Editor’s Note: The following statement was made by Unity of Fields on October 16, 2024 in solidarity with the Samidoun Palestinian Political Prisoner Solidarity Network after the United States Treasury Department’s list of sanctioned organizations and individuals and Canada designed the organization a “terrorist entity.”
16 October 2024 – Solidarity statement by Unity of Fields:
On 15 October 2024, the US baselessly designated the Samidoun Palestinian Political Prisoner Solidarity Network (Samidoun) as a Specially Designated National (SDN) by summarily adding it to the Treasury Department’s list of sanctioned organizations and individuals. At the same time, Canada designated Samidoun as a “terrorist entity” under Canada’s Criminal Code. Samidoun, a longtime target of state repression and liberal zionist counterinsurgency from within the movement, is a principled and unyielding international voice for thousands of Palestinian political prisoners. We categorically reject this illegitimate “terrorist” designation, and we call for international progressive forces to stand with Samidoun.
Imperialists have always weaponized “terrorist” labels to delegitimize liberation movements, but the designation of Samidoun, an unarmed solidarity movement, is a qualitative escalation. Whether it is Cuba being designated as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” Stop Cop City protestors facing domestic terrorism charges, or material support to terrorism (MST) charges being weaponized against anti-zionists, these terror lists and designations must be totally rejected and abolished. The US, Canada, and the zionist entity are the real “terrorists,” the genocidal settler states built on mountains of corpses and rivers of blood, at this very moment burning Palestinians alive in hospital tents, and slandering as “terrorists” those who dare to resist them.
As the US-backed zionist genocide intensifies in Palestine and Lebanon, the counterinsurgency intensifying against the anti-imperialist movement is no surprise. Make no mistake, fascism is already here. This attack on Samidoun is an attack on the entire anti-imperialist movement, and marks the beginning of a wave of broader criminalization and repression of pro-resistance speech, weaponizing laws like MST and RICO to break solidarity. Anti-imperialist forces must rigorously adapt our strategies to this new phase of repression. It is more crucial than ever to voice support for the resistance because the more of us that do, the harder it is for the state to divide and disorganize us. By cowering now, by withholding critical solidarity, by allowing the state to isolate organizations through lawfare and phony “terrorist” designations, we only relinquish our collective power. We must affirm the righteousness of the Axis of Resistance, and also the righteousness of militant resistance in the imperial core.