Activities

• Samidoun is a main advocate for the release of Palestinian prisoners, many with ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization (designated as such by the U.S., EU, Canada, and Israel.
• Many major Samidoun chapters and key activists in Europe and North America support the PFLP and its members, justifying the use of violence and incitement against the state of Israel. Read NGO Monitor’s report, “The Global Samidoun Network: Mapping Branches in Europe and North America.”

Samidoun Ties to Terrorism

• In February 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Defense designated Samidoun a terrorist organization and “a subsidiary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).” According to the Ministry, Samidoun was founded by “members of the PFLP in 2012,” and Khaled Barakat, identified by the PFLP as “coordinator” of Samidoun, “is involved with establishing militant cells and motivating terrorist activity in Judea & Samaria and abroad.”
• In May 2019, PayPal, DonorBox, and Plaid shut down online donations to Samidoun due to its alleged links to the PFLP.
• Samidoun events celebrate key milestones for the PFLP, such as its New York event for 50 years of the PFLP, and include former PFLP terrorists. Samidoun events usually include the display of PFLP flag. (See Appendix 1 below for screenshots of Samidoun’s ties to the PFLP.)
• On October 9, 2022, Samidoun NY/NJ and other groups held a demonstration to “shut Elbit down.” During the rally, Samidoun NY/NJ coordinator Laila quoted PFLP Founder George Habash and commented, “Al Hakim [Habash’s alias] was speaking of the brave Palestinian resistance in Palestine…We all have a right and a duty to resist the murderous Zionist entity and all institutions that support and benefit from the Zionist entity’s genocide of the Palestinian people.”
• In August 2022, Samidoun Netherlands demonstrated on behalf of Bassam al-Saadi, following his arrest by Israel. Al-Saadi was responsible for Islamic Jihad’s West Bank militant operations.
• On May 15, 2022, Samidoun participated in an event in Iran titled “Palestine – Dream Without Borders,” to mark the release of a documentary on “political prisoner” George Abdallah who is serving life in prison for “complicity in the assassinations” of an American and an Israeli diplomat in Paris. The event also featured Dr. Ahmad Reza Beizai, a writer for the Resistance Front, an Afghan Militia connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
• In June 2016, the PFLP issued an official statement of gratitude to Samidoun for its support to PFLP prisoners.
• On January 29, 2020, Samidoun Vancouver and additional groups held an event titled “Freedom for [PFLP Secretary-General] Ahmad Sa’adat.” According to Samidoun, Khaled Barakat spoke about “the case of Ahmad Sa’adat and fellow Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails and the use of ‘anti-terror’ designation and repressive legislation to suppress Palestinian organizing inside and outside occupied Palestine.”
• On November 1, 2018, Samidoun held a press conference in Gaza to “announce[] [a] series of events and actions to demand freedom for Khalida Jarrar.” The press conference included the display of PFLP flags.
  • Khalida Jarrar, Addameer’s former vice-chairperson, is a senior official of the PFLP. On April 15, 2015, Jarrar was indicted for various offenses including active membership in a terrorist organization (the PFLP) and inciting violence through a call to kidnap Israeli soldiers. She also has been placed in administrative detention multiple times and is again there due to her remaining a “threat to the security of the state.”
• On October 22, 2018, Samidoun participated in a Gaza demonstration organized by the PFLP in solidarity with “imprisoned Arab Communist revolutionary and struggler for Palestine Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.” During the demonstration Samidoun’s flag hung next to the PFLP flag.
  • Abdallah was convicted and sentenced by a French court to life in prison for “’complicity in the assassinations” of Charles R. Ray in 1982, a US military attaché serving in Paris, and Yacov Bar-Simantov, a second counsellor at the Israeli embassy in Paris.
• On January 5, 2018, as part of the 50^th anniversary of the PFLP, Samidoun launched a poster campaign in France calling for people to “support the historic program of the Palestinian Resistance…as well as the exit of the PFLP from the list of terrorist organizations of Europe.”
• On December 20, 2017, Samidoun organized an event in Athens, Greece to mark the “50^th anniversary of the Palestinian revolutionary left, including the founding of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” Mohammed Khatib, Samidoun’s coordinator in Europe and a PFLP member, attended the event which featured PFLP flags.
• In October 2017, Samidoun, alongside Addameer and the BDS Movement, hosted a conference in the European Parliament on the “role of women in the Palestinian popular struggle. The event featured Leila Khaled, a PFLP terrorist and airline hijacker.

Samidoun Staff Ties to the PFLP

• Khaled Barakat
  • According to Fatah, Khaled Barakat is a “member in the central committee of the PFLP.”
  • Barakat is also the International Coordinator for the “Campaign to Free Ahmad Saadat.” Saadat, the PFLP’s Secretary-General, was sentenced to thirty years in prison for heading an “illegal terrorist organization,” as well as for his involvement in planning many of the group’s attacks including the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi.
  • In September 2013, the PFLP referred to Barakat as “the “coordinator of [the] Samidoun Network,” and has labeled him a “comrade” and “commander at the PFLP” on multiple occasions.
  • In 2020, Germany expelled Barakat and imposed a four-year entry ban. His appeal was rejected, finding that Barakat “repeatedly participated in activities of the PFLP in Germany and/or appeared publicly under the PFLP label.” The court further described Barakat’s “support for a terrorist organization is a case of endangering public safety according to the definition in Section 54 (1) no. 2 of the Residence Act,” and “The connection between the plaintiff’s position on the PFLP…and his statements on the armed resistance refutes the…claim that the plaintiff only identifies with individual humanitarian/political goals of the PFLP.” 
  • In October 2022, Samidoun reported that Barakat was denied entry into the EU.
  • Barakat participated in a December 15, 2019 event celebrating the 52nd anniversary of the PFLP’s establishment, alongside PFLP member and coordinator of Samidoun Europe, Mohammed Khatib. During the event, Barakat stated, “the birth of the PFLP was an important moment in the history of the Palestinian struggle for return and liberation.”
  • In 2016, Barakat attended a funeral of Omar Nayef Zayed, a PFLP member who was convicted of the murder of a yeshiva student in 1986. Barakat was photographed next to Leila Khaled, a convicted PFLP terrorist, and other PFLP officials.
• Charlotte Kates
  • Kates has participated in delegations by the PFLP.
  • In 2012, she and her husband were members of the Canadian delegation that met with PFLP officials.
  • In October 2018, Kates participated in an event in Denmark speaking in front of a PFLP flag. Kates openly expressed support for prisoners who represent “Palestinian resistance in all of its forms,” including Khalida Jarrar.
    • Khalida Jarrar served as vice-chairperson of the PFLP-affiliated NGO Addameer, until 2017. Jarrar was arrested on October 31, 2019 on suspicions of “involvement in terror activity.” On December 18, 2019, it was revealed that Jarrar had “emerged as the head of the PFLP in the West Bank and responsible for all the organization’s activities” (emphasis added).
  • As reported by the PFLP, in August 2016, Kates spoke at a solidarity event for convicted PFLP member Bilal Kayed. During the event, Kates “praised the role of Bilal’s comrades in the PFLP in the occupation’s prisons, and that they offer him support…and first and foremost PFLP Secretary-General Ahmad Sa’adat…”
    • Kayed was arrested in 2002 and later convicted of a series of attacks and attempted attacks and sentenced to 14.5 years in jail.
• Mustafa Awad
  • Mustafa Awad is a Samidoun activist in Belgium.
  • In May 2016, Awad participated in a delegation led by the PFLP.
  • In August 2018, Mustafa Awad was arrested after attempting to enter Israel. Awad was accused of joining the PFLP and participating in a Hezbollah training course.
• Mohammed Khatib
  • Khatib is Samidoun’s coordinator in Europe and a PFLP member.
  • In December 2019, Khatib participated in a event celebrating the 52nd anniversary of the PFLP’s establishment.

Political Advocacy

• Samidoun endorses the Deadly Exchange campaign led by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) that aims to “end police exchange programs between the US and Israel.” JVP claims that American Jewish organizations and programs are to blame for police violence against minorities in America. The campaign also invoked antisemitic tropes.
  • The initial “Deadly Exchange” video labeled AIPAC, ADL, Birthright and other Jewish organizations as being responsible for these exchanges, and urged viewers to “Hold accountable the Jewish institutions who run and fund the deadly exchange.”
• Samidoun organizes an annual “Day of Solidarity with Palestinian Political Prisoners,” which features “rallies, events and action and distributing news and alerts about actions around the world.” Many of these prisoners have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization designated as such by the U.S., EU, Canada, and Israel.
• In May 2023, Samidoun tweeted, “Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network mourns the martyrdom of Sheikh Khader Adnan, 45, whose life was taken behind Zionist bars after 86 days of hunger strike in a Zionist assassination operation. This crime must not be allowed to pass without accountability.” Samidoun additionally affirmed that Adnan, “A leader in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, he became one of the most prominent symbols of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement and ongoing resistance…The martyrdom of Sheikh Khader Adnan, the symbol of dignity, freedom and steadfastness, is an Israeli assassination, carried out with forethought and premeditation.”
  • Khader Adnan, a senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad member arrested in February 2023 and indicted for membership in a terror group, supporting a terrorist organization, and incitement, died following his 86-day-long hunger strike and refusal to receive medical treatment from the Israeli Prisons Service.
• On April 13, 2023, Samidoun claimed that Berlin authorities banned an upcoming Samidoun rally. According to the Berlin newspaper BZ, “the police had banned the demonstration on the grounds that it could lead to inflammatory or anti-Semitic calls, glorification of violence or acts of violence. The Administrative Court and the Higher Administrative Court had confirmed the ban in summary proceedings.”
• During an April 8, 2023 Samidoun-organized protest in Berlin, demonstrators chanted “Death to the Jews, death to Israel!”
• In May 2022, Samidoun was a signatory on a flagrantly antisemitic report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry which was established to “investigate” crimes allegedly committed by Israel since April 13, 2021. The submission called to “Recognise and Address Zionist Settler Colonialism and Apartheid as the Root Causes of Israel’s Ongoing Violations.” The submission presented a blatantly false historical account that denied Israel’s right to exist, categorized Israel’s very existence as illegal, and labeled Zionism as a form of racism.
• In October 2021, Samidoun published a statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. According to the statement, “In our experience with this designation since February of this year, these designations are used as ammunition by Zionist  ‘lawfare’ groups in various countries in an attempt to create a climate of fear to undermine collective solidarity, cut off funding or access to banking, and silence advocates for justice, rights and liberation in Palestine at international venues.”
• In May 2021, Samidoun held a “Week of Palestinian Struggle” titled “From Gaza to Jerusalem: Confront massacres and ethnic cleansing, support Palestinian resistance!”
• In September 2020, following Israel signing a peace deal with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Samidoun signed a call stating that “While governments and corporations talk of business opportunity, tourism, and energy deals, the sidelined Palestinians continue to exist in apartheid conditions, under brutal Israeli military occupation.” The call further “demand[ed] an end to Zionist Colonization of Arab/Palestinian land.”
• In August 2020, to mark the 48^th anniversary of the death of Ghassan Kanafani, Samidoun held “Days of Resistance” in major cities around the world to “remind the world that the Palestinian people will continue to rise and confront all attempts of liquidation and destruction of the cause of Palestine and resist dispossession, exile and genocide.”
  • Kanafani was a spokesperson for the PFLP.
• In November 2019, Samidoun signed a letter to Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda calling to open “an official, full-scale investigation into the ‘situation in Palestine’” and the “possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed” as the “absence of an official investigation…has fuelled the already existing culture of impunity.”
•  In November 2018, Samidoun publicized a rally in Berlin for “101 Years of the Colonial Balfour Declaration” stating that “the Declaration of shame must not be forgotten! Balfour’s promised has created over 7 million refugees, justifying ethnic cleansing and land theft. Protest!”
• In October 2018, Samidoun participated in a series of events in Denmark, co-organized by Boykot Israel, “highlight[ing] Palestinian prisoners and the struggle for liberation” and displaying the PFLP flag. During the events, Samidoun’s coordinator Khaled Barakat addressed the “need for more action to boycott Israel. Israel is a racist and colonialist state that is doomed to dissolve. I believe that at one point Israel is going to become a burden for imperialism, as we have seen elsewhere in world history, such as in South Africa.” Charlotte Kates, Samidoun’s international coordinator, also “urged the boycott of Israeli academic institutions, including study abroad programs, in protest of the violation of Palestinians’ right to education.”
• In May 2018, during the violence on the Gaza border, Samidoun urged its supporters to “take to the streets. Silence is unacceptable in the face of massacres, colonization and complicity. The Palestinians whose lives were taken today and the thousands more wounded must be honored with struggle and commitment to the liberation of all of Palestine and its people, from the river to the sea, the dismantling of Zionist colonialism, and the return of the Palestinian refugees.”
• On May 13, 2017, Samidoun co-sponsored a rally in New York to commemorate “the 69^th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba,” describing the “ethnic cleansing of 1948.” Other organizers included Al-Awda, American Muslims for Palestine, and NYC Students for Justice in Palestine.
• In September 2017, Samidoun was a signatory on a call to restaurant chefs to “Take Apartheid off the Menu” and cancel their participation in the Tel Aviv “Round Tables Tour” as it “uses the time-honored tradition of sharing culinary experiences as a means for whitewashing widespread violation of Palestinian fundamental rights, including the right to food.”
• Samidoun works closely with number of Palestinian NGOs leading delegitimization campaigns against the State of Israel. According to NGO Monitor’s research, some of those NGOs are affiliated also with the PFLP.

BDS Activities

• 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.
  • 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.
• In February 2023, Samidoun was a signatory on a statement “welcom[ing] the historic announcement by the Barcelona City Council to suspend all institutional relations with apartheid Israel.” The statement called for “arms embargo against apartheid Israel, stopping trade with Israel’s illegal colonial settlements, and ending projects and agreements that sustain the illegal situation, including the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the EU-Israel Association Council, international agreements for gas pipes through the Gaza coast, and the Euro-Asia Interconnector project receiving electricity from Israel’s colonial settlement enterprise.”
• In September 2022, Samidoun endorsed a report by Al-Haq and Just Peace Advocates calling to “Update the UN database annually” and “Continue to exert the necessary efforts to ensure transparency and promote accountability for business activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, to counter the pervasive impunity stemming from corporate- related violations and grave breaches of international law in such contexts.”
  • The UN BDS “blacklist” of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line selectively targets Israel apart from all other nations, is aimed at economically damaging companies that are owned by Jews or do business with Israel, and is ultimately meant to harm the Jewish State.
• In March 2022, Samidoun was a signatory on a joint statement delivered to the UN Human Rights Council calling to “adopt effective measures, including sanctions, to end Israeli apartheid.”
• In August 2021, Samidoun signed a letter to the States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty calling to “put an end to Israel’s notorious use of arms and military equipment…by immediately imposing a comprehensive two-way arms embargo on Israel.” According to the letter, “This systematic brutality, perpetrated throughout the past seven decades of Israel’s colonialism, apartheid, pro-longed illegal belligerent occupation, persecution, and closure, is only possible because of the complicity of some governments and corporations around the world.”
• In June 2021, Samidoun was a signatory on a letter to President Biden to “Halt Weapons Sales to Israel.”
• In September 2020, on the 27^th anniversary of the Oslo Accords, Samidoun published a statement calling to “escalate the boycott campaign against Israeli products, cultural institutions, academic institutions and complicit corporations, and fight back against the recognition and normalization of a racist settler-colonial project in occupied Palestine. The boycott of Israel is antithetical to the Oslo process.”
• In September 2020, Samidoun held a “Day of action” calling to “take action to boycott Israel and complicit corporations like HP, G4S and Teva – and the boycott of the “Israel- Start Up Nation” propaganda team in the Tour de France,” and “escalate boycott campaigns in your university, union or other institution.”
• On June 19, 2018, Kates, along with co-founder of CODEPINK Medea Benjamin, Canadian BDS Coalition, Toronto BDS Action, and others, called for the leader of the Social Democratic political party in Canada and other MPs to immediately “disassociate themselves” from the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group, as “Israel has been as unjust towards Palestinians as the white-ruled apartheid state was to Black South Africans.”
• On March 3, 2018, Samidoun and BDS Berlin co-organized a protest in front of SATURN Alexanderplatz against the sale of Hewlett Packard (HP) products, “as the HP corporation provides services and equipment to the Israeli occupation directly for the suppression of Palestinian people in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and profits from this oppression.”
• On November 22, 2017, the PFLP published an article by Barakat in which Barakat stressed that “What our people want and aspire to is a movement that priorities the unity of our people and concentrate its forces behind the legitimate national right within the framework of the popular and armed resistance in all its forms, and in expanding the boycott and isolation of the Zionist entity…and  struggle against normalization…with the Zionist enemy”(emphasis added).
• In May 2017, Samidoun co-organized a demonstration in New York in support of the Palestinian prisoner’s hunger strike in Israeli prisons along with the BDS group American Muslims for Palestine. Participants “distributed flyers and materials highlighting the involvement of Hewlett-Packard corporation in profiting from Israeli apartheid, including maintaining the database system of the Israel Prison Service as well as HP’s contracts with the Israeli military and involvement with the apartheid system of checkpoints and ID cards. Participants called on customers to boycott HP and demand the corporation end its business with Israeli occupation and apartheid.”

Ties to Collectif Palestine Vaincra

• French NGO Collectif Palestine Vaincra (CPV) is a member of Samidoun. (Click here, here, here, here (French), and here (French) to read more on CPV.)
• CPV’s’ website, Twitter handle, and Facebook accounts appear on the Israel National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF) lists of “Terrorists Organizations and Unauthorized Associations” due to Samdoun’s close association with the PFLP.
• Since its establishment in 2019, CPV has been forced to change fundraising platforms multiple times. As reported in the media, in 2020, Paypal closed the account of CPV “because of its ties to the US and EU sanctioned terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).” Following the closure, CPV attempted to raise funding via Helloasso (France), Stripe (US), and Shopify (Canada; on file with NGO Monitor). Since December 2022, CPV raises funds via the Arizona-based 501(c)(3) charity Alliance for Global Justice, through Samidoun.
  • On March 9, 2022, the French government outlawed CPV. The decree of dissolution referenced clauses 6 and 7 of Article L. 212-1 of the Internal Security Code, which permits dissolving groups that:
    • Provoke discrimination, hatred or violence towards people because of their ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion, and/or are found to propagate ideas or theories which justify or encourage such discrimination, hatred or violence (clause 6).
    • Engage in acts that provoke terrorism (clause 7).
  • On April 22, 2022, the French State Council suspended the decree, pending an appeal by CPV.

Staff

• Samidoun does not list the identities of its staffers and their positions on its website. Independent research has identified the following individuals who work for Samidoun:
• Charlotte Kates is Samidoun’s International Coordinator and the wife of Barakat.
  • In 2006, Kates was a campus leader of the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM). Formerly, Kates was the Advocacy Program Manager at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), as well as an activist with the Al-Awda-The Palestine Right to Return Coalition. She also co-chaired the Middle East sub-Committee and is an “Organizer and Coordinator” at the National Lawyers Guild (NLG).
• Maram Saadi is the coordinator of Samidoun’s branch in Lebanon.
• Joe Catron is the US Coordinator of Samidoun.
  • Catron has written numerous articles for Electronic Intifada in support of  BDS, Palestinians who have been convicted of terrorism and security offenses, and Israel Apartheid Week. His articles have referred to the establishment of the State of Israel as a “Israel’s violations” in Gaza.
    • Electronic Intifada is an online platform that publishes viciously anti-Israel and antisemitic articles, promoting BDS campaigns, as well as the one-state formula.
  • In 2018, Catron participated in the International Solidarity Movement’s “US Spring Tour” that aimed to convey to Americans a “small portion of the immense trauma that Palestinians are experiencing.”
  • In September 2018, during the violence on the Gaza border, Catron accused Israel of “genocidal intent” and “brutal repression.” Catron ignored the violent nature of the protests, which have consisted of an organized armed attack on the Israeli border and IDF positions, attempts to destroy and breach the border fence, and sustained arson, rocket, and mortar attacks on Israeli civilian communities.
  • In January 2015, Catron uploaded a picture of himself with Leila Khaled, a PFLP terrorist.
  • In June 2014, Catron participated in a panel in Gaza expressing “solidarity with Palestinian prisoners.” The panel included Tawfeek Abu Naim, the Hamas Chief of Security.

Appendix- Samidoun Ties to the PFLP