Banning Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network highlights the anti-Palestinian character of Canada’s terrorist list. This self-perpetuating tool of U.S.-led global domination actually encourages terrorism.
On Tuesday the Liberal government listed Samidoun as a terror entity. Made in conjunction with Washington, the move criminalizes the Vancouver-based grassroots solidarity group. It’s now illegal to finance or materially assist Samidoun.
After Israel labeled Samidoun a terror organization in 2021 Zionist groups and the National Post began pushing Ottawa to follow suit. But the Liberals wavered under pushback from the BC Civil Liberties Association, Canadian Union of Postal Workers and dozens of other civil society organizations. After October 7 the Conservatives launched a full court press to list Samidoun that seems to have tipped the scales.
Listing Samidoun is a direct attack against those opposing genocide. An August parliamentary petition calling on the government to list the organization began, “Samidoun Prisoners Solidarity Network (Samidoun) is viewed as one of the main groups behind anti-Israeli protest rallies that have been staged across Canada.” Immediately after its listing Zionists started denouncing individuals and organizations that have worked with Samidoun or its two principal organizers Charlotte Kates and Khaled Barakat. For its part, Samidoun criticized its listing as “meant to introduce a norm in which organizations may be designated as ‘terrorist’ for organizing demonstrations, lectures, publishing posters and engaging in entirely public and political work that challenges imperialist states’ complicity in Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
Notwithstanding the menacing “terror” label, no one claims Samidoun has engaged in any violence. Criticism of the group focused on its supports for Palestinian armed resistance and that someone burned a Canadian flag at a protest they co-organized October 7. But that isn’t illegal, let alone grounds to ban an organization.
In the government’s statement listing Samidoun they claim the group has “close links with and advances the interests of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is a listed terrorist entity.” In its statement the U.S. accused Samidoun of financing the secular leftist PFLP but curiously Canada hasn’t charged anyone associated with Samidoun for what was already illegal.
If Samidoun is a terrorist organization because it has ties to the PFLP–which has barely engaged in armed struggle for decades–then it won’t be long until they target other groups on the grounds they have “close links” to Samidoun. And on and on.
Created in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack in the U.S., Canada’s terror list grants the government powers to ban an organization without providing a standard legal burden of proof. In essence the government can list a group and poof it’s illegal to assist it. It’s also near impossible for that organization to mount a defence against their listing.
Canada’s terror list reinforces the U.S.-led imperial system. It consists overwhelmingly of organizations viewed as challenging U.S. hegemony and is a concrete example of why Benjamin Netanyahu’s immediate response to the 9/11 attacks was to blurt out that “it’s very good”. Asked on the day of the attack how it would impact U.S.-Israel relations, the then former Israeli prime minister said it would “strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.”
During its first 12 years the list consisted solely of groups based abroad. That’s changing. According to the president of the Canadian Association for Intelligence and Security Studies Jessica Davis, Samidoun’s listing “is a rare case of a Canadian organization being listed, with someone leading it who is resident in Canada (and will likely feel the effects of this listing). If we’re going to see a legal challenge to this regime, it could well be this case.”
The first ever Canadian-based group added to the terror list was the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy. IRFAN was designated a terrorist organization in 2014 largely for supporting orphans and a hospital in Gaza through official (Hamas-controlled) channels.
At its high point the leading Canadian Muslim registered charity operated in a dozen countries and sponsored four thousand orphans. In the early 2000s Canadian Alliance (now Conservatives) leader Stockwell Day began attacking IRFAN. Nearly a decade later the Canada Revenue Agency revoked the group’s charitable status, claiming “IRFAN-Canada is an integral part of an international fundraising effort to support Hamas”, which is on Canada’s terror list.
A big part of the CRA’s supporting evidence was that IRFAN worked with the Gaza Ministry of Health and Ministry of Telecommunications, which came under Hamas’ direction after they won the 2006 election. The Mississauga-based organization tried to send a dialysis machine to Gaza and continued to support orphans in the impoverished territory with the money channeled through the post office controlled by the Telecommunications Ministry.
The IRFAN and Samidoun cases highlight the anti-Palestinian nature of Canada’s terrorist list. Over 10 percent of the list is made up of organizations headquartered in a long-occupied land representing one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population. Representing much of Palestinian political life, eight of the oppressed nation’s organizations are listed.
But no Palestinian organization is responsible for nearly as much death and destruction as the Israeli military. The IDF is responsible for dozens of times more deaths than any listed Palestinian (or other) organization.
Canada’s terror list doesn’t simply omit the main purveyor of violence in the region. It also enables that state’s terrorism. Israel supporters have long argued that that country has the right to terrorize Palestinians because Ottawa (usually at the lobby’s behest) listed some organization with limited means a “terrorist” group. Before Hamas’ October 7 attack Canada’s apartheid lobby argued Israel could terrorize 2.2 million Palestinians living in the open-air Gaza prison because Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad is listed a terrorist group in Canada. Over the past year of Israel’s holocaust in Gaza Canadian officials have repeatedly highlighted that Hamas is a terror organization as part of legitimating Israel’s killing.
Recently Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and foreign minister Mélanie Joly extended that point to Israel’s terror in Lebanon. In response to Israel dropping 80 “bunker buster” and other massive bombs on a Beirut suburb three weeks ago Trudeau posted,
Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has been killed. He was the leader of a terrorist organization that attacked and killed innocent civilians, causing immense suffering across the region.
But Hezbollah isn’t classified as a “terrorist” organization by the United Nations or most countries in the world. Nor was an organization that’s long been represented in Lebanon’s parliament defined as a “terrorist” organization by Ottawa for the first half of its existence. In fact, Prime Minister Jean Chretien met Hezbollah Secretary-General Nasrallah in Beirut in October 2002.
In “Selectively Terrified” Mary Foster detailed “how Hezbollah became a terrorist organization in Canada”. Foster wrote that “pressure to list Hezbollah came from the Canadian Alliance Party (a precursor to today’s Conservative Party), senior Liberal politicians Irwin Cotler and Art Eggleton, B’nai Brith (a Jewish human rights organization, staunchly pro-Israel in orientation), and the Canadian Jewish Congress.” The campaign was greatly boosted by fabricated quotes in the National Post claiming Nasrallah encouraged suicide bombing during a speech at a Beirut rally.
Hezbollah and Hamas’ listing was also used to justify listing the first major state actor. In June the Trudeau government added part of Iran’s military, the 100,000 strong Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), to Canada’s terrorist list. The government release noted,
the decision to list the IRGC through the Criminal Code listing regime sends a strong message that Canada will use all tools at its disposal to combat the terrorist activity of the IRGC, conducted both unilaterally and in knowing association with listed terrorist entities such as Hizballah and Hamas.
Made amidst Israel’s repeated provocations against Iran, Tehran condemned Canada’s move as made “in alliance with terrorists and Zionists.” Iran’s envoy to the UN sent a letter to the Secretary-General and UN Security Council labeling Ottawa’s move “a blatant violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations.”
When foreign minister Joly made the announcement Liberal MP Judy Sgro stood by her side. Sgro is a high-profile supporter of the violent, cult-like, Iranian opposition organization Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which backed Iraq in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.
MEK is one of only two groups ever removed from Canada’s terror list. In 2012 prominent pro-Israel activists worked with Iranian dissidents to convince the State Department to remove the MEK from the U.S. terrorism list, which paved the way for Ottawa to follow suit. The MEK, according to U.S. government sources, teamed up with Israel to assassinate Iranian scientists.
Clearly, Canada’s terrorist list is driven by imperial politics. Also apparent, is its deeply anti-Palestinian bias.
To paraphrase a famous quote from another time: First they came for the organizations that fought for Palestinian rights, but I didn’t protest because I wasn’t Palestinian. Then they came for the organizations that protested the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians …
You know the rest of the story.