The Times of Israel reports: “Six weeks after being released from US federal detention, Mahmoud Khalil, the first pro-Palestinian protest leader to be arrested by President Donald Trump’s administration last spring, has defended Hamas’s onslaught of October 7, 2023, and said concerns about antisemitism at Columbia University reflect a ‘manufactured hysteria.’

Khalil first made the latter allegation in a jailhouse letter in April, soon after he was detained by immigration authorities over his role in the university’s pro-Palestinian protests, which critics said were fueling antisemitism.

He repeated it in a wide-ranging interview with New York Times columnist Ezra Klein published on Tuesday. The interview appeared to mark the most extensive public questioning that Khalil has faced about the allegations of antisemitic activity that made him a symbol of the Trump administration’s crackdown on colleges…”