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solidarity with israel only....

Germany is home to Europe’s largest Palestinian community, with roughly 80,000 Palestinians living in the country. For years, German authorities have tried to stifle Palestinian activism, viewing it as a nuisance to its explicit policy of “unconditional support for Israel.” 

Demonstrations, such as one earlier this year to mark the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, have been sporadically banned in recent years. Organizations, such as the Palestinian prisoner solidarity network Samidoun, have also come under increasing scrutiny.

 

While other European countries are witnessing mass protests in solidarity with Palestine, Germany has been policing such scenes off its streets, Peoples Dispatch reports.

   By Peoples Dispatch

 

Yet the criminalization of solidarity with Palestine on a national level has taken on entirely new dimensions since Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

After a small demonstration on Berlin’s busy Sonnenallee street on the evening of Oct. 7, the German media and body politic have been up in arms about Palestinians supposedly celebrating terrorism and anti-Semitism on German streets.

Talking points that were two weeks ago only uttered by far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, politicians are now being openly expressed by politicians from all parliamentary parties in Germany. 

Playing off the idea of “imported anti-Semitism,” the Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz is now arguing that “we must finally deport on a large scale” residents who do not hold German citizenship and openly protest against Israel.

 

The Christian Democrats (CDU) are even demanding that the recognition of Israel’s right to exist must become a precondition for German citizenship.

Samidoun has been made into public enemy No. 1 as the media presents the group as a bastion for “sympathizers of terror” that poses “a particular danger, because as a secular organization, they are building bridges between Islamists and radical leftists.”

In a speech before Parliament on Oct. 12,  Scholz announced a ban on Samidoun along with a ban on the activities of Hamas in Germany. 

In Berlin specifically, which is home to one of the largest Palestinian diaspora communities outside the Arab world, the authorities have been particularly hostile towards any signs of solidarity with Palestine. 

Since Oct. 7, every demonstration explicitly or implicitly referring to Palestine has been banned, leaving the roughly 30,000 Palestinians living in Berlin with no means of expressing their anguish at the siege and bombardment of Gaza.

Solidarity groups have been trying to bypass this censorship by avoiding political statements and focusing on humanitarian campaigning, yet even demonstrations and slogans such as “Children in Gaza need help” and “Solidarity with the civilian population in the Gaza Strip” were banned. 

On Oct. 13, the police went so far as to outlaw a demonstration registered by the group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East entitled “Jewish Berliners against violence in the Middle East.” 

Sonnenallee, a busy street in the district in which many Arab migrants live, has become a focal point of dissent against Israel’s attack on Gaza. 

The police patrol Sonnenallee every evening with tight controls on the public squares. Racial profiling and brutal arrests are commonplace and often recorded and posted to social media. One particular video shows police officers stomping out a candle-lit vigil with their boots.

 

READ MORE:

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/25/germanys-ban-on-public-solidarity-with-palestine/

 

 

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Dresden-ish

Israel should level Gaza to the ground and expel all Palestinians to Egypt to deter its enemies, Likud party member and former Knesset lawmaker Moshe Feiglin said in an interview on Wednesday. Feiglin’s recent TV appearance, in which he called for firebombing Gaza like the German city of Dresden in WWII, has gone viral on social media.

Speaking with the Israel News Network (INN), Feiglin lamented that 18 days have passed since the Hamas attack and “we still have not revenged [sic], in a biblical way…we did not burn Gaza to ashes immediately!” 

Israel’s immediate objective must be to “destroy Gaza; above ground and the underground tunnels. Only then send the army in,” Feiglin told INN. 

“Make sure that all the people of Gaza are running to Rafiah. Create a tremendous humanity crisis. Level the entire area, just as you did in Gush Katif and in Yamit,” he added. “Anything less than that, and we’ll be defeated, and we’ll get the same things again and again; even in a worse way.”

Gush Katif was an Israeli settlement inside Gaza, destroyed by Ariel Sharon’s government in 2005 as part of a withdrawal from the territory. Yamit was a settlement in Sinai, bulldozed after the 1982 peace treaty returned that territory to Egypt.

Feiglin criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reluctance to invade Gaza as having “destroyed Israel” and “destroyed any kind of fear” among the Muslims around the world. He also accused Netanyahu of making Israel into a “banana republic” of the US.

https://www.rt.com/news/585800-israeli-politician-gaza-dresden/

 

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responsibilities....

Germany’s historical guilt haunts opponents of Israeli war in Gaza

Germany’s responsibility for the Holocaust underlines Berlin’s staunch defence of Israel and its bans on expressions of Palestinian solidarity, which authorities blame for a rise in anti-Semitism. But critics say the state is failing German Jews opposed to Israel’s policies and stifling the freedom of expression of immigrants.

 

Deborah Feldman knows a thing or two about standing up to authority. Her bestselling autobiography – which was the basis of the Netflix miniseries, “Unorthodox” – attests to that.

In her book, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots”, the New York-born Feldman recounts how she escaped her ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, the Yiddish-speaking Hasidic Satmar sect.

After moving to Berlin, Feldman became a naturalised German citizen in 2017 and is a familiar figure in her adopted country, where her book readings are sold-out events.

In numerous media appearances, she has discussed the curious twist of fate that saw a girl, brought up to be terrified of Germany by Holocaust survivors, embrace a country that is now considered an icon of post-conflict national reckoning.

But on Tuesday, November 1, Feldman took her adopted country to task in an electrifying TV appearance.

As Israeli warplanes pounded Gaza in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attack, Feldman appeared as a panelist on the primetime Markus Lanz talk show on a German public TV station.

In a clip that has since gone viral on social media, Feldman held truth to power on a particularly sensitive topic in Germany: the country's ironclad special relationship with Israel and its implications for German Jews and Muslims criticising Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government and calling for an end to the Gaza war.

Postwar Germany’s atonement for the horrors of the Holocaust has seen the German government and all major political parties condemn the Hamas attack on Israel while brooking no discussion on the context of the current conflict. Pro-Palestinian rallies have been banned. The list of writers, artists and cultural figures disinvited or being forced to resign due to expressions of sympathy for the Palestinian people grows longer by the day. Even small Jewish protests criticising Israel’s actions in Gaza have faced censure.

In her TV takedown of the current situation in Germany, Feldman cut to the heart of the matter. As a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, the 37-year-old Jewish writer noted that “there is only one legitimate doctrine of the Holocaust. And that is the absolute, unconditional defence of human rights – for everyone”, she said in German. “Anyone who wants to instrumentalise the Holocaust to justify further violence has forfeited their own humanity.”

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20231118-germany-s-historical-guilt-haunts-opponents-of-israeli-war-in-gaza

 

 

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