This Tuesday, October 15, the United States and Canada simultaneously declared that they had placed Samidoun, an international organization that campaigns against the prison oppression of Palestinians, on their lists of terrorist organizations. Citing the precedent set by Germany, which had already banned the organization in November 2023 Office of Foreign Assets Control from the US Treasury justified this decision by accusing Samidoun of being a ” false charity », the true nature of which would be to be a financing body for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), classified as terrorist by a large part of the Western countries.
This unverifiable argument attempts to mask the deeply political nature of this election. In reality, the criminalization of a pro-Palestinian organization is an extension of the repression of all imperialist states against the Palestinian solidarity movement. The classification of terrorism, whether it is used against Samidoun or the PFLP, is an instrument of political repression which allows a state to place an organization at discretion and thus crush any dissent. The organizations that appear on these lists are in fact victims of economic sanctions that make any economic survival impossible: all their assets are frozen and all economic activity is prohibited to them. It is then a question of allowing the states to put whole organizations underground in an arbitrary way.
As Israel continues to bomb Gaza, attack the West Bank and its bloody assault on Lebanon, the number of Palestinian prisoners in Israel continues to rise since October 7, 2023. Samidoun, who introduces himself as ” an international network of organizers and activists working to build solidarity with Palestinian prisoners and their struggle for freedom “, has always condemned the intolerable prison regime that Israel has imposed. Just a few months ago, several testimonies from released Palestinian prisoners condemned the heinous violence and torture that prisoners are subjected to on a daily basis, showing the horror of the oppression that Palestinians are subjected to.
While some critical voices among Western leaders are beginning to be heard, the United States maintains unwavering support for Israel and its murderous policies. As the main supplier of economic aid and weapons to the Zionist state, the US government faced strong challenges to its policies last year, particularly through intense academic mobilization. The criminalization of Samidoun is part of the more general repression of this movement, which resulted in several university sanctions against the mobilized students and attempts by various universities to ban any political demonstration within them.
If Macron has begun to criticize Netanyahu’s policies after French interests in Lebanon have been jeopardized, France has nothing to envy its transatlantic partner in terms of the suppression of the Palestinian movement: the accusations and trials in “apology for terrorism” have multiplied since . 7 October and various Palestinian organizations have been threatened with dissolution. Against political repression, we stand in solidarity with Samidoun, who is suffering the full force of a tool of arbitrary criminalization that seeks to silence protest. While the situation in Palestine and Lebanon is getting worse day by day, the movement in support of Palestine in the imperialist countries must stand up against oppression and against the complicity of the states through the strike and the streets!
