The fragile and faltering left-wing government of France is beholden enough to the pro-Hamas faction of its population that it has agreed to reward the terrorist group by recognizing Palestinian statehood at next month’s United Nations General Assembly. But even France understands the sovereignty of its own statehood. After a Gazan university student in Lille had her scholarship revoked for praising Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israeli civilians, the French foreign minister put the kibosh on the country’s program to receive Palestinian refugees from Gaza and referred the student for possible deportation.

The United States is not France. Foreign nationals do have First Amendment protections when on U.S. soil. But our Immigration and Nationality Act clearly does qualify noncitizens for deportation for “endorsing or espousing” terrorist activity. And French President Emmanuel Macron‘s Renaissance Party is not President Donald Trump’s Republican Party. The former is proudly progressive in a way that would place it squarely in our stateside center-left.

So it’s notable that whereas France’s liberal government has conceded that its ability to vet Palestinians has failed, the American Left continues to lionize Hamas sympathizer Mahmoud Khalil.

Since being released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention after the Trump administration tried and failed to deport the former Columbia University student, Khalil has been on a public victory lap, shutting down the streets for more protests and making the media rounds. During a long-form interview with Ezra Klein of the New York Times, Khalil is finally giving the lie to his Democratic defenders and saying the quiet part out loud.

Klein asked Khalil, a Syrian-born Algerian citizen who only came to the U.S. in January 2023, about Oct. 7 of that year. Crucially, Klein does not ask about Israel’s military response after — he simply asks Khalil what he thought the........

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