A thumbnail image for the eighth episode of The Canada Files’ Speaker Series, where we interviewed Samidoun’s International Coordinator, Charlotte Kates.

Written by: Aidan Jonah

Liberal MP Anthony Housefather, a proud Zionist, has confirmed he’s advocating for Canadian Palestine solidarity organization Samidoun to be put on Canada’s terrorist entity list.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network was formally created in 2012, while its International Coordinator, Charlotte Kates, came to her role in November 2011.

Samidoun firmly supports the Palestinian resistance and broader Axis of Resistance. Samidoun says they “developed out of the September-October 2011 hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, seeing a need for a dedicated network to support Palestinian prisoners.” In an interview with The Canada Files, Kates said Samidoun was initially focused on getting information about the prisoners out to the world but added broader organizing to its work after finding interest from activists. They have chapters around the world, from Canada to Brazil to Hungary to Iran and even occupied Palestine.

Kates has already faced state repression this year, being slapped with a farcical “hate-speech” investigation by Vancouver police after an April speech in support of the Palestinian resistance. In the aforementioned interview, Kates said this kind of investigation is meant as a tactic to sneak around the Canadian charter of rights. But Zionist attacks on Samidoun have gone on for years.

Since 2021, the claim laundered by Israel’s government that Samidoun is a cover organization for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), has been central to these attacks. Regardless of whether this claim is true or not, Palestinians’ right to resist as a colonized people is recognized under international law, making this a moot point on principle. So far, no evidence has been shown to prove Israel’s claim.

Repression started earlier however. Khaled Barakat, Kates’ husband, was banned from visiting Germany for four years in 2020, for his support of the PFLP. Barakat (by then a member of the Executive Committee of the Masar Badil/Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path group founded in 2021), and Kates were banned from the EU in November 2022 for multiple years, and deported from the Netherlands according to a press release. Samidoun was banned from operating in Germany in November 2023, soon after Israel had began the escalation of its genocide against Palestine. In July 2024, Belgium-based European coordinator for Samidoun, Mohammed Khatib (a Palestinian born in a refugee camp in Lebanon), faces a procedure to revoke his refugee status, in retaliation for his advocacy.

Zionist organizations in Canada, such as Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs, B’nai Brith Canada, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, want to see Kates and Baraka deported from Canada and/or Samidoun be prevented from operating in Canada, whether by putting Samidoun on the terrorist organization list or being stripped of its corporate entity.

In March 2024, Leo Housakos, a Canadian Senator known for working with Cuba regime change advocates, harassing Chinese Canadians who advocate for Canada-China cooperation and oppose spying claims against Chinese Canadian individuals, calling pro-Palestine protesters “terrorists”, and more, called for Samidoun to be registered on Canada’s terrorist organization list. Samidoun’s YouTube channel was blocked in June 2024. In August 2024, anti-communist Independent MP Kevin Vuong, who claims China was behind a dropped sexual assault charge and honours his collaborator Vietnamese uncle who fought for the former South Vietnam puppet-regime against the Vietnamese people, was the MP backing a parliamentary e-petition calling for Samidoun to be listed as a terrorist organization, which he promoted by himself calling for Samidoun to be listed.

Now Liberal MP and Special Adviser on Jewish Community Relations and Antisemitism, Anthony Housefather, is actively working to have Samidoun listed as a terrorist organization. Housefather was especially upset that Kates dared to go to Iran to accept a human rights award, an unsurprising fact, given that Kates explicitly mentioned, in an interview with TCF, the work of Samidoun in linking struggles in the Global South with the imperial core.

And so the much-vaunted Canadian ‘democracy’ carries on, with ‘Russian narratives’, ‘Chinese narratives’, Palestine support and more being attacked and/or repressed, while Bill C-70 sets the table for outright criminalization of supporting the Axis of Resistance – since it criminalizes supposed ‘intimidation’ on behalf of a terrorist entity, which most Axis of Resistance groups are listed as in Canada.

So just obey your colonial leaders and you’ll suffer economically anyways, or have a backbone like Samidoun to help create change and face blatant ant-democratic attacks against your activism and act in solidarity with the Global South.

If the Canadian government is allowed to knock Samidoun down, Canada becomes a complete dead-zone for anti-imperialist organizations, with only some isolated small groups being left. Samidoun’s survival in Canada should be a clear red line for whatever exists of the Canadian anti-imperialist left.

Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.

Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.

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