The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was one of several Palestinian terrorist organizations that took part in the Hamas-led October 7 attack. It posted real-time videos of its members participating in, celebrating, and taking credit for the attack, on social media as it happened. In a recent interview, a top PFLP media official acknowledged: "The PFLP was one of the factions that participated in the 7 October operation and is still performing well in the battle. It remains present on the battlefield..." Last month, the PFLP and its affiliates were also named in a lawsuit by families of Canadian October 7victims who are suing Iran.
Established In 1967 As A Secular Marxist-Leninist And Virulently Anti-Capitalist Organization, The PFLP Ideology Also Incorporates Jihad And Martyrdom
The PFLP was established in 1967 by George Habash, and designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department, Japan, Canada, and the EU. It has carried out numerous terror attacks, beginning with passenger airplane hijackings in the 1970s and since moved on to suicide attacks, shootings, and assassinations. It is currently based in Damascus, Syria and, like Hizbullah and Hamas, financed by Iran. Recently, it has called, multiple times, for terror attacks inside the U.S. and against U.S. Embassies and military bases, as well as at its rallies calls for "Death to Canada." Despite its secular Marxist-Leninist origins and its virulent anticapitalism, its ideology also incorporates elements of jihad and martyrdom.
PFLP Arch-Terrorists Reaping The Fruits Of A Hollywood Makeover In Hopes Of Inspiring A New Era Of Gen-Z Students
In addition to Habash, the PFLP's general secretary who adapted modern terrorist tactics as a weapon, the organization's other founders include terrorist operations chief Wadi Haddad, organizer of the 1976 Entebbe hijacking; the first woman hijacker in history, Leila Khaled; Abu Ali Mustafa, responsible for nearly a dozen car-bomb attacks; assassination mastermind and imprisoned PFLP secretary general Ahmad Sa'adat. These arch-terrorists are enjoying the fruits of a Hollywood makeover in hopes of inspiring a new era of Gen-Z students.
Johannesburg, South Africa Set To Name A Street After Laila Khaled, One Of The PFLP's Most Notorious Terrorists
A perennially popular and frequently interviewed PFLP figure whose image, speeches, and talks regularly appear on campus is hijacker and terrorist Leila Khaled. She is regularly invoked by pro-Palestinian and other protestors – much like Che Guevara, whose famous photo continues to appear on T-shirts, posters, and radical literature. It was recently announced that South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg, would be naming a street after her.
Students For Justice In Palestine – The Leading Extremist Student Organization In The U.S. – Adopts Leila Khaled And Promotes PFLP Ideology To Gen Z
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) – one of the most extreme student organizations known for its support of terrorist groups and increasingly being banned across the U.S. – has adopted Khaled's image: members have displayed at a panel depicting Khaled carrying a rifle at University of California Riverside, promoted a "teach-in" about her at UNC-Chapel Hill, and shared images featuring the PFLP logo on Instagram at the University of Texas, Dallas, NYU Law, and the University of Massachusetts. Students have glorified Khaled on Instagram at San Francisco State University and sold merchandise bearing her image at the Fashion Institute of Technology, which is part of the State University of New York. These are just a few examples of the PFLP presence that is spreading across campuses.
There are multiple lawsuits by families of October 7 victims against the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP, or SJP). Lawyers representing the victims allege that they and other student groups "work in the United States as collaborators and propagandists for Hamas... [and] are merely the current version of several prior entities that were already determined by the U.S. government to be supporters of Hamas."
PFLP Creates Networks Of Organizations, Activists, And Allies – First Among Them Samidoun, Recently Sanctioned By U.S. And Canada – Operating On And Off Campus To Obfuscate Its True Activities, Including Promoting Hamas, Hizbullah, And The Houthis
The PFLP excels at creating networks of organizations, activists, and allies such as SJP on and off campus to obfuscate its true activities, including fundraising – it raises millions of dollars via NGO front organizations in the U.S. and Europe. One is the PFLP-linked Masar Badil, an organization devoted to Israel's destruction that also does significant outreach to American and European students, while promoting Hamas, Hizbullah, and the Houthis.
The organization's most notable offshoot is the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a Canadian federally registered nonprofit that is a major disseminator and promoter of support for the PFLP and other designated terrorist organizations in the U.S., Canada, and other Western countries. Samidoun holds rallies and marches, hangs banners, and engages with media and followers online, and is very active on university campuses. It is closely tied to the PFLP and is itself designated as a terrorist organization in Germany and Israel. Following calls for the U.S. and Canada to do likewise, on October 15, 2024, the U.S. Treasury Department, in a joint action with Canada, designated Samidoun and its head Khaled Barakat, describing it as a "sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the PFLP" and describing Barakat as "a member of the PFLP leadership."
Samidoun is headed by the Vancouver-based former PFLP official and activist Khaled Barakat, who in 2020 was deemed a "security risk" and banned from entering Germany. In 2022, he was detained and deported from the Netherlands, along with Samidoun international coordinator Charlotte Kates, to whom he is married. In April 2024, Belgium began moves to expel Samidoun's coordinator in Europe, Mohammed Khatib.
In an April 26, 2024 Vancouver speech that led to her arrest by Canadian authorities, Kates championed the October 7 attackers to a cheering crowd and explains what they are trying to do: "[I]t is long past time to delist Palestinian and Lebanese resistance organizations from Canada's so-called list of terrorist entities. Hamas is not a terrorist organization. [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad is not a terrorist organization. The PFLP is not a terrorist organization. Hizbullah is not a terrorist organization. These are our resistance fighters.... They are freedom fighters. And they are heroes for a new world."
Immediately After October 7, PFLP Flags Became A Fixture At Pro-Palestinian Protests And At Campus Encampments
Right after October 7, PFLP flags became a fixture at pro-Palestinian protests and at campus encampments. The PFLP flags – red with a white emblem representing the word "Front" and a Palestinian return to Israel – have become popular, as have PFLP headbands and other paraphernalia appearing at these venues across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. PFLP-linked events at U.S. colleges and universities have included teach-ins and speeches featuring and focusing on the organization and its officials and affiliates.
University Campuses – Providing A Pool Of Readymade PFLP Recruits
University campuses have always provided the PFLP with a large pool of recruits already radicalized by extremist professors who exemplify how many universities have failed to protect their impressionable students from being groomed. The PFLP's secular Marxist-Leninist ideology, with its related goals for the destruction of Israel and of U.S. imperialism, have great appeal for these students.
Top PFLP Strategy – Eliciting Support From U.S. Students
Gaining support from U.S. students continues to be a top strategy of the PFLP: In an April 24 statement it underlined its appreciation for the "solidarity and support for the struggle of our people in various American universities." In May, the organization's deputy secretary general further encouraged the protests, saying that "the university intifada in America should be a model to be emulated in order to triumph for Palestine."
It was recently revealed that Hassan Diam, who as a member of the PFLP was involved in a terrorist attack on a French synagogue that killed four and wounded 40 in 1980, is now teaching at Canada's Carleton University while France is demanding his extradition.
PFLP Officials And Their Supporters At Top Universities Groom Students – While University Administrators, Law Enforcement Stand By
PFLP officials and its supporters at top universities are grooming students with little or no action being taken by law enforcement or even by the university's administrators. One incident that led to rare action taken by the university after publicity was in a March "Resistance 101" workshop hosted by the Columbia University Apartheid Divest student group, on the Columbia University campus, featured Samidoun leader Khaled Barakat, who speaking to the group openly referred to his "friends and brothers in Hamas, Islamic Jihad [and] the PFLP in Gaza," saying that particularly after October 7, "when they see students organizing outside Palestine, they really feel that they are being backed as a resistance and they're being supported."
Another PFLP-affiliated organization is the violent Gaza-based Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement (PARPM), which in May 2024 called on its allies to "besiege the White House" and to "surround the palaces, headquarters and ministries of Western colonial governments."
Notably, Lebanese-Canadian academic Hassan Diab, identified since 1999 as the suspected PFLP-linked motorcycle bomber in the 1980 Paris Rue Copernic synagogue bombing in which four were killed and 46 wounded, and convicted in absentia in France in April 2023 and sentenced to life in prison, is still teaching at Carleton University in Ottawa. In the fall of 2024, he taught a course on "Social Justice in Action." Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to the news of his conviction by saying that Canada would wait to see "what the French tribunals choose to do," adding: "But we will always be there to stand up for Canadians and their rights." In 2007, France issued an international arrest warrant for him, but Canada only agreed to extradite him eight years later. He served three years in prison there, about which Trudeau said in 2018 that this "never should have happened." In November 2022, the university's sociology and anthropology department hosted a rally in support of Diab, "demanding that the Canadian government protect professor Hassan Diab from further injustice." On January 2, 2025, Elon Musk posted a tweet seen over 20 million times: "A mass murderer is living free as a professor in Canada?"
The Longstanding PFLP Ties Of Bisan Owda, Whose News Broadcast On The Muslim Brotherhood-Affiliated Qatari Al-Jazeera Network Won An Emmy And A Peabody, Are Well Documented
Even with such openly violent calls for attacks against the U.S., the PFLP has been able to successfully enter the country's mainstream with a shocking number of people turning a blind eye to their dangerous extremism. One of the more troubling examples is longtime activist Bisan Owda, whose news broadcast on the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Qatari Al-Jazeera network won an Emmy this year and is a 2023 Peabody Award winner. Owda's PFLP ties are well documented, including as a featured "comrade" speaking at PFLP rallies and as a member of its Progressive Youth Union.
While her Hollywood apologists have claimed that she is not actually connected with the PFLP, there is ample evidence of the extent of her links to and activism for the organization, including her serving as keynote speaker at events. For several consecutive years, she led PFLP rallies in the Gaza Strip attended by armed members of the group's military wing. Owda herself appeared at these events in a military uniform with PFLP insignia. At these events, senior PFLP officials delivered speeches praising terrorists, the "resistance" and the "intifada." Owda has acknowledged her connection with the organization.
Alongside CNN and ABC, an Emmy to honor the best in American news and documentary programming was presented by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) and awarded to Owda on September 25. Even though there were calls to rescind the nomination, the NATAS said it wouldn't, noting that all documented ties between her and the PFLP occurred "between six and nine years ago," when Owda was still a teenager. NATAS added that it was "unable to corroborate" reports of other ties, and that it wasn't able "to date, to surface any evidence of more contemporary or active involvement by Owda with the PFLP organization."
The awards given by NATAS and Peabody, as well as the Hollywood figures who have backed Owda, are all enablers of a designated terrorist organization who actively calls for attacking the U.S. and are part of the PFLP's makeover attempt. Her case isn't a make-believe TV drama in which, changing her PFLP uniform for street clothes, she turned from a member of a terrorist organization into a journalist. Journalists have neglected to research either Odwa and the network she works for Al-Jazeera, which has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, or the PFLP presence all over campuses more broadly.
At PFLP Rallies: Uniformed Activists Wear Mock Explosive Belts, Wave PFLP Flags; Senior Leaders Indoctrinate Young People To Carry Out "Martyrdom-Seeking" – i.e. Suicide – Operations Involving "All Means Of Fighting" Including Knives, Firebombs, Handguns
To understand why Owda's receiving such prestigious awards is deeply disturbing and dangerous, one needs to understand, along with PFLP being a violent terrorist organization, exactly what goes on at the PFLP rallies like those she participated in and led. At these rallies, which feature masked and uniformed activists wearing mock explosive belts and waving PFLP flags, the organization's senior leaders indoctrinate and push youth to carry out "martyrdom-seeking" – i.e. suicide – operations involving "all means of fighting" including knives, firebombs, handguns.
PFLP: The U.S. Is An Enemy Equal To Israel – And Must Be "Targeted With All Forms Of Resistance"
The PFLP has issued several statements since October 7 declaring the U.S. an enemy equal to Israel and calling for it to be attacked. In early November, it said that the U.S. must be "targeted with all forms of resistance" and must "pay the price" for unleashing the "Zionist evil," and called for a "popular uprising that burns the embassies of the aggression states and their interests and bases in the region."
In a series of December 2023 press releases, the PFLP called for attacking the U.S. In January 2023, the PFLP's Beirut office called to "raise the level of targeting against American interests in the region," stressing that the continued presence of U.S. Embassies and military bases in the region represents a "stab in the back" of the Palestinian people. In July 2024, the PFLP called on the international community and victims of "American terrorism" to target American interests everywhere.
The outreach, indoctrination, and brainwashing efforts by PFLP leaders and affiliates – many of whom have been involved in terror attacks – that are directed at largely already-radicalized and receptive Western students and young people have only one possible goal: to further radicalize them towards taking their convictions one step farther – to actual terrorism. Counterterrorism and intelligence officials need to be paying close attention to what the PFLP is doing in the U.S. and in the West – including examining whether there are any ongoing influence campaigns and if so, who is behind them – and to be aware of the danger this group poses if they fail to do so.
* Steven Stalinsky is Executive Director of The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
