Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative party leader, vowed last week to designate Samidoun as a terrorist group were he to become prime minister. In response, the Liberal government said it was “considering all options.”
“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,” said Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc in a press release.
After literally a Year of waffling by the Liberal government in Canada, & zero waffles given by the Conservatives…
In Canada, the Criminal Code prohibits providing financial services, money or property to a designated terrorist group.
“In Canada, any bank accounts that Samidoun has, or that organizers have, are almost certainly being frozen, probably closed, reported to FINTRAC, our financial intelligence unit, and there’s probably a flurry of suspicious transaction reports and mandatory reporting going in on anyone associated with this organization,” Jessica Davis, a counterterrorism expert at Carleton University, said.
Samidoun is a registered not-for-profit in Canada. As of Tuesday morning, its registration page on the government of Canada website noted that it is now designated a terrorist organization. The federal government was not able to say immediately whether Samidoun retains its charitable status???
Seriously???
Khaled Barakat, whose wife Charlotte Kates is a director of Samidoun, has also been designated a terrorist by the United States’ government and identified as a member of the leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the U.S. State department said.
“His fundraising and recruitment efforts support the PFLP’s terrorist activity against Israel,” says a separate U.S. news release.
Last week, at a Vancouver rally organized by Samidoun on the one-year anniversary of the October 7 terror attacks, attendees chanted “death to Canada.” Samidoun later that “we at Samidoun stand by this phrase as the call to action that it is” in a statement posted to Instagram.
The Liberal Government is starting to listen?
At the event, five masked protesters set a Canadian flag on fire. An unidentified woman chanted “We are Hezbollah and we are Hamas,” referring to the terror groups active in, respectively, Lebanon and Gaza.
In a press release, the United States, in a joint action with Canada, said it was designating Samidoun a “sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization.”
'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'
apple.news
“The PFLP, which was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S. Department of State in October 1997 and October 2001, respectively, uses Samidoun to maintain fundraising operations in both Europe and North America,” the U.S. press release says.
Canada has listed PFLP as a terrorist organization since November 2003.
Founded in 2011 following a widespread hunger strike organized by the PFLP in Israeli prisons, Samidoun has been a prominent organizer of protests in Canada since the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel. Its full name is Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.
But, the two countries allege that Samidoun’s activities go far beyond raising awareness about Palestinians behind bars in Israel or organizing street protests in Canada and around the world.
“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 Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T. Smith, in the U.S. press release.
…& yet still Samidoun is a registered not-for-profit in Canada….& the federal government was not able to say immediately whether Samidoun retains its charitable status?? “Yeah…uh…well Uhm, have to get back to you on that…”
I wonder what Amira Elghawaby has to say on this? She’s not made many statements as of late, that’re searchable with Google anyway…
You’d think that someone whose job is to combat hatred would be the first to denounce a hate-filled rally such as this, even if it was antisemitism being espoused, rather than Islamophobia. But according to Elghawaby, such displays should only be condemned “if police determine any action was motivated by hate.” (Which is a little hard to do since we can’t read minds, and highlights the folly of creating a separate class of crimes that are dependant on the thought processes of the perpetrators.)
What Elghawaby claims the “demonstrators were actually protesting” was the “indiscriminate killing of any and all innocent men, women and children.” Which is an interesting way to phrase it. Yes, the number of Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza is far too high. But no, Israel is not indiscriminately killing innocent civilians. It is deliberately targeting Hamas terrorists, who are putting innocents at risk by embedding themselves in civilian areas and using civilian infrastructure for military purposes.
According to our Islamophobia czar, “Anyone who condemns one but not the other” — i.e., condemns antisemitic protests here at home but not Israel’s actions overseas — “is demonstrating to all of us how Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism operate to devalue the lives of those deemed less than human and unworthy of protections, including those afforded by international humanitarian law.”
Apparently Islamophobia czar is paid to pretend antisemitism doesn't exist
nationalpost.com
'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'
apple.news
…after literally a year of completely tolerating this type of activity.
