A Canadian resident with ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine took to the stage in Ottawa recently, where expressed his support for arming Palestinians and took aim at the Canadian government for designating groups like Hamas and Hezbollah as “terrorists.”
Speaking on June 3 at the “International League of People’s Struggles in Canada” (ILPS) conference, Khaled Barakat sought to blame Israel for Palestinian violence.
Barakat is a resident of Vancouver who has been tied to the PFLP, and his wife Charlotte Kates, who runs Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, which the Israeli Ministry of Defense calls a terrorist organization.
During the event, which was held at a city-owned community center, Kates claimed that Jewish groups—calling out B’nai Brith Canada and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs by name—tried to shut down the event because they were hoping to silence the voices of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
The men, who were apprehended within days and were members of either the Palestinian Islamic Jihad or the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, were all serving life sentences for terror attacks on Israelis.
‘We are concerned by remarks made by speakers’
During his talk, Barakat also took aim at the government and its Foreign Terrorist List, which Hezbollah and Hamas, asking why Israel isn’t on it along with Arab groups that have murdered Canadians.
“We challenge the Canadian government, and we say why are you listing, for example, the Popular Front on your terrorist list? What did the PFLP do against Canada or Canadian interests, or commit any crime against Canada here or abroad? Zero. Nothing.”
“Yet Hamas is on the terrorist list,” he said. “We have to ask these questions and mobilize in order to erase this shame—this list is the so-called terrorist list—it has to be abolished. … We aren’t going to shy away and say we don’t support the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance.”
And for what, he added, so Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “can like us?”
“F*** Trudeau,” proclaimed Barakat.
“We are concerned by remarks made by speakers at the ILPS conference that took place at a venue that is under the jurisdiction of the City of Ottawa. Some of those remarks incite hatred against the Jewish community,” said Becca Wertman-Traub, director of Research at CIJA. “CIJA and the Jewish Federation of Ottawa will continue to engage directly with the city and ensure in future they apply their own guidelines, and not provide a platform to groups or individuals that have links to organizations that are designated by Canada as terrorists.”