jewish Book of the Year and The Natan Fund’s 2025 Notable Book Award.
Bipin Joshi wasn’t supposed to be sent to the Gaza border.
At 23, the tall young man carried his family’s aspirations on his shoulders — he was their firstborn son, their vessel of promise.
Home was Kanchanpur in Nepal’s fertile westernmost reaches, where the Mahakali River nourishes borderlands renowned for abundant harvests. There, Bipin first envisioned transforming agricultural knowledge into prosperity — he dreamed of a banana plantation that would secure his family’s future.
Israel was meant to be just a brief detour on his path to building something lasting back home.
When he enrolled in the Learn and Earn program that purported to offer students from Africa and Asia the opportunity of earning relatively high wages while taking classes in high-tech agriculture. Bipin had been assured placement in Israel’s heartland. But his assignment was changed at the last moment, and he was placed at Kibbutz Alumim, two miles from the Gaza border. Yet any disappointment he felt gave way to relief: He would be working with Himachal Kattel, his best friend and roommate from college in Nepal. In Alumim, the two Nepali young men resumed their familiar schooldays routine, sharing a modest room where, after exhausting days of fieldwork, they would unwind with cold beers and songs from home.
A month later, Himachal and Bipin were some of the only students left alive from their cohort, nearly 3,000 miles from their home in Nepal, when Hamas attacked Alumim.Through the lemon and orange orchards, dozens of Hamas terrorists rampaged the Kibbutz, shooting indiscriminately. They killed 22 Thai and Nepali citizens, kidnapped eight, and injured a few more.
Tribhuvan International Airport, Kathmandu | Sept. 13, 2023
Himachal, a 25-year-old from a small village in the mountains of Gorkha, sported a large red Tika on his forehead at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu. This was a blessing from his older sister, Niruta. He was the youngest of four siblings.
All 17 students awaiting their midnight flight were adorned with Tikas, a token of pride and blessing from their families.
In Nepali culture, they serve as good-luck charms and vouchsafes for significant journeys. Many parents had come to the airport, some in tears, others bearing gifts. It was a long goodbye — their children were leaving for 11 months.
They were making the trip for the money, and the education: they were supposed to earn more in a year in Israel than they’d earn in a few in Nepal, as well as gain skills that would advance their careers.
Aged between 22 and 25, most of the students had been raised in poverty.
Prabin Dangi, 24, was hoping to support his chronically ill mother back home, but found that despite his education, good jobs in Nepal were scarce. This was a common dilemma in his family, as one of his brothers was working in Dubai and another in Saudi Arabia for the same reason. His mother pleaded with him, her youngest son, not to leave, but he was determined to provide her with the best possible care.
Students take part in a candlelight vigil in Lalitpur, Nepal, on Oct. 9, 2023, in memory of Nepali citizens who were killed in Kibbutz Alumim, in Israel. (Prakash Mathema/AFP via Getty Images)
Ananda Sah, 25, had promised his grandmother that he’d build a house for her. Dipesh Raj Bista, 24, planned to finance his younger brother’s medical studies, being the sole supporter of his family after the death of his father.
And Joshi traded his musical ambitions and writing talent for practical skill: He wanted to learn advanced agricultural techniques that he could apply back home.
The group was sent to a classic “old-style” kibbutz named Alumim, where they shared responsibilities and lived communally. The kibbutz population — a community of 500 — was a mixture of religious jewish immigrants from Arab countries, members of the U.K.’s largest Orthodox Jewish youth movement, agricultural workers from Thailand and now, them as well.
Thai labor, along with Nepali labor, became Israel’s agricultural backbone after Palestinians (who had previously replaced Israeli farmers) were restricted from working in Israel in large numbers following the first intifada in the 1980s. Security concerns about terror attacks led Israel to seek an inexpensive workforce sourced from countries uninvolved in the conflict.
Kibbutz Alumim | Sept. 14-Oct. 6
The students arrived in Israel in mid-September: warm, sunny days.
Soon after arriving, the students’ expectations collided with reality. The communal socialist principles they’d heard about didn’t seem to apply to them.
Their accommodation consisted of small cramped rooms equipped with bunk beds to maximize space.
Their days began around 4 a.m., when they’d gather in the cramped, gray kitchen to cook the lunch they’d bring with them to the fields, before heading out to do arduous physical labor under the sun, which typically lasted until approximately 4 p.m.
Prabin, Padam and Rajan were responsible for managing the kibbutz’s irrigation system. Their duties included carrying heavy pipes out to the fields, assembling the pipes and connecting them to the irrigation system, and fixing malfunctions.
Himachal and Bipin worked together in the orchards, trimming trees, and picking and packing pomelos and oranges. The work was simple, not technically advanced; it was difficult for them to ignore a sense of disappointment.
Each evening of the three weeks the Nepalese cohort spent there, many students called home, reassuring their families that their time in Israel, though it was draining, was a wise investment in their future.
They clung to the hope that their situation would improve once the university opened in October – the “Learn” portion of the program, which involved attending classes at Ben Gurion Negev University once a week.
On Oct. 3, an earthquake struck Nepal, and many were concerned for their families. Padam Thapa called home anxious on October 6. His sister-in-law, Mekhu Adhikari, told him about the frightening aftershocks. Ganesh Nepali urged his elder brother to look after their parents and stay safe, as their family home had sustained structural damage.
Kibbutz Alumin, the Foreign Workers Zone | Oct. 7
Himachal had stayed up until 3 a.m., engrossed in the final season of “Vikings” on Netflix. Saturdays offered the only chance for sleeping in.
Drifting off with his earphones in, he didn’t hear the sirens. At 6:30 a.m., Bipin woke him, urging, “We need to get to the shelter quickly.”
In the other room, Prabin, still half-dressed, rushed to the bunker, witnessing rockets slicing through the sky.
Padma (screen) and Pushpa (podium) Joshi, the mother and sister of Nepalese national Bipin Joshi held hostage by Palestinian militants in Gaza since 2023, address a demonstration organized by the families of hostages calling for action to secure their release in Tel Aviv on Aug. 16, 2025. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)
The 17 students were confined in the open-door shelter for more than an hour, waiting for instructions. This was the first missile attack they’d ever experienced. They’d been reassured before that rocket attacks from Gaza were common but rarely harmful, and told that staying inside a shelter would keep them safe. To pass the time, they divided into teams, playing Ludo on their phones.
Meanwhile, Rafi Babian, a kibbutz member and the security officer of the Sdot Negev Regional Council, was worried: The sheer number of missiles being fired was unusual. He headed to the council’s headquarters to activate the emergency center. En route, he was warned at the Reim intersection about the presence of terrorists nearby and soon after received an alert about terrorists approaching the gate of his home, Kibbutz Alumim. He notified the kibbutz a few minutes before Hamas arrived. By 6:45 a.m., the entire kibbutz emergency response squad, comprising a dozen members, was armed and ready. Fifteen minutes later, about 20 terrorists were at the kibbutz gate.
The Nepali students didn’t know any of this. They assumed the noises they heard were from missiles. They didn’t know that terrorists riding motorcycles and mopeds were already firing RPGs.
The emergency squad prevented the terrorist from reaching the kibbutz’s residential area — a few civilian-volunteers and soldiers were killed in the battle — but no kibbutz members were harmed.
The terrorists, having been repelled, went looking for another target. They found the workers’ quarters, near the cows and orchards.
From their shelter, the students heard loud Arabic being spoken by the approaching terrorists. Thinking the Arabic was Hebrew, they were relieved: someone had come to help them.
Dipesh Raj Bista stepped out of the shelter, followed by Ganesh Nepali, who just needed to use the restroom.
Outside the shelter, they were met by two men in black, pointing guns at them. Realizing these weren’t kibbutz-members, Dipesh Raj Bista yelled, “We are Nepalese!”
Gunfire was the response.
Dipesh and Ganesh were killed on the spot.
Soon after, a grenade was thrown into the shelter where the 15 other students were hiding. Bipin immediately realized what happened and threw the grenade back out. But he couldn’t catch the grenade that followed, and five of the students were injured. Ananda Shah was severely bleeding, clutching a pillow to stifle his screams. Lokendra Singh Dhami, bleeding too, was whispering about his wife, his 5-year old daughter, and his 2-year-old son.
Prabin, Himachal and Bipin weren’t hurt. They had huddled in a corner of the room, squeezing so tight together that it was hard to breathe. Together, they called one of their bosses, pleading, “Please help us, we’re in trouble.”
The response was short: “I’m so sorry, I can’t help you. There are terrorists attacking all over, I’m hiding too.”
Narayan Prasad Neupane wasn’t as gravely injured as the others: despite having lost three toes, he could still walk. He happened to have remembered the number of the Israeli emergency medical services and called for an ambulance. The operator, speaking English, assured him that help would arrive.
Soon after, two men in blue uniforms entered the shelter. “Please don’t hurt us,” the few students still alive begged.
“We’re the police, the Israeli police,” the men assured them.
“Please, take us to a hospital … these people are dying … get us out of here.”
“There are still terrorists outside,” the police said. “It’s impossible to move you now, but we’ll be back. Everyone who can walk, you need to move to a different place; it’s not safe in the shelter. Go to the kitchen or to your room.”
“And leave the wounded here?”
They had no choice.
Nepal’s interim Prime Minister Sushila Karki pays respects after draping the country’s national flag over the coffin of Bipin Joshi at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on Oct. 20, 2025. (Prakash Mathema / AFP via Getty Images)
Bipin, Himachal, Rajan, Prabin, Prabesh and Padam, leaping over the corpses and injured bodies of their friends, made their way into the dining room.
There, a few Thai workers were also hiding. Some of their friends had been murdered while sleeping in their beds.
Narayan, Lokendra and Dhan decided to move to the residency area. Upon hearing a car outside, Narayan went out to check if it was the ambulance he was waiting for. He was shot twice by a passing terrorist.
Crawling back into the room, covered in blood, water was his last request.
Kibbutz Alumim, Kitchen | Oct. 7
A defensive wall of Persian rice sacks — that’s what they constructed to shield themselves from further grenade attacks. Prabin came up with the idea, and they quickly stacked the sacks on top of each other.
It was a small kitchen; options for shelter were limited. Most of the Nepalese and Thai workers crouched behind the “rice wall,” under a wooden table, with Parmod hiding under the sink. Bipin, positioned in the middle and not shielded at all, grew increasingly worried about their friends left in the shelter.
As time passed without any sign of rescue, Bipin considered going back to help them. “We need to think about our next steps. Will you come with me and help bring our friends here?” he asked Himachal.
They sought the opinion of a Thai worker who’d been hiding in the kitchen before them. His name was Phonsawan Pinakalo, a 30-year-old tractor driver who’d arrived in Israel four years earlier, to earn a salary that was four times what he would’ve earned in Thailand. They communicated using Google Translate, going back and forth between Nepali and Thai.
Phonsawan’s response was unequivocal: “Don’t do it. If you do it, you’ll die. We’ve heard the terrorists walking around here for hours.”
On the other side of the table, Rajan tried to reassure his roommates Prabin, Prabesh, and Padam. “Don’t worry, nothing will happen. Help will come soon.”
Exhausted by their ordeal in Israel, Prabesh declared, “If we survive, we’re heading back to Nepal as soon as possible.”
An hour and a half later, Hamas terrorists broke down the kitchen door, shouting “Allah-hu Akbar” and shooting indiscriminately. The makeshift wall of rice sacks offered no protection.
The bullets pierced the sacks and hit them. Blood and rice was spilled on the floor.
“Prabin, how bad is your leg?”
“It’s bad. I can’t feel much of it. And you, Himachal?”
“You see the holes in my chest and shoulder, right? It’s getting harder to breathe.”
“We need water. I can’t bear this.”
Struggling, Himachal rose from their hiding spot under a cheap wooden table to fetch water. As he moved, he aggravated his chest wound and lost more blood. He managed to collect some water in a shallow plate, but half of it spilled as he returned to Prabin on the kitchen floor.
Israelis attend a farewell ceremony for Bipin Joshi at Ben Gurion Airport on Oct. 19, 2025. One holds a sign that says, “Sorry you got caught up in our disaster.” (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
It wasn’t enough. Prabin’s throat was parched and he was writhing in agony.
“Pramod, do you have any water to give me? I beg you.”
Pramod didn’t respond. Hidden under the sink in a small plumbing cabinet, he was the only student unharmed, unseen by the Hamas shooters.
“Pramod, there’s water in the sink above. I beg you, I can’t move to get it. I’m so thirsty, I might scream, and they’ll come again and finish us off.”
He pleaded again and again, until Pramod made a small hole in the sink pipe and collected some of the murky water in a pot. Extending his hand from the cabinet, Pramod whispered, “Here, this is all we have.”
Prabin lapped up the mixture of water and urine. His roommates, Rajan and Prabesh, lay under the table as well: They were dead, killed immediately.
Padam, a fourth roommate, took longer to die. “I am dying, bhauju,” he managed to send a short text-message to his sister-in-law, then plead with his friends to help him: “Kill me. I can’t stand this anymore, kill me with a knife if you can.”
“Please, friend, bear this pain. The police will come for us,” Himachal said, though he believed they were all doomed. Beneath the table, he noticed his own breathing growing heavier and heavier, matching the heavy breathing of Padam and Parbin.
Oct. 8 – The Present
The men who arrived in Israel as “neutral” replacements for Palestinian workers ultimately returned to their home countries either empty-handed or in coffins.
Out of the 17 Nepalese students at Alumim, 10 were killed, four injured, two survived unharmed — and Bipin was taken hostage alongside Phonsawan.
From their hiding spot in the kitchen, Himachal and Prabin overheard one of the terrorists questioning the two hostages about their religion, to which Phonsawan responded, “Buddhist, Buddhist, Thailand, Thailand.”
Two hours later, Bipin and Phonsawan were seen with their captors being pushed into a-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
With the onset of war, the thousands of Thai and Nepalese workers in Israel left the country, causing the collapse of the Israeli agricultural sector.
In the midst of harvest season, Israel was once again in desperate need of guest workers. In December 2023, the government of Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries, announced it would send about five thousand young people to work in Israeli agriculture. Hundreds of Sri Lankans also joined, putting money over safety.
Men take the coffin of Bipin Joshi, to a car after a farewell ceremony for Bipin Joshi, a young Nepalese man who was taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023 and later died in captivity in Gaza, at Ben Gurion airport on Oct. 19, 2025. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Himachal and Prabin spent several months in Israeli hospitals, lonely, unable to communicate adequately, facing a range of complex surgeries and medical procedures. Eventually, they managed to recover and even continue their studies, earning their master’s degree from Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment in Rehovot last month.
At some point, Phonsawan was added to the list of dead; his body was returned and flown to Thailand this week. But Bipin’s fate remained unknown.
During two years of war, Bipin’s family lived in agonizing uncertainty, not knowing whether their son was alive or dead. They were disappointed through two ceasefires, when Thai citizens who’d been taken hostage were released, and as government officials expressed “grave concern” for his life. Clinging to hope, they did everything in their power to raise public awareness about their son, a young man trapped in a foreign conflict.
Their worst fears were confirmed last week when Bipin’s corpse was returned to Israel, on the first day of a new ceasefire that brought with it the release of all 20 living hostages in Gaza.
“With immense pain, we received the worst news imaginable. Our dear son, Bipin — brother and soulmate to our daughter Pushpa — was murdered in Hamas captivity. Bipin left us full of excitement, setting out for a year of study in Israel. We never imagined that the hug we gave him then would be our last,” the Joshi family said in a statement.
Family members mourn during the funeral ceremony of Bipin Joshi at his residence in Kanchanpur, Nepal, on Oct. 21, 2025. Prakash Chandra Timilsena/AFP via Getty Images)
“Before you were taken, you managed to send a message to your cousin, asking him to be strong and always look toward the future. It is hard to imagine a future without you, Bipin,” the statement continued. “Every flower in the garden we planted for you will remind us of you — every orchard, every field. You are part of the landscape of Nepal, and now also part of the landscape of the Land of Israel.”
On Monday, Bipin made his journey home. The first stop was a ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport, where a top government official praised his heroism and addressed him directly, saying, “I am sorry. It shouldn’t have ended this way.”
Then, Bipin’s body was flown to Kathmandu, where Prime Minister Sushila Karki draped Nepal’s flag over it during a brief ceremony at the airport.
And from there, his coffin was taken to his village where on Tuesday morning, after a night in which his family was reportedly accompanied by so many who had provided comfort over the last two years, his body was cremated in a ceremony on the banks of the Mahakali River. Government representatives were present, and the photograph that had become famous in Israel and beyond was on display. Bipin was home in Kanchanpur, the borderland district whose soil nurtured his dreams and now his memory.
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The post Bipin Joshi was in Israel for 23 days before Oct. 7. This week, he was buried in his native Nepal. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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US House Passes State Department Funding Bill With $3.3 Billion in Security Assistance to Israel
US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks to members of the media on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, Nov. 12, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
The US House of Representatives in a decisive bipartisan vote passed on Wednesday a sweeping government funding package that includes $3.3 billion in annual security assistance to Israel, underscoring continued congressional support for Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East amid heightened political scrutiny.
The legislation — which combines funding for the State Department and certain national security programs for the Treasury Department and other parts of the government — passed easily by a margin of 341 to 79, reflecting a durable consensus on Capitol Hill that Israel’s security remains a key US strategic interest.
Washington has committed to provide Jerusalem with $3.8 billion in military aid each fiscal year until 2028, according to an agreement signed by the two nations in 2016. The $3.3 billion in aid passed by the House, along with the $500 million given to Israel as part of the US defense budget for anti-missile programs, will meet that total.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the foremost pro-Israel lobbying group in the US, issued a statement praising lawmakers for passing the legislation, arguing that it bolsters the longstanding relationship between the US and its closest Middle Eastern ally.
“The pro-Israel provisions in this bill further reinforce the bipartisan and ironclad support for the US-Israel partnership in Congress,” AIPAC said. “These resources help ensure that our ally can confront shared strategic threats and that America has a strong and capable ally in the heart of the Middle East.”
The funding for Israel is provided through the Foreign Military Financing program and aligns with the 10-year memorandum of understanding between Washington and Jerusalem. Supporters say the assistance is critical to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge, funding advanced missile defense systems, and ensuring the country can defend itself against evolving security challenges.
The House package also includes provisions tightening oversight of US funds directed to the Palestinians and restricting assistance to international bodies viewed by supporters of the bill as hostile to Israel. It further bans funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the controversial UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. The Israeli government and research organizations have publicized findings showing numerous UNRWA-employed staff, including teachers and school principals, are active Hamas members, some of whom were directly involved in the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, while many others openly celebrated it.
The legislation additionally blocks all funding to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which was founded in 2002 under a treaty giving it jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that were either committed by a citizen of a member state or had taken place on a member state’s territory.
Last November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
Israel has adamantly denied war crimes in Gaza, where it has waged a military campaign to eliminate Hamas following the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on ICC judges and those who assist with International Criminal Court (ICC) investigations of American citizens or allies such as Israel in February 2025.
The legislation also allocates $37.5 million for the Nita Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act, a 2020 US law issuing a maximum of $250 million over five years for initiatives promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace-building efforts and a two-state solution.
The funding package is making its way through Congress as the future dynamics of the Israel-American military aid relationship remain in flux. Recently, Netanyahu told US reporters that he plans on weaning Israel off US support over the next decade. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a stalwart supporter of Israel, responded by announcing he plans on introducing legislation to accelerate the timeline to end US aid to Israel.
The measure now moves to the Senate, where leaders are expected to take it up in the coming weeks. If approved and signed into law, the funding would ensure uninterrupted security assistance to Israel for another year.
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Argentine Doctor Suspended After Threatening to Cut Jewish Throats
Dr. Miqueas Martinez Secchi. Photo: Screenshot
A doctor in Argentina has been suspended from his job at a hospital in Buenos Aires after posting antisemitic messages on social media that included explicit calls for violence against Jews.
The suspension of Miqueas Martinez Secchi, a resident physician specializing in intensive care at José de San Martín Hospital in La Plata, marks yet another example of rising antisemitism in health-care settings across the West.
“Instead of performing circumcision, their carotid artery and main artery should be cut from side to side,” Secchi wrote in one post.
The medical professional’s antisemitic online activity was exposed by journalist and commentator Dani Lerer, who posted the graphic messages on the social media platform X.
El @miqveas_ que llama a cortar la yugular de los judíos, y que borró su cuenta, es residente de terapia intensiva del Hospital General José de San Martín de La Plata.
Imagino que ya mismo tomarán cartas en el asunto las autoridades, pero que las redes hagan lo suyo. pic.twitter.com/luCjZbedar
— Dani Lerer (@danilerer) January 12, 2026
The posts prompted widespread outrage, leading Secchi to delete his social media account — but not before other users were able to save screenshots.
Buenos Aires Province Health Minister Nicolás Kreplak released a statement responding to the incident.
“Any aggressive message or one showing a lack of respect for human life is incompatible with health care practice and particularly with medicine. They are fundamental values of training as a health professional,” he posted on X. “Health is one of the essential assets of society, and it is indispensable to be firm against any act of discrimination and racism. As is public knowledge.”
Kreplak then referenced Secchi and noted he is under investigation.
“Due to this message, consistent with other previous behaviors that now acquire relevance, the resident doctor at Hospital San Martín de La Plata who made those public statements is suspended and in an administrative and judicial investigation process, in order to conduct an evaluation under an ethical, technical, and professional committee that will determine whether it is appropriate or not for them to resume their training process,” the minister said.
The incident in Argentina continues an alarming pattern of rampant antisemitism in health care across the Western world which has left Jewish communities feeling unsafe and marginalized.
In November, for example, a Jewish columnist from Amsterdam said she was denied medical care by a nurse who refused to remove a pro-Palestinian pin shaped like a fist.
Elsewhere in the Netherlands, local police opened an investigation into Batisma Chayat Sa’id, a nurse who allegedly stated she would administer lethal injections to Israeli patients.
In Italy, two medical workers filmed themselves at their workplace discarding medicine produced by the Israeli company Teva Pharmaceuticals in protest of the Jewish state and the war in Gaza.
In Belgium, a local hospital suspended a physician after discovering antisemitic content on his social media, including a cartoon showing babies being decapitated by the tip of a Star of David and an AI-generated image depicting Hasidic Jews as vampires poised to devour a sleeping baby.
The same doctor came under fire after he recently diagnosed a nine-year-old patient by listing “Jewish (Israeli)” as one of her medical problems on his report.
Several such incidents have occurred in the United Kingdom, where British Prime Minister Keir Starmer unveiled a new plan in October to address what he described as “just too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively” in the country’s National Health Service (NHS).
One notable case drawing attention involved Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, a trainee trauma and orthopedic surgeon, who police arrested on Oct. 21, charging her with four offenses related to malicious communications and inciting racial hatred. In November, she was suspended from practicing medicine in the UK over social media posts denigrating Jews and celebrating Hamas’s terrorism.
That same month, UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting called it “chilling” that some members of the Jewish community fear discrimination within the NHS, amid reports of widespread antisemitism in Britain’s health-care system.
Incidents in the UK included a Jewish family fearing their London doctor’s antisemitism influenced their disabled son’s treatment. The North London hospital suspended the physician who was under investigation for publicly claiming that all Jews have “feelings of supremacy” and downplaying antisemitism.
In Australia, two nurses filmed themselves bragging online about refusing to treat Israelis, making throat-slitting gestures, and boasting of killing Jews. Both lost their licenses and now face criminal charges.
A US-born Jewish woman who moved from Israel to Australia six years ago told The Algemeiner last year that she no longer feels safe in hospitals given the atmosphere of heightened antisemitism.
“In the past year alone, my little boy has witnessed many hostile protests where ‘anti-Zionists’ have actually come into the Jewish community without permits to intimidate us. Time and time again, instead of [authorities] dispersing and arresting anyone in the crowd for screaming racial slurs and threats, Jews are asked to evacuate and told if they don’t run away, they are inciting violence,” the woman said.
“Now they actually brag online about killing Israeli patients,” she continued, referring to the case in Australia. “I don’t know how safe I would feel giving birth at that hospital.”
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US Appeals Court Says Decision to Free Mahmoud Khalil Lacked Jurisdiction, Opens Door to Rearrest
Anti-Israel activist and former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil marching with followers in New York City on June 22, 2025. Photo: Reuters Connect
A US federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that a lower court judge lacked the authority to order the release of a prominent anti-Israel activist who helped stage riotous demonstrations on New York City college campuses.
Mahmoud Khalil, an Algerian citizen born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, was detained by the Trump administration in March after federal agents arrested him at his Manhattan apartment for what the Department of Homeland Security described as “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” The State Department also alleged that Khalil was supporting Hamas and argued his residing in the US posed “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
Immigration officials moved Khalil to New Jersey, leading his case to be transferred there to US District Judge Michael Farbiarz.
Khalil was held without charge for more than 100 days at a facility in Louisiana administered by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, until Farbiarz ordered his release in June, ruling that the government failed to prove he posed a threat and suggesting the detention may have violated his First Amendment rights.
On Thursday, however, a three-judge panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the lower court lacked “subject-matter jurisdiction” under federal immigration law to halt the Trump administration’s effort to deport Khalil.
According to the appeals court, the district court that considered his lawsuit was not the proper forum to address Khalil’s claims, which should have been heard through an appeal of a removal order from an immigration judge in accordance with the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
The ruling stressed that Khalil lacks legal standing to challenge the government’s decision to deport him before his case has been adjudicated in immigration court, adding that the INA does not allow for a petition to review (PFR) the case at the federal level at this time.
“The scheme Congress enacted governing immigration proceedings provides Khalil a meaningful forum in which to raise his claims later on — in a petition for review of a final order of removal,” an opinion issued by the majority says. “That scheme ensures that petitioners get just one bite at the apple — not zero, or two. But it also means that some petitioners, like Khalil, will have to wait to seek relief for allegedly unlawful government or conduct.”
It added, “Because Khalil raises legal questions that a PFR court can meaningfully review later on, the INA bars him from attacking his detention and removal in a habeas petition.”
In a statement, Khalil was defiant even as he faces the possibility of being again detained.
“The door may have been opened for potential re-detainment down the line, but it has not closed our commitment to Palestine and to justice and accountability,” he said. “I will continue to fight, through every legal avenue and with every ounce of determination, until my rights, and the rights of others like me, are fully protected.”
Additionally, his lawyers, provided by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), vowed to exhaust “every available avenue,” which may include a petition for his case to be decided by the US Supreme Court.
Speaking to Fox News, the Trump administration commended the decision, saying, “Mahmoud Khalil was given the privilege of coming to America to study on a student visa he obtained by fraud and misrepresentation. As we have always maintained, the executive branch has the lawful authority to take actions that will protect the public and to ensure the integrity of our immigration system.”
Beyond Khalil’s alleged pro-Hamas activities, the US government has maintained that its action was warranted by his lying to obtain a green card. In court documents it charged that Khalil did not disclose that he had interned for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), a group that was found multiple times to have been breached by Hamas members, and also concealed key details about another position he held at the British embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Khalil, the government added, also did not inform immigration officials about his leadership role in the notorious “Columbia University Apartheid Divest” (CUAD) group.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CUAD perpetrated illegal building occupations and severe infrastructure sabotage while Khalil participated in a graduate program at Columbia University in the months after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. The acts stunned Columbia’s campus, prompting fears of imminent revolutionary-style violence on campus even as Jewish students and faculty received antisemitic hate mail and death threats.
The Department of Homeland Security initially arrested Khalil while acting on an executive order issued by President Donald Trump which called for the deportation of foreign nationals who cause antisemitic hate incidents. A major provision of the order calls for the deportation of extremist “alien” student activists, whose alleged support for terrorist organizations, intellectual and material, such as Hamas supposedly contributed to fostering antisemitism, violence, and property destruction on college campuses.
Khalil has refused to condemn Hamas and even once denied that antisemitism at Columbia University required a policy response from school officials.
“I would say there is manufactured hysteria about antisemitism at Columbia because of the protests,” Khalil told Ezra Klein in an interview with The New York Times last year. “There are incidents here and there. But it’s not like antisemitism is happening at Columbia because of the Palestine movement … This is why I always push back. I have a strong belief that antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism rise together because the same groups are perpetrating that in different ways.”
Khalil then went on to assert some of the very claims prompting accusations of antisemitism in the anti-Israel movement, accusing the Jewish state of “genocide” while arguing that the accusation is aimed at making pro-Israel supporters “uncomfortable” and defending the terrorist-led Palestinian intifadas.
“I don’t want to sanitize history,” Khalil continued. “Like I told you, the second intifada involved violent acts, but overwhelmingly, they were peaceful.”
Over 1,000 Israelis were killed in the early 2000s during the second intifada, when Palestinian terrorists ramped up violence targeting Israelis that included suicide bombings, shootings, and stabbings.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, pro-Hamas activists at Columbia produced several indelible examples of campus antisemitism, including a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, brutal gang-assaults on Jewish students, and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
CUAD was among the most strident pro-Hamas organizations on campus and once promoted itself by distributing literature which called on students to join Hamas’s movement to destroy Israel and America.
“This booklet is part of a coordinated and intentional effort to uphold the principles of the thawabit and the Palestinian resistance movement overall by transmitting the words of the resistance directly,” said a pamphlet distributed by CUAD, a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spinoff, to incoming freshmen. “This material aims to build popular support for the Palestinian war of national liberation, a war which is waged through armed struggle.”
Other sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose is to build an army of Muslims worldwide.
“We call upon the masses of our Arab and Islamic nations, its scholars, men, institutions, and active forces to come out in roaring crowds tomorrow,” it added, referring to a then-upcoming event. “We also renew our invitation to the free people and those with living consciences around the world to continue and escalate their global public movement, rejecting the occupation’s crimes, in solidarity with our people and their just cause and legitimate struggle.”
Columbia University denounced the group in 2025 as a part of a rollout of policies to combat antisemitism and unauthorized demonstrations which disrupted academic life.
In a statement issued in July, university president Claire Shipman said the institution will hire new coordinators to oversee complaints alleging civil rights violations; facilitate “deeper education on antisemitism” by creating new training programs for students, faculty, and staff; and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — a tool that advocates say is necessary for identifying what constitutes antisemitic conduct and speech.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.