In Germany, politicians, public figures and ordinary citizens have been insisting for years that the Palestinians don’t fight Israel because of the occupation and apartheid, but rather because they are rabid antisemites. They are labelled as the new Nazis, and it is claimed that antisemitism has been imported into this country by the migrants who have arrived in recent decades. On Holocaust Memorial Day, they made this clear in the worst possible way on social media, in the courts, and on the streets.
On 27 January 2025, coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops, once again a Jewish person sat before a Berlin court accused of inciting hatred for opposing genocide in Palestine.
The Israeli-Jewish filmmaker Dror Dayan sat on the bench accused of using symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organisations (Section 86a of the German Criminal Code), for denouncing on his social networks the state’s intention to criminalise the use of the slogan “From the River to the Sea” and its attempt to link it to the prosecution of the use of Nazi symbols. In Dror’s own words:
“In 2023 I read a newspaper article stating that the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” will be treated in Germany in the same way as swastikas and SS-Slogans. I saw this as a further, dangerous step not only in the criminalisation of the Palestinian struggle and solidarity with it but, more hypocritically, as a clear attempt at equating the legitimate Palestinian resistance with the genocidal Nazi past of today’s German Federal Republic. Since October 2023 we have seen many voices in German media and politics not only equating Palestinian organisations with the Nazis but at times even claiming that they are worse. This serves a double purpose – it allows to further dehumanize Palestinians and present any support of them as criminal, but also to minimize and relativize the German Nazi crimes. If SS-Slogans are the same as Palestinian slogans for liberation from occupation and genocide, the logical conclusion is that the Nazis were only fighting for their freedom and equality. This is sickening but in the current climate in Germany in no way surprising. For this reason I published a post using the slogan and explaining that Palestine solidarity cannot be the sacrificial lamb on the altar of German historical revisionism and that the German crimes will always remain German and cannot be pushed unto the backs of Palestinians and their supporters.”
“Several months later I’ve received a letter telling me I’m charged with usage of propaganda of terrorist and anti-constitutional organisations. This is due to the fact that in the wording of its ban of Hamas, Germany has included the words “from the river to the sea” as a Hamas slogan, without any evidence. This was clearly done in order to ban as large parts as possible of the solidarity movement together with the organisation, even if they are not related. My hearing was scheduled for January 27th, the holocaust remembrance day. This date is very fitting, as it marks one German genocide and today we are dealing with active German support for another genocide. This is another German attempt at rewriting history and changing the meaning of the term antisemitism from hatred of Jews – which would make many current German politicians antisemitic – to opposition to Zionism and Israel’s crimes, which would clear those same public figures from antisemitism, as they might hate Jews, but love Zionism.”
“This is all part and parcel not only of Germany’s active role in the genocide in Gaza – through arms deals, support in the ICC, and repression at home – but also the ongoing attempt to mililtarize Germany and re-invent its past. While Germany has never broken away from its Nazi past, it is now equating all its enemies – be it Palestinian freedom fighters or Russia – with its own Nazis. While Germany is propping up its own neo-Nazis in the AfD and CDU, it attempts to sell the world an image of itself as fighting Nazis. It simply lies about who those Nazis are.”
The trial, which was due to start at 11am, was finally delayed for several months because an expert who was to give a statement on the history and use of the slogan failed to attend the trial due to illness. The judge had had this information for a few days and decided to disclose it minutes before the trial. However, the expert’s testimony had already been submitted to the court in writing and could have been read out, as is customary in the instance of an expert’s non-appearance, so it seems that the judge’s decision was based on other factors.
It is possible that the judge has decided to postpone the trial and await the decision of other judges in one of the many cases pending in this city over this slogan. Including one of the two cases that have already been lost in Berlin, which is now in the second instance.This will set a bad precedent, because in this case the person used the controversial slogan together with pictures of the Qassam Brigades. This puts on a golden platter for the prosecution the argument that it is a slogan used by an organisation that is considered a terrorist organisation in this country. Undoubtedly, the judicial establishment has an interest in this trial, which is clearly in its favour, to set precedent.
But this decision must also have been influenced by the demonstration outside the court, which clearly denounced that the German Staatsräson, i.e. its unconditional support for Israel, takes precedence over the lives of the anti-Zionist Jewish people in this country. And which highlighted the lack of historical memory by holding this trial on the very day when the victims of the Holocaust are commemorated. At a subsequent rally called in the same place for another anti-genocide comarade, the police seemed to be trying to make up for this little antisemitic slip-up on Holocaust Day. They arrested half of the people present on various pretexts, including the new ban on slogans such as “Zionists are fascists” or “Israel is killing children“.
The day before, on Sunday 26 February 2025, the left-wing anti-Zionist organisation Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East called for a rally to commemorate all the victims of the Holocaust, explicitly calling for all the victims, including those of the current genocides, to be mentioned.
The place chosen for the tribute was highly symbolic, as it was the square where the Nazis famously burned books on 10 May 1933, now known as Bebelplatz.
This moving tribute, at which relatives of Holocaust survivors, Jews, Roma and Sinti, as well as communists, anarchists and socialists spoke, was hyper-policed by officers in riot gear.
In response to this national Zionist, German, white and non-Jewish groups, including groups that consider themselves to be anti-fascist, counter-mobilised. In what appears to be a deliberate move, these groups, who had applied for permits after seeing the call by Jewish Voice for Peace, were given the first line of the square facing the main avenue. Meanwhile, the groups of Jews, Roma and Sinti, migrants, anti-fascists, communists, anarchists and other allies were relegated and fenced in at the back of the square, as far as possible out of sight of potential tourists and passers-by. The police force surrounding them did not lift a finger when some of these Zionist “anti-fascists” broke into the event to break it up, shouting “Free Gaza from Hamas” in the middle of a speech, after having interrupted the minute of silence for the victims of past and present genocides with loud music. Paradoxically, with the song “The Sound of Silence”.
These unpleasant incidents and details show the institutionalised and widespread historical blindness of a segment of the German population which, in its flight from its genocidal Nazi past, is beginning to want to move on and make others pay the price: Palestinians, anti-Zionist Jews or any migrant who does not fit the twisted narrative of its neo-historical remembrance.
The far-right has latched on to this trick, fed up with this phoney sense of guilt, which wants not only to turn the page on this chapter but to reawaken the worst of its patriotic pride. The day before these incidents, the AfD party held a campaign rally with Elon Musk, who declared that Germany had had enough of historical guilt and claimed that Germany should be great again. The question is: which great Germany do they want to return to? Their rhetoric and iconography suggest the 1930s.
Anyone who has read anything about the Holocaust knows that it began decades, if not centuries, before the so-called Final Solution was implemented. It began on the streets with the harassment of Jews. It moved into the courts and institutions with trumped-up charges, preventing Jews from practising their professions, gradually stripping them of all their possessions and citizenship before finally taking their lives. Many of those who managed to escape saved their lives by arriving in Palestine, as has been shown, despite the opinion of some in German society, even the Stolpersteine.
And anyone who has read history knows that the other victims of the Nazis and their allies were also those groups that the German government today criminally ignores or blames: minorities such as the Sinti and Roma, those who are still considered foreigners no matter how many generations they have been here, anti-fascists, communists, anarchists and, in general, anyone who does not put Israel and its right to commit genocide above all else.
