Viet appeared in a momentous “Voices for Gaza” event in New York City, along with authors Mosab Abu Toha, Hala Alyan, Hannah Lillith Assadi, doctor Seema Jilani, artist Nan Goldin, activist Mahmoud Khalil, and emcee Aasif Mandvi, with a performance by the Resistance Revival Chorus. The event was produced by Raad Rahman and Michiko Clark, with help from Sarah McNally and McNally-Jackson Books, which sold the authors’ books at the event, with generous assistance from Town Hall of New York City and Democracy Now! Additional support came from Simone Wesley, Cat Broderick, Jonathan Hayden, Juliane Pautrot, Tingyo Chang, Shruti Ganguly, Andy Hsiao, Naina Ramrakhani, Zeteo News, AAWW NYC, PalFest, Artists4Ceasefire, Celebrities4Palestine, Filmworkers4Palestine, and Jewish Voice for Peace. All proceeds went to support INARA, which aids Palestinian children.
The Columbia Spectator’s report on the event follows:
By Colette Carbonara and Tsehai Alfred • September 23, 2025 at 8:32 PM
The Palestinian activist spoke just days after an immigration judge ruled he be deported to Algeria or Syria.
Mahmoud Khalil, SIPA ’24, joined fellow Palestinian rights advocates on Sunday to speak at a “Voices for Gaza” fundraiser, where he shared diary entries from his experience in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center. His appearance at the event came just days after a federal judge ruled he be deported to Algeria or Syria.
Writers, journalists, a doctor, and a choir joined Khalil at The Town Hall to highlight the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and raise funds for the International Network for Aid, Relief & Assistance.
While at Columbia, Khalil served as a prominent student activist, leading negotiations during the April 2024 “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” He became the first high-profile target in the federal government’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian advocacy on college campuses when plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained him in the lobby of his University-owned residence on March 8.
Emcee Aasif Mandvi, an actor, comedian, and writer, opened the event by posing a question to the audience: “Where was the outrage about free speech when ICE kidnapped Mahmoud Khalil and sent him to detention facilities for writing op-eds and organizing protests?” His question was a reference to the recent public outrage over ABC’s Sept. 17 decision to suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” due to Kimmel’s comments on the shooting of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk.
Many saw the move by ABC as compliance with threats from Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr to revoke broadcasting licenses from ABC’s affiliates. Disney, ABC’s parent company, announced Monday that “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” will return Tuesday.
“Stay tuned for my late-night show,” Khalil joked during his remarks. “Perhaps this would save me from deportation, or maybe not—comedy only buys so much immunity when your identity is a target and when your homeland is a metaphor everyone fears.”
In April, Secretary of State Marco Rubio alleged that Khalil’s presence in the U.S. could have “adverse foreign policy consequences.” Following Rubio’s revocation of Khalil’s green card, ICE agents arrested him. Khalil spent 102 days in detention at an ICE facility in Louisiana before being released on bail June 20 and returning to New York City. He has yet to be charged with a crime.
Khalil read a diary entry he wrote during his detainment. His entry touched on June 13, the day a federal judge denied his release.
“I returned to my bunk and stared at my son’s photograph for hours,” he read. “His eyes fixed at me, already carrying the weight of lineage he cannot name.”
U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz denied Khalil a temporary release on April 20 to attend the birth of his first son. When ICE agents arrested him in March, Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, was eight months pregnant.
“What does it mean to crown a child born into exile while his father counts time under fluorescent light?” Khalil asked in his diary entry.
A Louisiana immigration judge ordered on June 20 that Khalil be deported to Syria or Algeria, citing the government’s allegations that he failed to disclose information about an internship he held at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East on his application for permanent residence in the U.S.
Khalil described how friends declined to write letters in support of his release out of fear of retaliation.
“Fears like that remind me of how many watch the bombs fall in Gaza while silent, afraid of losing their jobs, their visas, their scholarships, their carefully constructed safety,” Khalil said.
In a July 2 interview, Khalil told Spectator that, “people think that we enjoy protesting, but we do not enjoy protesting. It’s not something to enjoy. But it’s something that we have to do because remaining silent is complicity.”
Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha; Palestinian-American novelist and professor of fiction at the School of Arts Hannah Lillith Assadi, CC ’08, SoA ’13; Palestinian-American writer Hala Alyan; and American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, also spoke at the event, reading excerpts of their work.
Pediatrician Seema Jilani read two original poems describing her experience treating children in Gaza during the war. Nan Goldin, an American photographer and activist, shared a short journalistic film covering the past two years on the ground in Gaza.
Photo by Stella Ragas / Photo Editor
Jilani’s poem “Letter to a Gazan Child” depicts her experiences as a medical worker in Gaza, treating a dying child.
The death toll in Gaza has passed 64,000 as of Sept. 4, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Humanitarian groups including the World Health Organization, United Nations World Food Programme, and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations have reported over half a million people suffering from famine, citing an Aug. 22 Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report.
Abu Toha was the first speaker to address the crowd, reading from his poem “Under the Rubble.”
He spoke later in the program in a discussion moderated by writer John Freeman about how, when the war in Gaza began, he became a journalist in addition to being a poet, essayist, translator, and school teacher.
“I found myself reporting, because I’m not going to wait for anyone to come to the refugee camp and report and tell the story, so I am the teller of the story, and I am a story,” Abu Toha said. The poet founded the Edward Said Public Library in Gaza, which Israeli airstrikes have since destroyed.
Photo by Stella Ragas / Photo Editor
Abu Toha read his poem “My Dreams as a Child,” from his collection Forest of Noise, in which he describes dreaming about the Al-Shati refugee camp he grew up in, which Israel has since bombed.
Nguyen spoke about the importance of solidarity, condemning solidarity that is “limited,” and arguing rather for “expansive solidarity and capacious grief.” He spoke about how his experience growing up in a Vietnamese-American refugee family contributes to his understanding of “otherness.”
The urge to keep a memory of being othered, Nguyen said, “is important, but can also trap us in our otherness and prevent us from seeing that we too can harm others.”
Photo by Stella Ragas / Photo Editor
“What does it mean to claim to belong to a nation when the nation is an empire, when the nation is built on settler-colonialism?” asked Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen.
Goldin then screened a silent film consisting of a compilation of videos and images from Gaza. In introducing her film, Goldin said, “I’ve come to the point where I have no more words.”
Jilani, who has visited Gaza multiple times since October 2023 to serve wounded Palestinian children as a pediatrician, said she recounted her firsthand experience to legislators, U.N. officials, White House officials, and the media.
“I did it all in the hopes that it would lead to stopping the carnage. Then they all did nothing,” she said.
She recited a poem, “Deconflicted,” depicting her struggle to bring attention to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to these officials, as well as her poem entitled, “Letter to a Gazan Child.”
Independent bookstore McNally Jackson Books and INARA sponsored the event. Jiladi said that INARA’s clinic in Gaza had been treating 120 patients per day since Israel began its ground invasion of Gaza City, wherein their workers were forced to evacuate. Jiladi said four had refused to leave.
The United Nations concluded in a Sept. 16 report that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. That same day, Israel announced the start of its ground invasion of Gaza City.
The U.N. report includes references of Israeli officials killing and harming “unprecedented numbers of Palestinians,” blocking the humanitarian aid, damaging healthcare and education systems, perpetrating sexual violence among Palestinians, targeting children, and attacking cultural sites as evidence of genocide. Days after the U.N. released the report, Britain, Canada, Australia, Portugal and France announced a formal recognition of Palestinian statehood.
Photo by Stella Ragas / Photo Editor
Khalil, speaking of a fellow detainee in the Louisiana facility, said “the court betrayed him, locked him for five years now they want to deport him. His words carry no faith in justice, only in struggle. The world must unite against injustice.”
In his final remarks, Khalil said, “I write because silence is worse than despair, and because one day when my son reads this, I want him to know his father did not accept defeat. His father did not keep quiet while his people were massacred.”
Staff Writer Colette Carbonara can be contacted at colette.carbonara@columbiaspectator.com. Follow Spectator on X @ColumbiaSpec.
City News Editor Tsehai Alfred can be contacted at tsehai.alfred@columbiaspectator.com. Follow her on X @TsehaiAlfred.
Read the Columbia Spectator’s article here.
