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Khaled Barakat is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Germany apparently fears radicalization of Arab communities in the country.
By Yakir Benzion, United with Israel
Germany slapped an outspoken member of the notorious Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) with a four-year travel ban, the Jerusalem Post reported Sunday.
Khaled Barakat will not be able to enter Germany, where he has given speeches laced with anti-Israel vitriol and incitement.
The PFLP gained fame for a series of airplane hijackings and fatal attacks on European airports in the 1960s and 1970s, the most infamous being the hijacking of four airliners (TWA, Pan Am, Swissair and BOAC) and blowing them up at the same time in the Jordanian desert. The group has carried out numerous attacks killing Israeli civilians, including suicide bombings during the intifadas, a massacre in a Jerusalem synagogue in 2014 that claimed the lives of four rabbis and a policeman, and the 2001 assassination in Jerusalem of Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi.
Both the U.S. and the European Union list the PFLP as a terrorist organization, and Barakat does not hide his membership.
Indeed, in July 2019, Barakat addressed the European Parliament at the invitation of Spanish lawmaker Manu Pineda, a fervent pro-BDS activist. The event gave legitimacy to an individual who belongs to a terrorist organization that is banned throughout much of the world, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and, ironically, the European Union.
In a webinar last month, however, Barakat said Germany issued a 23-page ruling against him that cited his opposition to the Oslo peace plan and a two-state solution, Barakat refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist and supports the anti-Israel Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which the German government has labeled anti-Semitic.
The German ruling also barred him from entering the country, he said, because “I could play a role in radicalizing foreigners, which they mean…they have Palestinian communities” and that it “could lead to… tensions between Arabs and Jews in Berlin, the Post reported.
The webinar was hosted by Samidoun, an organization that expresses solidarity with Palestinian prisoners with blood on their hands and which seeks to free convicted terrorists. Barakat also spoke of the need to release convicted terrorists from European prisons, including Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, who are serving a life sentence in France for the 1982 murders in Paris of the American military attaché and an Israeli diplomat, the Post reported.
Barakat is married to a Samidoun staff member, Charlotte Kates. Israel’s Strategic Affairs ministry reported last year that there were close similarities between the PFLP and the Samidoun websites and that given the close family connection, it was “likely that donations made through the Samidoun website benefited Barakat and the PFLP.”
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