After a controversial 2024 Detroit event that praised terrorists and had speakers who were affiliated with terrorist organizations, a second People’s Conference for Palestine was announced by the Palestinian Youth Movement on February 6.
PYM said on social media that the conference was being organized in response to US President Donald Trump’s proposals for America to take control of the Gaza Strip and relocate residents.
“Our goal is to unite in support of Palestinian liberation, contribute to rebuilding efforts, and uphold the steadfastness of the Palestinian people to remain on their land,” PYM said on Instagram.
No date or location for the conference was announced, but the website was updated with the tagline “Gaza is our compass.”
The May 2024 conference was organized with the cooperation and attendance of many of the main post-October 7 protest organizations and featured Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) member Wisam Rafeedie speaking remotely after being denied a visa.
Rafeedie told the crowd there was “no place for the two-state solution for any Palestinian” and described Hamas as part of the “Palestinian people’s liberation movement, like all the resistance factions in Gaza, both Islamic and leftist.”
The conference received endorsement from Palestinian terror group PFLP
The conference’s keynote speaker was Sana’ Daqqah, wife of PFLP terrorist Walid Daqqah, who died in prison in April after commanding the PFLP cell that abducted, tortured, and murdered Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984.
The event’s main hall was named after Daqqah, who was repeatedly praised and quoted by panelists alongside terrorists such as Bassel al-Araj, Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, Udai Tamimi, former PFLP spokesperson Ghassan Kanafani, and convicted murderer Assata Shakur of the Black Liberation Army.
Ahead of the conference, it was officially endorsed by leading PFLP member Salah Salah in a PYM video.
Throughout the conference, which also saw addresses by Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, armed “resistance” was glorified as a means to achieve the objective of Israel’s destruction.
Mustafa Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, said in a video address: “In all its forms, resistance is our right, resistance is our way, and resistance is our guarantee to succeed in our future.”
Activist Sarah Abdelshamy praised the success of the October 7 attack for its “scenes of our heroic people breaking down the siege that has suffocated the Gaza Strip for 17 years.”
“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 Youth Movement’s Ashraf Hazayen explained that the October 7 massacre was made possible because of the “guerrilla warfare advancement from previous wars in Gaza.”
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network co-founder Sara Kershnar said that protests until the conference were part of a “lifelong struggle to dismantle Zionism in the State of Israel.”
“We stand in our own history of resistance to genocide, including the right to resist and armed resistance as part of that history. In that way, we are unequivocally with the resistance in Palestine,” said Kershnar.
Palestinian Youth Movement Houston’s Mohammed Nabulsi led the conference participants in chants calling for intifada and praising Hezbollah and Houthi terrorism.
“Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around,” said Nabulsi.