Coalition for a Safer Web Calls on Biden Administration to Block Assets of Samidoun;
Non-profit promotes antisemitic violence worldwide, is linked to PFLP Palestinian Terror Group.
Washington, DC – July 11, 2024 – In a letter[1] to President Biden, the Coalition for a Safer Web (CSW) urged him to immediately designate Samidoun (a/k/a The Palestine Prisoners Solidarity Network) as an operating affiliate of the Popular Front for the Liberation Palestine (PFLP), a U.S. designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, and to block its U.S. assets pursuant to Executive Order 13224.
As detailed in the letter and its appendix, Samidoun in the U.S. has for more than a decade collaborated with and supported the PFLP whose terrorists have been linked with numerous attacks on Israelis spanning decades including the October 7, 2024, Hamas rampage.
According to Ambassador Marc Ginsberg, CSW Founder and President, “It’s inexcusable that nine months after October 7th that Samidoun not only benefits from IRS tax-exemption but uses these tax-deductible donations to host teach-ins on terrorist playbooks and tactics with PFLP leaders and inflame anti-Jewish hate at protests in US cities and on college campuses.”
“CSW is leveraging its forensic social media research expertise to identify and act against antisemitic organizations inciting violence against the U.S. We are not only identifying the culprits, but we are also acting against them. Based on CSW’s extensive research on Samidoun in recent months the Biden Administration has simply no justification to excuse Samidoun as a group exercising its First Amendment right of peaceful protest. Its U.S. operation is no less an appendage of the PFLP as is its Iran office. Executive Order 13224 was adopted to block U.S. operations of terrorist organizations. Samidoun clearly fits that bill.”
The most recent example of Samidoun’s affiliation with the PFLP was last week when Samidoun’s New York – New Jersey
chapter, whose logo reads “Long Live October 7th” and contains images of Palestinian paragliders and attacks on IDF personnel, hosted a study group on “Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine,” a 160-page PFLP manifesto for armed resistance.
Promoted on one of Samidoun’s Telegram accounts, the July 5 Brooklyn, NY event was the latest of a series of “teach-ins” and webinars promoting the October 7th attacks as a template for ongoing violent “resistance” against Israel and its Western allies. According to reports, the PFLP itself participated in the Hamas October 7 terrorist attack against Israel and U.S. media and intelligence reports state that the PFLP is holding U.S. hostages in Gaza.[2]
Samidoun warrants the President’s determination for the following reasons as stated in our letter to the President:
- Samidoun, whose Director and International Coordinator Charlotte Kates is married to senior PFLP operative Khaled Bakarat, is directly responsible for inciting antisemitic violence in cities and on campuses across the US and advocating terrorism against US worldwide interests.
- Samidoun has hosted post-October 7th webinars with Kates and Bakarat to bolster college protests in New York and which praise the use of airline hijackings as a “resistance” tool.
- Despite Samidoun operating as a “fiscally sponsored” operation in the U.S. to camouflage its U.S. operations, its operatives maintain direct ties with and financially supports the PFLP.
- Samidoun’s leadership advocates acts of terrorism against U.S. interests.
- Samidoun is designated a terrorist organization by several of our major allies, including Germany, Israel, Belgium.
As indicated in the letter’s APPENDIX Samidoun and the PLFP are inseparable from one another. Samidoun’s own U.S. website acknowledges it maintains an operation in Iran from which it financially supports its global operations not just in support of Palestinian terrorist prisoners, but also in support of for the PFLP terrorist agenda.
CSW has already taken action against donors and recipients funding antisemitic and extremist violence in the U.S. by filing complaints with the IRS to challenge their tax-exempt status. CSW has also penetrated encrypted platforms of antisemitic groups to reveal & neutralize conspiracies to incite violence at the upcoming Democratic National Convention and the July visit of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to the U.S.
These initiatives are now joined by this unprecedented initiative to strip one of the most notorious antisemitic/anti-Israel organizations of its ability to leverage the Gaza protest movement to incite domestic violence and acts of terrorism against the American people.
[1] https://coalitionsw.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/POTUS-Samidoun-LTR-July-8-2024.pdf
[2] https://www.ngo-monitor.org/reports/pflp-involvement-in-the-october-7-atrocities/
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About Coalition for Safer Web: Based in Washington, DC, the Coalition for a Safer Web is a non-partisan non-profit foundation that exposes and counters online extremist activity and its funding.
About Ambassador Marc Ginsberg: Founding President of the Coalition for a Safer Web and one of the nation’s leader experts on cyberterrorism and social media-fueled extremist violence. He was former WH Mideast Advisor to President Carter and a former U.S. ambassador to Morocco.
For more information and interviews contact: Marc Ginsberg, marc@CoalitionSW.org or Adam Dubitsky, adam@coalitionsw.org, 202-933-6300, or visit www.CoalitionSW.org