DETROIT, Michigan — The second annual People’s Conference for Palestine highlighted growing extremism within the anti-Israel movement, marked by direct calls for violence and aggressive rhetoric.

The conference, which took place from August 29-31, 2025, demonstrated how certain concerning trends and tactics that gained traction in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror attacks on Israel have become normalized nearly two years later. These included the open and explicit glorification of terror groups like Hamas; calls to eradicate Zionism and target Zionists; encouraging the use of potentially unlawful, direct-action approaches that go beyond standard protest activity; the platforming of individuals convicted for terrorist activities; and extreme calls not for a ceasefire but to abolish Israel.

Organizers reported approximately 4,500 conference participants, with a speaker roster that again included convicted terrorists; elected U.S. officials at the local level and even one at the federal level; university professors and student organizers; activist group leaders and others. Among the speakers were U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Hatem Bazian, Mahmoud Khalil, Hasan Piker, Linda Sarsour and Omar Suleiman. The event was co-emceed by Taher Dahleh, a Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) organizer, and Rama Kased, a San Francisco State University professor and U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) organizer.

The conference’s incendiary tone was clear from the outset. Eduardo Martinez, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-aligned mayor of Richmond, California, drew resounding cheers from the crowd during the event’s opening session for explicitly justifying Hamas’s October 7 attacks. Martinez stated, “If Palestine were a schoolyard playground, I would be a Palestinian. And that part of me that couldn’t endure the abuse any more would be Hamas.”

 (Screenshots/YouTube/Instagram)

Richmond, California, mayor Eduardo Martinez speaks from the podium at the second annual People’s Conference for Palestine on August 29, 2025 (left), and is seen later in the weekend participating in the conference while wearing a hat that reads, ”DD TT IDF [Death Death to the IDF]” (right).

 

The conference was convened by a dozen organizations and endorsed by hundreds more—across campus, community, and other sectors—which together represent vast swaths of the organized anti-Israel movement in the U.S. As with last May’s inaugural conference, organizers sought to use the three-day gathering “to address the current political moment and to bring together critical voices in the struggle…to continue building and strengthening the movement for Palestinian liberation in North America.”

Glorifying Terror and Platforming Terrorists

During a session titled “The Palestinian Struggle Behind Bars,” speakers openly praised current and former terrorists, who were also cheered by the crowd. The panel featured a virtual address by Hossam Shaheen, a member of the designated terror group the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades (AAMB) who served more than 20 years in prison in Israel on charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Shaheen was freed as part of a temporary Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement in early 2025 that included a release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7.

Shaheen was joined on the panel by Arab Barghouti, son of the prominent Palestinian figure Marwan Barghouti, an imprisoned convicted terrorist and leader of the Fatah-affiliated militia group Tanzim. Lama Ghosheh, a Palestinian journalist who in 2023 received a suspended sentence after being arrested on allegations of “identification with a terrorist group,” also spoke on the panel.

 (Screenshot/Facebook)

Hossam Shaheen, Arab Barghouti, and Lama Ghosheh speak virtually on a panel titled “The Palestinian Struggle Behind Bars,” during the second annual People’s Conference for Palestine on August 31, 2025.

 

Omar Assaf—a co-founder of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), which was at one time recognized by the U.S. government as a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO)—spoke on a panel later in the weekend.

Echoing comments made during his appearance at last year’s conference, Raja Abdulhaq—co-founder of Palestinian news agency Quds News Network, which reportedly has a reputation for being affiliated with U.S.-designated terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—lauded the “Axis of Resistance,” a term that refers to Iran and its proxies of terrorist organizations in the Middle East. During a plenary titled “Zionism, Imperialism, and the Shifting Battlefield,” Abdulhaq justified the actions of groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and PIJ as “authentic indigenous response to a violent, colonial project.”

Abdulhaq added: “The only way to undo and undermine and sabotage and mitigate the subjugation of the Arab and the Muslim subjects in the region, the colonized subjects in the region, is through resistance…This is the time where we come together—leftists, Islamists, socialists—I don’t care what ideology you have. What matters is we are united.”

Hani Al-Masri, one of the founders of the West Bank-based Masarat – The Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies, spoke on that same panel. He celebrated “the valor of the Palestinian resistance,” characterizing the October 7 attacks as “a normal and natural reaction” to Israel’s actions and referring to the fact that “Palestinians are fighting” as “a miracle.” Al-Masri elicited fervent applause from the crowd when he stated that “the Palestinian population is still much greater than the Jews that are settled there.”

Speakers frequently invoked the names and actions of terror group leaders. Healthcare Workers for Palestine (HCW4P) representative Maisa Morrar praised Hamas co-founder Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) co-founder George Habash. Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha expressed reverence for the late PFLP terrorist Walid Daqqa and PFLP spokesperson Ghassan Kanafani.

The glorification of terrorists was apparent elsewhere throughout the conference space, including on conference attendees’ clothing and in the vendor fair and art installation areas. The Palestinian Feminist Collective’s booth honored figures like the notorious PFLP leader and airplane hijacker Leila Khaled; convicted attempted movie theater bomber Fatima Bernawi; and others. 1804 Books, a New York-based bookstore and publisher operated by The People’s Forum, sold copies of former PFLP spokesperson Ghassan Kanafani’s translated works. PFLP’s Khalida Jarrar was among those lionized in a “Palestinian Political Prisoners” poster installation.

Charting a Direct Action-Focused Path Forward Domestically for the U.S. Anti-Israel Movement

Throughout the conference, speakers reflected on the anti-Israel movement over the past two years and looked ahead to the future, brainstorming on such topics as how “to isolate Zionism on a concrete level” and “actionable ways to ensure that Zionism is never able to rehabilitate its genocidal image.”

Coordinated Campaigns and Direct Actions

Loubna Qutami, a Palestinian Feminist Collective organizer and panel moderator, acknowledged that enthusiasm among the general public to engage in anti-Israel protests has waned. She stated, “In the recent period, popular participation in our protest has been on the decline. We are not seeing the level of energy, the level of momentum, and we have to be honest about that.”

Speakers resolved not to be discouraged, however, and to double down on taking tangible action against Israel.

Aisha Nizar, a PYM organizer and member of the steering committee for the PYM-led “Mask Off Maersk” campaign, boasted about targeting the Copenhagen-based global shipping and logistics company “through a multitude of avenues,” including the company’s use of “civilian infrastructure.”

Sachin Peddada, a PhD student and the research coordinator of the organization Progressive International, urged “action” that goes beyond “putting out a joint letter or standing with a sign at the street and voicing your opposition.” He praised the sabotage undertaken by Palestine Action in the UK—a group that engaged in multiple instances of significant vandalism and violence and which was proscribed in July 2025 as a terror group under the UK government’s counterterrorism laws. “Those actions work,” said Peddada. “They show the empire that it is not invincible, that it is not infallible, that there are ways that we can attack it and actually make our attacks land.”

Prominent Palestinian-American activist Huwaida Arraf spoke about her work with the Free Gaza Movement and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which Arraf co-founded during the Second Intifada, a prolonged period of violent terrorist attacks that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 Israelis. Harnessing a contentious slogan tied to the violence of that period, Arraf declared to the cheering crowd: “We have and we will continue to globalize the Intifada!” Arraf echoed the messages imparted by other speakers on the need to shift anti-Israel activism into a more confrontational approach, urging attendees, “speaking, talking is not enough.”

Nidal Jboor, M.D., co-founder of Doctors Against Genocide, a Michigan-based international coalition of healthcare professionals that formed in the wake of October 7, urged escalated actions: “It is time for us to pay back and stop the criminals, the perpetrators, the child murderers…We all know who they are, whether they are in Israel, in Tel Aviv, in Washington, in Germany, in Europe. We all know them…They need to be locked up, they need to be taken out, they need to be neutralized, to save children…We have been speaking up for two years. Now it’s time to escalate and to act and to get the murderers out.”

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Nidal Jboor speaks on a panel at the second annual People’s Conference for Palestine alongside Maisa Morrar, Thaer Ahmed, Karameh Hawash Kuemmerle and Jill Stein on August 31, 2025.

 

On the final day of the conference, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib addressed attendees, stating, “We have been lied to, gaslit by a Democratic president and now a Republican president. Both parties vote time and time again to fund one of the worst crimes in history, but…outside of the decaying halls of the empire in Washington, D.C., we are winning…Real change doesn’t come from the cowards and warmongers in Congress. It comes from the streets. It comes from all of us mobilizing and seizing the power to resist and fight back.”

Closing out the conference on Sunday evening, PYM organizer Jenan Awaida reaffirmed that “every sector of society must become a front for confronting Zionism” and that “now is the time to put our entire weight behind campaigns that will strike all of these pressure points.” She added: “We come from a long legacy of people who have fought tooth and nail to take down these systems, people who have sacrificed their lives for this struggle, and we have a responsibility to keep fighting.”

Ideological and Institutional Strategies

Some speakers repeatedly commented on needing to root out Zionism and Zionists from various parts of society and to build on successes in shifting public opinion. At times, their comments echoed antisemitic tropes about the supposed nefarious Jewish influence and control of governments, media, culture, education and more.

During a session titled, “Unmasking Genocide Enablers in the United States,” anti-Zionist activist and author Miko Peled alleged that, for decades, Zionists ensured that “Western education is going to be a Zionist education,” that “Western media was going to be Zionist media,” and that “Zionism was going to be inherently rooted, deeply, in Eurocentric, Western culture.” He further stated, “but it wasn’t only education, it wasn’t only culture. It created a political system, a political structure, that is, again, Zionism is one of its pillars.”

Hani Almadhoun, founder of Gaza Soup Kitchen, encouraged anti-Israel protesters to “appeal to a broader coalition” than just leftists, commenting that “the ones who are making the most sense right now are Tucker Carlson and the congresswoman from Georgia,” ostensibly a reference to U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Hasan Piker, a popular Twitch streamer with millions of subscribers, doubled down on justifying the atrocities of October 7 and criticizing Zionism, sentiments he frequently shares on his streams. Piker again shifted the blame for the October 7 attacks entirely away from Hamas by stating that “all of the violence” on that day was “very much a consequence of Israel’s unrestrained cruelty and its sovereignty and its occupation over the Palestinian population.”

Piker celebrated the gains of the anti-Israel movement and the shift in public opinion on Israel as he railed against “Zionist organizations that masquerade as Jewish advocacy groups.” He added optimistically, “All of those sacrifices are worth it at the end of the day, as long as we can all, one day, say, that Zionism has finally ended, that Palestine is finally free.”

Prominent British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah commented, “The institutions of power in the West, whether they are the universities or the media, are enemy institutions. And the only way we can free our lives of their malevolent influence is by taking them over. We need to retake the universities, we need to neutralize and silence—or at least limit—the insidious effect of these corporate media. We need to be able to neutralize and eventually dismantle the genocide-enabling apparatus that exists.”

Similar ideas were shared by Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University graduate student who helped lead the anti-Israel encampment and other protests on that campus in 2024, before making international headlines in 2025 when he was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “The Palestinian liberation movement is winning…It punctures the Zionist narrative and the propaganda that Israel depends on…Our work is to strip that facade until Israel stands exposed as a pariah state,” he proclaimed. “Until the Zionist genocidal project and the ideology of supremacy that it’s built on collapse completely.”

Throughout the weekend, conference co-emcee and PYM organizer Taher Dahleh led the crowd in chants of “Gaza will free us all; Zionism will fall.” He repeatedly referred to the so-called “Zionist lobby” and denigrated Zionism, claiming that it is “genocidal” at its “core.” Monadel Herzallah, founder and President of the Arab American Union Members Council and an organizer with USPCN and Labor For Palestine, told the crowd: “We have an honorable duty and a responsible [sic] to ensure that Zionism never recovers from this bloody stain.”

Lamees Mehanna, a PYM organizer, similarly celebrated how “the movement for Palestinian liberation has been able to weaken the basis of support for Israel and revealed the true face of Zionism as synonymous with genocide” and to reveal the supposed falsehoods of “Zionist propaganda.”

A Vision for Continued Violent Confrontation

In addition to the numerous discussions about the strategies of the anti-Israel movement in the U.S., conference speakers and participants also repeatedly foreswore the idea of compromise with Israel and promoted violent confrontation.

In one of the final sessions of the weekend on a panel discussion titled “Struggle, Resistance and the Path Forward,” speakers condemned the Palestinian Authority (PA)— the body that governs and administers Palestinian areas in the West Bank and which has often clashed with Hamas regarding relations with Israel and the best path forward for Palestinians.

Tara Alami, a Palestinian Feminist Collective organizer who also spoke at last year’s conference, moderated the panel, criticizing the PA as “the lackeys of the colony.” She accused “the PA and the political elite in Ramallah” of “stifling resistance and building a project that exchanged the original revolutionary program of the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] into a state-building, reactionary, political spectacle that is founded on compromise.”

Alami contrasted what she described as the failures of the PA with the successes of militant terror groups, which she referred to as the “nuclei of resistance in the northern West Bank.” She commented that “this practice of resilience and resistance that is a true representation of liberation and commitment to return that rejects entirely the notion of political or diplomatic compromise.” Alami praised the six convicted AAMB and PIJ terrorists who, in 2021, broke out of Israel’s Gilboa prison.

Palestinian activist Fadi Quran, founder of the Palestinian community organization Thiqa, called for “a Palestinian revolt, insurrection” to replace the current Palestinian political representatives. Mariam Barghouti, a Palestinian journalist based in Ramallah, shared explicit praise for those who “[rise] up in armed resistance, very bravely,” in contrast to the PA, which she alleged seeks to “quell Palestinian resistance.”

Conference Conveners and Endorsers

Conveners of this year’s conference included the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), the U.S. Palestinian Community Network  (USPCN), Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, the ANSWER Coalition, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the Arab Resource Organizing Center (AROC), the Palestinian Feminist Collective (PFC), the People’s Center for Palestine (PCP), National Students for Justice in Palestine  (NSJP), The People’s Forum (TPF), the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), and Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG).

Endorsers included CODEPINK, Doctors Against Genocide, Healthcare Workers for Palestine (HCW4P), International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Jews Against White Supremacy (JAWS), Labor for Palestine, National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and many others.

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Preceding provided by ADL’s Center on Extremism