How German Media Criminalize Palestinians
For several months now, Berlin has been experiencing a targeted smear campaign against Palestinian refugees, in particular against the Barbakh family from Gaza. The reporting on this family is a shocking example of the systematic anti-Palestinian racism that has long become normalized in Germany’s mainstream media.
Instead of truthful reporting, media outlets such as WELT, BILD, FOCUS, BZ and Berliner Zeitung produce a racist narrative in which this Palestinian family is broadly criminalised and portrayed as a security threat. The Barbakh family is stylised as a projection for societal fears—while the reality in Gaza, occupation, apartheid, and genocide are largely ignored.
In recent months, the reporting of these media houses has repeatedly contributed to the public stigmatisation of the family – not based on facts, but by completely disregarding any journalistic standards. In the articles, a threat is constructed from a family – a so-called ‘Gaza clan’ – a racist cipher that mixes and criminalises origin and political attribution. WELT writes of ‘Hamas incitement in Berlin living rooms’, FOCUS fabulates of a ‘clan family from Gaza terrorising Berlin’. Evidence? None. Instead, rumours and generalized suspicion are reformulated as truth.
What supposedly turns a family into a ‘clan’ is never explained. Rather, the tabloid-style, unserious, and racist reporting presumes that the racist narrative of ‘Arab clans’ needs no definition, as it is already firmly anchored in the imagination of a right-wing discourse.
This reporting does not follow journalistic ethics, but serves political purposes: Palestinian life is to be delegitimised and pushed out of the public sphere in order to legitimise, among other things, the Israeli state’s crimes under international law and to maintain support for genocide and ethnic cleansing.
A Textbook Example of Racist Reporting
1. Dehumanization through Language
Terms like “Gaza clan” or “agitators in the most negative sense” (WELT) strip members of the Barbakh family of all individuality. FOCUS fantasizes about a family “terrorizing Berlin.” BILD writes about a “whining clan member.” The people disappear behind racially charged labels—Gaza, clan, terror.
2. Collective Guilt and Guilt by Association
Several reports hold the entire family responsible for the alleged actions of individuals. The principle of guilt by association is stretched to the extreme: anyone from Gaza or anyone who knows people from Gaza is automatically associated with Hamas—regardless of actual political stance. It is implied that merely living in Gaza or having contact with Palestinians
automatically indicates proximity to Hamas. The fact that most residents of Gaza no longer have a livelihood due to Israel’s genocidal violence is of no interest. Political complexity is sacrificed in favour of a racist simplification.
3. Cultural Racism
Language, clothing and origin are instrumentalised to mark ‘foreignness’. The Barbakh family is not portrayed as part of this society, but as an ‘other’, dangerous element that must be controlled, monitored or deported.
The media campaign against the Barbakh family is emblematic of structural anti-Palestinian reporting
Media such as WELT, BILD, FOCUS, BZ, and Berliner Zeitung disregard journalistic, ethical and legal boundaries – and do not even stop at minors. They use the family’s Palestinian origin as a projection surface for racist stereotypes. This fuels anti-Palestinian sentiment among the public.
Violation of Privacy Protection for Extraordinary Vulnerable Youth: Faces and Names Are Published
Children and adolescents from the Barbakh family are also criminalised by the reporting. Guidelines on how to deal with children and adolescents in journalism are disregarded in the reporting. Their faces are shown uncensored, personal details are revealed and political statements are taken out of context.
Violations of the Press Code and Child Protection Directive
The German Press Code has clear guidelines on the protection of children and adolescents:
“The aim is that, during interviews with children and adolescents, their well-being, protection, and safety, as well as their rights to participation, are respected by those conducting the interviews.”
The guideline of the child protection directive from the network for the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is also clear:
“Before the child consents to an interview, they must be informed about the aim and the planned topics of the interview, as well as the child’s right to withdraw their consent at any time.(…) Before the interview begins, it must be made clear that the child only has to speak if they feel comfortable and that they can withdraw consent at any time.”
These standards are regularly ignored by newspapers such as the BZ, FOCUS, Berliner Zeitung and BILD when it comes to writing tendentious and stigmatising hate pieces against refugees from the Barbakh family.
For example, the Berliner Zeitung recently published an article by Carola Tunk in which she rambles about how she searches for an underaged refugee from Gaza in Neukölln, whom she describes in a lurid manner in the headline as “Gaza Mohammed” of the “Barbakh clan.”
Such a dehumanisation of minors not only reflects racist projections, the author’s entire ‘research’ is also in direct contradiction to the press code, which clearly states that the identity of minors must be particularly protected (German Press Code Section 8) and that the consent of the parents or guardians of minors must always be obtained.
In addition, the press code stipulates the protection of the dignity of children and adolescents (Section 9), a rule that newspapers such as the Berliner Zeitung, BZ, BILD and FOCUS disregard when it comes to stigmatising young people who are regularly arrested by the police solely because of their participation in protests against the genocide.
Participation in demonstrations, which is also permitted for refugees in a democracy and should be protected by freedom of assembly and freedom of expression, is reinterpreted as ‘criminality’ in the anti-Palestinian agitation.
Stalking of Minors on Social Media and in the Streets by Berliner Zeitung
Not only do the aforementioned newspapers now seem to consider it normal to approach Palestinian children and adolescents without the consent of their parents or guardians, in violation of all journalistic guidelines, the Berliner Zeitung author Carola Tunk (as she herself describes) repeatedly ignored the clear statement of the minor concerned and his friends that they did not want to speak to her.
In blatant violation of press law, she wrote to him several times on social media, where she asked him personal questions and tried to find out where the minor was. However, the author did not make it clear what she actually wanted to write about in any of her attempts to speak to him.
This practice is not only profoundly immoral, but also a blatant violation of the Press Code, in particular:
- Section8 (Protection of Personality): The identity of minors must be specially protected.
- Section 1 (Truthfulness): The reporting is one-sided, distorted, and full of speculation.
- Section 9 (Protection of Honor and Dignity): Children are violated in their dignity and deliberately stigmatized.
“Anyone conducting interviews with minors should therefore not only obtain the minor’s consent but also that of their legal guardians—ideally in writing for evidence. (…) Consent should cover both the interview itself and any additional aspects—such as recording or publishing the interview.”
In its decision of 18 March 2025, the Press Council’s Complaints Committee itself had already ruled that the BILD and BZ articles “Gaza clan smuggles Hamas supporters to Berlin” of 22 October 2024 violated the Press Code and had issued a statement of disapproval and recommended that the editorial offices print them. This has not yet happened. On the contrary, the aforementioned media continue to pursue their smear campaign against the Barbakh family regardless.
Criminalization through Semantic Construction
The portrayal of the Barbakh family is based on a discursive mechanism of demonization, in which political reality is replaced by racist fantasies:
- “Clan” instead of family
- “Gaza” instead of origin
- “Hamas” instead of political diversity
- “Terrorism” instead of resistance, escape, or trauma processing
Double Standards and Complicity with State Repression
While German media criminalise Palestinians, their reporting on the crimes committed by the Israeli military in Gaza remains one-sided to tendentious. The same public that defames the Barbakh family remains silent about the systematic destruction of their homeland: about the widespread bombings by Israel, the sealing off of the Gaza Strip, the targeted deprivation of water, food, and electricity, and the destruction of medical infrastructure and supplies. The ongoing genocide is ignored by the aforementioned media outlets—while its survivors in Germany are labeled a threat.
Not a single article asks: What does it mean to have to watch the destruction of one’s own homeland from afar? What does trauma, displacement, and loss mean? Instead, their names and faces serve the aforementioned newspapers as vehicles for a smear campaign that fuels racist domestic politics.
The journalistic goal is not information, but dehumanization
Journalists and editorial offices produce a narrative in which Palestinians do not appear as people with legitimate political positions, but as a potential danger that should be ‘neutralised’.
Deportations as an Instrument of Anti-Palestinian Repression
The media attack on Palestinian families like the Barbakhs does not happen in a vacuum. It goes hand in hand with an increasingly brutal deportation policy that specifically targets Palestinians – including survivors of an ongoing genocide.
Berlin is now deporting Palestinian refugees, although German administrative courts have regularly deemed deportations to Greece inadmissible for years because conditions of reception there violate basic human rights standards. The German government has been trying to ignore this case law for around a year. In addition, since November 2023, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees has imposed a decision halting asylum applications from Gazans on the absurd grounds that the situation in the Gaza Strip is ‘extremely dynamic, confusing and difficult to assess’.
The German deportation policy is therefore not only an expression of racist migration policy, but also an active means of political intimidation.
Whether the Barbakh family, children and young people at demonstrations or politically active Palestinians – they are all portrayed in the German media not as people with political awareness and legitimate concerns, but as security risks.
This reporting is not enlightenment—it is an attack on fundamental rights.
Children and young people are being doxed. Families are stigmatised. Human rights are violated. Meanwhile, Israel’s crimes are accepted. The newspapers in question act as an ideological instrument of a state that shows solidarity with a settler colonial power – and not with the victims.
We Demand:
- The retraction of all named articles that incite anti-Palestinian racism
- Publication of a correction
- Public apology to those affected by the racist media coverage
- Immediate protection of underage Palestinians from media doxxing
- An end to the racist criminalisation of Palestinian families
- An independent review of reporting by BILD, WELT, FOCUS, B, and Berliner Zeitung
- Consequences for media professionals who violate the Press Code
- A public debate on anti-Palestinian racism in German editorial offices
- Recognition of Palestinian voices as part of the democratic public sphere
Contact: palestiniansandallies@proton.me
📧 arrestunits-berlin@proton.me
Signed by:
- Pallies
- Palästina Spricht Berlin
- Arrest Press Unit
- as well as the lawyers of various affected members of the family
- Lawyer Nevin Duran
- Lawyer Nadija Samour
- Lawyer Viktor Riad
- Lawyer Benjamin Düsberg
