Campus Reform has reported that San Francisco State University has scheduled a lecture from terrorist Leila Khaled for later this month.
The First Female Hijacker
Leila Khaled, known as the first female hijacker, is famous for her role in two plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970. Khaled is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Khaled, along with a few other hijackers, took control of TWA Flight 840 from Rome to Tel Aviv in 1969. No one was injured during the hijacking, though the terrorists did blow up the nose of the plane upon landing it.
In 1970, Khaled and one other terrorist hijacked El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York City. While Khaled carried two grenades, she did not use them, though her partner shot a member of the flight crew. Israeli air marshals returned fire, killing him, and then subdued Khaled. No passengers were injured.
A San Francisco State University spokesperson defended their decision to invite a terrorist to speak to students, saying that the lecture will give them the opportunity to listen to “divergent” ideas.
“Higher education and the college experience are an opportunity to hear divergent ideas, viewpoints and accounts of life experiences. An important outcome of the college experience is to learn to think critically and come to independent, personal conclusions about events of local and global importance,” said the spokesperson.
Her scheduled lecture will take place during an event hosted by the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora Studies Department. The event’s topic is “gender, justice & resistance.”
“A university is a marketplace of ideas, and San Francisco State University supports the rights of all individuals to express their viewpoints and other speech protected by law, even when those viewpoints may be controversial,” the spokesperson continued.
The American Jewish Committee commented on this insanity on Twitter:
Leila Khaled is a terrorist who twice hijacked planes full of Jews. There is nothing “courageous” about inviting her to campus.
We do not say this lightly — @SFSU has become a hostile and unsafe school for Jewish students.https://t.co/WQMiJBliOQ
— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) September 6, 2020
Rodney Khazzam, one of the survivors of El Al Flight 219 penned a letter to the university expressing his outrage at their decision.
“Leila Khaled sat just behind me, my sister, my father and my pregnant mother. Several minutes into the flight, over international air, above the English Channel, Leila Khaled (and her partner) stood up from directly behind us and began her flight of terror. Her intent was to kill every passenger on board, whether by taking the plane down in a crash, or by diverting the flight to a desert in Jordan… This attack was not for freedom, but rather for murder. This was not a plane full of oppressors. This was not a war plane. This was a civilian passenger plane, full of innocent civilians, including Americans like myself… I am alive because of the heroic pilot who thwarted the hijacking. Her partner in crime was killed on the plane by undercover marshals right in front of me. She was captured by the same. When she realized she was being captured and her plan was being foiled, she detonated a grenade and indiscriminately attempted to set if off onboard. By sheer fortune, all her attempts failed,” Khazzam wrote.