Such hateful rhetoric is unacceptable. This has no place in Canada. All options must be considered. This is not who we are. We are treating this with the utmost urgency.
And so forth. And so on.
For more than four years, this is what we have been hearing from the Liberal government about the bloodcurdling incitements that are the stock in trade of the Vancouver-headquartered Samidoun Network, the overseas agitation and propaganda wing of the terrorist-listed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
It’s what Canadians have been hearing from federal, provincial and city politicians over the course of a year’s worth of skyrocketing hate crimes targeting Jews in the ugliest convulsions of antisemitism in living memory.
It’s what we heard again this week in Ottawa, where Samidoun’s unencumbered mobilizations and lurid sloganeering came up several times in Parliament after Samidoun hosted an anniversary celebration in Vancouver Monday commemorating the Hamas-led surprise attack on Southern Israel last October 7.
Samidoun has been at the vanguard of the most outwardly pro-terror street rallies and campus demonstrations that have erupted across Canada since last October 7. Roughly 1,200 people were killed in that attack, including several Canadians, and 251 people were kidnapped. To Samidoun, this is all to the good. The October 7 pogrom also triggered the war in Gaza that has left roughly 41,000 people dead, civilians and terrorists alike.
At the Monday Samidoun event in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, a masked woman shouted into a megaphone: “We are Hezbollah, and we are Hamas.” A Canadian flag was set on fire, and hundreds of revellers joined the masked woman in a chant: “Death to Canada, death to the United States, and death to Israel.”
The PLFP, Hamas and Hezbollah are proscribed terrorist organizations in Canada.
“So, if burning a Canadian flag, if calling for the death of Canadians, if fomenting hate in this country, and most of all being a front for an already-listed terrorist organization is not enough to put them on the list, then what the hell is it going to take for them to ban them?”
It’s a good question. It’s also a question Justin Trudeau’s government has never answered.
Ever since 2020, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, B’nai Brith Canada, the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and other Jewish advocacy organizations have been pleading with Ottawa to outlaw Samidoun, which makes no bones about its explicit support for mass murder in the cause of Israel’s annihilation. It’s all legitimate “resistance.”
The latest twist in Ottawa: Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc has handed the Samidoun file over to the recently-appointed Nathalie Drouin, the National Security and Intelligence Advisor who doubles as Clerk of the Privy Council, for an “urgent” review. Also on Monday, Pierre Poilievre said a Conservative government would quickly move to outlaw the organization.
There was another particularly odd twist in the Samidoun saga in Vancouver on Tuesday, involving the scheduled court appearance of Samidoun’s international coordinator, Charlotte Kates.
Last April, the Vancouver Police Department announced that Kates had been arrested following a speech in Vancouver in which she heaped praise on Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. “These are resistance fighters,” Kates shouted. “These are our heroes. These are those who are sacrificing so that we can live and speak and struggle and fight. These are the people whose blood is being shed to defend humanity and to defend the world.”
In court on Tuesday Kates was expected to face charges under Section 319 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits incitement of hatred and wilful promotion of hatred. In Canada it’s perfectly legal to glorify terrorism and praise terrorist groups, something Samidoun does gleefully and frequently.
Instead, the court appearance was cancelled because British Columbia’s Crown counsel is still fussing with its “charge assessment” process. As a result, the conditions of Kates’ release — back in April she was barred from engaging in further harangues in the interim — were allowed to expire, according to the B.C. Prosecution Service.
“The expiration of her conditions of release will allow her to continue to incite hate and division against the local Jewish community,” says Ezra Shanken, CEO, Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver. “If we value respect, inclusion, and diversity, the Crown must approve and lay the charges recommended by VPD.”
Kates was nowhere near Vancouver on Monday anyway. She was in Madrid at a conference of the Samidoun offshoot Masar Badil, where she said: “We see the fascist newspaper saying we are here to celebrate the 7th of October. Well, yes, we are here to celebrate the 7th of October.”
Headquartered on and off in Berlin and Vancouver over the past decade, with offices in Toronto and Tehran, last year Samidoun lost the capacity to raise funds through the “anti-capitalist” Arizona-registered charity Alliance for Global Justice after the payment-processing and insurance companies Stripe, Paypal, Deluxe and Salsa Labs backed away for fear of charges of providing material support to a terrorist group.
Samidoun also had a hard time getting established in Berlin. The organization’s troubles in Germany go back to 2019, when Samidoun’s leading lights, including Kates’ husband Khaled Barakat, who Israeli intelligence agencies say is a member of the PFLP’s politburo — were prohibited from engaging in any public speaking events. Last November, Germany banned the organization completely. At the time, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said: “By banning Hamas and Samidoun in Germany, we have sent a clear signal that we will not tolerate any kind of glorification or support for Hamas’ barbaric terror against Israel.”
But by then, Samidoun had already managed to find safe haven in Canada. On February 28, 2021, Corporations Canada threw Samidoun a lifeline by allowing the organization to register under the Not-for-Profit Corporations Act. Samidoun’s official Canadian registration came just three days after Israeli Defence Minister Benjamin Gantz signed an order designating Samidoun a terrorist organization, owing to its intimate ties with the PFLP.
It’s not as though Samidoun is lacking for friends in Canada.
Backing Samidoun in its claim that its troubles are due to Zionists intent on “the criminalization of Palestinian advocacy” are dozens of individuals and organizations, including the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, the Canada-Palestine Support Network, the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, the Canadian Peace Congress, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the anti-Israel lobby group Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.
The big question that went unanswered on Tuesday was the question raised in the House by Michael Chong, the Conservatives’ foreign affairs critic: “Samidoun is knowingly acting on behalf of, at the direction of or in association with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist group under the Criminal Code. This qualifies Samidoun for a terrorism listing. Why hasn’t this happened?”
The Trudeau government has never answered that question, either. Proscription under Canada’s anti-terrorism laws is supposed to be an independent process. But as to why that process has never been put into play, or whether the process has simply missed Samidoun, is anybody’s guess.
National Post