Since October 7, 2023, Arabs in Germany have watched the country undergo an authoritarian restructuring touching every aspect of life. Germany claims to have overcome its genocidal past, but this lie only serves to distract from its violent present.

Germany is now taking in animals from Gaza while refusing entry to injured and sick Palestinians. The message is clear: in Germany’s hierarchy of “valuable” life, Palestinians are valued less than animals.

While Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s announcement that Germany is stopping arms deliveries to Israel made international headlines as a shocking policy reversal, the details tell a different story.

This week, I faced trial for opposing genocide, Zionism, and for challenging Germany’s unconditional support for Israel. The state prosecuting me may have legal authority, but its moral authority has collapsed as it again participates in a genocide.

The Gaza genocide is nearing its final, most brutal phase, and Israeli universities are providing intellectual, logistical, and technological support. The academic boycott of Israeli institutions is the minimum that justice demands.

It is not just pro-Palestinian students in the U.S. who are facing the threat of deportation. Anti-genocide activists in Germany and Greece are also currently under threat of deportation, an unprecedented move to quash popular support for Palestine.

For over one year, Germany has been actively participating in the killing and dehumanization of Palestinians by providing political, financial, military, and legal support to Israel. Germany’s complicity in Israel’s atrocities must stop.

The shame of Israel’s genocide in Gaza will haunt the international moral conscience and the Israeli psyche for the coming century. Though Israelis, accustomed to the perpetual shaming of Germany, are unprepared for the shame they must now confront.

A recent resolution of the Evangelical Church in Germany underscores the church’s continued failure to challenge Israel’s prolonged settler colonial occupation.

At a recent convening at The Hague, state representatives to the ICC agonized over the disastrous implications for the international rules-based order should Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant evade accountability for war crimes in Gaza.