Leila Khaled Says Jews ‘Are Now Playing the Same Role as Hitler’ in Webinar

On October 3, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) member Leila Khaled said that Jews are currently “playing the same role as [Adolf] Hitler.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that Khaled was the keynote speaker on a webinar hosted by the International League for the Peoples’ Struggle’s (ILPS)the ADL described the ILPS as a “far-left ‘anti-imperialist’ group.” The ADL quoted Khaled as saying during the webinar, “The Jews were oppressed…in Europe, by the Nazis. Now they are playing the same role of Hitler. They are playing the role…a new copy of Nazis just to end us.”

Khaled also said that the Palestinians “are still determined to continue using all means of struggle, including armed struggle” and accused the Israeli police of teaching other countries “how to suppress the people.” She continued, “I’m very sure that all the documents that we have shows that this is one of the main tools that is done by the Israelis and the Zionists in the world.”

Khaled had been scheduled to speak at a San Francisco State University Arabs and Muslim Ethnicities Diaspora Studies department Zoom webinar on September 23; Zoom announced on September 22 that it was barring the webinar from its platform. The next day, Facebook removed the event page and the link to the webinar. YouTube allowed the webinar to stream for a little more than 20 minutes before cutting off the stream.

Khaled, now 76, was among the terrorists who hijacked commercial jetliners in 1969 and 1970. Her attempt to detonate grenades on the 1970 flight were thwarted, and no one was injured or killed in either incident.

“While properly protected by the First Amendment, hosting or venerating Khaled and others who advocate violence can serve to legitimize terrorism,” the ADL concluded in its post on Khaled’s October 3 webinar.