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........

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