The People’s Conference for Palestine announced the dates for its August event on Thursday, featuring a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine member and the widow of a terrorist in the advertisement.
The launch video for the second annual conference in Detroit, posted to the Palestinian Youth Movement’s Instagram account, included clips of PFLP member Wisam Rafeedie and deceased terrorist Walid Daqqa at the previous year’s event.
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“The people united will never be defeated,” Rafeedie said in the closing shot of the advertisement.
Rafeedie had spoken remotely at the previous May conference because he was denied entry into the United States.
Sana’ Daqqa, speaking last year in the event hall named after her deceased husband, was shown in the video stating, “We do not fear this country and its arrogance; we are the ones who create life, and they create death.”
Daqqa was also featured in a promotional social media post on Monday, which explained that the August 29-31 gathering of organizations and activists to participate in panels and workshops would “strengthen our collective commitment to the struggle for a free Palestine.”
The deceased terrorist, who died in an Israeli prison from cancer, had been convicted of commanding the PFLP cell that tortured, mutilated, and murdered IDF soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984.
The Thursday video also saw a speaker proclaiming that last year’s conference was a recommitment to freeing “every inch of Palestine from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea.”
Glorification of terrorists
The conference website, which has been subtitled Gaza is the Compass, noted that the conference serves as a broad forum for different pro-Palestinian voices, and the organizers do “not endorse specific statements or actions or screen the words of any Conference participants and explicitly disclaims responsibility for the views expressed, which are the speakers’ own.”
The previous year’s conference saw widespread glorification of terrorists, from chants praising Hezbollah and Houthi attacks to the repeated quoting and adoration of individual terrorists such as Bassel al-Araj, Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, Udai Tamimi, former PFLP spokesperson Ghassan Kanafani, convicted murderer Assata Shakur, and Daqqa. The event had also been endorsed by PFLP leading member Salah Salah.
Rafeedie had also recently been scheduled to give a virtual address at the early April Palestinian American Community Center conference. While later promotional materials removed mention of Rafeedie, the content still listed his session “Centering Palestinian Political Prisoners” on the agenda.
On April 6, New Jersey Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer urged US Attorney-General Pam Bondi to investigate the New Jersey conference for its promotion of Rafeedie.