The National Interest Foundation Newsletter

Issue 282, April 18, 2025

Welcome to our NIF Newsletter. In this week’s edition, we look into the pattern of deplorable Israeli attacks on hospitals and healthcare facilities in Gaza, provide analysis regarding how a State Department memo has exposed the absence of evidence in college student detainment cases, and examine Trump’s meeting with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele amid the ongoing deportation controversy.

Editor: Bassam Tarbush

Pattern of Deplorable Israeli Attacks on Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities in Gaza

This past weekend, in the early morning hours of the Christian holiday of Palm Sunday, Israel carried out an appalling attack on the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital – the largest remaining functioning medical facility in northern Gaza. Not only did the bombing take place on what is meant to be a celebratory religious date marking the beginning of Holy Week in the Christian liturgical year, but it also forced hundreds of patients and staff to frantically flee the premises of the hospital while still enveloped in the overnight darkness. As such, the attack drew heavy condemnation from a host of entities including the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem which denounced it in the strongest possible terms. The diocese recounted the harrowing course of events in their statement, remarking that the twin strikes had demolished the hospital’s two-story genetic laboratory and damaged the pharmacy, emergency department buildings, and a nearby church structure as well.

Regrettably, Israel’s deplorable attacks on hospitals and other healthcare infrastructure in Gaza are far from a new phenomenon, and thus the bombing of Al-Ahli is just the latest in a pattern of this type of behavior. Since the onset of the Gaza War back in October of 2023, international organizations have documented at least 670 attacks of this nature on more than 33 hospitals and 122 healthcare facilities. At the beginning of this year, a report released by the UN Human Rights Office highlighted Israel’s systematic targeting of hospitals and healthcare facilities in Gaza. It also outlined how these attacks had pushed the territory’s healthcare system to the brink of total collapse, while at the same time, providing undeniable proof of egregious Israeli war crimes and human rights violations. Patients, medical personnel, and other healthcare sector workers are strictly meant to be protected under international law, and therefore intentionally directing attacks against these sites amounts to a blatant breach of the laws of armed conflict. The deliberate destruction of medical and healthcare facilities can be deemed a form of collective punishment against the civilian population, which itself equates to a war crime as well.

When it receives condemnation for its attacks against medical and civilian infrastructure, Israel has a track record of claiming that the buildings are used by militants, however, this is consistently not substantiated by any actual evidence. Israeli forces repeatedly use this as an excuse to carry out attacks against innocent civilians and other non-combatants. For many observers, it is no accident that Israel decided to carry out an attack on Al-Ahli, the last fully functioning hospital in northern Gaza. Hospitals and healthcare facilities have been targeted throughout the ongoing conflict, not as militant control centers, but as places for Palestinian civilians to receive medical care, where even there, people are not safe from the heinous violence. Israel’s pattern of such actions has been well documented by rights groups, and despite the outrage from humanitarian organizations and other members of the international community, Israel continues to act in brazen defiance.

In light of Israel’s latest attack on hospitals and healthcare facilities in Gaza, various groups have rebuked it for its actions. The Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine commented that “The attack, carried out on Palm Sunday, one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar, constitutes a grave violation of religious sanctity and fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.” Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) also stated that “The bombing of the Anglican Al-Ahli Arab Hospital is a violation of the sacredness of life and it is especially abhorrent during this sacred time for Christians.” For Palestinian Christians in the birthplace of Jesus, Palm Sunday and the lead-up to Easter is a hallowed time of the year known as Holy Week, and so it is particularly despicable for Israel to commit such acts at a time like this. The rapid evacuation of the hospital caused several deaths, including that of a 12-year-old child with a head injury. Since patients were forced to move to smaller health facilities which lack capacity to provide full medical services, this is likely to result in further loss of life, body parts, and could cause long-term disabilities.

State Department Memo Exposes Absence of Evidence in College Student Detainment Cases

New reports earlier this week uncovered how an internal State Department memo had found no evidence supporting the Trump administration’s alleged rationale for abducting and pushing to deport Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, yet days later, immigration officials unlawfully detained her nevertheless. The memo’s findings solidify what rights advocates have been seeking to highlight all along – that the unfounded detainment of students like Ozturk is simply a violation of free speech protections, and is not based on any actual documentation of wrongdoing or illegal activity. The complete lack of a shred of evidence is why in the cases such as that of Ozturk, Mahmoud Khalil, and other recent student detainments, the Trump administration has failed to present a single criminal charge. Instead, it is glaringly obvious that these individuals are being targeted solely for their activism in support of Palestinian human rights and social justice. Ozturk herself was detained and had her visa revoked for merely co-writing an op-ed last year in the school’s newspaper urging Tufts University to divest from companies with ties to Israel – something that the higher education institution’s president noted was well within the bounds of its code of conduct and has therefore prompted him and the university to come to her defense.

The Trump administration has revoked the visas of hundreds of international students and detained at least a dozen on college campuses across the United States, in what rights groups have denounced as a disturbing assault on the civil liberties and free speech protections of legal immigrants. As officials with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have pointed out, speaking out against human rights violations or being critical of a university for its policies and ties to certain entities is neither illegal nor a valid reason for detention. What is wrong, on the other hand, is the Trump administration’s use of immigration officers to try and silence people who hold political opinions that they disagree with. The administration’s actions have sparked outrage and criticism, particularly as videos of some of the arrests have gone viral, depicting plain-clothes officers detaining individuals without warning or the levying of official criminal charges. This is alarming due to the fact that legal and immigration experts have affirmed visa-holding students possess the same First Amendment right to free speech as U.S. citizens, and thus, forms of peaceful political or social expression should not warrant the potential of visa revocation and deportation. As a result, lawyers for Ozturk are understandably questioning the legality of her detention at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Louisiana, saying that the Trump administration’s actions have violated constitutional free speech and due process rights.

Similarly to how recent developments have illustrated the absence of evidence in Ozturk’s case, this can also be said about other high-profile college student detainments as well, like that of Mahmoud Khalil. When digging into the documentation submitted by the Trump administration in its effort to deport Khalil, media outlets found that the government is relying on unverified tabloid articles about him in some instances, and in others, their so-called claims are undoubtedly false since timelines laid out do not match. While Trump officials such as U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio have tried to characterize Khalil’s actions as antisemitic, the detained student’s attorneys have submitted evidence rebuking this, including first-hand accounts of him expressing that antisemitism has no place in the Gaza solidarity movement and that Jewish activists were an integral part of it. In spite of all of this, an immigration judge ruled late last week that Khalil is eligible to be deported from the United States. Following the ruling, Khalil’s attorneys informed the judge of the intent to file an appeal, and the judge ordered the government not to remove Khalil as the case challenging his arrest as unconstitutional plays out in federal court – the outcome of which could block the prospect of deportation.

Ozturk and Khalil are just two of a growing number of voices simply expressing concern with injustice against Palestinians that the current administration is attempting to silence. Badar Khan Suri – a scholar at Georgetown University – and most recently, Mohsen Mahdawi – a Columbia University student – have been taken into custody as well. Khan Suri’s case has prompted more than 370 alumni of Georgetown University to join 65 current students there in signing a letter opposing immigration authorities’ detention of him, while what unfolded with Mahdawi has elicited outrage as he was arrested earlier this week at a U.S. citizenship interview in Vermont. As in the cases of Ozturk and Khalil, the Trump administration has been heavily criticized for providing no evidence or legitimate explanations for its actions against Khan Suri and Mahdawi. Adding to the anger and confusion is the lack of clarity regarding how officials are choosing who to detain, other than relying on extremist groups like Betar to arbitrarily give at least 1,000 names to the administration. It has become clear that individuals who have voiced a certain viewpoint are being targeted without valid reason or due process, and the use of law enforcement entities to carry this out is alarming, as it resembles the actions of a repressive regime with no regard for the protection of freedoms and civil liberties. This combined with Trump’s efforts to pull funding from various universities, whose campuses have long been viewed as major platforms for social, political, and cultural movements and activism, should trouble all who value American democratic ideals and principles.

Trump Meets with El Salvador’s President Bukele Amid Ongoing Deportation Controversy

This week, U.S. President Donald Trump met with his counterpart from El Salvador Nayib Bukele on Monday at the White House. The visit from Bukele comes at a particularly notable time amid the ongoing controversy surrounding the wrongful deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a prison in the Central American country as a part of the Trump administration’s mass expulsion of migrants in recent weeks. The Salvadoran president has long proclaimed himself “the world’s coolest dictator” and has become a key ally in Trump’s migrant crackdown, opening the channels for those deported from the U.S. to be held in El Salvador’s harsh maximum-security prison CECOT. In doing so, Bukele has paved the way for Trump to try and sidestep the Supreme Court’s order for his administration to take the necessary measures to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States. In the midst of the meeting, Bukele dismissed the idea of doing so himself after Trump officials attempted to deflect the onus of returning Abrego Garcia onto El Salvador, while Trump raised eyebrows by discussing the prospect of sending American citizens to jails there.

One of the main takeaways from the meeting that analysts picked up on was the Trump administration’s clear effort to place the burden of Abrego Garcia’s status into the hands of Bukele and Salvadoran officials. For many, this was a calculated and intentional course of action that was taken in light of the Supreme Court’s unanimous 9-0 ruling demanding that the U.S. government facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return because it gives Trump the opportunity to try and claim that he is powerless to implement the directive. The rhetoric from both Trump and Bukele on the matter is aimed at creating a “catch-22” scenario whereby the two governments contend that they lack the authority as they seek to offer up an excuse for failing to comply with the judicial order – even as the Trump administration itself has readily admitted the deportation of Abrego Garcia was an error. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have rejected the idea that the United States is powerless to retrieve him, noting that the U.S. is paying El Salvador to hold prisoners and that it can therefore exercise those same contractual rights to request their release. The defiance of the court ruling has prompted a federal judge to call for the sworn testimony of several Trump administration officials to determine if they complied with the orders to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia. What makes his wrongful deportation even more troubling is the fact that it was carried out despite a U.S. immigration judge shielding him from expulsion to El Salvador back in 2019 due to the likely persecution that he would face there from local gangs that had terrorized his family.

Another noteworthy element to come out of the Trump-Bukele meeting was the American president’s floating of the idea of sending U.S. citizens to prisons in El Salvador. President Trump relayed his openness to this, and stated that the administration was currently “studying the laws to see if that is possible.” At one point during their conversation, Trump even encouraged Bukele to build more mega-prisons. Legal scholars and experts have pointed out that the notion of sending American citizens to prisons abroad brings up serious constitutional questions. In a 1936 case, the Supreme Court determined that a president cannot extradite a U.S. citizen except by an act of Congress. On top of this, the suggestion of the United States aligning itself with Bukele on this issue – whose aggressive and controversial crackdown in El Salvador over recent years has led to a drop in the country’s crime rate but raised an array of human rights concerns – is problematic too. Bukele’s CECOT prison has been widely criticized for human rights abuses and a lack of legal protections for inmates. Furthermore, rights groups have documented how tens of thousands remain imprisoned in the facility without sufficient evidence against them and deprived of due process.

Protests have emerged in Maryland and elsewhere across the country demanding Abrego Garcia’s return, while U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) traveled to El Salvador this week to press government officials there to release him from prison. Van Hollen visited with the Central American nation’s vice president, with the latter initially rejecting the former’s request for a virtual or in-person meeting with Abrego Garcia on Wednesday. However, ultimately, on Thursday evening, Van Hollen did meet with Abrego Garcia. Senator Van Hollen has also insisted that additional members of Congress are planning to make the trip to El Salvador regarding the salient issue as well. Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, summed up the current state of affairs potently when she remarked that the “Trump and Bukele administrations continue to play political games with his life.”