EXTREMISM“Fight Until Victory”: Speakers & Guests Declare Full Support for Terrorism at “People’s Conference for Palestine”
The “People’s Conference for Palestine,” held in Detroit, MI on 24-26 May, offered insight into the strategies and goals of the most influential forces driving a movement that has gained increasingly widespread and mainstream support as the Israel-Hamas war has dragged on.
As the “People’s Conference for Palestine” got underway in Detroit, MI on May 24, the packed audience cheered as Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) organizer and conference MC Mohammed Nabulsi opened by offering “salutations to our people in Palestine and to our noble, steadfast Resistance.” Nabulsi garnered further enthusiastic applause when he urged “eternal glory to our martyrs” and called to “liberate every inch of Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.”
The conference, which took place from May 24–26, 2024 at the Huntington Place convention center and drew thousands of attendees both in person and online, was organized by many of the leading groups in the U.S. anti-Zionist movement, offering insight into the strategies and goals of the most influential forces driving a movement that has gained increasingly widespread and mainstream support as the Israel-Hamas war has dragged on.
In addition to his praise for the so-called Palestinian “Resistance” — a euphemistic reference to the various terrorist groups responsible for violent attacks against Israel — Nabulsi explained that conference organizers sought to “craft a path forward that truly brings the Zionist state and its military and its imperialist backers to their knees.”
Nabulsi’s opening remarks set the tone for the rest of the weekend’s keynote and plenary sessions, which were rife with overt support for U.S.-designated terror groups and the Hamas-led October 7 attack, extreme anti-Zionist rhetoric including open calls for the destruction of the State of Israel, and classic antisemitic tropes. These types of extreme sentiments were the defining characteristic of the conference and echoed repeatedly throughout the weekend. The event not only gave a massive platform to those who endorse violence against Israel, but fully embraced and amplified those voices.
The conference also highlighted how such rhetoric — which at one time may have been perceived as fringe or espoused only by the more extreme segments of the anti-Zionist movement — has come to represent the movement broadly and has been accepted by many mainstream critics of Israel and Zionism.
The use of increasingly extreme language, which the ADL Center on Extremism had observed among many anti-Zionist organizations before October 7, has notably progressed since the start of the war.
