Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib spoke on Saturday at a Detroit Pro-Palestinian conference that advocated on behalf of terrorism, honored terrorists, and featured a member of a terrorist organization as a panelist.
Tlaib made a surprise appearance at the People’s Conference for Palestine, an event that saw dozens of the anti-Israel groups involved in the post-October 7 protests in attendance, while Dearborn Michigan Mayor Abdullah Hammoud gave a video address.
The May 24-26 conference is set to have Wisam Rafeedie as a speaker at a workshop on Sunday, the last day of the event. According to Amnesty International, Rafeedie is an activist for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP is designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department.
Terrorist speaker
The keynote speaker at the event was Sana’ Daqqah, the wife of PFLP terrorist Walid Daqqah, for whom one of the rooms was named.
Daqqah died from bone marrow cancer in an Israeli prison on April 8. He was originally imprisoned for commanding the PFLP cell that abducted, tortured, and murdered Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984.
Daqqah was referenced several times at the conference, including by Palestinian activist Tara Alami, who also spoke at length about semen smuggling through which Daqqah’s daughter, Milad, was conceived.
“In honor of Walid and all the martyrs, we’ll continue the fight until all political prisoners are free and Palestine is liberated!” said co-organizer Answer Coalition on Instagram on Saturday.
During Alami’s speech at a panel on Palestinian Resistance and the Path to Liberation, in which panelists advocated for the use of armed action against Israel, attendees cheered when she mentioned Iran’s April 13 drone and missile attack on Israel and the evacuation of 250,000 Israeli civilians due to ongoing Hezbollah rocket and drone barrages.
BESIDES DAQQAH, terrorists who were praised and quoted repeatedly by the panel included Bassel al-Araj, Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, Udai Tamimi, and Black Liberation Army convicted murderer Assata Shakur. Terrorism, or, as the speakers deemed it, “armed resistance,” was also promoted, reinforced, and legitimized during the panel.Activist Sarah Abdelshamy, serving as the panel’s moderator, introduced the session by praising the exchange of imprisoned Palestinian terrorists for Hamas hostages and the success of the October 7 attack by the Gazan group.
“In the past eight months, we’ve seen incredible images of victory – from witnessing the families of political prisoners reunite with, and embrace their loved ones for the first time in years – to scenes of our heroic people breaking down the siege that has suffocated the Gaza Strip for 17 years,” said Abdelshamy.
“This is a protracted people’s war of liberation” she explained, adding that the “only one that is capable of sustaining it is the Palestinian resistance, which will continue to fight until liberation from the river to the sea.”
Palestinian writer Abdaljawad Omar defended the utility of “armed resistance” in the public eye, stating practical military gain, and denied that it was based on antisemitism or revenge. Further, he rejected the label of terrorism.
As proof of the effectiveness of armed action, he described October 7 as bringing about the political possibility currently facing the Palestinian people, in his words.
“Without the PLO, Palestinian identity would have been erased. Without the First and Second Intifadas, Israel would not have withdrawn from Gaza and besieged it from the outside and October 7 and the promise of liberation it holds would not have manifested in our conference today,” said Omar.
THEN, THE Palestinian Youth Movement’s Ashraf Hazayen explained that the population sustained armed groups by supporting them.
“We in the Palestinian Youth Movement see that a really important part of our role in the diaspora is internationalizing the popular cradle, that is, mirroring the popular support for Palestinian resistance that we see in Palestine across our organizing efforts in the diaspora,” Hazayen said.
“The Zionist project neglects a crucial fact – that the al-Aqsa Flood [October 7 massacre] was waged for and because of the people of Gaza and the Palestinian people as a whole,” Hazayen continued.
The PYM member also explained that “guerrilla warfare advancement from previous wars in Gaza made October 7 possible.”
General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative Mustafa Barghouti on Friday gave a video address at the conference. According to Answer Coalition, he told audiences, “In all its forms, resistance is our right, resistance is our way, and resistance is our guarantee to succeed in our future.”
At a Friday panel on Correcting the March of History: Strategies of Popular Education for Palestine, People’s Forum Education Director Layan Fuleihan explained former PFLP spokesman Kanafani’s “vision of transformative education.”
Another PFLP member, hijacker Leila Khaled, was featured in a painting at the conference’s art exhibition. Even before the event, PFLP made common cause with the conference, with PFLP’s leading member Salah Salah endorsing the event in a May 20 PYM video.
Palestinian Youth Movement Houston’s Mohammed Nabulsi, who served as conference MC and led the attendees in chants of, “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” said at the opening ceremony on Friday, “We also want to take a moment to honor our brave and noble resistance that defends our people from beneath the ground.”
Nabulsi also called for the liberation of Palestine “from the river to the sea,” and said that the conference “provides us with an important opportunity for all of us to reflect on the work that we’ve done so far, so that we may craft a path forward what truly brings the Zionist state and its military and their imperialist backers to their knees.”
Despite endorsement by US politicians, the conference also saw repeated uses of anti-American rhetoric. At a panel on Zionism and US Imperialism, Fuleihan said that her movement’s red line was “genocide, the entire occupation, and US imperialism’s role in occupying, massacring, and exploiting the entire world.”
PYM movement member Yara Shoufani claimed in videos posted by the group that the “Palestinian revolution is a gateway struggle and it radicalizes us and it shows us clearly who our enemies are. We have comrades in the movement who, a year ago, may have seen, may have had illusions about reforming the US empire, and today, through the Palestinian revolution, see clearly that there is no reforming the US empire.”
Shoufani bragged that the anti-Israel movement was creating tensions between the “US empire” and Israel.
Academic Rabab Abdulhadi, according to PYM, said that the Palestinians intend to fight, “to stay strong,” and “to defeat not only the mighty Israeli army, but US imperialism itself.”