The Left Berlin News & Comment

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AL.Festival.2025

One week. One city. One radical gathering.


08/10/2025

AL.FESTIVAL.2025 is back this October for its 6th edition! Since 2019, AL.Berlin has built a platform for music, art, and critical exchange, amplifying the voices and cultures of South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) and their diasporas. Over the years, AL.FESTIVAL has grown into Berlin’s leading festival for SWANA music, a place where community, resistance, and celebration come together.

Unapologetically loud and boldly present, AL.FESTIVAL is a space of resistance and joy in a time when our existence is too often treated as a threat. We come together to disrupt, to be heard, and to carry both the rage and calm woven into our sound.

We’re honored to present an artist lineup like no other, with powerful collaborations alongside some of your favorite Berlin-based SWANA collectives! Expect workshops, exhibitions, film screenings, talks, radio shows, and a food Bazaar offering a rich variety of flavors that taste like home

Rooted in SWANA and Global Majority voices, we move together in continued solidarity against the noise of rising far-right extremism, the weight of colonial legacies, and ongoing systems of oppression.

The festival ends on Friday, October 11th with a multi-stage playground of live music, DJs, queer karaoke, and open-air vibes in the Festsaal Kreuzberg. Doors open 4pm.

Help my mother to heal and my family to survive

Fundraiser by Saeed Amireh, activist from Ni’lin


30/09/2025

Dear friends, friends of Palestine and humanity,

My name is Saeed Amireh, 33 years old from the village of Ni’lin,Palestine.peace and human rights defender.

This year in May, we discovered that my mother suffers from a disease which is similar to uterine cancer. She was in urgent need of surgery and despite all the challenges and difficulties, we found a way to get her to the hospital in time and get the surgery done that ultimately saved her life, thanks to three amazing friends who helped paying the hospital bills, as well as medicine and food, so that my mother was able to heal.

In the following weeks, my mom’s health was improving. Yet, she was still very weak. Also, her condition needed further treatment. Due to economic difficulties – with the worsening of the blockade and new check points and daily harassment – it was getting more and more difficult to provide her with healthy food and the ongoing treatment she needs.

We’re struggling since the beginning of the ugly war, the harassment by the settlers as well as the Israeli military has made our survival very difficult. Therefore., we’re drowning in debts to the local shop keepers. Since the shop keepers need to provide for their families, too they no longer accept our promises to pay them back – there are simply too many families in very dire conditions, trying to survive without any means and thus amassing debts with the shop keepers. Therefore we’ve been told that we need to pay back our debts before we can get any food.

For the past 20 days every single day was an incredible struggle in order to feed the family, as we’ve been without any income or means, just full of debts.

As if this were not enough, every single day, I’m struggling with anxiety. The fear of loosing my mother, because I cannot provide her with the necessary treatment and food is suffocating me. We’re all praying that my mother’s health doesn’t deteriorate and that we all manage to stay safe and to survive this madness. But the war seems endless and we are very tired and don’t know how to survive anymore.

I’ve always been the one who has helped other people, spoke on their behalf and tried to restore their hope and find solutions for impossible problems when they were in need. Now, I’m desperate for the situation of my own family and I lack energy and ideas for a solution on how to survive.

As a last resort I’m turning to you, pleading with you to help me save my mother and to help my family to survive.

I’m setting up a fundraiser with the target of 7000,- Euro. 3000,- Euros will serve for the continuous treatment and the necessary medicine for my mother and 4000,- Euros will be used for food, as well as the most urgent needs for the next couple of months, until we hopefully find an alternative solution to our dire situation or see an end to this ugly war and get back on our feet again.

Any amount can make a big difference for us. God bless all of you and your beloved families and keep you all healthy, safe and protected

Thank you so much!

You can donate to Saeed’s fundraising campaign here.

No Allianz with Genocide

Allianz profits from the genocide of Palestinians and the destruction of the Earth


24/09/2025

Gaza is under siege. And Allianz, Germany’s biggest financial services company, is actively complicit. While Palestinians are being killed, displaced, starved, and erased, Allianz is underwriting, insuring, and investing in the weapons, machinery and tech that make genocide possible. 

Allianz is a German multinational company headquartered in Munich, Germany. It is the world’s largest insurance company and the largest financial services company in Europe. They are complicit in genocide.

Here is how: 

1. Allianz finances the genocide in Gaza by purchasing Israeli “war bonds”. Pimco, a subsidiary of Allianz in the US, has purchased nearly $1 billion worth of Israeli war bonds. These are bonds that Israel has been issuing since October 7, 2023, to finance its sharply increased military budget. 

2. Allianz invests in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, and is the insurer of its UK factories where deadly “Hermes” drones are produced and shipped to Israel. These drones are then deployed in surveillance and strike missions in Gaza. Without insurance, Elbit could not continue to operate.

3. Allianz invests $450 million in further arms companies that supply military weapons to Israel. These weapons have been used in the occupation and ongoing genocide in Palestine. Instead of divesting from weapons manufacturers like other companies are doing, Allianz has doubled its investment in 2024.

4. Allianz also sells insurance policies and directly invests more than $2.3 billion (600 million for insurance policies + 1.7 billion investments) in fossil fuel companies that fuel the destruction of the environment and supply the Israeli war machine. Among these: BP, ExxonMobil and Chevron, whichprovide crude oil to fuel Israel’s military and air force. Chevron operates the Arish-Ashkelon pipeline that delivers gas from Israel to Egypt through Palestinian waters, and supplies energy to illegal settlements while cutting electricity to Gaza.

On November 1, 2025, Allianz is set to renew it’s deadly contract with Elbit Systems. 
This cannot happen.

The No Allianz with Genocide campaign is a coalition of groups. It is one of a number of international campaigns holding financial services and insurance companies accountable for their complicity in the genocide in Gaza. Earlier this year, the Boycott Bloody Insurance campaign was launched in the UK, demanding the UK insurance industry end their complicity. Following international pressure, the insurance company AXA has completely divested from Elbit Systems.

You can support No Allianz with Genocide in the following ways:

  • Sign our petition
  • Boycott Allianz. If you’re a customer, leave.
  • Ask your workplace, union, school or institution to cut ties with Allianz.
  • Join our campaign to pressure Allianz to divest from Elbit Systems and from all arms manufacturers complicit in the Gaza genocide.
  • Sign the Declaration of Divestment

Friends of the Filipino People in Struggle

Solidarity organization supporting the National Democratic people’s movement in the Philippines


17/09/2025

Friends of the Filipino in Struggle (FFPS) is an international network building support for the Philippine revolution and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines’s (NDFP) 12-point program for a just and lasting peace. Through education, mobilization, and other forms of concrete solidarity, FFPS works to amplify the voices of the Filipino masses, share information about their struggles, and strengthen anti-imperialist solidarity with the Philippine revolution.

As part of its main campaign FFPS tries to gather support for the NDFP and promote the Philippine revolutionary struggle. It is important to amplify the program of the Philippine revolution, learn from its inspiring practice and give concrete support where we can.

Under the current US-backed Marcos regime, the Philippine government wages a brutal counterinsurgency under the false banner of “peace.” Behind this façade lies an agenda of violent suppression, corruption, and deeper dependence on U.S. imperial interests.

FFPS campaigns internationally to expose this sham and to highlight that it is the NDFP—not the Marcos government—that offers a real path to peace. Through revolutionary armed struggle, the NDFP lays out a framework for national and social liberation.

In the face of escalating repression and disinformation, FFPS calls on movements worldwide to mobilize in support of the Filipino people’s struggle for liberation.

Day of Solidarity with the Filipino People

On September 20, Migrantifa Berlin, Lotta Basel, and Friends of the Filipino People in Struggle (FFPS) are hosting a day of solidarity with the Filipino people’s fight for national liberation.

In early 2024, an internationalist delegation visited the Philippines, where the Communist Party and its guerrilla force, the New People’s Army (NPA), have been waging a long-standing liberation struggle against the US-backed fascist Philippine government since the late 1960s. The event will feature a documentary exhibition and two presentations: one on solidarity work in Europe, and another reporting on the revolutionary mass movement in the Philippines and its successes on the ground.

For centuries, the Filipino people have faced oppression and exploitation at the hands of foreign powers. However, their fierce resistance against them has persisted for just as long. The Filipino people have the right to fight back against the root problems of Philippine society, namely imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

The National Democratic Front of the Philippines unites the fighting Filipino masses and represents the revolutionary mass movement. Its 12 point program unites the various classes and sectors of the Philippine society for national liberation, genuine freedom and democracy.

When: Saturday 20 Sept 12-6pm
Where: bUm (Kreuzberg)

Shut Elbit Down

In Ulm, Koblenz, and Berlin too!


10/09/2025

Elbit Systems is the largest private arms manufacturer in Israel and one of the main suppliers to the Israeli military. Around 85% of the IOF’s drones come from Elbit Systems. However, few arms companies face as much opposition as Elbit Systems. Well-known examples include the UK, but protests are also growing in the US, Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany, among other countries. Since December 2023, the Shut Elbit Down campaign has also been running in Germany.

From 17th – 21st September 2025, Shut Elbit Down is organising a Camp & Protest Days in Ulm, where Elbit’s European headquarters are located. On the 20th, a demonstration will be held to call for the shutdown of their operations. Elbit’s weapons contribute directly to the occupation of Palestine and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. You can register for the camp here.

A solibus will be leaving Berlin on 17th September and returning on the 21st for a suggested donation of €25 per person. Secure your seat now, as the Soli-Bus is going only if there are enough confirmed bookings to have a climate friendly ride – and we want to confirm it soon. Write to solibusprotestcamp@proton.me

We demand:

  • Elbit Systems out of Ulm!
  • Stop the genocide in Gaza!
  • A comprehensive military embargo against the zionist entity!
  • Free Palestine

The resistance against Elbit Systems is growing in Ulm. Join the movement against this criminal corporation.