OPINION

The Left is mainstreaming Palestinian Marxist terrorists 

by John Rossomando

 | May 24, 2019 12:00 AM

A disturbing trend of open support for the Palestinian Marxist-Leninist terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP, has emerged on the political Left amid rising anti-Semitism that hides behind the label of anti-Zionism. 

On May 8, San Diego State University English professor Peter C. Herman observed that an email from SDSU's Women's Resource Center included the slogan "From the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free," and a photo of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist Leila Khaled clutching an AK-47. 

Khaled is famous for hijacking two airliners in 1970. She and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was designated in 1997 as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department, have been active in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement that seeks to economically and politically strangle Israel. Khaled remains a member of the PFLP's political bureau.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorists also gained notoriety for the 1976 hijacking of a Paris-bound Air France flight that was diverted to Entebbe, Uganda. More recently, the group claimed joint responsibility with Hamas for a deadly East Jerusalem attack in 2017 that left an Israeli female police officer dead and several others were wounded.

Coming so soon after last month's Poway synagogue shooting near San Diego, the imagery of this email from a group ostensibly promoting women's issues "seems especially shocking," Herman wrote. "But how are we to respond to a glorification of violence in a university-sanctioned newsletter?"

The university's Students for Justice In Palestine chapter hosted now-deported PFLP terrorist Rasmieh Odeh via videoconference in 2015. Odeh played a key role in a 1969 Jerusalem supermarket bombing that killed two students.

The mainstreaming of this violent terrorist group at San Diego State University is not isolated.

The Temple University Students for Justice In Palestine chapter posted the same image of Khaled on its official Twitter page in March 2016 in celebration of International Women's Day. Last summer, the same SJP chapter wrote a lengthy opinion piece supporting the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Chapter leader Brandon Do, lamenting the loss of the Soviet Union, attacked modern Palestinian leaders, who he claimed sold out to Zionism by agreeing to the 1993 Oslo Accords. 

Support for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has gone mainstream elsewhere on the progressive Left. The U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights and its Executive Director Youssef Munayyer have tweeted their support for this designated terrorist group. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez retweeted Munayyer on an unrelated issue in February, illustrating how few degrees of separation there are between these trendy terrorists and actual elected officials. The Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, whose leadership includes at least one Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine official and whose events frequently feature PFLP's flag, has also thrown its support behind Ocasio-Cortez and fellow freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., posed for a photo with a Samidoun's U.S. coordinator Joe Catron last month.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a terrorist group. It has been officially designated as such by the U.S. government since the Clinton era. It's a very bad sign for today's divided politics that students and others on the American Left would glorify terrorists and their violent acts.