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May 25, 2017 3:51 pm
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Stanford Student Senate Funds On-Campus Speech by Jailed Palestinian Terrorist Leader Marwan Barghouti’s Son

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Aarab Barghouti, launching the “Salt Water Challenge.” Photo: YouTube Screenshot.

The Stanford student senate voted to fund an on-campus speech by the son of imprisoned Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti, a campus paper reported on Wednesday.

The event featuring Aarab Barghouthi, to be hosted on Thursday night by Stanford’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), will receive “$450 for an honorarium and $200 for facility use” from the senate, according to the report in The Stanford Daily.

Three senators abstained from the vote.

Jewish senator and appropriation’s chair Gabe Rosen was quoted as saying though he was “personally very deeply concerned with the content of the speech,” he supported the measure in the name of freedom of expression.

Jacob Kaplan-Lipkin, a past president of the Stanford Israel Association, told The Algemeiner that he was “not at all surprised” that SJP invited Barghouti to come speak about his support for his father, who is currently heading a hunger strike of Palestinians jailed in Israel. Marwan Barghouti — the head of Fatah’s Tanzim armed wing and a founder of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades — orchestrated a string of deadly terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada before being arrested in Ramallah by Israeli troops in April 2002. He was convicted on five counts of murder in May 2004 and is serving life in prison.

Aarab Barghouti has been a leader in crafting the international campaign in support of the hunger strikers, including launching the “Salt Water Challenge,” in which anti-Israel activists film themselves drinking a cup of saltwater and challenging friends to do the same.

“SJP has hosted far worse people,” said Kaplan-Lipkin, adding that he “would expect an administrative response” if SJP were to invite, for example, Marwan Barghouti himself.

Kaplan-Lipkin noted that hosting pro-terror speakers was the “bread and butter of SJP…[and] if we took the time to be outraged at every iteration of this, we would not be able to focus on planning” the numerous pro-Israel events SIA has held this year, including Israel Independence Day parties and lectures by Israeli diplomats.

“I am, of course, concerned that Aarab is speaking in support of terrorists, but unfortunately, I am not the least bit surprised, and it would simply be impossible to be emotionally distraught every time this happened,” he said.

Jewish Voice for Peace is among the co-sponsors of the Barghouti event.

The senate and SJP did not respond to The Algemeiner‘s requests for comment.

In 2015, Stanford’s SJP co-hosted a program featuring Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor who said in November 2001 that he supported the 9/11 terror attacks, as “the oppressed…have a moral right to attack the USA with any weapon they can come up with.”

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