Eight pro-Israel groups, headed by the AMCHA Initiative, sent a letter June 24 demanding that the California state controller investigate San Francisco State University for funding a professor’s trip to the Middle East that included meetings with members of terrorist organizations.

AMCHA, a nonprofit that aims to combat anti-Semitism on college campuses, claims professor Rabab Abdulhadi received more than $7,000 from SFSU to fly to meet with Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist Leila Khaled. PFLP is responsible for more than 150 terrorist acts and the deaths of 20 U.S. citizens, AMCHA noted. Abdulhadi also met with Islamist Sheikh Raed Salah, who was recently incarcerated for incitement over his call to start another violent intifada against Israel.

The professor had called the trip a “political solidarity tour” meant to promote “resolute actions in support of the academic and cultural boycott of Israel.”

In addition to AMCHA, groups signing the letter are the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs and the Zionist Organization of America.

Abdulhadi’s trip was revealed through a California Public Records Act inquiry by the AMCHA Initiative, according to co-founder Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at U.C. Santa Cruz. — jns.org