A pro-Hamas activist who spoke at Columbia after being banned in Germany for supporting terrorism is a communist from New Jersey who publicly supports the October 7 slaughter of Israelis, resulting in the deaths of over 1,700 Israelis.
Charlotte Kates, a prominent figure in the pro-Palestine movement on college campuses for over twenty years, has regularly participated in anti-Israel demonstrations at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Originally from New Jersey, Kates is the international coordinator of the Samidoun Prisoners Solidarity Network, an organization with connections to the PFLP. This group is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel and banned in Germany due to its ties to terrorism.
Hamas in America
Kates, a lawyer, was seen on Friday in Vancouver praising the terrorist attack by Hamas, which left 1,700 Israelis dead and sparked the war in Gaza, where 30,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed.
"We say today, long live October 7!' Kates yelled outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, calling the attack a show of 'beautiful, brave and heroic resistance of the Palestinian people."
"We stand with the Palestinian resistance and their heroic and brave action on October 7,' she said. 'Long live October 7."
Kates continued to defend terrorist groups, saying that it is overdue to remove Palestinian and Lebanese resistance organizations from Canada's list of designated terrorist entities.
"Hamas is not a terrorist organization. Islamic Jihad is not a terrorist organization. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is not a terrorist organization. Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization."
"These are resistance fighters. These are our heroes. These are those who are sacrificing so that we can live and speak and struggle and fight. These are the people whose blood is being shed to defend humanity and to defend the world," she added.
Her husband, Khaled Barakat, is allegedly a prominent member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the US government has branded a terrorist organization for its ties to Hezbollah and Hamas.
The organization is known for its airline hijackings and suicide bombings, and its military component has bragging rights to having taken part in the Hamas assault on Israel.
In 2014, the PFLP claimed responsibility for an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue that resulted in the deaths of four rabbis and a police officer. The group has been implicated in other suicide bombings. Barakat has refuted any affiliation with the group.
Last month, Columbia University welcomed Kates and Barakat to speak despite her extensive record of endorsing terrorism. During the two-hour discussion, Barakat spoke about his "friends at Hamas and Islamic Jihad," while Kates asserted that "there is nothing wrong with being a fighter in Hamas."
The event was organized by Columbia University Apartheid Divest Group, the group behind the encampment that is presently encircling the Ivy League institution.
Supporting Terrorism
Kates has been advocating for armed resistance by Palestinians from her base in North America since her days at Rutgers University in New Jersey. As a law student, she was actively involved in New Jersey Solidarity and played a leadership role in organizing the Third North American Student Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement, which aimed to mobilize against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
In a profile published by The New York Times in 2003, Kates identified herself as a communist and expressed admiration for the Soviet Union's "utopian vision," a dream she had harbored since childhood.
Kates shared details of her early involvement with communism, revealing that she became a paying member of the American Communist Party at the age of 13. She proudly discussed her readings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, and boasted about displaying a poster of Che Guevara in her dorm room. Another poster in her dorm celebrated the "Proletarian Feminism" of the Red Women Fighters of Peru.
She described her upbringing in a working-class family, with her mother employed as a service representative at a bank and her father retired from a job operating heavy equipment. Her brother, Benjamin Kates III, previously served as a US marshal in Texas and now works as a law enforcement specialist.
Kates recalled her activism starting as early as seventh grade, when she protested her school's dress code and lunch fees under the banner of the "lunch costs too much campaign."
During her undergraduate years at Rutgers, Kates organized a "people's convention" and campaigned for radical candidates for the City Council in New Brunswick. Remarkably, the slate she supported received an impressive 278 percent of the vote.
As a lawyer, Kates is also involved with the US National Lawyers' Guild's International Committee, which has been providing representation for pro-Palestine protesters involved in encampments at universities throughout the United States.
