Terrorist Group and Don't Know Where to Peddle Your Wares? Try Canada!

"Enough is enough. Samidoun's ties to the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] terrorist entity are self-proclaimed and explicit. The group does not even attempt to hide them."

"What is unclear is why the [Liberal] government has yet to take action to outlaw the group's activities in Canada."

Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, (CIJA) Canada 

 

"We have long alerted the government to Samidoun's incitement to hatred against Canada's Jewish community and affiliation with the PFLP."

"Emboldened by impunity and inaction, Samidoun is now hosting its first major North American demonstration, here in the capital [Ottawa] of our country."

Shimon Koffler Fogel, president, CIJA 

"This conference is not organized by Samidoun."

"Throughout my years here, and I've been here for almost a decade, any kind of Palestinian-themed event here meets some sort of resistance, from either B'nai Brith or other organizations, so we've come to hear all kinds of complaints."

"We work with all kinds of progressive movements here in the city."

Jason St-Laurent, SAW curator

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is honoured to join with the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, in calling all activists, organizers and supporters of Palestine in North America to join us in Ottawa on Algonquin Anishinaabe Land, April 28-30, 2023, for the Liberation Conference. Samidoun Website

The tip-off is the 'progressive' designation and affiliation. The PFLP is a recognized terrorist organization, infamous for its plane highjackings and other high-profile stunts to draw attention to the existence of a 'Palestinian' extremist group whose purpose is the destruction of the State of Israel. As a terrorist entity Canada, among other democratic nations of the world have placed the group on a terrorist list forbidden entry to those countries.

 

Jewish groups, in view of the NGO group calling itself Samidoun, heavily affiliated with the PFLP which purportedly defends the human rights of Palestinians in Israeli prisons (where conditions are such that prisoners may pursue academic upgrades among other 'progressive'-welfare conditions of their imprisonment for major terrorism events) and for whom propaganda slandering Israel and Jews is a major activity -- call on the government to investigate it under Section 83.05(1)(b) of the Criminal Code for acting on behalf of and/or associating with a listed terrorist entity, the PFLP.

The SAW Centre is an avant-garde Ottawa arts centre, preparing to play host to an international conference organized by a shadowy terror-affiliated network whose purpose is defaming Israel preparatory to its destruction. It has wide appeal among 'progressives' and those for whom antisemitism is a natural reaction to the presence of Jews. Yet Public Safety Canada is disinterested in acting in any capacity, whether it be an investigation of the presence of these outlawed terror groups or their purpose harmful to the Canadian-Jewish community in inciting against Jews and Israel.

According to the SAW Centre, the Jewish Federation of Ottawa is busy spreading a "fallacy" about the central role that Samidoun has taken in the conference organization. The Ontario Public Interest Research Group at Carleton University booked the SAW venue, Samidoun simply an endorser of the conference among about 30 "antiwar" and "anti-imperialist" groups organizing and attending the conference whose focus is the victimhood of Palestinians.

 

From its inception in 1973, the artist-run centre SAW has supported politically and socially engaged art, focusing on the performance and media arts.  SAW Website

 

The website for the conference is festooned with Samidoun flags; its European coordinator announced the plans for the event months earlier, the first such conference in North America of "the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement". A fairly new group of Palestinian militants, Masar Badil, who reject Palestinian Authority legitimacy, oppose peace talks with Israel and call for a resumption of the intifada of 1987. After the intifadeh that saw the deaths of both Israelis and Palestinians, 822 Palestinians were executed by their leaders, who charged them with collaborating with Israel.

The co-founder of the group is Khaled Barakat, key in the rejectionist militant movement, who has been resident in Canada off and on for several decades; a ubiquitous figure at Samidoun events globally. According to Israeli intelligence, Barakat is a high-ranking PFLP member, and Samidoun the PFLP's overseas fund-raising and recruitment proxy. Fund raising is vital to Samidoun and they've run into constraints since Visa and MasterCard cut the group off.

Three days before Samidoun was registered as a charitable group with Corporations Canada as a non-profit corporation, Israeli authorities listed Samidoun as a terrorist entity, given its PFLP connections. The event taking place at the SAW Centre this weekend describes itself as focusing on "building the liberation struggle in North America", linking with Indigenous and Black "liberation movements". 

Sessions at the conference include: Anti-Imperialism and the International People's tribunal on U.S. Imperialism; Palestinian Prisoners and the Resistance; Organizing for Return to Palestine; Building the Boycott Movement; and Anti-Zionism: An Anti-Colonial Struggle.

Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine stand guard during an Al-Quds Day parade in Beirut on April 14. Photo by Mohamed Azakir/Reuters