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How Germany tries to ban the slogan “From the river to the Sea”

German police have carried out a wave of unprecedented repression against Palestine solidarity, and they are focusing on one sentence in particular


29/08/2024

In the last year, Berlin has seen an unprecedented wave of repression against the Palestine solidarity movement. Police actions range from the horrific – such as violent assaults on underage demonstrators – to the downright bizarre, including bans on speaking Irish and Hebrew. One slogan in particular has been forbidden by law since November 2023, since the German government interprets that as the complete annihilation of Israel: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. Just last Friday, police stopped the Beats for Gaza solidarity concert after a rapper used this phrase.

In a country that supposedly guarantees freedom of expression, what is the legal basis for banning a sentence not banned in any other country, including Israel? Last November, Germany’s interior minister Nancy Faeser decreed that the slogan was a symbol of Hamas, a prohibited organization. You don’t need to be a lawyer to realize this is ridiculous. How can a slogan that was widespread in the 1970s and is used by countless Palestinian factions be a unique marker of a group that was only founded in 1987?

With the same logic, I could say that the German national anthem was used by the Nazis, and therefore everyone singing about the “Vaterland” at a football match is declaring loyalty to the NSDAP. A court in Mannheim pointed out that the sentence can be interpreted in myriad ways, and is protected by the constitutional right to free expression. Not all German courts agree, however.

On August 6, the 22-year-old Berlin activist Ava M. was sentenced to a 600 euro fine for chanting about rivers and seas. M., who comes from a family of exiled Iranian communists, made clear at trial that her goal is a democratic Palestine with equal rights for all people living there. Since it would be a bit too silly to accuse her of loyalty to Hamas, prosecutors tried a completely different accusation: “condoning a crime”, prohibited by paragraph 140 of the criminal code. According to the judge, this slogan implies support for every action by Palestinian militants on October 7. This is even more absurd, as the phrase was in use decades before the events it is supposedly referencing.

A second criminal trial, scheduled for August 22, was postponed. Numerous supporters outside the court were detained for – what else? – chanting “from the river to the sea”.

Police have additionally been using a third charge, Volksverhetzung, officially translated as “incitement to hatred”. Paragraph 130 originally banned “incitement to class hatred” and was used to persecute socialists. At the moment, in theory, it could be used against racists. Yet the German state has declared that Nazis shouting “Ausländer raus!” (foreigners out!) are using protected speech – while anyone calling for equal rights for all people in Israel / Palestine is guilty of a hate crime.

Without any evidence, politicians claim the slogan is calling for the expulsion of Jewish people. So what happens when supporters of Israel use the exact same phrase to negate any kind of Palestinian sovereignty? When far-right supporters of Israel called for sole Israeli rule “from the river to the sea”, Berlin police decided this was fine. The founding charter of the Likud party declares “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty”. Applying the law consistently, Berlin police would need to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu.

It might seem like all of Germany is solidly behind Israel’s war. While virtually all parties profess their unlimited support for apartheid, this is not true of Germany’s population. According to the semi-official Deutschlandtrend survey, 68 percent do not think Germany should be sending weapons to Israel. The same number think that Israel’s military actions are not justified when Gaza’s civilians are affected. These numbers are astounding given a one-sided media coverage and the manipulative questions in the survey itself.

This is what the judge who sentenced Ava M. meant when she said that German Staatsräson outweighs freedom of expression. As defined by the Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy, the “reason of state” refers to a “disregard for legal, moral, and religious considerations” when the interests of the state itself are at stake. In other words, this is an explicitly anti-democratic concept – and that is why it is being enforced with such blatant violations of democratic rights.

This is a mirror of Nathaniel’s Red Flag column, published in Neues Deutschland. Reproduced with permission

Crossing the Border into the West Bank

Travelling through the infrastructure of Israeli apartheid from Jordan to the West Bank.


28/08/2024

For most Palestinians, the sole route in and out of the West Bank is through a border crossing located about an hour’s drive from the Jordanian capital Amman. This crossing is known by several names: the Jordanians refer to it as King Hussein Bridge, named after King Hussein of Jordan, who is not well-regarded among Palestinians. The Israelis call it Allenby Bridge, named after the British officer who led the Palestine campaign against the Ottomans in World War 1 and rebuilt the bridge. Palestinians, however, call it Al-Karameh Bridge, named in honor of a battle in the nearby town of Karameh – meaning ‘dignity’ in Arabic – where Palestinian fighters claimed a partial victory against Israeli forces in 1968. Meanwhile everyday people simply call it The Bridge.

The Bridge has three sides: a Jordanian, an Israeli and a Palestinian.

The Jordanian side

Traveling from Jordan (or overseas) this is the side you will get to first, it’s about an hour drive from the capital, Amman, or its airport and is located just outside a small border town. The area looks underdeveloped: small bumpy roads and no proper taxi drop off area or a large parking space. The walls from the outside look old and rusty and it feels very much like you are entering an abandoned area that is being swarmed with people.

Once you get off the taxi the first step is to buy a ticket for the bus that will take you to the Israeli side. There are three windows that sell tickets (a newly opened fourth in a separate area), the windows are in the middle, separated by a tall thick metal fence that makes you feel you are in a cage. On both sides are the doors that will lead you to the next step after the tickets. This place is covered from the sun (as it is outdoors) and has a dozen or so fans, half of which had not been working, judging from the cobwebs, for a long time. There is little respect for queuing while buying tickets, and lots of shouting and pushing as people – with their luggage- move forward. In their defense the place does look as if it is designed for such a thing, or – more likely – not designed for anything. There is an empty VIP lane (a fast-track lane but it’s called VIP) that you can use for an extra fee to skip this queue and subsequent ones. Another common way to skip queues is to know someone, usually a security guard, who will escort you ahead of everyone. Next to the ticket windows there is a large sign in Arabic warning you that photography is prohibited at the crossing, and a smaller sign, in English, that says ‘’No Drones Allowed’.

After the tickets you need to wait for any of the two doors to open once the employees inside open them for a brief time to let people in so that it’s not crowded inside. When it’s crowded outside (which is common) you are more likely to be pushed through the doors than walk by yourself. Inside there is a small room in which you’re separated from your luggage (you will pick it up later on) with the usual luggage scanner that you see in airports next to a single metal detector door. Passing them leads to the Jordanian departure hall, where you need to fill a departure card (known as the white card) with basic personal info, then walk (and queue) to one of the several booths (similar to airport immigration ones) with your passport and the departure card, the officer then checks the documents and passes them through a small hole on their right to another officer servicing another booth and asks you to queue on that booth (most of the trip is spent queuing). The other officer stamps the white departure cards with half a dozen stamps before giving it back to you then you are out.

The next area is a considerably smaller hall that is roughly 100 square meters in size and has a duty-free zone, the zone primarily sells cigarettes and can get extremely crowded and chaotic as people ‘queue’ to buy the maximum allowed packs (two large boxes per person); cigarettes are extremely expensive in the West Bank compared to Jordan (three times the price when duty free) so buying here then selling it later at home will cover the trip costs and leave you with a small profit. Some people buy more than what is allowed and look for strangers who didn’t buy to carry it for them, others are professional ‘smugglers’ who seem to know what they are doing when hiding the cigarette packs in their hand bags.

Leaving that area you are outdoors again and you need to look for your luggage that was thrown in some corner and then get on the bus (less queuing here and more pushing). The buses come one by one and leave one by one whenever the Israeli side allows. Once on the bus and before it moves an officer gets on board to check your ticket and take the bottom half of the white departure card leaving you with the top half. The (manual) gate then opens and the bus takes a short drive to a nearby rest area where it parks till it gets a signal to move again, then passes a sign in Arabic with the odd message: “We are the closest to the crisis in Palestine”. After 10 minutes it continues its trip through a narrow road interrupted by a crossing herd of sheeps then it stops at a checkpoint next to the Military Liaison Office where an officer – still Jordanian – gets on board and takes the remaining top half of the white departure card. After a short drive, the bus crosses the actual bridge where the water has long since dried up and is now just dry grass. A plaque displaying the Japanese flag and the words “From the Japanese People” is placed on the left side. From this point on, the area looks drastically different with large modern roads bearing a new flag and language. 

The Israeli side

Right after crossing the bridge the bus stops at an automated gate like those in parking lots. A few cleaning staff are the only people visible. Once the gate opens the bus drives through artificial small hills with machine gun nests before coming to its final stop in a few hundred meters, everyone then disembarks to pick up their luggage that was just recklessly unloaded from a trolley attached to the back of the bus and checks it into the Israeli area after another queue and more pushing. Inside the Israeli departure hall there is a queue to go through the one sole metal detector door servicing thousands of travellers a day – on average twenty five thousand pass through this door a week. In the event that the metal detector beeps you are asked to go through the adjacent 360 X-Ray scanner, the scanner is there to ensure you have a safe and pleasant trip (or so the sign says). In front of these scanners there are two glass booths with two visibly bored frowning Israelis who don’t say much, but give hand gestures when something beeps to try again or try the other door. There are a number of Palestinian workers to guide you through the scanners and interpret the gestures of the frowning, bored Israelis. After clearing the security area there is one short queue followed by another longer one; in the first booth the Israeli takes your passport and asks a couple of questions and gives it back to you with a small paper that you take to the next booth. The next Israeli officer, the first who isn’t frowning, though still bored, takes the passport and the small paper again, scans and returns them and you are off to pick up your luggage, passing the customs area with more frowning Israelis yelling four or five Arabic words that they know at frustrated travellers (bag!, here!, passport!, come!, etc..).

Outside there is another bus ticket window where you need to buy a ticket to the Palestinian side to get on the bus, sometimes there is queuing here but not this time.

The Palestinian side

After a short drive the bus leaves the Israeli area and enters the Palestinian city of Jericho where the Palestinian side is. You get off the bus and pass a short queue at the immigration booth, then a tiny customs area where the officers are likely to ask you to open your luggage looking for hidden cigarettes then you are done. The surroundings outside looks way more developed than the Jordanian counterpart with proper parking lots for public transport and private cars, a small cafeteria and better overall buildings and roads as well as free WiFi (something the previous sides lacked). From here you can take a shuttle van or a bus to your destination or a short walk into Jericho downtown. 

It’s worth mentioning that even though crossing The Bridge is an annoying and time consuming process; two and half hours on quiet days and five plus hours when it’s busy; aside from 20 minute bus rides, the trip is spent queuing. It has gotten much better over the past decade. Previously, luggage was transported in separate trucks, causing long waits on the Israeli side if you arrived before your bag. Working hours were more limited but now (before October 7th) it operates 24 hours for a day or two; the rest of the days it varies from 8 am till 4.30 pm or 12 pm and closes on Saturdays. There were far more Israeli officers and armed soldiers, some used to get on the bus before its final stop to check everyone’s ID. The changes were most likely not made to facilitate travel for Palestinians but to alleviate the boredom of the Israeli authorities monitoring them. Nowadays the staff at the Israeli side are from private security companies and throughout the whole trip two (female) soldiers could be seen carrying their lunch in the Israeli side before they went into their office.

“Netanyahu made me do it”

It’s myopic to suggest that fascist ideology has been ‘imported’ into Britain and could not possibly be home-grown


27/08/2024

The press and social media are awash with attempts to analyse far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson’s mass mobilisations over the last few months and the riots in the wake of the murder of three children in Southport. There’s a lot we don’t know about the perpetrators of the violence, but there’s also a lot we do know about the far-right and fascist ideologues who supported them.

What we should know from the history of the last century is that the rise of fascism is not easy to make sense of because its explanations for people’s problems, conflicts and fears relate to their real, everyday lives in shifting contexts. Nevertheless, some groups have an interest in treating fascism as though it is detached from “normal” life — a foreign import, like dragon’s teeth planted by outsiders, whose violent consequences we are left to reap.

In the current outbreak of violence, mainstream spokespeople for the state, like former MI6 spy, Christopher Steele, blame money, misinformation and the Russians. Supposedly dissident commentators, like David Miller and Lowkey, blame money, manipulation and the Israelis.

Although there are elements of truth in both of these theories — Tommy Robinson pockets large amounts of money from wherever he can get it, probably including both Israel and Russia — the suggestion that fascist ideology could not be home-grown is myopic. In the 1930s the British state claimed that fascism was a German import. Today it’s being variously attributed to Russia and Israel — but not, notably to all the other fascist movements and governments, including in Poland, Hungary, Italy, India and the United States, with which it is enmeshed.

Most longstanding anti-racists and anti-fascists reject these oversimplified explanations. Instead, they are looking closely at the events, assessing the similarities and differences between the current upsurge in the far right and earlier episodes in order to develop effective strategies for challenging it. They recognise that fascists focus on different targets at different times — Jews in the 1930s; African Caribbeans in the 1950s and ’60s; Asians in the 1970s and ’80s; migrants and Muslims today — but this does not mean that they move on from one to the next. They still hate all minorities, and Tommy Robinson’s flirtation with zionism and Hindutva does not mean he has fallen in love with Jews and Indians.

The people who claim that Israel is the moving force behind the riots take the view that the recent far-right street violence has made a fundamental break from classical fascism. This time, they say, hatred of migrants is a side-issue (which will be news to the refugees too terrified to go out of their homes). Instead, we’re told, these are “Islamophobic riots” and this proves that they are inspired by zionism to punish Muslims for supporting the Palestinians. According to David Miller: “The riots show that Israel is trying to burn down the UK.”

Illustrating this in his latest video are pictures of demonstrators draped in Israeli flags. Pause the video and look closely, though, and it’s clear that these are not images of the riots. They are photos of a far-right zionist counter-protest at one of the London Gaza demonstrations, probably the one on April 27 2024. No nicer, but not the same thing as the marauding mobs in Southport three months later.

In this scenario, racism against Muslims is treated as a novel, alien phenomenon, brought in from outside, which is odd, given Europe’s centuries-long record of persecution of both Muslims and Jews going back to the Crusades and the Inquisition.

But even this tortured logic is missing from Lowkey’s interpretation of the riots in a recent Double Down News video. He lists names, episodes and “facts” — some reliable, others questionable — leaving us to string them together and draw the conclusion that Robinson is being financed and worked from behind by Israel. It would have muddied the waters to mention Robinson’s well-established connections with other far-right groups, parties and governments, such as when he travelled to Poland in 2017 to join the 60,000-strong far-right nationalist march on Poland’s independence day. It would be even more confusing to show that Robinson’s Polish far-right friends are as anti-semitic as ever, as well as Islamophobic, anti-Roma, anti-refugee and anti-zionist from a right-wing perspective.

The juxtaposition of this outbreak of fascism in Britain with Israel’s devastation of Palestinian lives is significant. There are connections between the genocide being enacted in Gaza and the upheavals on our streets. For thoughtful commentators this shines a light on the dynamic interrelationship of colonialism, racism, capitalism, neoliberalism and fascism, their economic foundations and their social and political manifestations.

John McDonnell has given a measured analysis of the different layers of far-right activism, saying: “At the top are leading demagogues, the political provocateurs … Beneath them are a relatively small phalanx of hardline foot-soldiers, who have been trained and involved in fascist groups like the English Defence League over the years … the true-believing fascist muscle behind the riots. …Then there is a larger group: the disgruntled, the dispossessed and the disillusioned, who are prey to the simple, beguiling message that someone else is to blame for how they feel.”

The emphasis on Robinson by those trying to hang the riots on the Russians or Israel, and the downplaying of other fascist groups and individuals, as well as the role of successive governments and the British state, creates a thoroughly distorted picture. We have just fought an election in which both Labour and the Conservatives tried to outbid Reform UK in blaming migrants and minorities especially Muslims, for poverty, powerlessness and the disintegration of state services. And the government’s response to the riots has been to ramp up deportations and announce the reopening of immigration detention centres?

We’ve also witnessed Reform UK’s leader, Nigel Farage, feeding the mob with the claim that the police were withholding the truth about the Southport killer, and defending the rioters’ “sense of injustice” about “two-tier policing.” It is peculiar in the extreme to detach this sophisticated political operator from Robinson and his followers, many of them with longstanding links to football violence and anti-lockdown disorder, chanting: “We want our country back!”

In a recent interview, Robinson linked “mass immigration” with the “New World Order” and castigated the “far left” for allegedly being funded by the wealthy progressive Hungarian Jew, George Soros. This is a classic fascist, anti-semitic reference to the Great Replacement Theory which alleges that a shadowy Jewish conspiracy is replacing white Christians in the West with Muslims.

Despite all this evidence of a deep-rooted far-right ideology and relationships between different far-right entities, nationally and internationally, including fascistic elements in Israel and Russia, an alluringly simple analysis has captured the imagination of some anti-racists, including the targets of the rioters and their supporters.

The exclusive focus on backing from zionists (actually, far-right zionists, or the fascist-infused Israeli government) to the exclusion of their other backers is very dangerous. The fascists blame international forces for people’s troubles, rather than naming capitalism or the super-rich and the governments that sustain them.

But Lowkey and Miller are creating a mirror image of that claim. It seems extraordinary that anyone locating themselves on the left should ignore the breadth of support for far-right activism. How does this fit in with the backing of Donald Trump and US white supremacists, whose roots go back to transatlantic slavery? Or Robinson cosying up Indian fascism with its roots in Hitler’s Nazism? Not to mention his active support from far-right and fascist movements across Europe.

This exclusive focus strongly implies that the far right is simply being manipulated by Israel. This is worryingly close to a persistent anti-semitic thread in Western culture that portrays the Jews as puppeteers, controlling the world from behind the scenes. Miller’s latest theory is that the government’s decision to drop its objections to the arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, and rumours that they might stop selling arms to Israel “would be enough for them to push the riot button.” Apart from the absurdity of the image, this lets the fascists at every level — the ideologues, the organisers and the rioters on the streets — off the hook.

No-one made them set fire to hotels full of migrants. No-one made them throw bricks through the windows of mosques. No-one made them whip up fears of so-called “Asian gangs.”

“He made me do it” is for the playground. These far-right activists take money and political support from wherever they can get it. But whether it comes from Tel Aviv, Moscow or New Delhi, Washington DC or Warsaw, they are not helpless puppets but are responsible for their own decisions to wreck and loot, and to force migrants and minorities to live under a pall of fear.

This article first appeared in the Morning Star. Reproduced with permission

Life in the Occupied Town

Wartime mission: remain sophisticated.


26/08/2024

In the past, both in Russia and Ukraine, there was a tradition of burying virgins in wedding dresses. The dress symbolized purity and innocence. For many women back then, marriage was a significant life goal, a solemn transition from one state to another. Death could be seen as a passage to another world, and the wedding dress symbolized this transition, much like the transition from maidenhood to married life.

The first time I saw an elaborate wedding dress sticking out of a coffin  I was in school. Across from my school was an abandoned nine-story building. Someties, teenagers jumped from its roof. It happened quite often, maybe a couple of times a year. This time it was a girl from the neighboring building who took her own life. Through window of my school, I could see both the abandoned building where she jumped from due to heartbreak and the entrance to her home where the coffin stood.

I had a friend named Nina. She thought I liked her, but I actually liked her brother. She also watched the funeral from the school window. Later, she asked me to walk her home. Nina wanted to show me something.

Now she is 34 years old, and her child is the same age we were back then. Nina took me home and pointed to the wardrobe. She seemed suspiciously nervous. She didn’t want to open the wardrobe herself, so I had to do it. Inside a wedding dress hung on the clothes rack. Nina asked, “Do you think my parents want to get rid of me?”

The dress was big and white. That day, it was easier for us to imagine such a dress in an open coffin than at a wedding, because funerals had become the main topic at school. Suddenly, Nina asked if I wanted to see her in the dress. I didn’t. But I noticed she blushed. I felt she wanted me to see her in it. So, just for that reason, I nodded yes.

Nina took off her sweater and t-shirt. She removed her jeans, wearing only underwear. I tried not to look at her, but she took so long to change that it made me angry. I asked her to hurry up, and she started rushing. When she put on the wedding dress, she said, “My parents have been yelling at me a lot. They probably want to bury me. But I wanna live. Will you protect me?”

I told her she was silly and walked away. Only ten years later, recalling this episode by chance, I realized that young Nina was trying to flirt with me. She knew it was her mother’s old wedding dress. Our ciuntries have many weird traditions. We not only bury virgins in wedding dresses but also keep wedding dresses for life, even though we know there won’t be another chance to wear them. At least not in an acceptable way, one not associated with nervous breakdowns and nostalgia.

This morning, I called Nina. For some reason, I thought it would be amusing to suddenly ask her what happened to her mother’s wedding dress. But I must have interrupted her from something important. Nina didn’t understand which dress I was talking about. Nevertheless, we ended up talking on the phone for almost an hour.

Now she knows I’m gay. She knows I never noticed her attempts at closeness. I know her husband in person. They have a wonderful son growing up. They still live in our hometown, which used to be in Ukraine but now is in Russia. It’s an unusual life experience. But raising their son takes all her strength, so Nina admits she doesn’t have time to process everything going on. She’s just living day by day. She asks, “You won’t blame me for this, will you?”

It’s becoming more common among those who stayed in Ukraine to hear that during job interviews, a new norm is to ask: “Do you have relatives or friends in the occupied territories?” If you answer yes, you might be seen as unreliable. I don’t tell Nina that during our conversation. I don’t want to upset her with the knowledge that my connection to her could harm my reputation. Nina is important to me because we share childhood memories: the dead virgins in wedding dresses, the abandoned house where teenagers jumped from the roof, and school.

Nina says there are unexpected benefits to the occupation. The new generation of teenagers enjoys hanging out on the roof of the abandoned house. Nina used to worry her son might end up there and something bad would happen to him. But now, there are military personnel all over the town. They guard banks, mines, the mayor’s office, and the local sanatorium. The military also guards the abandoned building. Because of this, in the two years since the occupation began, not a single teenager has jumped from the roof.

I tell Nina about my cousin who stays indoors because he fears forced military conscription. I tell her how boys are caught on the streets in Ukraine and force to go to war. Nina knows about this, but she says it’s different in our town. In Donetsk and Luhansk, they also catch men, but in our mining town, they don’t. Men are stopped more often than women here to check their documents, but usually, that’s where it ends. I hear anger in Nina’s voice when she says, “If Ukraine liberates us, we’ll have to flee the country to keep my husband from being taken to war. But I don’t want to flee. I want to live in my hometown.”

Nina says she still can’t get used to the curfew. Just a couple of days ago, she told her husband how much she misses their nighttime walks on the beach. That same day, the Ukrainian army shelled our town. Ukraine is having problems with electricity. People in Kyiv are without power for 6-7 hours. They say the situation will get worse. Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to sell electricity to the EU. The Ukrainian army has intensified shelling of our town to reclaim the nuclear power plant located nearby. A few days ago, a substation was blown up. The town was without electricity for over a day, but it’s been restored now.

“When I heard the explosion, I was home alone,” Nina tells me, her voice becoming detached, as if she’s talking about someone else. “My husband took our kid to visit his parents. I needed some rest. I couldn’t get out of bed for a long time. And then I heard a very loud explosion. You know what I did? I got up right away. I dressed up. There was no electricity. I just sat in the armchair and waited. I thought if a missile hit my house, at least they would find my body dressed.”

Then Nina asks how much Pepsi costs here. She mentions that at the beginning of the occupation, Pepsi disappeared from the stores. Some Russian equivalent appeared instead. But now Pepsi is back on the shelves. She’s curious about the prices of soft drinks, as well as meat and seaweed, because she wants to understand the price differences.

Initially, stores had prices in two currencies: hryvnia and rubles. Now, only rubles remain. But Nina says there’s a different exchange rate here. Everything is more expensive. Prices are high, but salaries have also increased. Nina says it’s livable. She mentions she’s tired of the explosions. Even after two years of war, the explosions still scare her. But she’s also scared of rumors that Russia might stop using dollars all together as a result of sanctions. Nina doesn’t really understand it. Everyone keeps their savings in dollars, so does she. Nina’s worried about what will happen to her money.

“There are things you can never get used to,” says Nina, and her voice becomes familiar again. “You can’t get used to kids ending their lives every year, jumping from the roof of the same building. You can’t get used to explosions when your son sleeps nearby and you don’t know what to do to protect him.”

Then we discuss Nina’s intimate life and my new lovers. We talk about the book she’s reading this week. Only at the end of our conversation does she say, “You know, it’s strange how kids have been ending their lives from that building’s roof for years without anyone caring. It’s odd they only blocked the entrance due to the war now. Isn’t that rather strange to you?”

 

This piece is a part of a series, The Mining Boy Notes, published on Mondays and authored by Ilya Kharkow, a writer from Ukraine. For more information about Ilya, see his website. You can support his work by buying him a coffee.

 

“Individuals cannot do much. You have to organize”

Interview with lawyer Nadija Samour about the postponed “From the River to the Sea” trial


Hi Nadija. Thanks for talking to us. Could you start by briefly introducing yourself? Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Nadija Samour. I work as a criminal defence lawyer, and I am also the senior legal advisor for the European Legal Support Center (ELSC), which stands in solidarity with Palestine advocates and Palestinian rights, and offers legal support.

We’re here today outside the Tiergarten courthouse. Can you explain what just happened?

There was a court hearing scheduled for my client, who is accused of “using propaganda of a terrorist organisation”. This is the legal code. What they mean is she has used or shouted the slogan, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

The accusation is that this slogan is owned by Hamas, and that when you use it publicly, it’s propaganda for a banned or terrorist organisation. Of course, this is ridiculous, because the slogan is much older than Hamas, and the Federal Ministry of the Interior has absolutely no proof that it is a Hamas slogan. There is no proof because it’s just not true.

And what happened today? [this interview took place on 22nd August, 2024]

My colleague, Alexander Gorski, and I arrived with our client. We were ready to fight off this accusation, but the judge told us that he had not allocated enough time for this trial. He said he wasn’t aware that there would be so much attention and so many people would come.

We had prepared a proper defence, with applications for witnesses and expert opinions, and he acted surprised. But every judge knows that the most minor accusation at court needs at least an hour. The new date will be on 11th November. I really hope a lot of people will show up again, just like today.

We believe that he didn’t want to face it, and that there was a lot of press attention. He wasn’t very well prepared. But if you’re a judge, and you follow the public debate and read jurists’ magazines, you would know that this is a controversial question.

I was just talking to someone who asked: does the judge not read newspapers?

Exactly. That is ridiculous. I believe that he’s scared. Before the trial, he already said, “I won’t make a decision on this. Let the higher courts decide”. It’s a mixture of cowardice and laziness.

This is the second case in Berlin around “From the River to the Sea”, and the second time there’s been a protest outside. What is the role of the protests in affecting what happens?

I think it’s very important. It’s important for a client to experience solidarity on an interpersonal level, but it’s also important because the protests draw international interest into Germany.

Some weeks ago, I was in Geneva at the UN on a trip organised by Amnesty International. There was a special session on the human right of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. I was there with some students from the US who were active in the encampments. We met people from the office of the Higher Commissioner for Human Rights and the deputies of some countries. And everyone was asking me: “What the hell is happening in Germany?”

If it wasn’t for these demonstrations and the brave and stubborn way in which people keep on protesting, we wouldn’t gain this attention.

And yet, despite the protests, a lot of people aren’t really aware of everything that’s going on. I was talking to two women outside the court today, and they said, of course they’re here, but they didn’t know that there are other similar cases. So firstly, how many other cases are there?

I would say in the hundreds. Not all of these cases have reached court level yet. The police start investigating, they give the file to the prosecutor, and the prosecutor decides whether to drop the case. Most of these cases are still with the prosecutor. But to my knowledge, there are around ten cases at court level already, where the prosecutor has decided to file.

That’s just for Berlin. I don’t have the numbers for other places, but they must be in the hundreds, as this is a slogan that is really characteristic for the Palestine demonstrations. But people are not giving in. They’re not letting the slogan go. And I think this is very good.

How do people find out about other cases?

The ELSC is trying to follow up on all the cases. But we don’t know about them all. Not everyone is organised or part of a political group that knows how to deal with the repression and reach out to us. If you want change, then you have to do it collectively. If people do have court cases, they should contact the ELSC so we can coordinate support.

Why has the phrase “From the River to the Sea” become so important in Germany recently?

There is an official reasoning, and then there’s my interpretation. Officially, Germany felt they needed to react after 7th October. They see themselves as a close ally of Israel. And then there’s this spooky term, “Staatsräson”.

They felt they had to do something, so they banned two organizations that do not have a lot to do with each other. One is Hamas, the other is Samidoun. There are 70 pages explaining why they are banned, and in both cases they say they use the slogan as a trademark.

The German government basically invented the connection between the slogan and the banned organization. In the case of Hamas, they say the words are in the Charter of 2017. This is ridiculous, because they aren’t using it as a slogan. They are using it as a way of describing the territory of Palestine.

This is the official reasoning. But I would say that they needed a tool to oppress and repress the demonstrations. At the beginning, they tried to ban the demonstrations outright. They had trouble because the constitution doesn’t really allow that, and international pressure was mounting. People saw that Germany was not respecting basic democratic and fundamental rights.

So they said, “Okay, you know what? We won’t ban the demonstrators, but we’ll annoy them to hell. Let’s confront them with arrests”. These arrests were brutal – people have been badly hurt when they were arrested. So they said: “Let’s create some images for the press about those barbarities, and use this slogan to criminalize the demonstrations, if we can’t ban them”.

When you’re talking about “they”, who is giving the orders here?

It’s the Federal Ministry for the Interior. It’s basically the government. They have invented the interpretation of this slogan. The judiciary is technically independent and has said in many cases either that the slogan is not Hamas propaganda, or at least that it’s not clear. The judiciary has spoken, but the government doesn’t really care, because they have another agenda.

This agenda is not only to criminalize and harass those demonstrations. It’s also to prepare for mass deportations, as Scholz said last year. And what better reason you have for mass deportations than young Arab and Muslim men who have allegedly committed an antisemitic crime? This is a red carpet for deportation orders.

More people were arrested outside the court today. How much do we know about what happened and why it is happening?

I think the majority of today’s cases are because of the slogan. People know exactly what they are risking, but they do it because they are convinced, just like me, that this is really not a criminalized slogan, and we have to push for it.

In October, when the demonstrations were banned, people didn’t care. They were brave, they were courageous, they were stubborn, and they kept on demonstrating, until they broke the ban and enforced their rights.

How can you explain that courts in Mannheim say that “From the River to the Sea” is okay, and courts in Berlin just fined someone €600?

Unfortunately, I feel that the judiciary in Berlin is always a bit more close to the government. You can also see this with the cases related to the demonstration bans. They are sent to the Administrative Court, which always rules in favour of the state on this topic. This is really worrying.

I believe that there’s a technical difference as well. The case on the 6th of August used another code – condoning criminal acts. It was a very cheap trick. They said, “you used the slogan before the official ban, but you used the slogan in proximity to 7th October. This means there is absolutely no other interpretation possible than you are in favour of the deeds of 7th October”.

This won’t hold. It is a baseless kind of argumentation. In today’s case we had another code of using propaganda.

Do you think it’s significant that they’re using different codes in different cases? I get the feeling they’re seeing what they can get away with and what they can’t.

I see it like that as well. The further away we are from 7th October, the less they can use the claim of proximity. I think this is a one-off judgment, and that most of the rest of the cases will focus on propaganda of banned and terrorist organizations.

There has also been a push to criminalise the symbol of the red triangle. Why are they doing this, and what’s the chance of it becoming a law?

The red triangle is being discussed as a symbol of Hamas, and it’s also being discussed as a symbol of calling for violence or marking enemies. At the same time, the red triangle has many more meanings, for example, the Communists who were deported to the concentration camps. The VVN-BdA (main German anti-Fascist organisation) is still using it today.

And there are monuments all over Berlin with a red triangle

Exactly. So again, you will create a gray zone, where they will always say, “well, it really depends on the context.” This will give the police the powers to arrest people, to hurt people, to harass people, to intimidate people. They always create this kind of situation where the cops are free to act as they want, and then perhaps later, after you lost a lot of time and money and nerves in court, they might drop it.

But they are facing real formal difficulties in codifying this. So they tried the smart trick of saying that a demonstration has an order with limitations. You cannot do this. You cannot say that. You cannot call for violence. And so they say: “Whoever uses the red triangle is calling for violence, and therefore is violating the orders of the demonstration”. It’s not banned as the red triangle, but it’s interpreted as calling for violence.

So theoretically, somebody could be arrested for carrying a VVN flag, although the VVN have actually taken a very pro-Israel position?

Ah, you are missing an important point, which is racism. When they talk about context, what they really mean is: what does the person who is carrying or using the red triangle look like? The context that matters is the prosecution of anything related to Palestine or anti-colonialism. Let’s not assume that the authorities will act stupid and arbitrarily, but I think they know exactly how to target the right people.

Let’s try and end on an optimistic note. Palestinians, and other supporters of Palestine are being sent to court, they are being attacked by the police. In official German politics, they don’t see much support. Where can they find hope that things could change and that they can win justice?

We are winning already. It doesn’t always feel like this, but I think that we are already winning. Look at the amount of people talking about Palestine, the people showing up for Palestine, the people being so courageous and not backing down for Palestine.

I’ve been living in Berlin for more than 20 years, and I’ve never seen such solidarity since perhaps the last Iraq War in 2003. I studied at the HU. I’m not particularly proud of it, because it’s a very reactionary law school. But it used to be impossible to talk about Palestine before, as the AstA (student council) used to be so anti-Deutsch.

Now, at all universities in Berlin, people are organizing for Palestine. Artists are coming out for Palestine. School children are coming out for Palestine. We still lack the trade unions, but we’re working on it. This is unprecedented in my memory. I don’t know what it was like in the 70s, but that’s at least what I can tell you.

Why do you think things are changing?

The contradictions are so obvious, the confrontation is so clear, that we’re not only talking about a genocide. This is really bad enough, but we’re talking about a crystal clear complicity – of the German state, German industry, the German ruling class – in this. It’s even a partnership perhaps.

At the same time we have the hypocritical double standards and the readiness of Germany to crack down on their own constitution, on their own promise to respect international law, according to their own standards – just to support this genocide. This obvious contradiction is what people are reacting to. They don’t want to be alienated any more from their ability to act.

If people read what you say and are horrified by what’s going on, what can they do as individuals?

Individuals cannot do much. You have to organize. Reach out to the organization that you align with most. The Left Berlin is a very good one, a strong and important one. But also, if you are a student, reach out to your student group, if you are a worker, make some change in your trade union. You can do anything, anywhere, also in your neighbourhood.

You can reach out to the next pro-Palestine organisation. You can do things together collectively much better. It’s also much more fun, and you’re protected much more than as an individual. If you’re not there yet, keep talking about Palestine. Stay informed. Check out the European Legal Support Centre for the struggle against repression. Check out the BDS campaign.

This is something that people do on an individual level. The real force is when you do it as a collective, but this is something very practical. Boycott, divest, and sanction Israel for their human rights abuses against Palestinians.

And of course, there’s the postponed case on 11th of November.

Exactly, and the court is public. People are welcome to join. The case starts at 9 o’clock at the Amtsgericht Tiergarten on Turmstraße.