San Francisco State University professors will host a discussion with Leila Khaled, a Palestinian flight-jacker with Marxist political objectives, on Sept. 23 as part of a lecture series called “Teaching Palestine,” Forward reported.
Khaled hijacked TWA Flight 840 in 1969 and EI AI Flight 219 in 1970. British police arrested her after the second hijacking, but the government released her in a hostage exchange.
She belongs to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist–Leninist terrorist organization committed to a Palestinian state and the destruction of the Israeli state.
Khaled’s talk is titled, “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice, and Resistance.”
Rabab Abdulhadi, associate professor of Ethnic Studies/Race and Resistance Studies, will host the event along with Women’s Studies Prof. Tomomi Kinukawa.
Abdulhadi co-founded the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which the United States defines as anti-Semitic.
Abdulhadi praised Khaled, saying that she feels “honored” to host a terrorist whose “steadfastness, resilience, and resistance, has and continues to be a huge inspiration to me and to generations of Palestinian women.”
Khaled broke one inspiring glass ceiling: She was the first woman to hijack an airplane.
Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., wrote a letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to inform her about the terrorist’s appearance at a taxpayer-funded university.
Lamborn said Khaled will be able to appear at the discussion only because its of online format, since she the federal government would have denied her a travel visa, as the governments of both Italy and the United Kingdom have in the past.
Even so, it may be against federal law for SFSU to host Khaled on Zoom since the university is “aiding the dissemination of terrorist propaganda and materially supporting terrorism.”
Lamborn asked Devos and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to withhold federal funds from SFSU if the university has violated federal law.
