freedom
US refuses to say it won’t kill Assange
Wikileaks journalist remains imprisoned as US continues to pursue discredited extradition case – and refusal to give binding guarantee would result in his immediate release if UK justice system was fit for purpose
The US has refused to give a specific, binding guarantee to a UK court that it will not execute journalist and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Assange has been held for years in solitary confinement in Belmarsh prison while he fights the US government’s attempt to extradite him so it can imprison him for years beyond his lifespan, after Assange exposed war crimes in Iraq by the US military.
The case should have been laughed out of court three years ago, when the main US witness admitted he had been lying all along in his claim that Assange induced him to hack US systems. Instead, Assange has been submitted to what former UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer described as sustained psychological torture – and still faces the likelihood of imprisonment for more than a century.
His recent appeal was adjourned to give the US time to affirm properly that it would not kill him if he was extradited, a sick joke when there has been longstanding evidence of US plans to murder him outside the US.
Incredibly, the High Court has refused to admit fresh evidence of CIA plots to kidnap or kill Julian Assange.
The judges say the rationale for kidnapping or killing Assange would be removed if he is extradited, and the evidence is thus not worth consideration.
Read that again. pic.twitter.com/PqwJIg4yAn— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) March 26, 2024
The judges even refused to admit fresh evidence of the US’s plans to assassinate Assange, instead offering the US another opportunity to have him in their hands if they would promise not to put him to death. The US.
But Assange’s wife Stella has revealed that the US has refused to say that it will not kill him and has offered only a boilerplate statement about the death penalty, while denying Assange the free speech protections it would offer to any US citizen:
The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty.
It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a U.S citizen. Instead, the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can “seek to raise” the First Amendment if extradited.
The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family’s extreme distress about his future – his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in US prison for publishing award-winning journalism.
The Biden Administration must drop this dangerous prosecution before it is too late.
The US statement says the death penalty will be ‘neither sought nor imposed’, but this is non-binding and meaningless given its previous attempts to kill him. The refusal to guarantee there will be no death penalty in Assange’s specific case should mean under UK and European human rights laws that the extradition is immediately refused by the UK court and Assange should already be free. Even if the assurances had been given, the likelihood that the US’s treatment of Assange would lead to his death should be enough to quash the bid.
The fact that he is not yet free of the threat of extradition, let alone walking around in the freedom he should have, is a damning indictment of the state of UK justice and democracy.
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Greenstein takes police to court this week for return of seized electronics
Jewish anti-Zionist arrested by police in ‘fishing expedition’ in December still not charged, but computer and hard drive still not handed back to him
Tony Greenstein
Left-wing Jewish activist Tony Greenstein is taking the police to court this week in a bid to secure the return of a computer, hard drive and other electronics seized by anti-terror police last December when they raided his home and arrested him for a single tweet commenting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Four months later, Greenstein has still not been charged with any offence.
Greenstein, a well-known anti-Zionist prominent in the fight for Palestinian freedom and human rights, explained:
Just before Xmas I was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 in a dawn raid on my flat. My ‘offence’ was not planning a terrorist act but the tweet below which it was suspected was supporting Hamas. In 2021 the political wing of Hamas was proscribed.
After nearly 4 months I have still not been charged and I am under ‘investigation’.
The Police removed my computers, mobile and just about any electronic device they could find.
At the two interviews I had, and contrary to legal advice I gave full answers to their questions, I was questioned solely about the tweet below, two posts on my blog and a speech on Youtube.
This is clearly and obviously a case of the Police using ‘Terrorism’ as a means of suppressing free speech in support of the Palestinians in Gaza undergoing genocide. The Police could, if they so wished, charge Cameron and Sunak with aiding and abetting the commission of war crimes under the International Criminal Court Act 2001 ss.52/53.
However as we know the Police are increasingly acting as the enforcement agency for the government in their desire to suppress Palestinian activism.
The theft of my computers has had an enormous effect on e.g. my ability to comply with my statutory duty to keep accounts for the charity of which I’m a trustee, the Brighton Trust and many other effects. I have had to purchase new computers to continue to e.g. publish my blog and undertake necessary work not least having access to the medical records of my son who is autistic.
Although many files were saved on the cloud there are others which I can’t access.
I have no idea whether or not the Police will eventually charge me but one thing is clear. They do not need my computers to charge me as my views are all in the public domain and accessible on The Internet.
What the Police are engaged in is an intelligence gathering exercise, a fishing expedition.
My solicitor advises me that the action I have brought to force the Police to return my property is almost unheard of. I do not have great hopes that in a case such as this the Magistrates will defy the Police and do what is just and equitable. Nonetheless I believe that I should make the attempt. If unsuccessful I will take it to appeal as what the Police are doing is stringing out their ‘investigation’ and in the meanwhile punishing me even if I am not prosecuted.
It would be of enormous help, since this is a highly political case, for there to be a full public gallery and maybe a demonstration outside the courts.
At a time when the Police are even arresting the ‘wrong sort of rabbi’ for ‘inciting antisemitism’ (burning an Israeli flag – thus equating Jews with Israel) we must resist what is the road to a police state.
If you are free this Thursday 2 pm you I invite you to attend the court. I cannot guarantee it will even be heard, as last time it was adjourned but your presence might also be of help in that regard.
So if you live in the Brighton area and aren’t otherwise engaged please come.
Greenstein’s case has been listed for 2pm on Thurs 18 April at Brighton Magistrates’ Court. Supporters able to attend should get there early:
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Video: friend of Israel Hodge says ‘very few dare’ in Labour to support Palestine
Newly-uncovered video from Labour’s last conference shows shocking comment – and Hodge falsely claiming fellow right-winger Luciana Berger needed ‘police protection’ to move around 2018 conference
A Times Radio video clip reveals right-wing Labour MP Margaret Hodge – who has continued to accept funds from Labour Friends of Israel to visit the country even during Israel’s genocide of Palestinians – telling interviewer John Pienaar that ‘very very few’ people within the Labour party ‘are daring to express support’ for Palestinians.
The clip, which does not appear to have been circulated before now, was posted by Steve Powers after he found it couched in a much longer video from the Murdoch station. Hodge then goes on to repeat the long-debunked claim, still (of course) widely circulated by right-wingers and the so-called ‘mainstream’ media, that former Labour/Tinge party/LibDem MP Luciana Berger needed a police escort to ‘get around’ the 2018 party conference, the last one she had attended before deserting the party:
Merseyside Police confirmed at the time that there was no special police detail for Berger, whom Keir Starmer has welcomed back into the party despite her efforts to prevent a Labour victory in 2019.
But even more damning is the arrogance of the claim – no doubt accurate under Starmer’s Stalinist, pro-genocide regime – just as Israel was preparing to launch its genocide, that ‘very very few’ would now ‘dare’ to show support for Palestinians.
Within the rotting shell that now passes for Labour, that may be correct – but the millions marching every weekend for freedom for Palestinians and an end to Israel’s war crimes make clear that Starmer’s Labour, like the blue version of the Tories, is utterly out of touch with the three quarters of the UK public who despise the murderousness that has killed and maimed more than 100,000 civilians, mostly women and children, and the apartheid states’s contempt for international law and want the genocide to end.
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In pictures: Liverpool turns out in force for Gaza
Large gathering dominates famous station frontage as crowd chants for an end to Israel’s genocide
Hundreds turned out on Easter Saturday to demonstrate at Liverpool’s famous Lime Street Station today to demand an end to Israel’s genocide and war crimes against the Palestinian people in Gaza. The first real spring day did justice to the banners and flags and the large crowd was supplemented by passers-by as shoppers paused to find out more and then join in:
Liverpool Community Independents leader Alan Gibbons is a stalwart of the Gaza protests
Liverpool women hold ‘babies’ to symbolise Israel’s slaughter of Gaza’s children
The protest came in a week where a growing number of countries reinstated their support for the UN’s Gaza relief agency UNRWA – and as Ireland, the ancestral home of so many scousers, announced that it would formally join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.
According to human rights agency Euro Med Monitor, Israel has already killed well over 40,000 civilians in Gaza, mostly women and children, and has wounded and maimed at least twice that number, with the death toll now accelerating even further as the famine imposed by Israel on Gaza’s two million plus inhabitants bites. Israel continues to flout international law and is now ignoring the International Court of Justice’s orders to allow immediate, unfettered, mass access of humanitarian aid and has blocked UNRWA’s access to distribute and deliver, while allowing far-right Israeli groups to block shipments and using starvation as a weapon.
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Florida Philosophy Grad Student Seeks Legal Aid for Asylum Case
Shadi “Soph” Heidarifar is a doctoral student and teaching assistant in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Florida. She’s also suing the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for neglecting her asylum case.
Heidarifar, a queer woman, came to the United States from Iran and filed for asylum. She writes:
My country is among the fewest countries on earth that systematically executes people (even minors) for their sexual orientation and brutally assaults/kills women for their clothing choices. My asylum case is also based on the systemic treatment that I personally got there both as a woman and as a Queer person.
She filed for asylum four years ago but, she reports, “USCIS hasn’t scheduled an interview for my case yet.”
Her lawyer advised her to sue USCIS in a Federal Court to schedule an interview. She writes:
The problem, however, is that this entire process costs $3000. As an international graduate student, I’m in no position to pay this amount on my own. So, I’m asking for your help to please consider supporting this cause.
I can’t emphasize enough how much your support means to me; it is literally life-saving! When I first moved to this country, I was able to find who I am because of the amazing support I’ve got, especially in academia, and with the same kind of support, I’m sure we will achieve this goal as well.
You can donate to Heidarifar’s legal fund here.
The post Florida Philosophy Grad Student Seeks Legal Aid for Asylum Case first appeared on Daily Nous.
Analysis: Catalonia’s pro-independence movement forces Spain to approve amnesty
Catalan film-maker Jordi Oriola Folch on Spain’s amnesty for pro-independence politicians and activists and the success it represents for them
Photograph: Josep Renalias – Lohen11
In the Middle Ages, Catalonia was one of the great European nations, but after 1714 it was subjugated by Castile (Madrid) and lost its sovereignty. The Spanish way of being (vertical, authoritarian, conquering and warlike) is opposed to the Catalan way (horizontal, pacifist, democratic and merchant), that is why Catalonia has always tried to become independent, but Spain has violently prevented it.
From 1939 to 1978, Spain had a fascist dictatorship, which was not defeated as in the case of Germany and Italy. The transition to democracy was not by conviction but because the world demanded it and it was very deficient. Since then, two major parties have alternated in power, PP from the right and PSOE from the center. The PP is the direct heir of fascism and the PSOE is the heir, by environmental osmosis, of the same intolerant nationalism.
The ongoing independence attempt is the most powerful in history because now Spain cannot consider killing us in the institutional framework of the EU. In 2017 we held and won a self-determination referendum. The PP fought it using anti-democratic methods: judges, secret services, police… and then the PSOE is doing the same: repression and denial of any option towards freedom for Catalonia.
In the recent electoral campaign, the PSOE ridiculed Catalan independence, assured that it would arrest and lock up in prison Carles Puigdemont (the president of Catalonia who carried out the referendum in 2017 and who is in exile in Belgium) and denied the possibility of an amnesty for pro-independence criminals or any referendum on self-determination for Catalonia. The PSOE was showing off its chest by exhibiting the aggressive nationalism that is typical of the Spanish identity.
But the PP and the extreme right of VOX won the elections of July 23, 2023 without an absolute majority. Then the PSOE, seeing that it does not govern in any large region or city council, wanted to get the government of Spain so that its party has economic viability. And everything has changed. They no longer blaspheme the Catalan independentism, but they make a pact because they need their 7 votes to govern.
On March 7, the amnesty law that the PSOE said it would never approve was passed. And they have approved it with the Catalan pro-independence parties and other parties, in total 8 parties (179 seats and 12.3 million votes). It is a success for the Catalan independence movement because it has shown that they were falsely accused. Nobody would have been able to approve an amnesty that would pardon real terrorists. Spanish nationalism, in full fury, invented accusations against Catalan independence: rebellion, sedition, terrorism, treason, hate crimes, economic embezzlement,…. But it is quite the opposite, the Catalan independence movement is exemplary in its democratic approach (it does not want to impose independence but has always wanted to hold a referendum of self-determination for the Catalan society to decide democratically) and it is not violent (it has made massive and peaceful mobilizations). Aware that there had been “lawfare” (judicial dirty war), the PSOE has now accepted an amnesty.
But the right and the extreme right do not want to accept the amnesty, because they see it as a defeat. They have always imposed themselves by force and now they do not want to accept the law passed by the Spanish parliament. The judges threaten to sabotage the law and not to apply it. And the fact is that, there being no crimes, an amnesty law is needed because the judges accept the invented accusations and condemn the pro-independence supporters to destroy this political movement. With that motivation, the judges will look for subterfuges not to apply it and to continue condemning.
And all this is because now the PSOE needs the 7 pro-independence votes, but what will it do when it does not need them? What will it do when the Catalan pro-independence movement, remade from this chapter of repression, mobilizes again to free itself from Spain? We know: Both PP and PSOE will go back to repression. But for the moment, the independence movement has managed to demonstrate that it is not guilty of any crime and that it only wants freedom from a country that only increases the desire of the Catalans to free themselves from it.
The EU cannot continue tolerating these abuses and will have to intervene sooner or later, because the European Justice is about to issue judgments against Spain (this imminence has also motivated the PSOE to approve the amnesty). In order not to waste time, or energy, or increase the Spanish institutional crisis, it would be better for the EU to force Spain to accept the result of the 2017 referendum or hold a new one in which the Catalans can decide their future free of impositions and authoritarianism.
Jordi Oriola Folch is a physicist, documentary filmmaker and teacher who lives in Barcelona and fights for the independence of Catalonia.
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150 British Jews tell Met top cop: you’re racist assuming we all support Israel
Letter from anti-racist Jews denounces Establishment’s treatment of anti-genocide marches as antisemitic
One hundred and fifty British Jews have written to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley denouncing the police (and government) treatment of marches against Israel’s genocide in Gaza as if they are antisemitic. The letter reads:
We Reject Your Insinuation That The Marches Against Genocide in Gaza Represent a Threat to Jews or the Jewish Community and Suggest that It Is Not the Business of the Police to Intervene in Ongoing Political Debates
We the undersigned, being Jewish, wish to support and join a complaint against the Metropolitan Police, for their racist and anti-Semitic assumption that all Britain’s Jews support Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza.
We further believe that the decision of the Metropolitan, Police to delay the starting time of the March Against Genocide in Gaza on 17 Feb. 24 from 12.00 to 1.30 pm ‘to accommodate an event at a synagogue along the route’ is lslamophobic, based as it is on the assumption that the large numbers of Muslims taking part pose a threat to Jews worshipping in congregations nearby.
Your decision to delay the start of the march rested u~on the assumption that there is something inherently anti-Semitic about supporting the Palestinians and that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism.
The Met’s decision ignores the fact that many thousands of British Jews have already taken part in such marches without feeling threatened in any way. Indeed the march has started from Marble Arch on at least two previous occasions recently without any anti-Semitic incidents.
We are tired of the Police’s racist and anti-Semitic assumption that to be Jewish is to support Zionism and Israel’s racist and genocidal treatment of the Palestinians. There are many thousands of Jews who are active in the Palestine solidarity movement and we resent your assumptions to the contrary.
The letter is signed by:
The letter’s publication comes amid a flurry of racist and Islamophobic comments by government and opposition politicians, with the help of their media allies, aimed at smearing those who object to mass murder as racist – and the arrest of three left-wing protesters in Newham on the nonsensical basis that booing and hissing a supporter of Israel is antisemitic.
The Establishment is determined to suppress free speech against Israel and its war crimes, and to ignore the blatant racism involved in the assumptions it uses to try to justify those attacks. Anti-racist Jews in the UK and the US know better.
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We Think This Dystopia Is Normal Like People In Abusive Relationships Think It’s Normal
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/3e454c1adcdd004e0ec6286219ec2f84/href
Westerners who don’t appreciate the extreme dysfunctionality of western civilization are like someone in an abusive marriage who hasn’t yet recognized that there’s a problem, or someone who had a violent and chaotic childhood who still thinks their home life was basically normal.
All of us understand that there are problems with our society, and most of us understand that a lot of of those problems are severe. But few westerners really get just how bad it is. How pervasively diseased it is.
In reality, we are living in a profoundly sick dystopia that is built on a foundation of human corpses and fueled by an endless river of human blood. Our news media are propaganda services, our entertainment is brainwashing, and our mainstream culture is social engineering, all built to keep us turning the gears of a vast globe-dominating empire.
There’s a widespread assumption throughout the western world that while things might not be perfect our society is certainly much better than what people experience in a nation like China, smugly believing ourselves to be a free society full of free thinkers and free people in contrast with those unfortunate thought-controlled communist conformists. In fact western civilization is one giant thought-controlled conformity machine where people’s minds are shaped by mass-scale psychological manipulation far more effectively than anywhere else in the world, exactly because westerners don’t know this is happening and believe they are free.
Western minds don’t like to be told this, because it goes against everything they’ve been trained to believe about their nation, their society, and their world. Obviously we are much freer here than those poor saps to the east; here in the west we are free to choose between 197 flavors of frosted breakfast cereal and 20,000 different superhero movies. We are free to choose between voting for warmongering capitalist authoritarian Democrats or warmongering capitalist authoritarian Republicans. We are free to sell our labor at a fraction of the value it generates to any exploitative ecocidal employer of our choosing. We are free to think whatever thoughts we’ve been trained to think by our education systems, mass media, and Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation. We are free to speak our minds, which have been shaped and conditioned to serve the interests of the powerful and never to say anything that falls outside the Overton window of acceptable opinion.
Sure there are outliers in the margins, westerners who’ve slipped outside the matrix of thought control and have gained the ability to traffick in unauthorized opinions — if you’re reading this you’re probably one of them. But our numbers are deliberately kept too small to have any political consequence, and if those numbers start getting too big for comfort we immediately see influence ops to sow division and confusion and herd people back toward the mainstream flock. Sure we in our small numbers are free to voice unauthorized opinions on marginal platforms where we can’t have much impact — we’re free to dig a hole in the ground and whisper whatever we want into it, too.
The single biggest obstacle to our freedom in the west is our widespread belief that we are free. Until we collectively realize we’re human livestock being continually herded into our respective gear-turning stations to keep the imperial juggernaut trudging ever forward on the world stage, we’ve got no chance to break free and bring the whole abusive system crashing down.
Until this is seen we’re like the wife who thinks it’s perfectly normal that her husband controls all her finances and dictates every aspect of her life, and who’d be shocked and angered if anyone tried to tell her that this is what an abusive relationship looks like. We’re like the man who insists he had a happy childhood despite remembering a lot of body trauma and screams.
The truth is all around us — we’re marinating in it 24/7/365. But we can’t see it, because it’s all we’ve ever known. We’ve been conditioned to think that this murderous ecocidal mind-controlled dystopia is normal, and we can’t imagine it being any other way. The prospect of ending it can actually feel scary and intimidating, just as it can for someone who’s thinking about fleeing an abusive relationship.
But real freedom is just on the other side of that fear. All we’ve got to do is become sufficiently conscious of what’s really going on here.
____________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Jewish former S African MP Feinstein will stand against Starmer in Holborn St Pancras
OCISA selects candidate to fight for ‘Labour leader’s seat at next parliamentary election
Andrew Feinstein speaking at the ‘Stop Starmer’ initiative in London’s Conway Hall last year
The OCISA group formed with the aim of ousting so-called ‘Labour leader’ Keir Starmer has selected Corruption Watch UK director Andrew Feinstein, a Jewish former South African MP and adviser to Nelson Mandela, to stand against Starmer in Holborn and St Pancras in the next general election. Feinstein now lives in the seat.
Feinstein. the son of Holocaust survivors, has a long record of substance and principle that stands in stark contrast to his ‘broken every promise’ opponent, who is known as a ‘long-time servant of the security state’ and became known as the ‘kid starver’ after breaking promises to end the hated ‘universal credit’ benefit system and saying he would not end Tory benefit cuts that have put hundreds of thousands of children into poverty and hunger.
Feinstein has also consistently stood against Israel’s apartheid and genocide in Gaza, arguing that the same tactics his ANC party in South Africa used to bring down apartheid there must be used against Israel and pointing his social media followers to information about Israel’s slaughter of innocents. Starmer, in contrast, has said Israel has the ‘right’ even to impose the blockade on Gaza that is causing horrific starvation and disease.
Despite Labour’s significant majority in previous elections in the seat, the candidacy of someone with such substance and track record must be seen as a threat to Starmer’s position, particularly in a seat where one in six voters are Muslims and even more so in the light of South Africa’s leading role in the fight against the Gaza genocide – and soon against the UK’s complicity. The campaign is likely to be supported by large numbers of people from the constituency and around the UK, who are outraged at Starmer’s complicity in genocide and his abetting of the Tories’ assault on our rights and freedoms in the UK.
Starmer and his team are said to be ‘raging’ at the news and deeply concerned:
Those who wish to donate to Feinstein’s campaign fund can do so here.
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Woman walking 450 miles to fund legal costs of Israeli pro-Palestine activist
Lucy Boyle hopes to raise tens of thousands of pounds for Palestine Action activist Ronnie Barkan, who was convicted at Bristol Crown Court
Activist Lucy Boyle is hiking 450 miles in an attempt to raise funds to cover the legal costs of an Israeli Palestine Action activist facing a potential custodial sentence for defending Palestinian lives.
Ronnie Barkan, a co-founder of Israeli BDS group Boycott from Within, was convicted on Monday, alongside Stavit Sinai, Eliza Sarson-Diment, Archie Sadler, Finton Owens, Jarvey Georgson and Paul Shortt on one count of burglary and one count of criminal damage, after damaging equipment and spray-painting ‘Free Palestine’ at a factory owned by Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, who produces weapons used against Palestinians. The UK government has intensified its legal pursuit of Palestine Action in an attempt to quell protest, in both prosecutions and intimidatory arrests.
Barkan’s own crowdfund has raised £24,000 of the £50,000 costs he faces. Ms Boyle is hoping to cover the remainder.
Her fundraising page says of Barkan:
He has given his life in pursuit of Palestinian freedom and universal human rights, co-founding the Boycott From Within movement in Israel amongst many inspirational campaigns and actions. Many of these have led to repeated arrest, imprisonment and at times violent suppression.
Israeli dissidents are amongst the strongest, most noble of people and deserve the highest level of solidarity.
I am planning an approx 450 mile hike across Northern Spain to try and raise funds to help Ronnie pay his £50,000 legal fees as a result of this trial. Please sponsor this hike not only for Palestine and Ronnie but for all people in the world who resist what is clearly and fundamentally wrong.
Even historical figures involved in direct action will have at times felt daunted when faced with the damaging outcomes of their activism at huge personal expense. I hope that this hike and any money raised will show anyone brave enough to resist that there is solidarity. That they matter to us and that what they do matters to the world. No donation is too small.
In a 2023 video, Barkan explained why he takes action against Elbit and Israeli apartheid:
The group will be sentenced on 22 March. The crowdfund page can be found here.