Leila Khaled, a Palestinian Arab woman who was convicted of terrorism and who continues to advocate violence against Israelis today, is slated to speak at the European Parliament about women’s rights.
Khaled, who was invited to Brussels to speak Tuesday by lawmakers representing the far-left Izquierda Unida party from Spain, was arrested while carrying two grenades by Israeli sky marshals in 1970 while attempting to hijack an El Al flight from Amsterdam with a partner, whom the security officers killed. British authorities released her in exchange for hostages from another hijacking a month after her arrest.
She had already hijacked an American passenger plane in 1969, landing it in Damascus, where the two Israeli passengers aboard were arrested for three months before they were traded for Syrian prisoners of war in Israeli jails.
A member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine group, which is blacklisted as a terrorist entity by the European Union, Khaled is to be the keynote speaker at an event titled “The Role of Women in the Palestinian Popular Resistance,” a poster advertising the event read.
The American Jewish Committee’s Brussels-based Transatlantic Institute condemned the invitation extended to Khaled, saying that the group is “deeply concerned” by it and urged the European Parliament’s president to prevent Khaled’s planned arrival to its seat.
In a statement, the director of the Transatlantic Institute, Daniel Schwammenthal, said that it was an “utter disgrace that a convicted terrorist is given a platform in the European Parliament to spew her hateful message.”
Khaled’s terrorist group “has the blood of innocent victims on their hands,” Schwammenthal added. “It would be a sad irony if Parliament, only days after crucially setting up a special committee on terrorism, were to welcome and lionize as a ‘resistance fighter’ a convicted terrorist,” he also wrote.
Anders Vistisen, a vice chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament and a lawmaker from Denmark, on Tuesdaytold JTA he in recent days urged the leadership of the European Parliament, whose president is Antonio Tajani, to prevent Khaled from being hosted in parliament.
“I was told the parliament’s leadership will neither invite Palestinian terrorists nor prevent them from speaking in parliament if other parties do invite them,” said Vistisen of the Danish People’s Party, which is a member of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group.
This policy means “Palestinian terrorists are free to be hosted in parliament quite regularly,” he said. “It undermines the credibility of the European Parliament,” he added.