Eventbrite, an American website for the organizations of events, has decided to remove an event featuring Leila Khaled, a member of the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (FPLP), from its platform for violating its terms of service.
The zoom webinar is being co-sponsored by San Francisco State University’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED), as well as the University of California Humanities Research Institute. It was due to be hosted by UC Merced’s Zoom account and moderated by UC Merced professor Sean Malloy.
Leila Khaled played a role in two airplane hijackings in 1969 and 1970 as a member of the PFLP, and she is considered by the Israeli Shin Bet intelligence agency to be part of the present Jordanian command of the organization.
The Lawfare Project has urged Zoom and the University of California, Merced, to cancel the event. The group wrote letters to both Zoom and UC Merced Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz informing them that the event could violate federal law by providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization.
“San Francisco State University is once again sponsoring a webinar featuring notorious plane hijacker and PFLP terrorist Leila Khaled, this time in partnership with UC Merced,” Brooke Goldstein, executive director of the Lawfare Project, told JNS.
Last September, Zoom canceled an event also featuring Khaled hosted by the San Francisco State University’s AMED after the Lawfare Project informed the company that permitting Khaled to use its platform would violate federal law. Additionally, some 90 Jewish and pro-Israel groups also urged SFSU president Lynn Mahoney to cancel the event, who repeatedly defended the event by invoking freedom of expression.