At a student roundtable with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, a Georgetown law student told the premier about an upcoming event at her school featuring a convicted terrorist with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Netanyahu was aghast. The conversation elevated concerns about the event, which Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) had already been criticizing.

By last night, the event was “postponed so that the University could conduct a thorough investigation into serious safety and security concerns that had arisen in connection with the event,” the school told Torres, according to Jewish Insider.

The PFLP is a designated terrorist organization, so that was reason enough for the raised eyebrows. PFLP officials have been all over the tentifada movement, which has thus far had the perverse effect of normalizing its presence in civilized society.

The PFLP has particular appeal to the progressive left for two reasons: One, its history of hijackings and other forms of terrorism that left-wing activists have always romanticized, and two, because it is a Marxist-Leninist—and therefore secular and recognizably leftist—version of Palestinian nationalism. An organization that aims to kill Jews while espousing revolutionary socialism is the perfect entity to a not-inconsequential portion of today’s campus activists.

Which is why students at Columbia received PFLP “resistance” training, and George Washington University protest groups used a PFLP manual for a teach-in. Even Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) spoke at a PFLP-connected conference in Detroit, the program of which was saturated with PFLP speakers.

Then there’s Samidoun, a group masquerading as a pro-Palestinian organization but which has now been banned in the U.S. and parts of Europe for being “a sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” as the U.S. government puts it. Prior to its October designation, Samidoun popped up at the campus demonstrations as well.

It’s possible that the PFLP’s lower profile these days—in Gaza, Islamism is in and Marxism is out—is enabling it to appear as a harmless relic from the past or a nostalgia act, like a hair-band reunion tour. But there is a very good reason to be absolutely sickened by the Western embrace of the PFLP during the current conflict: The terror group participated in the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and has instructed its members to follow Hamas’s lead since then.

On Oct. 7, as NGO Monitor details, the PFLP released photos of its military wing, Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, attacking Israelis near Gaza and put out statements such as: “Cells of the martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades stormed several [military] points in the Gaza envelope and have inflicted verified losses in the Zionist ranks. The cells have returned safely to their bases, and other cells are operating in the field now to inflict more losses in the ranks of the occupation army troops and the herds of their settlers.”

Another statement that day: “‘The Al-Aqsa flood’ campaign is a campaign of the Palestinian people in all its resistance forces. In light of the heroic sights made possible by the heroes of the resistance inside the occupied lands…we in the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades emphasize the following:…We announce a state of maximum mobilization within the ranks of our fighters, and we work on the field on the ground in several axes side by side the comrades of blood and arms. We stand with our brothers in the [Izz ad-Din] Al-Qassam Brigades and with all the resistance forces, and fight alongside them this campaign which will be noted in history. We call upon all resistance forces inside and outside of Palestine to take their positions in the trenches of confrontation which stretch now throughout all the area. Glory to the martyrs and victory to the resistance.”

Charlotte Kates, an organizational leader of Samidoun and wife of PFLP official Khaled Barakat, called the Hamas massacre “brave and heroic” and “something we stand by 100 percent.”

The PFLP was also, reportedly, transferred custody of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas from Hamas early in the war. Ariel was four and Kfir was 10 months old when they and their mother, Shiri, were taken. Their father, Yarden, was released last week. The fate of Shiri and the kids is unknown, though Hamas has repeatedly taunted Yarden by saying they were killed in an Israeli airstrike. In December 2023, Israel was hoping to get the three (Yarden was held separately) returned as part of the first deal, but Hamas ended the ceasefire before the opportunity arose. At the time, it was reported that the PFLP was holding Shiri and the Bibas children.

The continued normalization of the PFLP among campus groups is the latest evidence that support for terrorism is a feature, not a bug, of these activists’ worldview.