On April 30, a federal court ordered the release of Mohsen Mahdawi, a graduate student at Columbia University with permanent-resident status who had been detained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security two weeks earlier. Google Mahdawi and you will find a fawning 60 Minutes interview from December 2023, where he speaks about his involvement in anti-Israel protests and makes a point of distancing himself from anti-Semitism. But, Asaf Romirowsky writes, whatever you think about the still-pending legal case against Mahdawi, he is anything but a sympathetic figure:

Mahdawi’s social-media accounts are . . . thick with blatant and vile anti-Semitic incitement, including the chant “Khaybar Khaybar ya Yahud,” referring to a battle in 628 at the Arabian city of Khaybar during which the prophet Mohammad slaughtered many of the town’s Jewish residents. The call, popular with Hamas and Hizballah supporters, is widely understood to be a threat.

And then there is the story Mahdawi has often retailed about how, as a child growing up in the Samarian hamlet of al-Fara, he saw his best friend shot dead by an Israeli soldier:

It’s a heartbreaking story; it’s also one that is very easy to corroborate, as a plethora of Palestinian and international human-rights organizations provide detailed accounts of Palestinian civilian casualties. . . . One child did die at al-Fara during the relevant time frame, but he was hurt by an explosive gas canister, not a bullet, and his fatal injury occurred in a remote field, not in the heart of the crowded [refugee] camp, as Mahdawi had repeatedly said.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.