A flag displaying the logo of Samidoun is seen at a Palestine solidarity demonstration in São Paulo, Brazil, February 15, 2025. Photo courtesy Samidoun Network/X.

In late March, the federal government moved to dissolve Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, an international group of organizers and activists long targeted for criminalization by the Israel lobby in Canada. The move follows changes introduced in the 2025 federal budget granting Ottawa explicit authority to disband organizations designated as “terrorist entities.”

The decision marks a significant escalation in the state’s crackdown on Palestine solidarity, one that coincides with Israel’s own intensifying repression of Palestinians.

Samidoun was founded in 2011 to build solidarity with a Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike. The 22-day strike, which ran from October to November of that year, called for an end to Israeli practices of solitary confinement, the denial of books and newspapers to political prisoners, and the shackling of prisoners during family visits. It also demanded the release of Ahmad Saadat, general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), from isolation.

Since then, Samidoun has worked to raise awareness about Palestinian political prisoners and the conditions they face in Israel’s apartheid penal system.

Across Israel and the occupied territories, the Israeli government holds around 10,000 Palestinians in its notoriously brutal network of prisons. Prisoners regularly face torture, starvation, and abuse. Thousands are held without charge or trial. Hundreds of those imprisoned are children—in fact, Israel is the only country in the world that tries children in military courts. Defense for Children Palestine notes that “about 500 to 700 Palestinian children are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system each year—some as young as 12.”

Amid the Canadian state’s crackdown on Palestine solidarity in 2023–2024, the apartheid lobby intensified its campaign to criminalize Samidoun. This long-standing effort rests on the unproven claim that Khaled Barakat, husband of Samidoun founder Charlotte Kates, is associated with the PFLP, an armed resistance organization that the Canadian government has listed as a “terrorist” group since 2003.

In October 2024, apartheid lobbyists got what they wanted. Ottawa announced that Samidoun had been listed as a “terrorist entity” under the Criminal Code. The announcement was made in coordination with the US government, which on the same day designated Samidoun a “specially designated global terrorist” through executive order.

The following month, Vancouver police conducted a militarized raid on the home of Kates, who had previously been arrested for praising Hamas military operations against Israeli occupation forces. The raid involved an armoured vehicle and heavily armed officers. Kates’s neighbour described the operation as “over the top,” adding, “I don’t think it is appropriate to use that much force.”

But the show of force was the point. The raid functioned as an intimidation tactic, sending a chilling message through the broader Palestine solidarity movement in Canada.

Such intense political furor and police repression over an alleged association with a Palestinian group exposes a glaring double standard in Canadian political life. One might ask why supposed ties to a Palestinian political organization provoke such outrage, while more than 200 Canadian veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)—an army that levelled Gaza and is currently engaged in brutal wars of aggression against Lebanon and Iran—are apparently welcomed home with open arms.

By any metric, the IDF is far more violent and destructive than any Palestinian group. Yet despite a supposed arms embargo, Canada continues to ship weapons to Israel via the United States, and the Liberal government recently voted down a bill aimed at ending these transfers.

Indeed, Canada’s “terrorist” list itself appears largely geared toward delegitimizing Palestinian armed struggle against Israeli apartheid and occupation. This is reflected in its disproportionate focus on Palestinian organizations. The list was created in 2001, and by 2022, “over 10 percent of Canada’s terrorist list [was] made up of organizations headquartered in a long-occupied land [Palestine] representing one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population.”

As Canadian arms fuelled Israel’s assault on Gaza, Minister Dominic LeBlanc claimed that Samidoun’s solidarity activists constituted a “threat to Canada’s national security.” His statement on the group’s designation read:

Violent extremism, acts of terrorism or terrorist financing 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.

How exactly a solidarity network focused on raising awareness about Palestinian political prisoners constitutes such a “threat” is left unexplained.

On March 30 of this year, three days after the federal government’s database listed Samidoun as “dissolved for non-compliance,” Israel’s parliament passed an ethno-nationalist death penalty bill imposing execution by hanging on Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis in “terrorist” acts. The same penalty will not apply to Jewish Israelis who kill Palestinians.

When the bill passed, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—a hardline ethno-nationalist and one of the most powerful figures in Israel—celebrated in the Knesset with a bottle of champagne. He had previously filmed himself in front of a gallows while threatening death for “terrorists.” In the months leading up to the vote, Ben-Gvir and other parliamentarians wore noose-shaped pins on their lapels to promote the mass execution of Palestinians.

VIDEO | Israeli National Security Minister Ben Gvir, outside the Knesset chamber, celebrates the passing of the death penalty law for Palestinian detainees, describing it as historic and saying, “Soon we will count them one by one.” pic.twitter.com/yc4Aan0dLf— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) March 30, 2026

VIDEO | Israeli National Security Minister Ben Gvir, outside the Knesset chamber, celebrates the passing of the death penalty law for Palestinian detainees, describing it as historic and saying, “Soon we will count them one by one.” pic.twitter.com/yc4Aan0dLf

The Canadian government has criticized the racist death-by-hanging bill. Foreign Minister Anita Anand noted that it “systematically targets Palestinians” and “adds to a growing list of actions which enables illegal settler violence while dehumanizing the Palestinian people.”

These words ring hollow. In the very same week, Canada forcibly dissolved an important support network for Palestinian political prisoners. The move was part of a years-long campaign to undermine solidarity with Palestine in Canada through censorship, job loss, smear campaigns, state and non-state intimidation, targeted criminalization, and overt police violence.

Canada’s criticism of certain grotesque aspects of Israeli policy means little when the government fundamentally supports a decades-long system of dispossession and ethno-supremacist rule. That support is manifested through weapons transfers, diplomatic backing, and the repression of Palestine solidarity at home.

The criminalization of Samidoun has dismantled a key network for Palestinian prisoner solidarity at precisely the moment such solidarity is most needed.

Ottawa can voice its objections to the horrors of Israel’s executions bill all it wants. That does not change the fact that Canada is deeply implicated in the conditions that made such a law possible.

Owen Schalk is the author of Targeting Libya: How Canada went from building public works to bombing an oil-rich country and creating chaos for its citizens, an exploration of Canada’s pivotal yet little-known role in Libya’s history, now available from Lorimer Books.

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