UN official withdraws from Montreal conference featuring terror leader

Article content

United Nations special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese has withdrawn from a Montreal conference featuring Charlotte Kates, the founder of Samidoun, a designated terror group.

An updated list of individuals participating in the inaugural “Coordinating Council 4 Palestine” conference on Nov. 1 and 2 has removed Albanese’s name as the keynote speaker on Saturday evening after Jewish leaders decried her plan to speak at the event. There have also been calls for her to be barred from Canada because her remarks, including comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, have been deemed to be antisemitic.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) said Albanese should be ousted from her position over her initial willingness to speak at a conference featuring the leader of a designated terrorist group.

“Earlier this week, we raised serious concerns about Francesca Albanese’s visit to Canada, given her history of troubling statements and associations with individuals who glorify violence against Israelis and incite hatred toward Jews,” CIJA general counsel Richard Marceau told National Post in an email following the news.

Article content

The Canadian Jewish group called on other institutions, including the University of Toronto, which is set to host Albanese for a talk about international law and genocide next week, to withdraw their invitations.

“We now urge any institutions hosting Francesca Albanese to sever ties with her and end any partnerships that lend legitimacy to someone whom G7 leaders, including those from the United States, France, and Germany, have called to be removed from her UN position,” Marceau said.

National Post was unable to reach Albanese for comment before press time.

Kates, who is based in Vancouver, is a leader of Samidoun, a group Canadian and U.S. authorities designated a terror entity in October due to its ties to another terror group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Her husband, Khaled Barakat, is a senior member of PFLP. Kates has previously celebrated Hamas’s October 7 massacre and led anti-Israel rallies in Canada. She took part in a panel in Montreal on Friday about “Criminalizing Dissent.”

Article content

Article content

During her opening remarks, Kates addressed Samidoun’s recent designation as a terror group by arguing that the entire process was corrupted by American influences and what she called the “liquidationist” agenda of the Oslo Accords, a peace deal negotiated between Israeli and Palestinian leaders three decades ago.

Kates compared Canada’s listing of Samidoun to a politically motivated intimidation campaign, encouraging listeners to “fight back to end the so-called terrorist list.” She explicitly advocated not only for the delisting of Samidoun, but also the removal of “Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, Hezbollah, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from this list.”

“By standing together even more explicitly and clearly with all of the resistance forces in the region, from Palestine to Yemen to Lebanon to Syria to Iraq to Iran and beyond and to build our own capabilities as a meaningful partner of this resistance force; to build a camp of resistance that fights ack against imperialism,” she said.

Her comments drew applause from fellow panellists and audience members.
Kates said earlier in her speech that it was not activists — safely outside conflict zones and seeking to change laws and opinions — who were indispensable, but those on the ground in battle zones, who she called “leaders of our movement.”

Article content

“They are the leaders of the Palestinian resistance,” she said, naming several convicted terrorists, including Marwan Barghouti, who is viewed by many as the architect of the Second Intifada in which thousands of Israeli civilians were killed by suicide bombings. “These are leaders of our movement. These are the people who inspire our encampments, our protests. These are the people that we read their words and we take them seriously,” Kates said.

She was unflinching in her ongoing support for the October 7 atrocities, calling them “heroic actions.”

“On October 7, it was clear that it was not only possible but probably for the Palestinian people and their resistance to defeat Zionism and for the people of the region and their resistance forces of the region to defeat imperialism.”

Article content