Samidoun says ‘death to Canada’ is an accurate summary of his goals

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After Samidoun was roundly condemned for shouting “death to Canada” at a rally in Vancouver celebrating the one-year anniversary of the October 7 terrorist attacks, the anti-Israel group doubled down on the slogan, saying it is an accurate representation of what you want. pending.

“We recognize that the community was shocked by the sentence and by the burning of the Canadian flag that occurred after the end of the march. However, we at Samidoun stand by this phrase as the call to action that it is,” the group wrote in a lengthy statement posted on Instagram.

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Samidoun’s official Instagram account was delisted in June for violating the site’s rules against promoting terrorism. As such, the statement was published on Thawra Vancouver, an account that consists entirely of statements and live streams affiliated with Samidoun.

Last Monday, Samidoun led a rally in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery on the anniversary of the October 7 attacks in Israel. The demonstration was billed as a commemoration of the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas’ official name for the operation that killed more than 1,200 civilians in an area of ​​Israel known as the Gaza Envelope.

“We are Hezbollah and we are Hamas,” an unidentified speaker told a cheering crowd at the event, before leading a chant of “death to Canada, death to the United States and death to Israel.”

Five masked organizers – one wearing a Hamas-style green headband – then burned a Canadian flag.

Samidoun confirmed that the “death to Canada” chant was led by a member of his organization and accurately reflected his goal of destroying the “colonial and capitalist state of Canada.”

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“We are not just fighting against the Zionist State, we are fighting against imperialism”, the statement reads.

He then praised the perpetrators of the Al-Aqsa flood and promised to echo their example in Canada. “We see it as our duty to increase resistance here,” it said.

This type of rhetoric was in line with Samidoun’s previous statements. At the rally itself, the group distributed leaflets detailing the risks and benefits of “complex and coordinated terrorist attacks” in pursuit of political objectives.

After the rally, Thawra Vancouver’s Instagram account posted images of a Vancouver SkyTrain station graffitied with the words “GLORY 2 AL-AQSA FLOOD.”

One caption praised the “brave resistance fighters” who carried out the October 7 attacks and said that, in tribute, “freelance activists in so-called ‘Vancouver’ took to the streets this morning, spraying graffiti on skytrain stations, targeting complicit businesses, to remind residents that despite the lies of the Occupation and its Western allies.”

Last week, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre cited the “death to Canada” chant when calling on the Trudeau government to list Samidoun as a terrorist entity. He was joined on the call by BC Conservative leader John Rustad.

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In the Netherlands, the Dutch government responded by doing so. On October 10, the Dutch parliament voted 100 to 50 to designate Samidoun as a terrorist organization.

Although the group is based in Vancouver, it has been active in organizing anti-Israel extremist events across Europe. Last year, Samidoun was also banned in Germany after he led a series of demonstrations celebrating the 7 October attacks which, according to German authorities, “demonstrated an absolute lack of respect for human life in a particularly abominable way”.

Poilievre’s main argument against Samidoun is that he serves as a front for a group that is already a listed Canadian terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Samidoun was founded by a prominent member of the PFLP, Khaled Barakat, and makes no attempt to hide its links to the PFLP, which remains an active Palestinian terrorist organization. Samidoun’s various social media feeds are used to circulate PFLP propaganda, the group has organized speaking dates across North America for PFLP members, and even celebrates PFLP birthdays and anniversaries.

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The “death to Canada” chant was condemned by politicians ranging from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to BC Premier David Eby, although they stopped short of calling for sanctions against the group.

Samidoun has been at the center of the Canadian anti-Israel movement since the October 7 attack, helping to coordinate hundreds of blockades, boycotts and demonstrations in cities across Canada.

It was a Samidoun rally held shortly after the massacres, for example, that featured former executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, Harsha Walia, indirectly praising the mass murder of more than 300 attendees at the New Music Festival in southern Israel.

“How beautiful is the spirit of liberation that Palestinians literally learned to hang-glide,” Walia said, in an apparent reference to the paragliders that Hamas gunmen used to ambush the music festival.

Charlotte Kates, wife of Khaled Barakat, has repeatedly praised the October 7 attacks in public speeches given everywhere from Vancouver to Toronto to Madrid.

Through it all, Samidoun has maintained its official non-profit status, with one of its only government sanctions being a temporary ban on Kates from making public appearances in Canada – although she has been free to travel abroad. That ban expired on October 8.

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