Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna of California is scheduled to appear this weekend at “ArabCon” in Dearborn, Michigan, alongside a slate of speakers accused of antisemitism and of openly defending Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel.
The four-day event, which began Thursday in the nation’s largest Arab-majority city, includes a lineup of activists and academics long criticized for praising terrorist groups. Khanna, who represents much of Silicon Valley, has said he wants “to be part of the national conversation” as a potential contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
Khanna is scheduled to speak Saturday with The Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur on a panel about the “political realignment” underway as “the genocide in Gaza continues to spark global outrage.”
Among the other featured speakers is Democrat Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who recently came under fire for telling a Christian resident, “you are not welcome” in the city, after the man objected to renaming an intersection to honor an Arab American journalist with a history of praising terror groups. Hammoud, who has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, called the man a racist bigot and Islamophobe, adding, “Although you live here, I want you to know as mayor, you are not welcome here. And the day you move out of the city will be the day that I launch a parade celebrating the fact that you moved out of this city.”
Also on the lineup is Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student, who has emerged as the face of resistance against the Trump administration’s crackdown on campus anti-semitism. The Syrian-born Palestinian activist, who was arrested in March by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, dubbed himself the “lead negotiator” for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a group on the front lines of an illegal encampment last year that saw protesters occupying a school building, assaulting Jewish students and praising Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in Israel.
The Department of Justice says Khalil failed to disclose on his permanent residency application that he previously worked as a political affairs officer for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the infamous UN agency accused of harboring ties to Hamas. Mara Kronenfeld, executive director of UNRWA USA, is also slated to appear at the conference.
San Francisco State University professor Rabab Abdulhadi is another speaker, known for having organized events with members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated foreign terrorist organization, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Abdulhadi has also claimed that the Hamas terrorists who attacked Israel on Oct. 7 were “merely defending themselves” against “colonial & racist violence.”
Amer Zahr, who is moderating a panel on Friday, said at a Dearborn rally in 2017, “We stand with everybody who stands against the Israeli occupation — whether it’s called Hamas, whether it’s called Hezbollah.”
Zahra Billoo, a Council on American-Islamic Relations official who once wrote, “Blaming Hamas for firing rockets at [Apartheid] Israel is like blaming a woman for punching her rapist,” is also scheduled to speak at the conference.
Muslim activist Linda Sarsour, who was forced to step down from her role in the Women’s March in 2019 over accusations of anti-Semitism, will appear on a panel with Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin. Code Pink has been linked to the Chinese Communist Party and is known for organizing disruptive pro-Palestinian protests.
Khanna, first elected in 2017, is leading a coalition of Democrats pushing the Trump administration to recognize a Palestinian state.
“I have never been to a conference where I agree with every speaker, but speaking at ArabCon is important,” he said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “I will discuss my efforts to recognize a Palestinian state without Hamas as part of a two-state solution. Recognition of Palestinian statehood — alongside continued efforts to secure Israel’s safety and guarantee its future as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people — is essential to achieving peace.”
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