Terry Glavin: Group banned in Germany gets carte blanche in Canada to glorify Hamas massacre (2024)

“We stand with the Palestinian resistance and their heroic and brave action on October 7. Long live October 7.”

It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

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It was yet another harangue from Charlotte Kates, international co-ordinator for the Samidoun Prisoners Solidarity Network, one of the main groups behind the dozens of “pro-Palestine” rallies and demonstrations across Canada since the Hamas atrocities of October 7 last year. The savageries of that day led to the war in Gaza that has so far cost the lives of perhaps 30,000 Palestinians.

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This time it was last Friday, at a rally at the Vancouver Art Gallery. “Long live October 7” was also the slogan chanted in Ottawa on April 21, eliciting denunciations from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. At the Vancouver rally, Kates added some colour to the slogan by referring to October 7 as an instance of the “beautiful, brave and heroic resistance of the Palestinian people.”

Kates also made it plain that she was unconcerned about whether her remarks should be understood as condoning or celebrating terrorism. “It is long past time to delist Palestinian and Lebanese resistance organizations from Canada’s so-called list of terrorist entities,” she said. “Hamas is not a terrorist organization. Islamic Jihad is not a terrorist organization. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is not a terrorist organization. Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization.”

All these entities are listed as terrorist organizations in Canada.

“These are resistance fighters,” Kates fairly shouted into her megaphone. “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.”

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Terror-listed in Israel and banned outright in Germany, Samidoun has long been intimately associated with the PFLP, best known for its suicide bombings and airline hijackings.

Kates showed up in Vancouver about 12 years ago after an internal dispute among “pro-Palestine’ activists at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Apart from her role with Samidoun, Kates is also the co-ordinator of the U.S. National Lawyers’ Guild’s International Committee. The NLG’s lawyers have been expending enormous effort in recent days, acting on behalf of “pro-Palestine” protests and encampments at universities across the United States.

Kates’ husband is Khaled Barakat, who was born in the village of Dahiyat al-Barid near Jerusalem in 1971. He was deported from the United States when his residency permit expired in 2003. He first showed up in Vancouver as a Palestinian student activist at the University of British Columbia in 2004. Israel’s Shin Bet security service identifies Barakat as a senior figure in the PFLP, and the primary leader of Samidoun, which Israel identifies as the PFLP’s overseas recruitment propaganda proxy. Barakat has consistently refused to respond to the National Post’s inquiries. Kates has denied that Barakat is even a member of Samidoun.

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Kates and Barakat were deported from Europe a couple of years ago owing to Barakat’s alleged tendency to violent, antisemitic rhetoric. They are now barred from re-entering Europe. Two weeks ago, Nicole de Moor, Belgium’s Secretary for Asylum and Migration, declared that she was looking to strip Samidoun’s European co-ordinator, the Palestinian “hate preacher” Mohammed Khatib, of his refugee status.

The PFLP’s military wing, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, has openly boasted about having participated in the Hamas-led invasion of Israel on October 7, which involved the mass slaughter of nearly 1,200 people in a rampage of rape, torture, the incineration of infants and the capture of 240 hostages. The Brigades have since been involved in clashes with the Israel Defence Forces in the Al-Zaytoun district of Gaza City.

Samidoun, headquartered in Vancouver, has been a federally registered not-for-profit corporation in Canada ever since March 3, 2021 — three days after then Israeli Defence Minister Benjamin Gantz signed an order designating Samidoun a terrorist organization.

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Canada’s Jewish advocacy organizations have been pressing the Trudeau government to at least list Samidoun as a terrorist entity, and more than three years ago, Israeli intelligence officials were already briefing the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency about Samidoun. Those briefings have continued since October 7.

“We are very concerned,” Israeli Ambassador Iddo Moed told me Monday. “Samidoun is known to be directly linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is already a listed terrorist organization. They have been inciting and glorifying terrorist attacks and massacres since October 7, Saturday morning. They were already hanging signs from bridges in Vancouver. This is a serious source of concern.”

Like Ambassador Moed, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, B’nai Brith Canada and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies in Toronto, former RCMP counterterrorism investigator John Mecher says Ottawa needs to start taking Samidoun seriously. He says it may be only a matter of time before Hamas and its Canadian supporters spawn a new generation of homegrown terrorists.

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Meecher spent more than four years working on the case of the Toronto 18, an investigation that began in 2005 and resulted in 11 convictions, foiling a plot that was intended to include murders, beheadings, the bombing of the Toronto Stock Exchange and the headquarters of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, and an armed assault on the House of Commons and the capture of the CBC’s Toronto headquarters.

Mecher says the current phenomenon of “pro-Palestine” activism presents a far greater risk of recruitment to violent extremism and terrorism than was present in the radical activist milieu following 9/11, during the days of the Toronto 18.

“Back then, you simply did not see people running through the streets saying, I’m an al-Qaida supporter, I love bin Laden,” Mecher said. Since 9/11, the terror threat has evolved from clandestine groups of fanatics who were inspired by al-Qaida to a similarly marginal Islamist constituency that was covertly active on behalf of ISIL, which often erupted in “lone wolf” terror attacks.

Since October 7, “true believers” like Samidoun openly organize rallies and demonstrations where their leaders, like Charlotte Kates, candidly express unambiguous support for and alignment with legally sanctioned terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, all in the guise of “pro-Palestine” solidarity.

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“When I look at what’s going on now, that’s the important thing, in my mind. It’s very different now. With the Toronto 18, we had a small group of people, some of whom had known each other for a while, and they built their little group and they did it in secret. They didn’t have these massive demonstrations where like-minded people can easily identify one another.”

It’s important to draw distinctions between the “true believers” and people who come to demonstrations simply because they’re genuinely upset about the bloodshed and suffering in Gaza, Mecher said. “Just because people show up at a demonstration, that doesn’t make them a threat.” And if sympathy for Palestinian terrorism was solely attributable to recent immigrants, the government would have more readily available policy choices. “Contrary to the wishes of some, you can’t deport people who were born here.”

In Canada, glorifying terrorism is perfectly legal, partly because of “free speech” concerns, but mostly because it was long understood to be unnecessary to criminalize such rare and socially repugnant speech.

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Since October 7, however, glorifying terrorism has become positively fashionable. And under Canadian laws as they currently stand, there’s little Canadian politicians are prepared to do except Tweet about how appalled they are about such polemics, and about how Samidoun’s exhortations have “no place in Canada.”

After the “Long live October 7” slogan was chanted in Ottawa, Poilievre responded this way: “I condemn these pro-genocide, antisemitic chants.” Under Section 318(1) of the Criminal Code, anyone who advocates or promotes genocide is liable to imprisonment for five years.

Trudeau responded this way: “It is unconscionable to glorify the antisemitic violence and murder perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th. This rhetoric has no place in Canada. None.”

While glorifying terrorism isn’t against the law in Canada, it is against the law, under Section 83.05(1)b of the Criminal Code, to knowingly act on behalf of, at the direction of or in association with a listed terrorist group.

On the face of it, Samidoun would appear to be doing just that.

But this hasn’t mattered, either.

National Post

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