Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) spoke Saturday at an anti-Israel conference in Detroit, Michigan, that was connected to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the U.S. regards as a Foreign Terror Organization (FTO).
The Detroit Free Press reported on Tlaib’s remarks at the People’s Conference for Palestine at Wayne State University:
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib slammed President Joe Biden and some of her congressional colleagues in a speech to the People’s Conference for Palestine in downtown Detroit, urging them to do more to stop what she calls the “genocide” in Gaza.
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More than 3,000 people registered for the three-day People’s Conference for Palestine, organizers said, and they descended on Detroit starting Friday from around United States, and some from outside the country. The goal was to “serve as a space to assess, strategize and prepare for what is required for us in the next phase of struggle,” organizers said.
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Sessions included “Palestinian Resistance and the Path to Liberation,” “Confronting Zionism in Higher Education” and “Zionism and U.S. Imperialism.” A vendor fair included Palestinian art, clothing and more. Many wore keffiyehs, the headdress or scarf that has come to be a symbol for Palestinians.
The National Review noted that one of the speakers, Wisam Rafeedie, is “associated” with the PFLP; while another, Sana Daqqah, is married to a PFLP terrorist:
Among the speakers at the Michigan event was Wisam Rafeedie, an activist associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist-Leninist terror group active in Gaza and headquartered in the Syrian capital of Damascus. The U.S. State Department, as well as Japan, Canada, and the European Union, has designated the PFLP as a terrorist organization.
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The keynote speaker at the People’s Conference for Palestine was Sana’ Daqqah, the wife of PFLP terrorist Walid Daqqah. In April, Daqqah died from cancer in an Israeli prison, where he was detained for leading the PFLP operation that kidnapped, tortured, and murdered Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984.
The Israel Defense Forces said in November that Hamas, which perpetrated the brutal October 7 invasion of Israel, likely handed over a ten-month-old Israeli infant and his family to a separate Palestinian terror group in Gaza. Security analyst Michael Horowitz told the Telegraph that the group is believed to be the PFLP.
Rafeedie’s remarks, translated live, called claims that Hamas fighters had sexually assaulted women and killed children on October 7 “cheap lies” and “propaganda against our people.”
A photo of Daqqah at the conference circulated online:
Posters of Walid Daqqah have been spotted at pro-Palestinian “encampments” in recent campus protests.
The Jerusalem Post added:
As part of the promotion of the event, the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), one of the organizers, shared an endorsement video by Salah Salah, one of the founding members of the PFLP, which has been recognized by the US as a terrorist organization since 1997. The PFLP has referred to Salah as a “historic leader.”
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Wisam Rafeedie, a self-admitted member of the PFLP, is among those who will address the event. According to Amnesty International and the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Rafeedie also ran a clandestine publishing house for the PFLP during the 1980s. Another key speaker is Sana’ Daqqa, the wife of Walid Daqqa, a PFLP member who was indicted for kidnapping and murdering an Israeli soldier in 1984, and who died last month in an Israeli prison.
The PFLP, it is worth noting, explicitly boasted about its active participation in the October 7 massacre, in which 1,200 people were murdered by Palestinian terrorists and an additional 240 taken hostage into Gaza, some of whom are reportedly being held by the PFLP. Hamas and the PFLP have also been coordinating their activities in Gaza and their joint stance concerning potential hostage release deals.
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Tlaib has been open in the past about her support for a “one-state solution,” i.e. one that would involve the dismantling of Israel. She told the conference that people should refuse to vote for President Joe Biden in the November 2024 election to show their opposition to his support for Israel (however lukewarm).
The PFLP was designated by the U.S. State Department as a foreign terror orgnization in 1997.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Photo: file
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