Leila Khaled is a Terrorist

In 1969, working with the terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), she helped hijack a TWA plane (Flight 840), flying from Rome to Tel Aviv, forcing it to land in Damascus. She had thought that Yitzhak Rabin would be aboard the plane, and could either be held for a prisoner swap, or killed, but she was mistaken. In Damascus, she and her fellows blew up the nose cone of the plane.

She then was given refuge by Hafez al-Assad, and by the next year she was at it again. On September 6, 1970, with another terrorist, she hijacked another plane, this one an El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York. While the plane was flying, two Israeli sky marshals killed the other terrorist, Patrick Argüello, a Nicaraguan–American. Khaled was carrying two grenades at the time, and though she had been given instructions not to threaten passengers on the civilian flight, she disobeyed.

While being overpowered, she withdrew the safety pin from one of the grenades and rolled it down the aisle towards the economy class passengers; miraculously, it did not explode. Had it done so, it would have caused general depressurization and the probable crash of the plane. In other words, Leila Khaled was a would-be mass murder, who had tried to blow up a passenger plane in flight. That should be kept firmly in mind.

Professor Rabab Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University had invited Leila Khaled to participate in a virtual seminar in September 2020. She was a guest at the event, entitled “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice and Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled.” Because of Khaled’s participation, the online seminar, which had briefly streamed on YouTube, was denied a platform by both Zoom and Facebook, and the service provider then cut its feed.

Abdulhadi filed a grievance, claiming that SFSU had violated her academic freedom. A report on the disposition of her grievance is here: “Faculty Panel Says SFSU Violated Professor’s Academic Freedom When Event With Palestinian Terrorist Was Denied Platform,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, October 15, 2021:

A three-member faculty panel at San Francisco State University has upheld a grievance filed by Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, ruling that the school violated the scholar’s academic freedom when a 2020 seminar she organized was cut off because it featured an affiliate of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The online seminar, which briefly streamed live on YouTube in Sept. 2020 before the service provider cut its feed, had been denied a platform by both Zoom and Facebook over the participation of Leila Khaled.

The Faculty Hearing Committee at SFSU said Thursday that school officials violated the academic freedom of Abdulhadi by “not providing adequate support” to the organizers of the event, and that they had caused “mental health stress.”

What kind of “support” should the university have provided to Abdulhadi? It was two social media giants, Zoom and Facebook, that pulled the plug on the seminar because of Leila Khaled, not the university. In demanding “adequate support,” did Abdulhadi expect her university to take on Zoom and Facebook?

How exactly would that have been done? In a lawsuit, that could cost the university a huge sum in legal fees, going up against the armies of lawyers that the two social media giants could field, how likely was It that SFSU would prevail? How long would such a lawsuit have gone on before being decided, possibly years after the seminar itself was scheduled to take place?

The panel cited an email from school administrator warning Abdulhadi and co-instructor Tomomi Kinukawa of the possible risks of engaging in criminal activity. In denying a platform to the event with Khaled, Zoom at the time noted the possible violation of its terms of service because of the speaker’s reported affiliation with the PFLP, a US-designated foreign terrorist organization.

The faculty panel considering Abdulhadi’s claim that her academic freedom was violated by SFSU found an email that in fact helps to exonerate the school: it was sent to Abdulhadi by an SFSU administrator who was concerned that by allowing a known terrorist to appear at the university-sponsored seminar, the school might be opening itself up to charges that, in holding up Leila Khaled for admiration and emulation, it was engaged in incentivizing terrorism. Zoom, a private party not subject to the First Amendment, had no trouble in finding a possible violation of its terms of service were Khaled allowed to appear, because of her link to the PFLP, which has been designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.

In finding for Abdulhadi, the panel called on SFSU to issue a public apology to the professor, issue a “public letter of support of faculty with regards to acaldemic freedom,” and provide a site for rescheduling the event.

Let’s get this straight. That three-person panel of fellow faculty wants SFSU to publicly apologize to Abdulhadi for not standing up to Zoom and Facebook and somehow to force them — how, exactly? — to carry the seminar where Leila Khaled has pride of place. And why should President Mahoney issue an apology to Professor Abdulhadi, when it is she who wishes to honor someone who tried to blow up a plane in flight with a hand grenade? 

What would be the effect on SFSU’s reputation were it to push back against social media. so that a would-be mass-murderer might appear as an “honored guest” at one of its seminars? What might be the effect of such an appearance on government contracts with SFSU faculty? How does Rabab Abdulhadi think SFSU should behave if a professor were to invite Robert Spencer or Ibn Warraq or Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak at a seminar on Islam? I’m sure she would be the first to demand that those invitations be rescinded. And if any of those guests actually appeared, she’d be trying to block their entry into the lecture hall, screaming her head off — academic freedom be damned.

The Thursday ruling prompted a support group for the professor to accuse SFSU of “complicity with Zionist and right wing groups aiming to silence Palestinian voices on campus” on Facebook.

That “support group” thinks that “Zionist and right wing groups” — carefully unnamed — are aiming to “silence Palestinian voices on campus.” No, they aren’t. They do not object to “Palestinian voices” no matter how deeply unpleasant but, rather, to the voices of “Palestinian terrorists,” including those who tried to blow up a plane in flight. That is a different thing.

The group also said that SFSU President Lynn Mahoney had three weeks to decide on whether to uphold the panel’s findings….

The bullying never ends. This faculty group that has given SFSU’s President exactly “three weeks” to meet their demands – where do they get off? Who appointed them? How dare they think they can order the university’s president around? And what will happen if she doesn’t apologize publicly to Abdulhadi, and doesn’t issue a “public letter of support of faculty with regards to academic freedom and provide a site for rescheduling the event”? If she does decide to do anything, it ought to be to reaffirm the principle of academic freedom “which is not absolute, and certainly does not apply to those who would celebrate terrorists.” As to providing a “site for rescheduling the event,” there are still the same obstacles – Zoom and Facebook — as before. 

They will not have changed their minds about blocking the appearance of Leila Khaled. Why should President Lynn Mahoney be held responsible for what those social media sites decide should be blocked? Abdulhadi and her willing collaborators appear not to understand that the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause applies to encroachments on speech by the government, not by private parties. Facebook and Zoom can ban whatever they want. Twitter can stop Donald Trump from appearing on its site, and it did. I’m fairly sure that Rabab Abdulhadi has no objection to that.

For the sake of SFSU’s reputation, and for her own, I hope President Mahoney ignores those preposterous demands, and reiterates the common understanding that academic freedom should not extend to the glorification of terrorists, and that, in any case, social media companies can ban whatever they like. If Rabab Abdulhadi and her rabid supporters are enraged to discover that the Free Speech Clause does not protect speech banned by private parties, that’s too bad.