The Left Berlin News & Comment
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Photo Gallery – The Left Berlin at the 1 May 2025 Festival
Mariannenplatz, in front of the Bethanien Building
“There’s A Lot Of Rage We All Feel, But More Than That, I Feel Love And Concern For My Friends”
Anam Raheem and Matt Davis call on our collective empathy to raise funds for Palestinians.
Quincy Mackay
03/05/2025
Gaza Champions is a mutual aid network founded by Anam Raheem and Matt Davis that places people in direct contact with families in need of support in Gaza, allowing them to directly fundraise for those hit hardest by the war. The champions are also pen pals with their families in Gaza, learning about their lives and experiences, building morale and helping them to better tell their stories. In times of staunch political division and polarization, Gaza Champions manages to cut through, and in its own way, enables people across the world to make small, albeit concrete contributions to the lives of people, who they now have meaningful relationships with. The Left Berlin spoke to Anam and Matt to learn more about the organization.
TLB: Can you tell us about your connection to Gaza?
Anam Raheem: Both Matt and I worked for Mercy Corps, which is an American international humanitarian aid organization. Specifically, we were working for a program called Gaza Sky Geeks, a Google-backed tech hub in Gaza City. The idea was to connect the youth in Gaza to the outside world, to earn dignified incomes by participating in the global tech industry. It wasn’t a typical NGO job where we were in an office and would have field visits. Instead, we were based in a community center in Gaza. We would have hundreds of people come through our doors every day, and so, we developed very close relationships with the people in Gaza, irrespective of whether they were our team members or people who participated in our program.
TLB: When was this roughly?
AR: So I was there from 2017 to 2021, and Matt left just before October 7 2023.
TLB: And it was after that that when you started thinking about Gaza Champions, right?
AR: Yeah, so it started about a year ago. As I’m sure you know, all these GoFundMes started coming out of Gaza. And because Matt and I both have a huge network in Gaza, many GoFundMes started coming our way. At first, I was just using my Instagram page to share GoFundMes, to try and tell the story of this or that person, and mobilize my small network to contribute. But very quickly it became overwhelming– with hundreds of GoFundMes it wasn’t effective to just fill my Instagram with these stories.
I have a friend in DC and she sort of naturally connected with some of my friends from Gaza on Instagram, and formed a pen pal relationship with one of them, and started promoting her GoFundMe, saying “This is this person, this is what I’ve learnt about them – let’s support them!” And that planted the seed for me– this one to one relationship where someone is just telling the story of someone in Gaza in a very human way, and using their platform to mobilize funds for them. At the time the border was open, so there was hope for their evacuation, but these days, with the border closed, people still need to survive day-to-day life, the cost of which is severely inflated during wartime.
I started out by simply writing a call for volunteers in the notes app on my phone and posting a screenshot of it on Instagram. That post went pretty far, I think the first wave was about 60 people. And then I told Matt about this idea and we created a spreadsheet to have a mechanism to start matching the GoFundMes we have with people who are volunteering. And that’s how Gaza Champions was born.
MD: For the first six months of the genocide, we were in shock, like everyone else. We were doing what we could, posting and so on, but by February or March it had gotten to the point where everyone in Gaza had run out of money and needed help, so it was a way of dealing with that feeling of wanting to share stuff my friends were sending me, but knowing that that wasn’t going to help.
TLB: So it sounds like the pen pal connection was part of it from the beginning.
AR: Yeah, the idea was that it wouldn’t be this anonymous thing, and that you would be in direct contact with someone, supporting them. I think what’s really effective, is being able to tell a story over time– this is a person I know in Gaza, this is what they went through this month, and from our fundraising, they were able to get a tent, for example. Some champions FaceTime with their person in Gaza with their whole family, so the whole family rallies around them and checks in on them and wants to know how they’re doing. It’s flourished beyond what I could have even hoped for.
TLB: There’s also a kind of accountability that comes through that as well – there’s a degree of responsibility that you feel as the connection with your family grows.
MD: It’s not even accountability, it just makes it feel more real. That’s the amazing way in which it has bloomed. When we worked at Sky Geeks there were about 40 people in the office, and some of them were super close friends, while others I would chat with but I wouldn’t still be close with them. But they’ve connected with some of my friends in England and now they’re really close friends, better than I ever knew them in person. So it’s that human element.
AR: Yeah, the thing that’s really motivating is friendship, right? If the world has turned on your friends you would do whatever you could to help them. And I think that is what keeps me sane, because there’s a lot of rage we all feel, but more than that rage, I feel love and concern for my friends. It’s also a great way of bringing people into the cause. You’re not just fighting for this abstract “Free Palestine” concept, you have someone in Gaza to help get through this. It keeps people motivated and helps not to burn out or give up.
TLB: Do you have any way of measuring the impact? Do you know how much you’ve raised across all of the different Champions?
MD: The short answer is we have no idea. At one point I was trying to track it a little bit, by looking on GoFundMe how much money had been raised before and after we connected people. But it’s hard to track because there’s no public API for GoFundMe, so getting the data is really hard.
AR: Yeah, we are doing this in a totally voluntary capacity. We know that we have 150-ish champions in 13 countries. In terms of impact, we have some beautiful anecdotal evidence– some people that were able to evacuate directly, and others who have had months of groceries covered because of their champions. But, yes, we don’t have a dollar figure estimate because we just don’t have the capacity.
TLB: Have you had any political opposition or pushback to the project?
AR: Well, generally speaking, it has been pretty insulated from the pushback and hate. I think that’s primarily because this is mutual aid, not protest or direct advocacy, keeping it very human to human. Especially compared to all the other kinds of actions and demonstrations and how charged things can get, Gaza Champions is like, warm and fuzzy.
There was one champion who reached out to me to say “Someone in my network googled the person I’m championing and found tweets around October 7, celebrating this act of resistance, so I don’t know if I can champion this person anymore.” I then reasoned with them, that while it was up to them to champion or not, I would call into question the motives of someone who put in their time and effort to look up someone enduring genocide, to find a reason not to support their humanity or support their survival.
It brings in the perfect-victim framework that Mohammed el-Kurd puts into context in his book, Perfect Victims. We need Palestinians to be ideologically pure, according to Western standards, to be worthy of our care and support. This is just one instance, but that person has continued to be a champion, and it shows how this can expand people’s political education around Palestine, because you’re not just thinking of it as an abstract cause, these are living, breathing humans.
Violence sucks, but we can understand that if someone is living under oppression, they have seen so much death, so much loss, and so much loss of opportunity. So if they see this as the first punch thrown against their oppressors, I can understand why someone might look at that day and feel a certain way, feel a certain catharsis. And it goes beyond that. You get to understand Islam through them, you get to witness Ramadan through them. So this is a really beautiful form of political education, that’s very practical, and isn’t in the form of demonstration or protest.
Something else that comes up a lot, is people wanting to know if these are verified campaigns. And it’s tricky, because it’s verified in the way that mutual aid is just a network, right? We know a lot of these people directly, but we also don’t know some of them. It’s just all word of mouth. So our rule is that it’s either someone we know directly or it’s being referred to by someone we trust– that’s the extent of our verification. On top of that, a lot of people want to be donating to a registered non-profit with a 501(c)(3) status– things that have, like, a Western stamp of approval. So Gaza Champions is about shifting how we think about aid in Palestine, or in a war-torn region, by going directly to people in a mutual aid format, as opposed to having our resources gate kept by big organizations.
MD: Anam and I were both working at a major NGO where we had to deal with a lot of red tape, and our hands were tied in a lot of situations, so being able to just do this has been very freeing. I love that there’s this moment where we connect people, and just say “Okay, you guys go do it.” When people are first connected, there might be some uncertainty, but as the relationship builds, it resolves the issue of verification– I don’t think that any of our champions would ever be questioning the people they are raising money for. And sure, we have more families who need help than champions at the moment, so you see why the red tape developed, because we just have to randomly pick cases. But it can also be a barrier, when you have to tell people you can’t help them because they don’t meet a certain set of criteria.
Going in, we had no idea of what it was going to become. I don’t think at any point did we expect it to get this big. And this has been a group learning experience, where one champion does one thing, and then they share that with others. This natural evolution– that is what solidarity is. The past two years have been really horrible, and there have been so many awful moments, and me and Anam have said to each other many times that doing Gaza Champions is what got us through.
AR: Yeah, it absolutely has kept me afloat. We are deeply personally affected by it, so to see that there are other people who care, and want to do something, even if they have never been to Gaza, is really uplifting. I like to focus on that. Of course there are the toxic trolls, and they make me want to do bad things, but if I didn’t have Gaza Champions, I don’t know where I would be right now.
You can support Gaza Champions or become one yourself! Sign up here.
Red Flag: Why Berlin’s Revolutionary May Day Was So Huge
In his weekly column, Nathaniel Flakin reports from 1. Mai.
For most Berliners, 1. Mai is about going to a park to dance, drink, and soak up some sun after an interminable winter — Görlitzer Park was packed with tens of thousands of revelers. For the city’s leftists, though, May Day is the most intense, longest, and best day of the year. It’s Commie Christmas.
The Maifeier or May Celebration has a long history in Berlin. Protests have taken place every year since 1890. But this year, the 135th anniversary, feels different. Germany is set to get a new Kanzler next Tuesday. The Blackrock gremlin Friedrich Merz promises to combine austerity with militarism and far-right culture war: hundreds of billions for the military and cuts for social programs. Merz hasn’t even been elected, and he’s already among the least popular politicians in the country, with 56 percent declaring him “nicht gut” and just 38 percent “gut”
The rise of the far-right AfD, endless rent increases, and racist fear mongering brought Berliners onto the streets on May Day.
Union Morning
In the morning, up to 10,000 people joined a demonstration by the German Union Confederation (DGB). Every German city has an official union rally featuring beer, bratwurst, and bad music. Social democratic politicians like to make appearances. Since post-war (West) Berlin has almost always had social democratic mayors, so public-sector workers have to demonstrate alongside their boss.
And so many choose to sleep in, only a tiny sliver of Berlin’s union members take to the streets. For the bureaucrats, this has long been an “alibi” event, doing as little as possible to claim they at least did something. I could never think of any other reason to pick an impossible time (usually 10am on a holiday!) and relatively unknown meeting points. They don’t put up posters nor send out e-mails to their members. Even people looking for the demonstration didn’t have an easy time finding it on the DGB website.
Back in 2022, then mayor Franziska Giffey was booed out for ten minutes as she tried to speak from a May Day stage. People were unhappy that she was refusing to implement the referendum that called for the expropriation of big housing companies. After Egg Day [editor’s note: a protestor threw an egg at Giffey], big politicians have avoided the space.
Yet even as union bosses refuse to mobilize, and union members sleep in – the proletarian Left keeps turning up. This year, the Class Struggle Bloc made up perhaps half of the demonstration. That was — more than all the union blocs together, according to junge Welt. Last year, “antideutsch” union stewards made ham-fisted attempts to expel the leftists. But that became such an embarrassment that there were no more attempts by DGB leaders to kick out half the participants.
Revolutionary Evening
As the sun was setting over Kreuzberg, tens of thousands of people gathered at Südstern for a revolutionary demonstration. By all rights, it should have been at Hermannplatz, but police have banned gatherings at this more political location. Over the next few hours, the crowd grew to 30,000 people. There was a hard core of several thousand anarchist and communist militants in tight formations, surrounded by several times as many supporters.
This goes back to the Kiezaufstand, the neighborhood uprising in Kreuzberg on May 1, 1987, when residents plundered dozens of shops and burned down a supermarket. That inspired an independent demonstration the following year, which has now taken place for 37 years, and wanders south toward Neukölln at a glacial pace.
Berlin police brought 6,000 officers to the scene, including water cannons and metal fences. But as the revolutionaries marched through the streets, cops generally held back and the mood remained peaceful. The unavoidable conclusion from decades of Revolutionary May Day — just about 100 percent of violence can be traced back to police. To put it scientifically: No cops, no problems.
Yet while the march was largely peaceful, police couldn’t let us reach the end without creating some images to justify the tens of millions of euros they spent on repression. Shortly before we returned to Südstern, they attacked the Palestine bloc and detained several dozen people. I won’t demean myself by repeating their ridiculous justifications for violence, which have been obediently repeated by bourgeois politicians and journalists.
The great thing about Berlin’s May Day is how it connects different struggles. Yesterday, Palestine was everywhere — like one would expect at left-wing demonstrations in every other country. I was pleasantly surprised when an autonomist feminist bloc, all decked out in purple, declared that people who didn’t support Palestine weren’t welcome. Yesterday’s demonstration was probably the biggest demonstration in support of Gaza Berlin has seen in the last 18 months.
What is the point of German Memory Culture when it has no universal application?
Holding a sign saying “Haven’t we learned from the Holocaust?” will now get you prosecuted and fined €1,500 in Germany
Editor’s note: This is an interview with someone who was recently fined €1,500 by a Berlin court for holding up a sign. She prefers to remain anonymous. Most of the interview was taken in the middle of April, 2025.
Thanks for talking to us. Could you first tell us a little about who you are?
I’m 31 years old. I came here to Berlin one and a half years ago. I was living in Bielefeld before. I really like this city because of its international people. Then, there are so many possibilities in Berlin. I also came here to do more acting.
I arrived around the same time as the start of the war in Palestine. I felt there were so many people who were engaged in this topic. What was different to Bielefeld was that people were so naturally politically active. I really appreciated that people were shaping politics in the sense of our democratic values.
As the war in Gaza went on and so many people died I felt as if I also have to engage in any kind of action, since the war got absurd. And disproportionate. I felt very helpless. I wanted to ask the government: “Why don’t you see what is happening?” We have a history in Germany, and we should have learned from this history. We also are responsible when war crimes are committed and we keep being silent. We should apply our knowledge of our history.
You wanted to do something. What sort of activities did you get involved in?
I thought, okay, maybe I could just go on the street on my own and remind people what our teachers in school always taught us about the Holocaust. They said that genocide should not happen again, nor should anything which has the character of genocide.
So, I took two signs and went to the government building. On one sign I wrote: “Haben wir aus dem Holocaust nicht gelernt?” [Haven’t we learned from the Holocaust?], and on the other: “Nein, zu der Ermordung von derzeit 8.500 Zivilisten in Gaza” [No to the murder of 8,500 civilians in Gaza so far].
How did the police react to your action?
There were three policemen who were actually there for a demonstration by Neue Generation in the government quarter. They stopped me and read my papers. They contacted their Zentrale [headquarters] I think it was the Landeskriminalamt [State Criminal Police] but I am not sure, who said they have to investigate this. That’s when they told me: “You can’t continue with this.”
They then took my papers, they wrote something saying I might get an Anzeige [notification of a court hearing], and then they sent me home.
When was this?
It was the 3rd November 2023.
You did receive an Anzeige. When did that arrive?
Well, first I got a letter. It was just information. Following this, it took a lot of time—half a year or something. Then I got a yellow letter, which is a serious one.
What did it say?
It said that I was being accused of Volksverhetzung [hate speech].
And now you’re going to be in court. What’s your feeling about this?
I’m absolutely confused. It felt like I was doing something wrong, but I didn’t. I had not intended to do anything wrong. My teachers taught me in school that democracy also means to question, to say your opinion, to look from different perspectives, and to have the right to do so.
I had the a feeling that Germany has a progressive understanding/ imagination about Menschenrechte and Völkerrechte [human rights and international law] because of its history.
And now, when I talk about our historical responsibility and humanitarian crimes in Gaza in one sentence, Germany starts to discuss the probability of playing down the Holocaust, instead of taking it seriously.
I would draw a comparison between the Holocaust and Gaza, but this is to point out that nothing similar to the Holocaust should ever happen again. The Holocaust is a benchmark we use to prevent a greater evil. What I mean is that in everything we do, we do make comparisons. How else can we know what goes too far?
And to repeat: all that you did was hold up one sign asking whether Germany has learned from the Holocaust and another sign opposing the violation of human rights in Gaza. It wasn’t antisemitic, it wasn’t racist, but now you’re facing trial because of this?
Yes.
How are you preparing for the trial? What sort of support have you received so far?
I spoke to a lot of people—to lawyers and organizations who have experience with this topic. They told me that it’s not a single case when it comes to a critic of Israel. There are many people who have experienced the same fate .
I don’t really feel alone with it, but on the other hand, I can’t know how it will go because I feel that these cases are not normal cases. They are not judged in the same way.
Have you had the chance to talk to other people facing similar criminal charges to yours?
No, actually not. It seems difficult because nobody stands on the street and says: “Yes, I had the same experience”.
It’s easier to get in touch with lawyers or organizations working in this field, especially those who have already worked on similar cases.
Has there been any media coverage of your case?
Not yet. There is one person who is writing about it, but she is the only one.
When is the court case going to be?
24th April of 2025
How can you ensure that you’re not left on your own?
I think it’s important to have a good lawyer who can give advice for a good defence. On top of this, there are so many groups who have taken on the mission of accompanying such cases. They provide both mental and physical support.
Before the trial started, they said that I could pay a fine of €200 and we wouldn’t go to court. I said: “No, I’m not paying. I’d rather go to court”, because I didn’t do anything wrong. What makes me feel safe is when we stand together and say: “No. They have no right to do this to us.”
What’s the worst that could happen if you lose the case?
If I lose the case, I could have to pay a lot of money, but that is not the worst that could happen. The worst is when the court decides that we are not allowed to say our opinions anymore.
So it’s not just about you?
No. I think it will continue like this if we don’t stay here and say: “Not with us!”
Is Germany different? There are similar things happening in the US and Britain, but maybe the public response is different?
I actually don’t know. What I know about Germany is that we are not allowed to criticize Israel, and if you do, you’re an antisemite. You can chose either you criticize the politics of Israel and you’re an antisemite, or you rather shut your mouth.
My teachings of the Holocaust is not to unconditionally support the country or the people who we committed genocide against. Instead, we should learn from this history that genocide should never, ever happen to anybody.
Do you think things can get better in Germany?
(long pause)
I think people have shown us before that when the whole population is against something, it can be changed. We can make a difference.
How do we make more people want change?
That’s the point. I think people will only get angry about something when it’s about themselves. And I think that people don’t understand yet that my case also affects them.
So, what would you say to someone about why your case matters to them?
My freedom of opinion was taken away from me. Yes, Palestine is far away, and people ask, “What does the Middle East conflict has to do with me?” They say, “Palestine is not even a democracy. It is not their kind of system.”
But the point is, it is not about that. It is about us. When we are charged wrong because of criticizing the state, then democracy disappears. Step by step.
So, if your freedom of opinion is restricted, then this can lead to similar restrictions on other people?
Definitely. What worries me is that there are so many cases of repression that are not even hidden by the state. It is getting normal.
We have so many cases now. We have your case. We have the Berlin 4 —European and US citizens who are threatened with deportation. We have Palestinians who are being deported to Greece already. Some people are appalled by this but don’t know what they can do about it. What do you think we can do to stop democracy being undermined?
(longer pause)
I am not a political scientist. But I think it’s more important than ever that we as a younger generation go into politics and have influence, and maybe find strategic ways to put pressure on certain systems.
You have had a horrible experience, and you’re still going through this experience. It would be very easy for you to say: “I’m not getting into any more trouble. I’m going to shut up”. This doesn’t seem to be your reaction. Why?
If something that belongs to you is taken away from you, would you just accept it? We should have the freedom of thought and speech in Germany, and nobody has the right to silence me by misinterpreting my words.
What’s your next step? We have the court case, what happens then?
My next step for this is to accompany the court cases of people who have been unfairly charged, to show them that they are not alone. But I think everybody should do whatever he or she is good in to support in our current and future political situation.
We have to show them that we are not letting this go – even if we have to fight every single case.
Editor’s Note: We talked again after the court case to discuss what had happened and what happens next.
We did most of this interview before your court case. You were in court yesterday. How did it go?
I received a fine of €1,500. I didn’t know that one could be prosecuted for a question regularly covered in history class if it was related to Palestine. But now I know that although Article 5 Paragraph 1 GG offers freedom of speech according to established case law covering many cases, in the case of Palestine, a judge does not have to stick to this.
Are you going to pay the fine?
No, I will not pay anything for now.
What happens now? How can people support you?
We will challenge the verdict. Further we are going to organize a fundraiser soon and would be happy for support.
I would be very, very motivated if I saw that more people not just accept the judgement but to go further until we reach the Bundesverfassungsgericht [high court] This is what makes me stronger.
Thanks a lot. Free Palestine.