A convicted terrorist released in return for October 7 hostages held by Gaza terrorist organizations spoke remotely at a Detroit People’s Conference for Palestine panel last Sunday, The Jerusalem Post can confirm after reviewing the social media posts of participants.
Tanzim operative Hossam Shaheen, who was released on February 1, along with other terrorists as part of a ransom to Hamas, appeared on the panel “The Palestinian Struggle Behind Bars” alongside Marwan Barghouti’s son Arab Barghouti and journalist Lama Ghosheh.
While most of the August 29 to 31 panels and speeches were live-streamed and saved by official event broadcaster BreakThrough News, the Sunday panel with Shaheen is missing. Two videos were removed from the broadcaster’s YouTube playlist. Beside the initial August 18 Instagram announcement of Shaheen’s participation, the panel was not presented or advertised on the social media of organizers or participating groups.
Yet a review of TikTok accounts of participants revealed images of the panel with Shaheen, Ghosheh, and Barghouti, who all spoke by video call. A sketch of the panel was also included in a Thursday Instagram photograph album posted by conference organizer Palestinian Youth Movement.
Shaheen had created an al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade cell in the Jerusalem area, and recruited terrorists and supplied them with weapons for attacks. He was arrested in 2004 in Ramallah.
The conference had faced intense backlash after the Post’s report that Shaheen, who had been sentenced to 27 years in prison for attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder, would be speaking at the event.
State Deparment puts alert out for international speakers at event seeking a visa
The State Department consequently put out an alert for international speakers at the event seeking a visa, with journalist Abubaker Abed later telling the conference remotely that the United States was a “fascist and sadistic country” after it denied him a visa.
Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), which participated in the conference, mentioned Barghouti and Ghosheh on an X/Twitter thread about the panels last Sunday, but made no mention of Shaheen.
Barghouti, according to WAWOG, emphasized the importance of the “prisoners’ movement” in the conflict.
“My father told me that hopelessness is a privilege that we Palestinians don’t have,” Barghouti allegedly said. “He promised my mother when he proposed to her over 40 years ago: ‘We will live a normal life.’”
The elder Barghouti, Marwan, was instrumental in establishing the Fatah military wing and was sentenced in 2004 to five life sentences for his role in terrorist attacks that murdered five people.
Ghosheh accused the Israel Prison Service of abuse and humiliation of female security prisoners, according to a clip posted by an attendee on TikTok.
The journalist was fined NIS 4,500, given nine months of community service, and placed on probation for three years in September 2023 for identification with a terrorist organization and incitement to terrorism. In a series of Facebook posts from 2022 to 2023, Ghosheh praised several terrorists, including Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, calling the slain Lions’ Den founder a “hero” whose echoing bullets set “the foundations for a clear operating model.”
In May 2022, Ghosheh posted a photo of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) operatives, with an explanation that their model of armed battalions would spread through the West Bank and lead to confrontations.
“Resistance is a continued gift,” read the accompanying hashtag.
Ghosheh had interviewed Shaheen earlier in August for her show Freedom Breakers, in which he described himself as a “freedom fighter” and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) cell commander Walid Daqqah as like a “brother.”
Shaheen was not the only member of a terrorist organization to speak at the conference. The same day as Shaheen’s panel, ex-Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) official Omar Assaf addressed audiences, slamming the Palestinian Authority (PA) for acting as a “barrier” preventing the Palestinian people from confronting Israel.
Another controversial figure featured was convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was given a platform to speak via a pre-recorded message to the conference.
The conference, which was attended by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez, and Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein, was toned down in radical rhetoric when compared to the previous year, but still saw praise for terrorists, along with anti-American rhetoric. This included Martinez explaining that “If Palestine were a schoolyard playground, I would be a Palestinian. And that part of me, that part of me that couldn’t endure the abuse anymore, would be Hamas.”
The previous year’s event saw terrorists and terrorism being praised consistently through every panel, with the main hall named after Daqqah and his wife as the keynote speaker. PFLP terrorist Wisam Rafeedie also spoke remotely at the event after having been denied a visa.