“We now ask for your intervention to end this silencing of Palestine and other narratives of resistance and justice.” Organizers of an April online event featuring Leila Khaled, which was shut down by private tech companies following Israel lobby pressure, respond.
Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled speaks at an event in Barcelona, Spain, in 2017. Photo: Fira Literal Barcelona / Wikimedia Commons.
Zoom has introduced a new policy on “academic freedom” for higher education users, which will limit its interference in the shutdown of controversial virtual events hosted on its video conferencing platform. The move comes as Eventbrite last week decided to remove a San Francisco State University-sponsored event on April 23 featuring Leila Khaled a member of US-designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – from its platform, as it violates the event management platform’s terms of service.
The new policy, which according to the education outlet
A program in Muslim and Arab studies at San Francisco State is again attempting to present an online forum featuring a Palestinian militant who participated in two airplane hijackings, and is again running into roadblocks by internet companies and opposition from Jewish groups.
On Thursday, a page for the forum was removed by Eventbrite, a San Francisco-based ticketing and event registration company. Facebook also reportedly took down its page for the forum, called “Whose Narratives? What Free Speech for Palestine?”
The internet companies’ rebuffs come as little surprise after a similar forum held last September and featuring many of the same panelists encountered equal pushback: Its Zoom registration link was deactivated, Facebook removed the event page, and YouTube, which is owned by Google, cut the talk short after 23 minutes.
Lawfare Project Urges Zoom, UC Merced to Cancel Event Featuring PFLP Terrorist | The Jewish Press - JewishPress com | Sean Savage | 4 Iyyar 5781 – April 16, 2021 jewishpress.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jewishpress.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Meanwhile, a Zoom spokesperson said the company was 'reviewing the facts of this event to determine if it is consistent with our Terms of Service and Community Standards.'