June 21 saw the largest Palestine solidarity protest in German history. According to organisers Abed Hassan, who rose to social media prominence as the “German voice from Gaza," and Amin Rjoob, a food-blogger who the national propaganda rag Bild and Hamburg’s (Weaponisation of) Antisemitism Commissioner have repeatedly smeared as a “Jew-hater”, 70,000 people flooded the streets of the capital Berlin under the banner United4Gaza.

The presence of this long overdue critical mass of people of conscience, especially in a city where administrative violence and police brutality against anti-genocide rallies are particularly vicious and routinely invite condemnations from human rights watchdogs, is in stark contrast to Germany’s political and media class’ increasingly isolated position of unconditional support for "Israel’s" genocidal war on Gaza.

As starving Palestinians are lured into death traps masquerading as aid distribution sites just to be murdered there for sport in what has been compared to dystopian media franchises like Squid Game or The Hunger Games, the German government and its stenographers in the national media remain unfazed at "Israel’s" execution of “one of the cruelest genocides in modern history,” to quote UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.

Instead, Germany is doubling down even harder on its politics of denial and distortion and its already brutal state violence against peace activism in a desperate attempt to stay in control of a losing narrative that misrepresents colonial barbarism as self-defense and serves the interests of its military-industrial complex, as Berlin remains the second-largest exporter of killing machinery to the Israeli regime after the US.

Sustaining moral panic

Manufacturing what political scientist Donatella della Porta describes as a “moral panic dynamic” of antisemitism has proven itself to be a very effective way for post-October 7 Germany to shift public attention away from the reality of German complicity in yet another genocide, while simultaneously refashioning the fight against Jew-hatred “into an instrument of racialisation and repression” against Palestine solidarity.

The designation of anti-Zionist Jewish organisation Jüdische Stimme, rights group Palästina Spricht and two local Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) groups as “assuredly extremist” by Germany’s notorious Verfassungsschutz security service last month is the latest step in sustaining a moral panic in which non-violent justice movements are constructed as top-level threats to Germany’s allegedly democratic constitutional order.

Just a week after the United4Gaza mass protest in Berlin, at the end of which police arrested co-organiser Rjoob, the co-governing Social Democrats (SPD) passed a motion to combat antisemitism at their federal party congress.

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Entitled “Never again is now! Protect Jewish life!” in a nod to last year’s much criticised Bundestag resolution of near-identical name-giving, Motion I06 is yet another red herring designed to distract the public from the real problem: "Israel’s" genocide in Gaza and the corresponding anti-Palestinian authoritarianism of the colluding German state in the service of a foreign entity.

Using suggestive wording and flawed anti-Jewish hate crime statistics, which wrongly equate opposition to "Israel’s" genocidal settler colonialism with hatred of Jews, the motion paints Palestine solidarity as inherently antisemitic. In a five-line paragraph on the anti-genocide student protest movement, you will find the word “antisemitic” four times.

Gaza/Ukraine double standard

German news organisations have gained notoriety for purposely downplaying "Israel’s" commission of a colonial genocide to the point of stone-cold denial, while awarding Russian attacks on Ukraine knee-jerk, front-page outrage.

“A propaganda system will constantly portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy,” write Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their seminal 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.

For the past 21 months, this double standard has been at the heart of German media’s coverage of "Israel’s" campaign of annihilation in Gaza.

Despite an estimated 75,200 violent deaths in Gaza between October 7, 2003 and January 5, 2025, Palestinians are still forced to “audition” for empathy, as Palestinian-American writer and clinical psychologist Hala Alyan lamented in the early days of the genocide, while Ukrainians are seemingly entitled to it by default of their victimisation by an “enemy state” and their white privilege.

Access a mainstream news website like tagesschau.de, and the landing page’s top news items will routinely feature stories that amplify the plight of Ukrainians affected by the war with Russia.

The ever-worsening human suffering in Gaza, on the other hand, where "Israel" killed 150 Palestinians in a single day on July 1, is treated as a mere afterthought and “has all but disappeared from the headlines,” according to German media critic Fabian Goldmann.

Even though 80% of Germans reject "Israel’s" actions in Gaza, according to a May poll conducted by public broadcaster ZDF, Germany’s morally bankrupt political and media class with their scandalous lack of historical self-awareness (despite incessant protestations to the contrary) continue to manufacture consent for a genocidal war that has German entanglement written all over it.

“Never again is now,” they say? Not if you’re Palestinian.