EI co-founder Ali Abunimah was interviewed on Flashpoints Radio on Monday, 7 May 2007. He joined host Nora Barrows-Friedman to discuss the persecution of Azmi Bishara, who recently resigned from the Israeli Kenesset and is now effectively living in exile, unable to return to his country. Abunimah told Barrows-Friedman, “The reason Israel announced the investigation when Bishara was outside the country, and then … announced that he could face the death penalty if he returned, was that Israel wants him out of the country because they do not want the Palestinian community in Israel to be galvanized around the message of democracy, to forge connections with the rest of the Palestinian community — those in the diaspora and those in the West Bank and Gaza. And Bishara, by far and away, is the key figure that has in recent years been able to do that. So this is an attack on the entire community and it is an attempt to maintain or forestall … change to the Apartheid system which exists in Israel.”