In a major victory for Canadian Jewish communities, leaders, and advocacy organizations, Samidoun—the Vancouver-based group also known as the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network—has been formally designated a terrorist entity by Public Safety Canada.
Ottawa’s decision was made jointly with counterparts in Washington, D.C., and announced Oct. 15 by Public Safety Canada and the U.S. Treasury Department.
The non-profit organization Samidoun, which has links to the terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was formally added to Canada’s list of terror entities, joining PFLP, which Canada has listed since 2003. A terror group that pioneered airplane hijackings, suicide bombings and assassinations of Israelis, PFLP was directly involved in the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.
Jewish leaders had also been arguing the Vancouver-based non-profit organization has direct ties to PFLP support.
With the addition of Samidoun, there are now 78 terrorist entities listed under Canada’s Criminal Code. The designation prohibits certain actions, including terrorist financing and recruitment.
Public Safety Canada’s website says that “many Palestinian prisoners for which Samidoun advocates for release have ties to terrorism, assassinations and countless attacks against Israel.” The group’s goals are “the destruction of Israel and establishing a Palestinian state in its place.
“To achieve this goal, Samidoun advocates all kinds of activities, including violence. The organization helps advance the interests of other listed terrorist entities such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) on social media and in public protests,” reads the entry dated Oct. 15.
Canadian public safety minister Dominic LeBlanc denounced “violent extremism, acts of terrorism or terrorist financing” and said they should have “no place in Canadian society or abroad.”
“The listing of Samidoun as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code sends a strong message that Canada will not tolerate this type of activity, and will do everything in its power to counter the ongoing threat to Canada’s national security and all people in Canada,” he said in a statement.
Samidoun has been banned by Germany and Israel, and the Netherlands has held a vote to consider doing the same. The PFLP is banned in the United States and the European Union, as well as in Canada.
Samidoun has European chapters and affiliates in Sweden, France, Spain, Hungary, and Greece, and what appear to be at least two groups maintaining a presence in some form in Germany; there’s also an affiliated group in Brazil. North American chapters or affiliates include New York and New Jersey, the cities of Portland, Oregon, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, plus Canadian affiliate Anti-Imperialist Action Ottawa, and Samidoun’s Toronto chapter.
Scrutiny intensified over Samidoun’s status in Canada after the group organized protests to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. At one event in Vancouver, some demonstrators tried to set fire to a Canadian flag, calling, “Death to Canada, death to the U.S.A., and death to Israel.”
The same masked speaker who led that chant also told the crowd “we are Hamas, we are Hezbollah,” Global News reported. Vancouver Police are investigating that incident.
American authorities named Khaled Barakat, a Canadian citizen and Vancouver-based Samidoun organizer, as an affiliate of the PFLP and a leader involved in fundraising for the terror entity.
Recently, authorities in British Columbia were forced to lift bail conditions that had prevented Samidoun’s Vancouver-based director, Charlotte Kates—who is married to Barakat—from participating in any protests for a period of six months.
Vancouver police arrested Kates in April after she gave an antisemitic speech that praised the Oct. 7 massacre, including “Long Live Oct. 7” and calling the Hamas-led attack “heroic and brave,” as CBC News reported. But charges had not yet been laid before the bail deadline expired on Oct. 8.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) called the move “a significant step toward ensuring the safety and security of Canada’s Jews.” CIJA president and CEO Shimon Koffler Fogel said Samidoun’s designation as a terrorist entity “means they will no longer be able to use our streets as a platform to incite hate and division against the Jewish community.”
“This decisive action sets a strong precedent that organizations that promote violence and hate will not be tolerated in Canada,” said Fogel in CIJA’s written statement.
“Samidoun has never hidden its affiliation with the PFLP…. [the group’s] open and unapologetic support for violent terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PFLP, demonstrates just how dangerous they are.”
David Cooper, CIJA’s vice-president for government relations, told The CJN in an interview Oct. 15 that one of the next steps should be minister of immigration and citizenship, Marc Miller, asking his department to review Kates’s and Barakat’s citizenship applications.
“We have always contended that Kates and Barakat have close affiliations to PFLP,” and the government should find out whether the couple revealed that when they became citizens, said Cooper.
“We’ve asked that for Nazi war criminals,” too, he said.
Cooper also says that the next steps for CIJA, which also began advocating for Samidoun to be listed as a terror entity starting in 2020, are to push for Samidoun to lose its corporate not-for-profit status with Industry Canada.
He says the business regulator had previously told CIJA that it was beyond its mandate to de-list Samidoun without evidence of criminal activity. However, Cooper said that Industry Canada representatives had told him that if Samidoun was added to Canada’s terror entities list, then the body “would become involved in de-listing” the organization.
“We want to ensure that happens,” said Cooper, and noted that CIJA is also lobbying the federal government to pass legislation that would prohibit the glorification of terrorism.
“The definition doesn’t have to be huge,” and can “allow for lots of interpretation,” Cooper said in support of stricter laws to make it a crime to display the Samidoun flag or distribute its propaganda in Canada.
The public nature of Samidoun’s terrifying statements, Cooper said, subvert expectations for the posture of a group wishing to “fly under the radar screen” to continue to operate in Canada.
“If I were doing something illicit in Canada, I would not be so open.”
Requests for comment emailed to Public Safety Canada about the status of Barakat, Kates, and any ongoing investigations, were not returned by press time.
Samidoun doubled down on the calls for death to Canada, the U.S, and Israel, and defended the flag burning attempt in an online statement Oct. 7. Organizers posted via a proxy Instagram account, Thawra Vancouver, which they’ve used while Samidoun’s own account has been taken offline.
“We acknowledge that the community was shocked by the phrase, and the burning of the Canadian flag that came after the march… Yet, we at Samidoun stand by this phrase as the call to action that it is,” read the lengthy post in part.
“We see it as our duty to escalate the resistance here as we salute the heroism, brilliance, sacrifice and deep commitment and faith of the Palestinian resistance and the entire axis of resistance, whose struggle is liberating humanity.”
The post, dated Oct. 7, 2024, called that escalation in Canada “particularly urgent” on the anniversary of “the great flood of resistance for liberation.”
The chants and the flag burning, as well as the Oct. 7 statement after that incident, may have contributed to finally listing the group as a terror entity, Cooper said.
“They said they were not only comfortable with that statement [death to Canada, the U.S.A., and Israel] but that it should be actioned.”
Richard Robertson, B’nai Brith Canada’s director of research and advocacy, called the move a “decisive blow against the forces of hate and extremism” in Canada.
“The links between Samidoun and the PFLP, a listed terror entity, have long been undeniable. Samidoun’s ability to operate in Canada enabled it to use our country as a platform from which to incite hatred and support terror,” wrote Robertson in a B’nai Brith statement reacting to the decision.
“The listing of Samidoun sends a clear message that there is no place in Canadian society for those who foment hate and promote terrorism. Canadian authorities will now be able to hold those who have used Samidoun as a vehicle through which to support the actions of terrorists duly accountable.”
B’nai Brith is also supporting a lawsuit launched by the families of Tiferet Lapidot and Judih Weinstein Haggai, two of the Canadian citizens murdered in the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas in southern Israel, to claim damages under Canada’s Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act.
The Ontario Superior Court statement of claim filed by lawyers for Ohad Lapidot, father of Tiferet, and Iris Weinstein, daughter of Judih, seeks $250 million in compensation from the Palestinian Authority, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Syria, and Samidoun, alleging that the named defendants are funding schemes that reward the families of terrorist attackers against Israel. Kates, Barakat, and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas are among those personally named in the lawsuit along with their organizations.
The lawsuit claims that “by funding a ‘pay-for-slay’ program that rewards Palestinians who carry out terrorist attacks against Israelis, the Palestinian Authority is liable under Canada’s Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act,” B’nai Brith wrote in an earlier media release.
Anthony Housefather, the Liberal MP from Montreal and the government’s special advisor on Jewish community issues and antisemitism, had been calling for the move for months.
Housefather said Samidoun’s actions “over the last week in particular” that glorified Oct. 7 had crossed the line of “what is permissible in our society” and what is not, he told The CJN following the announcement.
He says the Canadian Jewish community over the last year has seen rising antisemitism “fuelled by organizations like Samidoun, who “glorify the events of Oct. 7, and believe Zionism and Israel are things that should be eradicated, and incite others to engage in behaviour that crosses the line from what’s acceptable to what’s not.”
The decision to list Samidoun as a terror entity shows law and order is taken seriously, Housefather says, and that such decisions are rightly made independently of political maneuvering, by professional law enforcement, intelligence, and security services.
“That’s why politicians don’t make [these] decisions. Security services need to do thorough investigations… our security services determined Samidoun was providing service and succor” to terrorist activity, he said, as did U.S. agencies.
“Jewish Canadians should be reassured that the federal government is doing what it can to keep the peace in our streets,” he said. “A lot of work falls to local police departments that are responsible for policing demonstrations.”
Except, he says: “Samidoun will no longer be allowed to organize any demonstrations in Canada.”
Housefather also says there’s a difference between Canadians supporting Palestinian independence and safety and allowing Samidoun’s conduct to continue unenforced.
“There’s a line [between that and] supporting hate and violence… and that’s what Samidoun has been doing,” he said.
Calling Samidoun a “sham charity” and listing Vancouver as the organization’s base, the U.S. Treasury Department said that Samidoun presents itself as a humanitarian group as a cover for supporting terrorism against Israel.
“Organizations like Samidoun masquerade as charitable actors that claim to provide humanitarian support to those in need, yet in reality divert funds for much-needed assistance to support terrorist groups,” said Bradley T. Smith, acting under secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, in a press release.
“The United States, together with Canada and our like-minded partners, will continue to disrupt those who seek to finance the PFLP, Hamas, and other terrorist organizations.”
Ezra Shanken, the CEO of Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, still wants to see action taken on charges for Kates over hate speech.
Shanken had called it unacceptable “that the conditions prohibiting Charlotte Kates from participating in protests have expired.”
“In the year since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, the Jewish community has experienced an escalation in antisemitic hate incidents, including at protests such as those organized by Kates,” wrote Shanken in a statement released before the Oct. 15 announcement of Samidoun’s addition to Canada’s terror entity list.
“The expiration of her conditions of release will allow her to continue to incite hate and division against the local Jewish community,” Shanken wrote, urging the Crown to approve and lay charges related to Kates’ hateful speech at the April 26 demonstration in Vancouver, where, the statement says, “she referred to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks committed by Hamas as ‘heroic and brave.’
Based in Vancouver since 2011, and with a Toronto chapter since 2021, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network on its website describes itself as “an international network of organizers and activists working to build solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in their struggle for freedom.”
Samidoun’s website references the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, which triggered the ongoing war in Gaza and the region, as the “Al-Aqsa Flood” the term used by Hamas and its allied terrorist and militant groups.
A Samidoun poster in Toronto’s Parkdale area reading “Long Live Oct. 7” (as a declaration, an event title, or both) promoted a “letter writing to the Palestinian resistance” event scheduled for the evening of the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attacks.
Samidoun did not respond to The CJN’s request for comment. It had recently promoted events in Vancouver, Seattle, and Madrid on its webpage in commemoration of Oct. 7 using the Al-Aqsa “Flood of Liberation” term and praised “glory” to assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a “martyr” and a “great international revolutionary leader of our era” in a website post Sept. 28 following Israel’s strike in Lebanon that killed Nasrallah one day earlier.
Samidoun is a registered non-profit organization based in Vancouver, though not a registered charity, which means it does not need to prove its activities meet the compliance requirements for charitable tax status. Online donations to Samidoun can’t be made at present, according to the donation page currently linked from its website, although the page notes “paper checks” directed to Samidoun can be made to a group called Alliance for Global Justice based in Tucson, Arizona.
Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research organization, called Samidoun “a major participant in campus-based mob violence” in Canada and the U.S., adding that “there are a number of similar NGOs that need close examination.”
“According to the [Israeli Ministry of Defence], Samidoun was founded by ‘members of the PFLP in 2012,’ and Khaled Barakat, identified by the PFLP as ‘coordinator’ of Samidoun, ‘is involved with establishing militant cells and motivating terrorist activity in Judea & Samaria and abroad,'” reads NGO Monitor’s Samidoun profile, which notes “Samidoun has been registered as a not-for-profit in Canada” since 2021.
Last week, Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the federal Conservatives, had demanded Ottawa follow other countries’ lead and declare Samidoun a terrorist organization, which would block Samidoun’s ability to fundraise and would make it a crime for anyone to help it.
Poilievre took aim at Prime Minister Trudeau in a post reacting to the announcement, saying his political rival had finally “buckled under pressure from common sense Conservative demands” to ban the group in Canada.
With files from Ellin Bessner.
