Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is suing the federal government and several private groups, alleging they were part of a conspiracy to suppress criticism of Israel through a coordinated campaign to dox, jail and ultimately deport student activists.
The civil rights suit, filed in federal court Tuesday, names the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, as the architect of what it describes as an ongoing conspiracy to silence members of the pro-Palestinian movement by smearing them as antisemites.
Those efforts were aided by Canary Mission and Betar, two pro-Israel groups that maintain online lists of Israel’s critics, often alongside unsubstantiated claims that they are affiliated with Hamas, according to the lawsuit.
Activists placed on those lists “were nearly automatically targeted by the Federal Defendants for arrest and removal,” the suit claims, adding that the “process of nomination to punishment was frictionless.”
Lawyers for Khalil argue this “public-private partnership” could violate the Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law that sought to restrict government coordination with vigilante groups.
