Canada, Harbouring Terrorists

"Representatives of the organization are active in many countries in Europe and North America, led by Khaled Barakat, who is part of the leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) abroad."

"Barakat is involved with establishing militant cells and motivating terrorist activity in Judea & Samaria and abroad."

National Bureau for Counter-Terror Financing report, Israel

"It's highly alarming that modern terror organizations, in their tactics of concealment and disguise, have methodically adopted pseudonyms from the world of human rights and civil society organizations to hide behind."

Israeli Ambassador to Canada, Ronen Hoffman

"The links between the PFLP, a listed terrorist entity in Canada and Samidoun are clear. We are deeply troubled that the funder and leader of Samidoun, Khaled Barakat, and his wife Charlotte Kates are able to lead Samidoun from Canada with apparent impunity."

"This should be shocking to all Canadians."

Shimon Fogel, president, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canada

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! interviewed Khaled Barakat, and Charlotte Kates, co-ordinator of the Samidoun Palestinian prisoners’ solidarity network.

Many of questionable character have found themselves a comfortable niche in Canada, far from the turmoil of the geographic locations abroad that represent the focus of their activities, generally actions engaged in that result in turmoil, threat and murder of those whose ideologies or sectarian choices or, in the case of Israel and the Palestinian diaspora, an antipathy to the very location of a historical homeland restored to the rightful inheritors, to the murderous rage of usurpers claiming the land as their own.

Again, in the case of Palestinians, there is a propensity to migrate abroad and from their new perches plan and execute atrocities to take place that target the Jewish state or Jews in general as symbols of the self-imposed 'victimhood' of Arabs who saw fit to 'inherit' the identity-nomenclature of the original inhabitants; Jewish Palestinians denoting a Roman-era designation for Judea and Judeans. Where not only have those Arabs taken possession of the name of Palestinian but they are claimants to all symbolic and real religious sites aligned with Judaism.

Young Palestinians in Canada on study visas are enabled to become landed immigrants and eventually citizens, while others immigrate with full families to make a place for themselves within Canadian society. Yet rather than accepting the prevailing Canadian culture and values they bring with them venomous hatred of Israel and of Jews, fulminating against both as usurpers in their very land of ancestral inheritance.

Palestinian Khaled Barakat, now 51, has lived in Canada posing as a Palestinian rights activist and freelance writer for the last 20 years. He and his defenders claim he is a victim of Israeli intimidation and persecution simply because he is a voice for Palestinians in exile from 'their' land. In fact he is an active and senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist group, listed as such in North America, the European Union, Japan and Australia.

In Palestinian news websites the man is described as a "leader of the PFLP", and sometimes as a member of the PFLP's governing central committee. According to Israeli intelligence, PFLP documents identifying him as a key operative in their organization have been intercepted, completely validating identifying him as a covert terrorist living freely in Canada. His true identity is fully known by Canadian intelligence agencies, law-enforcement authorities and senior federal politicians.

Many of Samidoun’s activists are also members and leaders of pro-BDS organizations in the United States.

• Khaled Barakat, coordinator of Samidoun, is also a member of the Al-Awda Palestine Right to Return Coalition, an organization that supports BDS.



  Khaled Barakat (shown in a photo that appears on the Samidoun website). Photo by Aage Christensen/samidoun.net

• Charlotte Kates, co-manager of Samidoun, is a member of the “Organizing Collective” of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) and was previously an activist with New Jersey Solidarity Activists for the Liberation of Palestine (NJS), an organization that called for the destruction of Israel.

NGO Monitor

He has appeared for years at rallies and meetings across Canada and travelled widely in Europe. In 2019 he was detained in Berlin and deported for what German authorities spoke of as violent, antisemitic rhetoric. The PFLP's major financial and political backers are the regime in Damascus, Khomeini's Iran and Hezbollah, in Lebanon. Barakat himself is involved with an organization called the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network that Israeli intelligence identify as a PFLP "proxy" functioning as the group's overseas recruitment, fundraising and propaganda arm.

Samidoun  was designated last year as a terrorist organization in Israel, with Barakat identified as central to its operations. Shortly afterward, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network was formally registered by the federal Corporations Canada agency under the Canada Not-for-Profit Corporations Act. Alarmed, under information-sharing terms of the 2014 Canada-Israel strategic partnership agreement (signed under the previous Harper Conservative government)m\, Israel proposed a briefing spurred by the PFLP having "inexplicably been allowed to set up shop in this country".

A meeting between Israeli and Canadian officials, including representatives from Canada's CSIS (security intelligence establishment), the RCMP and the Canadian Border Service Agency was arranged. Nothing of any substance came of the meeting. Samidoun's registry was not revoked and nor was the organization dissolved in Canada. B'nai Brith's chief executive wrote to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pointing out that the government's inattention was "inexcusable".

"This hate rally [Al Quds march taking place in Canada on April 30] is particularly troubling given that later this week, Jewish communities around the world will pause to mark Yom HaShoah [the Holocaust anniversary]."

"We are equally alarmed by the apparent involvement [in the Al-Quds parage] of terror-tied organizations, like Samidoun."

Gail Adelson-Marcovitz, CIJA national board chair