Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Activists Face Sanctions and Deportation

On October 15 the United States Treasury Department announced a joint action with the Canadian government, targeting the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. The U.S. slapped sanctions on the organization and Canada listed the group as a terrorist entity.

The Treasury Department press release refers to Samidoun as a “sham charity” and accuses it of raising funds for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a secular Marxist-Leninist Palestinian political party, which has been designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department.

“Samidoun is particularly targeted because of our political and vocal support for the Palestinian prisoners movement and the Palestinian people’s right to resistance,” reads a statement put out by the group in response to the development. “While the US and Canada are two of Israel’s biggest material supporters with weapons and money and repress the Palestinian movement in their own countries, their official outposts abroad have frequently sought to influence and direct Palestinian politics through conditional funding and similar colonial enterprises.”

“Through these sanctions, the US and Canada wish not only to support genocide but to criminalize even verbal resistance to that genocide,” it continues. “The Palestinian people, like all colonized and oppressed peoples, have the right to resist to liberate themselves and their land from colonialism and occupation, from the river to the sea. Those who resist occupation and oppression — the Palestinian resistance — are not only heroes of the Palestinian people, they are defenders of all of humanity.”

Mondoweiss U.S. correspondent Michael Arria spoke with Samidoun’s Europe Coordinator Mohammed Khatib about the situation.

Michael Arria: When did you hear the news and what was your initial reaction?

Mohammed Khatib: I first saw it on the Zionist news and and then I saw the statement from the U.S.

After this heavy year of repression and genocide, to be honest I wasn’t surprised at all. We know the U.S. stands with supporting the genocide and supporting the Zionist entity.

This kind of repression is not only being done against Samidoun and hasn’t only been going on in the United States and Canada, but also in Europe. I’m currently speaking to you from Brussels and I’m facing deportation. The state is trying to revoke my asylum status in Belgium, for example. Our comrades in Germany are facing also a heavy repression.

So it was not really surprising to be honest. We see it as a part of this campaign against the Palestinian people, against the Palestinian diaspora, against the Arab and Muslim community, against the solidarity movement with Palestine. We’ve saw these forms of repression against the student movement, against the queer movement, against the Jewish community for standing up for Palestine. So we are part of this package.

What did you make of the specific Treasury Department accusations? That the group is a “sham charity” raising money for the PFLP?

We never claimed to be humanitarian agency in the way they understand what a humanitarian work is, but this is a smear campaign. It’s an attack to delegitimize the network and to create a fear about us.

They are attacking us on the basis that we were fundraising for other political groups and political parties and they know very well that this is not true. If there was any serious allegation there, many of us would be in prison right now. So there is not any legal grounds or element for any of this. It’s just a bullshit campaign to attack Samidoun and the work that we are doing.

As one of the co-founders of Samidoun, I can tell you that every time we are attacked, by the Zionist entity in this way, in Germany, in Canada, in the US, we get stronger and more powerful. This is kind of assurance to us that we are on a good political line and we are on the right side.

So this will never scare us or we will never let do what they are aiming to do against our network.

How does this kind of action from the U.S. and Canada hinder your ability to organize and assist people?

Yeah, for sure. This will impact our fundraising, but we don’t receive great amounts of funds. We rely on individuals’ support most of the time. To be honest with you, our community, our people, the supporters of Palestine, when they see this kind of campaign against us, they will support us and our work more.

That’s why Samidoun is a very difficult network and political organization to break down because we don’t rely on money. We don’t have offices or employees the way other organizations do. We are a very light organization and our local work doesn’t need a lot amount of money. We have an alternative perspective on organizing and mobilizing. Each chapter is independent. We make some basic money that we need to make flyers and stickers, stuff like that. We don’t take grants, we don’t take money from foundations. That’s not the way we operate. So it would be very hard for them to break us from this.

Of course, this is the aim of the attack: to make it difficult for us to fundraise and for people to support us, but this will never break us or eliminate us. This will only give us more courage and strength.

What implications do these moves have for the Palestine movement more broadly?

In a time when we are watching our people burn alive when we are seeing our community being displaced, and facing ethnic cleansing and genocide, this will only give us strength.

We need to fight back, mobilize more, and understand, as part of the Palestinian diaspora, we are part of the battle. This means we are part of the resistance, the resistance of the Palestinian people. As part of the diaspora, we are not just in the solidarity movement of Palestine. The solidarity movement itself is not isolated from the Palestinian resistance. The Palestinian resistance relies on the solidarity movement as a shell that protects, supports, and provides space for the Palestinian people.

All these kinds of attacks against the Palestinian people, against our youth who are engaged in the struggle today, against the student movement or against other fronts, they show that, more than ever, we have a duty to rebuild our mass organizations and to organize ourselves strongly and to be part of the liberation program. To be part of the liberation project of the Palestinian people, and to play our role to be an essential part of of that resistance.

We have a very strategic and important role and place. We are based in the belly of the beast. We are based in the imperialist and colonialist core in Brussels, in Berlin, in Paris. This is where the Zionist movement was born. Our people back home in Palestine are struggling to defeat Zionism. We have to make sure that we need to stop Zionism in its birthplace in the West, in Brussels, in the United States, in Canada.

I think the Canadians and the Americans are behaving this way, not only because they care about Israel, but also because they’re starting to understand the danger of Zionism being dismantled. That will give a perspective to the liberation movement in the United States and Canada, for Black people, for indigenous people, for migrants, for refugees, for Arabs and the Muslims to be united in the United States because as Israel needs to be defeated, Canada and the U.S. must also be defeated.