Vice-President of the EU Parliament and Syriza MEP meets with Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled

Papadimoulis with Khaled on February 10, 2016 (Photo via http://syriza.eu/images/PAPADHMOULIS/PapadimoulisHaled.jpg). Khaled poses in scarf with the PFLP logo: Inside a red circle, a black arrow points from a white semi-circle to a map of Israel and the territories. Below the arrow, on the right side, is a green dot. The arrow symbolizes the return of Palestinian refugees. Red symbolizes the group’s Marxist-Leninist heritage. Description via http://archive.adl.org/terrorism/symbols/popular_front_pa1.html

Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled met with Dimitris Papadimoulis, Syriza MEP and Vice-President of the European Parliament, in its headquarters in Brussels on February 10, 2016. Leila Khaled was accompanied by a PFLP delegation. Syriza, a left-wing party that despite its past support for the Palestinians has sought to strengthen ties with the Jewish state, has called Khaled in a statement issued after the meeting an “activist with a historical role in the Palestinian Resistance.”

Khaled is member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Palestinian Marxist-Leninist and nationalist organization founded in 1967. PFLP is considered as a terrorist organization by the Council of the European Union, since its members have carried out numerous hijackings, assassinations, bombings and paramilitary operations against civilian and military targets in Israel. Khaled herself has been involved twice in airline hijackings and is an active supporter of the BDS movement.

One can therefore raise the question over the legitimacy of the visit of the PFLP delegation at the EU Parliament. How can it be that the delegation of a terror group obtained the right to enter the EU Parliament and meet with its Vice-President? Does Syriza seek to compensate the ongoing cooperation between Greece and Israel with an implicit tolerance of Palestinian radicalism?

After her visit to the EU Parliament in February, Leila Khaled has launched a tour of Germany, Sweden and Austria, meeting with Palestinian communities and supporters of the Palestinian cause. In Wuppertal, Germany, she spoke in a Greek restaurant together with a speaker who has justified terror attacks against Jews in Israel. During an event in Vienna, Austria, she accused Israel of being responsible for “a Holocaust” against the Palestinians and justified the ongoing knife attacks on Israeli citizens.