Samidoun has sponsored events at Princeton, Harvard, and Columbia.
The U.S. on Tuesday designated the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network a “sham charity” that fundraises for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist organization. The fake charity has also organized anti-Israel student initiatives on elite college campuses across the U.S.
Samidoun claims to advocate for Palestinian prisoners in Israel, but according to the Treasury Department, the group is actually a front for the PFLP in countries that designate the Marxist revolutionary group a terrorist organization. Samidoun operates mainly in Europe and North America. The State Department listed the PFLP as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997 and 2001.
The U.S. joined Canada in imposing sanctions on Samidoun, with the Canadian government labeling the group a “terrorist entity” under its criminal code. Founded in 2011, Samidoun is based in Vancouver, Canada.
Samidoun has had a visible presence on college campuses in recent years, especially since October 7 of last year.
Samidoun co-sponsored a divestment rally at Princeton University in December and taught an “Abolish Imperialism” lecture at Harvard Law School in March, to name just a few instances. It also led a “Palestinian Resistance 101” event at Columbia University in March, during which Samidoun member Charlotte Kates praised Hamas’s October 7 attack and explicitly supported terrorism against Jews.
Notably, Kates’s husband Khaled Barakat was sanctioned alongside Samidoun.
The teach-in prompted Minouche Shafik, president of Columbia at the time, to announce the suspension of several students who partook in the event to “promote the use of terror or violence.”
In January 2022, Princeton’s Palestine club partnered with Samidoun for a “Palestinian Prisoner Letter-Writing Session” designed to “boost the morale of Palestinian political prisoners.” The club has ties to Samidoun as far back as 2017.
Samidoun has also sponsored posters calling for the freedom of PFLP secretary-general Ahmad Sa’adat during anti-Israel protests at Rutgers University, Columbia, New York University, and Princeton, according to the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor. Sa’adat has been serving a 30-year prison sentence in Israel since 2008.
NGO Monitor, which noted Samidoun’s links to terrorism over seven years ago, praised the U.S. and Canada for taking action against the group this week.
“As NGO Monitor has documented, Samidoun is a major participant in campus-based mob violence across the U.S. and Canada, and there are a number of similar NGOs that need close examination,” NGO Monitor president Gerald Steinberg said in a statement obtained by National Review. “Authorities should also examine the role of Alliance for Global Justice, which, as NGO Monitor has repeatedly highlighted, served as Samidoun’s fiscal sponsor in the U.S.”
Israel, Germany, and the Netherlands have also labeled Samidoun a terrorist group.
Samidoun itself responded to the U.S. and Canadian sanctions, accusing both countries of attempting to “repress political organizing” on behalf of the Palestinian people and prisoners.
“It is a coordinated attempt by the enemies of the Palestinian people to stop every form of solidarity with the Palestinian people and political organizing efforts to end Israel’s genocide, crimes against humanity and occupation,” Samidoun said in a statement on Wednesday.
The group claimed it doesn’t have any ties to terrorist entities designated by the U.S., Canada, or the European Union.
Tuesday’s actions come after the Treasury Department sanctioned Hamas’s international fundraising network on the one-year anniversary of October 7. That set of sanctions also targeted Hamas’s use of sham charities, which the U.S says may have generated as much as $10 million a month for the Palestinian terrorist group as of early 2024.