Isra Hirsi, the daughter of “Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), promoted a fundraiser supporting Mohsen Mahdawi, the Columbia University student activist facing deportation over his support for Hamas.
Hirsi, a far-left activist, anti-Israel agitator, and Barnard College senior, posted a screenshot of the GoFundMe with a link on her Instagram story Tuesday evening. At the time, the fundraiser had collected just over $9,000. By Wednesday afternoon, that ballooned to more than $42,000.
The GoFundMe launched after ICE detained Mahdawi, a Jordan native, following the revocation of his green card on Monday. The fundraiser has a $100,000 goal to cover his legal fees and other expenses while in detention. Originally, the page said the proceeds would also help Mahdawi “achieve his quest for US citizenship,” but that language was scrubbed Wednesday afternoon.
“It also seeks to further his advocacy for building understanding between Israelis and Palestinians for the traumas that each have experienced in order to bring peace and justice to each,” an earlier version of the GoFundMe page read.
But the fundraiser still portrays Mahdawi as an “advocate for peace and justice,” though the Columbia graduate student has repeatedly expressed support for Hamas. Just two weeks after the terrorist group killed nearly 1,200 Israelis during its Oct. 7 attack, Mahdawi told a New England newspaper that “Hamas is a product of the Israeli occupation.” According to the newspaper, he also helped pen an Oct. 14, 2023, statement that anti-Israel groups at Columbia issued arguing that the “Palestinian struggle for freedom is rooted in international law, under which occupied peoples have the right to resist the occupation of their land.”
“If every political avenue available to Palestinians is blocked, we should not be surprised when resistance and violence breaks out,” the statement read.
That December, Mahdawi said he empathizes with Hamas and argued that the terrorist group’s attack should not be looked at in a vacuum.
“I did not say that I justify what Hamas has done. I said I can empathize. To empathize is to understand the root cause and to not look at any event or situation in a vacuum. This is for me that path moving forward,” he said during a 60 Minutes interview.
Last August, meanwhile, Mahdawi posted pictures to his Instagram account honoring the “martyrdom” of his “cousin,” Maysara Masharqa, who served as a prominent field commander in the military wing of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, a U.S.-designated terror group that participated in the Oct. 7 attack alongside Hamas. Mahdawi praised Masharqa as a “fierce resistance fighter” who had been fighting since he was 17, adding that he spent seven years in an Israeli prison.
“Here is Mesra who offers his soul as a sacrifice for the homeland and for the blood of the martyrs as a gift for the victory of Gaza and in defense of the dignity of his homeland and his people against the vicious Israeli occupation in the West Bank,” Mahdawi wrote.
And during a Jan. 24, 2024, campus protest, Mahdawi told a crowd of students that “there’s nothing, nothing more honorable than dying for a noble cause.” He has been heavily involved in activism, serving as a leader in anti-Israel campus groups since first moving to the United States more than a decade ago.
The deportation order Mahdawi faces would send him to the West Bank, which he called a “kind of death sentence.” According to a memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the New York Times reported, the Trump administration is seeking to deport Mahdawi on the grounds that his activities could “potentially undermine” the Middle East peace process by fueling anti-Semitic sentiment both in the region and globally.
Hirsi similarly promoted a fundraiser last month for Mahmoud Khalil, a fellow protest leader and encampment negotiator facing deportation. That effort has raked in nearly $557,000 to support Khalil’s legal defense, secure bail if he becomes eligible for release, assist his family, cover medical expenses, and bankroll “long-term justice efforts” to “hold those responsible for his unlawful detention accountable.”
Hirsi has a long history of taking radical positions, including heavy involvement in the anti-Israel movement following Hamas’s attack. She has participated in protests at Columbia, Barnard’s sister school, and was arrested and suspended in April after refusing to vacate an illegal encampment on the Ivy League school’s campus.
Alongside Khalil, Hirsi is an organizer with Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), two student groups that have endorsed “armed resistance” and praised terrorists. Just two weeks ago, CUAD activists defaced a Columbia campus bathroom with red paint and inverted Hamas triangles. The previous month, a mob led by both CUAD and SJP stormed two Barnard campus buildings, during which radical activists disseminated Hamas pamphlets and clashed with security guards, sending one to the hospital. Video footage placed Khalil at the most recent building storming.
Following her suspension, Hirsi complained in a Teen Vogue interview that she was left homeless and without food. On the first anniversary of Hamas’s attack, Hirsi posted a picture to her Instagram account with the caption, “Resistance is glorious, we will be victorious.”
In October, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Hirsi, whose parents are Somali immigrants, had received “reparations” payments from her white friends on Juneteenth nearly every year since 2019. Reparations advocates typically push for payments to descendants of African Americans enslaved in the United States, and Juneteenth commemorates the nation’s 1865 end of slavery.
Hirsi did not respond to a request for comment.
Update, 7:05 p.m.: This article has been updated with additional information.
Original News Source – Washington Free Beacon
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