Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Anti-War Committee of Chicago.

The Anti-War Committee of Chicago strongly condemns the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designation of Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network as a sanctioned entity and gross slander as a “sham charity.”

Done in tandem with the government of Canada, this designation serves only to repress Palestinian solidarity at a time where Israeli war crimes spit in the face of international law. The same week both governments colluded to designate Samidoun with these outrageous sanctions, Israeli Occupation Forces burned Palestinians alive in Al Aqsa Hospital, destroyed an entire village in south Lebanon, and bombed Syria.

It is also evidently clear this designation comes at a time where Palestinian solidarity is at the highest it has been, not only in the US and Canada, but worldwide. The world can no longer ignore the plight of the Palestinian cause. US insistence of the world following its “rules based order” is contradicted by the endless financial and political protection it gives to Israel, which cannot go a day without violating international law – the very “rules based order” the U.S. insists everyone else follow.

This heinous designation should raise several red flags for anyone in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. This is an attempt to normalize repression on behalf of imperialist, colonialist interests who profit from the death and destruction of sovereign countries and people.

Since the onset of the October 7 Al Aqsa Flood Operation, the US has begun a crackdown of Palestinian activists – harassing peace activists at home, in schools, at airports, at work, and disrupting their daily lives and livelihoods in order to intimidate them into silence. The U.S. government and the Canadian government both insist that the general public should look the other way as they sponsor genocide through the Israeli occupation of Palestine. This is but one instance in this country’s history of criminalizing liberation movements from indigenous American organizations to Black liberation organizations.

While actual, racist and domestic terrorist gangs are on record operating within the Chicago Police Department, the U.S. government instead chooses to criminalize opposition to their genocide. Opposing genocide is not a crime! Solidarity is not a crime! Demanding an end to apartheid and occupation is not a crime!

We demand the immediate removal of these designations and an end to unjustified lawfare imposed on organizations seeking justice for Palestine. Hands off Samidoun! An attack on one is an attack on us all! Free Palestine, no more aid to Israel, no more arms to Israel!

#ChicagoIL #IL #AntiWarMovement #Samidoun #AWCChicago #PoliticalRepression