Security in Context: Khaled Barakat on anti-Palestinian smear campaigns

Khaled Barakat is a Palestinian-Canadian activist and writer, currently based in Vancouver, who was recently subjected to a media and political campaign aimed at silencing him and those fighting for Palestinian rights in Canada. Attempts to criminalize Barakat originated in an article published in the right-wing newspaper The National Post, and quickly became subject of debate in the Canadian Senate, with a conservative senator going so far as to asking the government to expel Barakat, a Canadian citizen, from the country. The campaign against Khaled Barakat is one of many smear campaigns being launched against pro-Palestinian voices, a phenomenon that seems to be increasing nowadays. Security in Context is a podcast project from the research network of the same name, aimed at promoting new thinking on security from a global perspective. The Security in Context podcast features discussions about key questions on peace and conflict, the political economy of security and insecurity, militarism, and geopolitics particularly as they intersect with the processes of climate change, population movement, and the reorganization of global powers. In order to delve into these topics, we interview writers, researchers, activists and professionals from inside and outside the Security in Context network. Our ultimate goal is to provide a critical representation of security related issues, paying special attention to the Global South, often misrepresented in mainstream media coverage.