US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is set to appear as a speaker at the same conference as a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist for the second time in a year, with the US politician addressing the Palestinian American Community Center (PACC) 2025 Conference on Thursday – and Palestinian author Wisam Rafeedie speaking virtually on Sunday.
According to a March 8 PACC Instagram post, Tlaib is set to hold a session alongside her son on the first day of the annual conference, leading a panel on “Palestine storytime” during a day themed “youth day.” The session is set to review their children’s book Mama in Congress: Rashida Tlaib’s Journey to Washington and introduce children to Palestinian culture, history, and “resistance” through storytelling.
The PACC website also originally provided promotional images of Rafeedie participating on the fourth day of the seventh annual conference, themed “Voices from Palestine” and subtitled “activism and liberation.” The new promotional images on the website still list the title of the PFLP terrorist’s session “Centering Palestinian Political Prisoners,” but do not name him as the speaker. However, archived versions of the PACC website and a still existent March 13 Instagram post detail Rafeedie’s participation.
Rafeedie is set to lead a PACC session “dedicated to shedding light on the lives of Palestinian political prisoners and their ongoing resistance within Israeli prisons.”
“We will explore the harsh realities faced by prisoners, the efforts to secure their release, and the global movement advocating for their freedom,” read the advertisement. “Through discussions on international solidarity, prisoner advocacy, and actionable ways the diaspora can support their struggle, this session aims to deepen our understanding and commitment to the fight for the release of political prisoners in Palestine.”
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PACC did not immediately respond to a Jerusalem Post query about the participation of a member of a US State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization.
Who is Rafeedie?
Rafeedie, who, according to Amnesty International and the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) ran a clandestine publishing house for the PFLP during the 1980s, also appeared at the same conference as Tlaib in May.Tlaib made a surprise appearance at the second day of the Detroit People’s Conference for Palestine, which also saw a video address by Dearborn, Michigan, Mayor Abdullah Hammoud.
Rafeedie, who spoke remotely on the final conference day because he was denied a visa, described Israel as a racist project and said that there was “no place for the two-state solution for any Palestinian.”
The PFLP member described Hamas as part of the “Palestinian people’s liberation movement, like all the resistance factions in Gaza, both Islamic and leftist,” and encouraged conference participants to go on social media to dispute the atrocities of the October 7 Massacre.
Rafeedie was not the only PFLP member who was honored at the event, with PFLP commander Walid Daqqah serving as the keynote speaker in a hall named for the deceased terrorist who commanded the cell that abducted, tortured, and murdered Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984.
The conference, which was endorsed by leading PFLP member Salah Salah in a Palestinian Youth Movement Instagram video, also saw panelists repeatedly reference, praise, and quote Daqqah, PFLP spokesperson Ghassan Kanafani, Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, Udai Tamimi, and Black Liberation Army convicted murderer Assata Shakur.
As the author of Trinity of Fundamentals, Rafeedie is a celebrity among radical political sects, appearing in a July People’s Forum class about how the “Palestinian resistance” had advanced liberation by exposing the “weaknesses and deficiencies of US imperialism and the Israeli occupation.”
In a 2021 Albawabh television news interview, Wisam explained how he hid from IDF forces over the course of nine years, based on instructions from his PFLP commanders.