PSC 'Nakba Day' broadcast includes tribute to Palestinian terrorist linked to Lod Airport massacre

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has paid tribute to a leading member of the terrorist organisation that carried out the Lod Airport massacre in Tel Aviv, which saw 26 people indiscriminately shot dead and another 80 injured.

Ghassan Kanafani was spokesman for George Habash’s Popular Front For The Liberation of Palestine at the time of the terrorist atrocity – and he was photographed in his office with one of the three men who carried out the 1972 attack.

But in last Friday’s online broadcast to mark Nakba Day – which commemorates Palestinian displacement after Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence - the PSC included a gushing tribute to Mr Kanafani, referencing his career as a journalist and writer.

Introduced during the near two-hour long broadcast as “one of foremost Palestinian writers”, Mr Kanafani was described on the stream by activist Alan Kolski Horwitz as an “example” of how to “combine our moral, artist and political objectives.”

Confirming that Mr Kanafani was indeed the “official spokesperson for the PFLP”, Mr Horwitz then told those watching the broadcast that he had been “murdered in Beirut in July 1972 by a bomb planted by Mossad.”

There was no reference at all to Mr Kanafani’s link to the terrorist atrocity only a few months earlier, which had been carried out by three members of the Japanese Red Army under the guidance of the PFLP.

The three Japanese students arrived at Israel's Lod airport in Tel Aviv on an Air France flight from Paris and once their luggage came through to the baggage hall, drew out automatic guns and hand grenades and began shooting people indiscriminately.

At the time Mr Kanafani confirmed the group’s involvement in the attack – and a photograph was published in Lebanese newspapers showing him with Fusako Shigenobu, founder of the Japanese Red Army.

Two years ago Israel removed a statue in the city of Acre that had been erected to honour Mr Kanafani by militant Palestinians.

UNRWA - the United Nations refugee agency – also removed a tweet after protests in which they described Mr Kanafani as a “famed” writer.

The PFLP were responsible for some of the most deadly terrorist attacks of the 1970s and 80s – including the Avivim school bus massacre, the bombing of Swiss Air flight 330 and the Kiryat Shmona massacre.

The group has subsequently been largely inactive but has remerged in Syria fighting on the side of the Ba'athist Syrian Arab Republic.

The PSC – which regularly holds events at the Labour Party’s annual conference - claims to be an “advocate for peaceful and just solutions that respect the rights and dignity of Palestinians and Israelis”.

The JC has contacted the PSC for comment over last week’s tributes to the PFLP’s spokesperson.