Rutgers University and San Francisco State University are set to host a discussion panel on the Sept. 11 attacks that will feature speakers with sympathies for terrorists. Several organizations that will cosponsor the event have also praised terrorists and voiced anti-Semitic and anti-Israel views.
One of the 10 speakers at the event, which is scheduled to take place on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, has been convicted of assisting terrorists. Sami Al-Arian in 2006 pleaded guilty to providing services to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Hamas-aligned terror group that has killed dozens of Israeli civilians and soldiers.
Rabab Abdulhadi, another panelist, is a San Francisco State professor who hosted Palestinian terrorist and hijacker Leila Khaled at a university event last year. During a failed hijacking of an Israeli flight in 1970, Khaled reportedly rolled a grenade in the plane in an attempt to kill passengers.
Abdulhadi has expressed admiration of Khaled. "We really idolize somebody like Leila Khaled, somebody who actually stands up for herself, speaks for herself, actually goes to a plane and hijacks it," Abdulhadi said.
Panelist Hatem Bazian is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and founder of American Muslims for Palestine, a cosponsor of the event. Bazian in 2004 called for an "intifada" in the United States as the second intifada in Israel killed over 1,000 Israelis.
American Muslims for Palestine is a leader in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel. The U.S. government has linked organization officials to Hamas fundraising fronts, and the group's executive director has peddled anti-Semitic tropes and praised Hamas.
Another cosponsor, the Palestinian Youth Movement, has memorialized Palestinian terrorists and hosted events that feature anti-Semitic and violent rhetoric. After the group in May held a rally in Los Angeles, a pro-Palestinian mob brutally attacked a group of Jewish men at a restaurant.
Another organization that will host the event, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, reportedly helps "facilitate tax-exempt donations" to Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Liora Rez, executive director of StopAntisemitism.org, rebuked Rutgers and San Francisco State for hosting the event on the anniversary of 9/11.
"This event spits on the graves of the 3,000-plus American lives taken from us on 9/11 by terrorists," Rez said. "Rutgers and San Francisco State University should be ashamed of themselves for their participation."
Rutgers's Center for Security, Race, and Rights and San Francisco State's Arab and Muslim ethnic studies department sponsor the event, which "challenges the exceptionalization of 9/11/2001; legitimization of 'war on terror' and other imperialist wars and interventions; … and promotion of hyper masculinity and a colonial gender and sexualized order of modernization and 'civilization.'"
In 2019, San Francisco State reached a landmark settlement with students over allegations of "rampant anti-Semitism and discrimination against Jewish students."