Make Hosting Terrorists Illegal
The "People's Conference for Palestine" is just the latest instance of Palestinian-American NGOs platforming terrorists. But it's the first time a member of congress showed up at one.
We often hear about the “material support for terror laws,” which were conceived to prevent and hold accountable people and entities from aiding US-designated terror groups. Unfortunately, these laws have lost much of their value over the last several years, as multiple nonprofits have effectively provided terror groups and their members with free PR and other services.
Over the weekend, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib graced the Huntington Place in Detroit, Michigan for a surprise appearance at the People’s Conference for Palestine, which featured a cavalcade of terror supporters and even a member of the US-designated terror group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The conference, organized primarily by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), featured a speech by the PFLP’s Wisam Rafeedie, during which he called for the “end of the Zionist project in Palestine,” referring to Israel. Prior to the conference, Rafeedie and a co-founder of the PFLP, Salah Salah, released separate endorsement videos calling on the public to tune in. Another key speaker was Sana’ Daqqa, the wife of Walid Daqqa, a PFLP member who died last month in Israeli prison, where he sat since being convicted for kidnapping and murdering an Israeli soldier in 1984. With speakers like that, it’s unsurprising that the conference also featured calls to dismantle the United States itself.
The PFLP, it’s worth noting, is responsible for orchestrating the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre, in which 26 people were murdered, including 17 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico. The organization also participated in the October 7th massacre and has held some of the abducted Israeli children who were taken hostage during the assault.
Despite all this, Rep. Tlaib enthusiastically spoke to the conference, seemingly without fear of incurring any sort of ethics complaint from the House. Perhaps that’s because for well over a decade now, US-based pro-Palestinian groups have openly engaged with terrorists with little to no consequences.
For example, the Chinese Communist Party-linked People’s Forum, which sat among the conference's steering committee and even owns the conference web domain, published the first-ever English edition of Rafeedie’s novel, The Trinity of Fundamentals, which was translated from Arabic by PYM. The People’s Forum and PYM hosted Rafeedie for a launch event last year celebrating its release.
Also among the steering committee was National Students for Justice in Palestine, which for over a decade hosted events with convicted terrorists such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Khader Adnan, who has openly expressed support for suicide bombings, and the PFLP’s Rasmea Odeh, who murdered two students in a Jerusalem supermarket bombing.
Moreover, since the Hamas-led October 7th massacre, the Samidoun Prisoner Solidarity Network, a PFLP front group that has for years been orchestrating rallies in New York City, hosted webinars with a senior member of the Houthi terror group, as well as Hamas officials Basem Naim, Husam Badran, and Osama Hamdan.
These examples (and there are many more) all underscore a broader issue: the existing material support laws – 18 U.S.C. § 2339A and § 2339B – are too narrow and vague, allowing radical, terror-supporting entities to carefully skirt the line of legality and provide what in virtually any other context would be defined as “material support or resources.” And yet, the most the Attorney General and Department of Justice could seem to muster to confront this issue is a collective whimper, out of a misguided and inaccurate fear that tackling it head on would violate first amendment protections.
Since the Executive has failed to act upon these alarming and ongoing abuses, Congress should immediately begin a process to amend 18 U.S.C. § 2339A and § 2339B and enshrine that “material support or resources” also encompass hosting members of US-designated terror groups for events, virtual or not.
This is not to suggest that anyone who expresses vocal support for US-designated terror groups be prosecuted – condemnable as such statements may be – but rather that serving as their PR wing should be a punishable offense. Free speech is paramount. But it must not be perverted for the benefit of terrorists.