When it comes to Palestine, Germany is turning into a police state

Hamas’s attack on October 7 solicited visceral reactions from the Western world, leading many to support Israel’s extreme retaliation campaign against the Gaza Strip that has claimed the lives of over 7,000 Palestinians. But there is yet to be a country as authoritarian in its approach to activists fighting for a ceasefire as the German government. 

Chancellor Olaf Scholz claimed early on that “Berlin will prohibit any activities in support of [Hamas],” then almost immediately moved to ban the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Samidoun. Earlier this year, the German state sent a notice to one member of Samidoun — a Palestinian refugee from Syria — and informed him they would strip him of his refugee status over his activism. 

Scholz then took it a step further. On his October 17 visit to Israel, he vowed that anti-Israel demonstrations that “glorify and celebrate violence are forbidden and will be punished.” 

Given that no demonstration had taken place in Germany “glorifying violence,” it is clear that Scholz was indicating there would be a blanket ban across the country of any demonstration against the Israeli assault on Gaza. As we’ve seen these last few weeks, he meant exactly that. 

In Berlin, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Heidelberg, and so many other German cities, protest after protest calling for a ceasefire has been banned or subjected to an extraordinary amount of police presence and subsequent police violence. Even a vigil to remember those killed, one I personally helped organize after the Al-Ahli hospital massacre, was banned at the last minute. Anyone who did not disperse was immediately detained. 

At a protest in Frankfurt a few days earlier, the police banned the demonstration just 10 minutes before the official start time. I witnessed the detention of 300 people and the violent arrest of some who questioned why they were being detained. Not only were we kettled, but we were surrounded by what seemed like an army of police cars, water cannons, and a helicopter overhead. 

In Berlin last week, 174 protestors were arrested by Berlin police, and legal experts informed me that since October 7, they estimate the number of protestors arrested in Berlin alone to be in the hundreds. This does not even include those who have been arbitrarily arrested while police patrol and racially profile Berlin’s Arab neighborhoods of Neukolln and Kreuzburg. 

Extraordinary amounts of violent police interactions have been caught on video, leading the organization Campaign for Victims of Racist Police Violence (KOP), to make a statement: “Over a hundred people were held for up to 3 hours, many were not allowed to go to the toilet or even sit down. We have received numerous videos of violent police officers who prevent video recordings, hit people lying on the ground on the head and sit on their upper bodies in such a way that they can no longer breathe.” 

“While the Brandenburg Gate is illuminated in the colors of the Israeli flag, Palestinians and people in solidarity have to watch in silence as civilians in Gaza are bombed” KOP said. 

Yes, this is a huge violation of an internationally recognized human right to protest — yet this seems to be becoming less and less important for Germany.

A German lawyer, Clemens Arzt, recently wrote that the right to assembly has been completely undermined since October 7, and lawyers here are beginning to deal with criminal standards that are not part of the “canon of traditional legal training.” 

Article 8 of Germany’s Basic Law guarantees meetings that are held “peacefully without weapons.” Arzt writes he has seen no such violations and concludes that provocative statements that are against the country’s foreign policy aims are not “unpeaceful.” 

For this country, unconditional solidarity with Israel trumps any rule of law, making what we are seeing as a rise in authoritarian state practices, or simply, a transformation into a police state. 

It isn’t just the protest bans that have seen intense police presence; politicians have extended their reach into primary and secondary schools in Berlin by banning any signs of Palestine solidarity. This includes “wearing the keffiyeh, showing stickers with inscriptions such as Free Palestine, and exclamations such as Free Palestine.” 

If these rules are violated, the Berlin Senate gives teachers the right to “report actions immediately to the police.” 

Unconstitutional? Yes. But again, that doesn’t matter here. 

Scholz, who belongs to the more left-leaning Socialist Democratic Party, seems to be aligning with right-wing conservative parties after his latest comments last week calling for deporting antisemitic migrants “on a large scale.”

Soon after, on October 25, the German Cabinet approved legislation intended to ease deportations of unsuccessful asylum-seekers. The draft legislation, which would need parliamentary approval to take effect, increases the maximum length of pre-deportation custody from 10 days to 28 and specifically facilitates the deportation of people who are members of a criminal organization.

It also would authorize residential searches for documentation that enables officials to firmly establish a person’s identity, as well as remove authorities’ obligation to give advance notice of deportations in some cases.

This country’s Holocaust memory culture, which the world revered as an example of how to deal with your past, has instead weaponized accusations of antisemitism to quash any and all debate. 

German media has shut out Palestinian perspectives or even acknowledged the genocide that is unfolding in Gaza. Politicians who express even an ounce of sympathy, even writing a comment on an Instagram post, are immediately removed from their position, as was the case with Schleswig-Holstein’s Integration State Secretary. 

In another recent act of censorship, Palestinian author Adania Shibli was to be honored for her novel, Minor Detail, at a ceremony at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Shibli’s novel tells the story of a Palestinian girl who is raped and murdered by Israeli soldiers in 1949. She won the 2023 LiBeraturpreis, a German literature prize awarded annually to an author from Africa, Asia, Latin America, or the Arab world, and it is presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair, considered one of the global publishing industry’s largest gatherings. 

But the event was canceled by the organizers, citing the October 7 attack as the reason. Ulrich Noller, a journalist on the Litprom jury, resigned over the decision to give the literature prize to Ms. Shibli’s novel. Shibli was slandered by German journalists and was accused of antisemitism and of portraying “the State of Israel as a murder machine.” 

 The censorship does not only impact Palestinians, however. Jewish critics of Israel have faced the wrath of German censorship, such as the example of a museum guide who was fired from the Jewish Museum of Berlin after he said that Israel maintains an apartheid regime in the West Bank. 

Even if Germany cannot officially be called a police state, their unconditional allegiance to the state of Israel has transformed a supposed democracy into a nation committed to silencing, censoring, and criminalizing the Palestinian population in Germany — the largest Palestinian community in the diaspora outside the Middle East and South America. 

It seems to only be getting worse.