State repression against Palestine solidarity in Germany continues unabated
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Timo Al-Farooq
- Today 14:41
5 Min Read
Despite overwhelming public opposition to "Israel’s" genocide in Gaza, Germany’s government has doubled down on weapons deliveries and escalated repression against Palestine solidarity, turning Berlin into a laboratory of criminalisation, censorship, and police violence.
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"The police are just finding ways of creating charges and making up offences. They’re using and bending the law to their advantage." (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Zeinab el-Hajj)
More than two years into "Israel’s" genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed at least 70,000 Palestinians according to official figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Germans are becoming increasingly wary of their government’s unbroken support for the Zionist entity.
An August poll commissioned by public broadcaster ARD found that 66% of respondents agreed with the statement that “the German government should put more pressure on the Israeli government to change its stance on the Gaza Strip.”
In a YouGov poll from September, 62% of German voters said that "Israel’s" conduct in Gaza constitutes a genocide.
Yet Germany’s coalition government under centre-right Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has been at the centre of controversy after making several racist statements about immigrants, Brazil and Angola, remains unperturbed by the majoritarian will of the people.
Berlin recently decided to resume its weapons deliveries to "Israel", thus ending a temporary suspension that had been in place since August.
The move comes amid nearly 500 Israeli ceasefire violations in 44 days that have killed hundreds of Palestinians, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.
Meanwhile, crackdowns on Palestine solidarity continue unabated, particularly in the capital Berlin, which is home to the largest Palestinian community in Europe.
Videos of riot-gear-clad officers of the Berlin police arresting and beating peaceful protesters for exercising their right to free speech and assembly continue to invite condemnations from human rights watchdogs.
A Palestine solidarity march on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25 was yet again marked by unprovoked police brutality.
Social media footage taken by various activists and independent journalists on the scene shows police attacking and violently arresting protesters, including women and children.
In one video, a female protester can be seen lying on the ground while an officer punches her in the ribs and abdomen.
Uniformed officers were also filmed as they forcibly removed posters depicting Palestinian female prisoners detained in Israeli prisons.
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Kafkaesque
In October, a group of six UN experts urged Germany to stop the indiscriminate punishment and suppression of Palestine solidarity activism.
“No circumstances can justify unnecessary and excessive police violence or unjust criminalisation for exercising fundamental freedoms,” the experts said.
Marie-Alice Morel is one of countless activists in Berlin who have been victimised by the German state’s “unjust criminalisation” of Palestine solidarity in the service of "Israel".
In July, Morel, who is the local co-chair of left-wing party MERA25 Berlin, was arrested at a protest for holding a placard that read “End racial discrimination in schools,” followed by a large, red exclamation mark.
She was accused of displaying the symbol of a banned organisation because the upper part of the exclamation point happened to be a red inverted triangle, which German authorities associate with the proscribed Palestinian Resistance group Hamas.
Berlin’s Public Prosecutor’s Office dismissed the case last month, but another case relating to an alleged offence committed in April 2024, in which she is accused of allegedly “chanting about Palestine in relation to rivers and seas” (Morel’s words), is still pending.
She is alluding to the decades-old Palestinian liberation slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which German authorities falsely attribute to Hamas and treat as a prosecutable offence, even though the courts are divided over its supposed illegality.
Morel describes her experience with pro-"Israel" German lawfare as “Kafkaesque,” a reference to Franz Kafka’s dystopian novel The Trial, in which a young man is arrested for an unknown crime and finds himself caught up in a surreal and nightmarish bureaucracy.
"The police are just finding ways of creating charges and making up offences. They’re using and bending the law to their advantage. It’s a horrible experience, especially because the law is supposed to protect you,” she said.
Normalising repression
While many were caught by surprise at Germany’s post-October 7 crackdowns, state violence against Palestine solidarity in the country is not a new phenomenon.
“Anybody who looked at Germany in the past couple of years already saw this coming,” said Hanna Al-Taher, a researcher and lecturer at Dresden University of Technology.
In August 2024, Al-Taher co-published a paper which studies the repressive effects of Germany’s pro-"Israel" reason of state (Staatsräson) on German schools and universities since October 7, 2023.
“More and more people around us are being sued, fined, intimidated, have their houses searched, computers confiscated, and their events canceled,” she and Anna Younes, an independent researcher, write.
Even though the latest polls show that the majority of Germans oppose "Israel’s" genocidal war, Morel laments the general public’s lack of concern for the proliferation of state repression against Palestine solidarity.
“That’s exactly how we normalise these kinds of things and how they can become worse in the future,” she warned.
