On October 15 the US imperialists collaborated with Canada to sanction Samidoun, designating the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network a “terrorist entity” under Canadian criminal code and the US Treasury department.  This outrageous attack is a clear attempt by Biden and Harris to repress all organizing against the Israeli occupation of Palestine that steps out of the boundaries acceptable to the rulers. Proud of our past work with Samidoun, Behind Enemy Lines stands firm in the truth that neither Samidoun nor the Palestinian Resistance is a terrorist. We will continue to politically work with principled Palestinian organizations to resist the real terrorists: US Imperialism and the Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide against the people of Palestine that it sponsors. 

These new sanctions come as Israel expands its bombardment and invasion into Lebanon with the full support of the US, Canada, and the EU. Like Germany’s banning of Samidoun in November 2023, these sanctions are designed to threaten everyone engaging in the political struggle to resist imperialist states’ complicity in Israel’s increasingly unjustifiable crimes against humanity, and to keep protests within the boundaries acceptable to the imperialists. In the face of these attempts to isolate Samidoun, everyone with a heart for the people of the world must extend support to them, and recognize that standing with Palestinian prisoners is paramount to standing with all Palestinians! 

Behind Enemy Lines also stands with Palestinian writer and executive committee member of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, Khaled Barakat, who has been labeled by the U.S. a “specially designated global terrorist” in an attempt to denigrate his work toward Palestinian liberation. While Biden and Harris routinely parrot long-discredited lies about the Palestinian resistance, their own administration is using the ridiculous and censorious practice of terror-tagging to silence and target an important Palestinian intellectual and activist. The terror tagging of Barakat and Samidoun is a deadly lie, intended to silence the truth about the situation on the ground, and especially the reality of the daily torture and sexual assault against the thousands of Palestinians held captive in Israeli jails and prisons. 

That the bloodthirsty imperialists in the US and Canada go out of their way to target Samidoun and Khaled Barakat exposes that our rulers have no reservations about lying, and breaking their own rules and laws to silence free expression when it threatens their interests. Everyone who stands with Palestine must now stand with Samidoun against this move to criminalize legitimate dissent. In Behind Enemy Lines, we’re proud to have worked together with Samidoun, and we stand with them now. Their steadfast resistance inspires us to continue to build the fight against U.S. imperialism inside the belly of the beast. It’s only through courageous defiance that goes beyond acceptable limits that we can stand with the people of the world in the struggle to bring down this imperialist beast, once and for all! 

Stand with Samidoun! It’s right to rebel against genocide!