By Yves Engler

Canada’s terrorist list targets those opposing Israeli terror. In a stark example of our upside-down world those promoting Israel’s endless crimes are on the offensive seeking to criminalize opposition to Israel’s holocaust.

Efforts to sanction Palestine solidarity have ramped up in recent weeks. Niagara police showed up at the home of a lawyer to question her over social media posts, a top government bureaucrat was fired for an anti-genocide song she played, protesters were arrested for waving a flag at a march and a judge banned protests across McGill University.

In a troubling escalation of the repressive climate, a concerted campaign was launched this week to ban the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. In the House of Commons, at multiple press conferences and on social media Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has called for Samidoun to be listed as a terror entity. That would criminalize the grassroots solidarity group and anyone associated with the organization.

Over the past 48 hours, the National Post has published a half dozen articles critical of Samidoun, including front-page stories on both Wednesday and Thursday. The probable instigator of the latest push, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs began a new email campaign to list Samidoun. There’s also an international dimension to the campaign with the Dutch parliament voting to criminalize Samidoun this week.

Previously, civil society successfully challenged the Israel lobby and National Post’s efforts to list Samidoun as a terror organization. More than two dozen organizations, including the BC Civil Liberties Association and Canadian Union of Postal Workers, opposed listing Samidoun.

Now, the Israel lobby is hoping to capitalize on the anti-Palestinian, warmongering, hysteria sweeping a media sphere preparing for a major regional war. They’ve hyped the fact a Canadian flag was burned at a rally organized by Samidoun and three other groups on Monday. But there’s nothing illegal about burning flags and it’s certainly no reason to ban an organization that organized a protest.

The other criticism of Samidoun is that the group has expressed support for armed resistance. But, under international law Palestinians and Lebanese have every right to resist their occupier and brutalizer.

Another claim leveled at Samidoun is that they have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP is a sizeable secular leftist political organization that has engaged in little armed struggle for decades. It’s outrageous that the organization is on Canada’s terror list, which is a post-9/11 creation bypassing the standard legal burdens of proof. In essence, the government can just list a group and poof it’s a criminal association.

No organization has ever been taken off the list and it’s near impossible for a group to seek to be de-listed, as lawyer Yavar Hameed detailed to me in an interview.

In its yearlong holocaust in Gaza, Israel has destroyed most of the buildings, water sources, and agricultural land. Currently, the Israeli military is seeking to implement an ethnic cleansing/starvation plan in the decimated north of the coastal strip. If you include excess mortality the full Gaza death toll is upwards of 200,000.

At the same time, Israel has killed 2,200 Lebanese, including over 100 first responders and 100 children. A quarter of that country has been displaced and Benjamin Netanyahu just threatened the Lebanese with “destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza”.

It’s mind-boggling that those promoting these crimes claim to be arbiters of who is a “terrorist”. But they know that Canada’s terrorist list is anti-Palestinian and self-reinforcing. Over 10% of the list is made up of organizations headquartered in a long-occupied land representing one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population. Listing is often based on guilt by association. In 2014 the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (IRFAN), which had been a well-established registered charity, was designated a terrorist entity for engaging in the ghastly act of supporting orphans and a hospital in Gaza through official (Hamas-controlled) channels.

Now, Poilievre and the Israel lobby is saying Samidoun is a terrorist organization because it has ties to the PFLP. If Samidoun is listed, then they’ll target other groups claiming they have ties to Samidoun. And on and on.

Simply pointing out the double standards and defending our right to oppose Israel’s horrors is insufficient. We should be celebrating groups and individuals leading the opposition to Israel’s crimes. The hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have taken to the streets against Israeli violence this past year deserve to be celebrated. Let’s start by giving Samidoun an award.

 – Yves Engler is the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and a number of other books. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. Visit his website: yvesengler.com.