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“Individuals cannot do much. You have to organize”

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


26/08/2024

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.

Histories Divided and Shared in Berlin’s Tiergarten Park

Interview with Miriam Schickler about her new audio walk Geteilte Welten, exploring the constructions of memory behind memorial sites in Berlin


25/08/2024

In May 2024, Miriam Schickler released the audio walk “Geteilte Welten” (“Shared/Divided Worlds”) – available via online download for free or a donation. All you need is a couple free hours and a pair of headphones. There will also be a communal walk and picnic on September the 1st, starting at 15:00.

Can you introduce yourself and your new audio walk?

My name is Miriam Schickler. I work at the intersection of sound research performance and education, mainly in collaborative ways with others. Though this time I haven’t [collaborated] much because I started working on it right when the pandemic started.

I worked on the audiowalk for four years, I would call it a sonic intervention into Berlin’s memory landscapes. It guides the listener through Berlin Tiergarten where all the major Holocaust memorials are situated, but also other public sites there. It’s my critique of German memory culture as a divisive political tool. That is why it tells different histories of violence – of the Holocaust, of colonialism, of migration – through their entanglements.

It’s also, therefore a re-appropriation of history and of memory. It points out that actually all this memory was fought for by communities and their allies. And this memory was taken up by the state and turned into a national concern, which de-politicized it.

As you go through the walk, you hear not only narration but also walking on gravel, church bells, whispered voices, echoes which are integrated into the experience. What is the role of these sounds for the experience of the walk?

I really felt a need to tell these stories in a different way, not just with language. The sound is not just the content but a sensual experience. I used a lot of binaural recordings, which means that you perceive the sound in a relatively “natural” way, as in a 3D way. It’s very immersive, and lifts you to a different level of perception, without losing contact with the space that you’re actually traversing. This is why I love audio walks so much, their potential to change your perception even on something that you think you know quite well.

We’re living in a society that is dominated by, well, we call it “ocular-centrism”. Meaning, we tend to rank vision over all other senses. It’s a very Western way of perception and it’s not necessarily the only way of gaining knowledge, right? So this is what interests me with sound.

One of the things we’ve noticed in The Left Berlin is the difference in memory discourses here depending on what language something is in, whether it’s English or German. I’m wondering, since the tour has versions in both languages, whether you see these sounds as bridging this gap?

It does in a way. It was very interesting to work with the two languages, I started with English because most of my education took place in English. I read mainly in English, but it was super-important for me that all of it would be articulated in German. I worked on it in German then changed the English again, with a more precise understanding of it.

And another thing I noticed during the tour is the amount of care that you stress for the participant, urging them to take breaks, watch out for traffic, etc. What is the role of this?

While I was writing and composing it, I always had the question of who am I doing this for? Who am I addressing? And I tried to be as open as possible to different positionalities. But I was mainly concerned with people who have experienced the type of violence discussed in the walk, whether directly or in their families. I wanted to make sure that they don’t feel alone. Because for me, often being the only Jew in different spaces while growing up in Germany, when people talked about history it was often a very lonely experience.

One of your past projects, “Echoing Yafa”, also engaged in memory politics by recreating a history that had been actively erased, that of a destroyed Palestinian neighbourhood. What is it about audio walks or work that makes it such a powerful tool for engaging both erasures and constructions of memory?

“Echoing Yafa” tells the story of Manshiyyah, a Palestinian neighbourhood that now literally lies underneath Tel Aviv. I started working on it, because it was difficult for visitors to the city to get access to that kind of information about the Nakba. Audio walks are a very accessible medium, you don’t need a guide or appointment, you can just download or stream it for free and do it whenever you want. Along with the multi-sensorial part I mentioned before, you’re being asked to engage with the surrounding in different ways and walk different routes, look at things that you hadn’t paid attention to before.

I’m wondering if your approach between the two walks has changed because of the time between them or the difference between an Israeli memory politics or a German one?

I mean, I’m sitting between these two nationalities, my father is a Jewish Israeli citizen, my mother is a non-Jewish German. The big difference, I think, is that for “Echoing Yafa” I worked very closely with a lot of Palestinian collaborators and was not telling my own story. I wouldn’t do it that way today. At the same time I’m implicated in both stories. In “Echoing Yafa” because I’m the daughter of a Holocaust survivor coming to Palestine as a child in 1944 or 1945. But there’s definitely a connection that goes beyond who I am. I see them historically as a sequence, as if “Geteilte Welten” is the prequel to “Echoing Yafa”.

What made you want to do this audio walk about Berlin?

The easiest answer is because I live here, and I work where I live. I actually never wanted to deal with those topics, I grew up during this memory culture boom when they started erecting all those monuments, and also because of the proximity of it all in my family.

When I came back to Germany to live, these topics became bigger and bigger. The instrumentalisation of memory, the weaponisation of antisemitism – I felt the urgency to deal with it. And the memorials are central sites. Think of the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe. It’s as if these blocks of cement came to signify German memory culture. 

And now that your audio walk has been released, how do you expect it to live in what is a changing city, and impact people’s experiences of the city?

I just hope people will find out about it and experience it. It’s not gonna change things directly, but it has the potential to open a lot of discussions, specifically between communities. Something that I didn’t realise until after I had finished, was how much it’s actually about having space for grief and mourning. So much is being taken away, or repressed by the city of Berlin. So I hope it will open up possibilities to think, feel and mourn together, and turn this into political energy to work against all this continued violence and repression.

Talking about the importance of spaces to grieve, you discuss in the tour how the Memorial to Europe’s Sinti and Roma Murdered Under Nazism is now set to be altered and damaged in order to create an S-bahn line.

Yeah, I mean the plans are not clear yet. To me it’s scandalous that this is possible. I find this memorial different from the one to the murdered Jews of Europe. Because the latter wasn’t a Jewish initiative and I don’t know anyone Jewish who identifies with it. Whereas the one for Rom*nja and Sinti*zze is a really important space for political activism, but also as a site to mourn and grieve.

It would be terrible if this were destroyed or altered. And thinking that an S-bahn would go underneath it… I mean, imagine how that would feel, with the history of the Deutsche Bahn and the Reichs Bahn that carried millions of people to their deaths. It’s absurd. I don’t think it would be possible to come up with the same plans for the Jewish memorial, and that shows again how selective this is and how opportunistic.

Throughout the walk, you repeatedly engage in the overlaps in the histories of the Holocaust and colonialism. But you also refuse to engage in simplistic identity politics, rather, you prefer to leave things messy. What is the idea behind how you engage in these entangled histories?

It comes from how memory has come to be abused, as if history and identity can give us a clear path to the present or future. I think both non-Jewish German and Jewish identity have been instrumentalised by Israel or Germany into some sort of entitlement. As if because we did “A”, we have to do “B”; or because we went through “A”, we are entitled to “B”. That’s something I refuse.

There’s a legitimacy to identity politics, but there’s also a danger of reproducing really simplistic binary oppositions – where does that leave us with the politics? In a way, this audio walk is feeding from my own biography and family, but what motivates me to do it is not my German-Jewish identity, but my deep commitment to justice. It’s a political thing. I have a relevant perspective to speak on these things, but I’m not entitled to it. And I want to show how messy and contradictory history is, and how we’re all implicated.

It also stood out to me how you engaged historical content in its messiness, such as the question of Queer people during the Holocaust. You challenge the monument’s narrative that only gay men deserve memorialisation. So you give space to the targeting of Queer people more broadly, while also stressing how important it is to recognize that many people who hid their queerness were among the perpetrators during the Holocaust. I’m curious how you think these historical complexities are useful for us today?

First of all, to de-center the narrative of the perpetrators, in order to not repeat the violence through  their language and how they categorised people. But it is also a way to question and destabilize our understanding of the categories of innocent victims and evil perpetrators. Men who engaged in homosexuality were persecuted by the Nazis and women weren’t, at least in Germany. In Austria they were, interestingly. What does that actually mean? Did that apply to everyone the same way? What about a person that was racialised and homosexual, or disabled and homosexual? 

And what does it mean today? We have a lesbian leading an extreme right wing party [Ed: Alice Weidel, co-lead candidate for the federal AfD], we have this memorial and laws against discrimination. But that doesn’t mean that Queer people are all safe. It also depends on where they are, and what else is in their identity. I think you always have to look a little bit closer in order to understand, to not fall into traps, and to be in solidarity.

On that note of solidarity, how has it taken putting out this walk in the present political moment?

It was meant to be released in November 2023. It was really difficult to finish the project while things have been escalating so quickly. The history of the Holocaust has been instrumentalised to such an unprecedented level. So much of what’s happening now in Gaza and elsewhere is implicated in these histories. It was impossible to include all of it, but I really hope it speaks to the situation we face now.

There’s a lot of overlapping of time periods during the walk, or things that don’t fit into a linear time frame. What were you trying to achieve while engaging this splicing of chronology within a given monument? 

In the hegemonic narrative the Holocaust transcends history. It’s the Zivilisationsbruch, the rupture of civilization, there’s no before or after. I think this is really detrimental to our understanding of it and it enables its instrumentalisation. In order to deepen our understanding of how violence and oppression are being produced and reproduced, we really need to move away from this. 

At the same time it is really important to be precise and intentional when we engage with these entanglements and comparisons to sharpen our understanding. The danger of equating everything with everything and relativising historical injustice is real. It doesn’t just concern the Holocaust. I didn’t have to construct these historical connections artificially, they exist. They are mind boggling, like the example of the German engagements in Venezuela that’s hardly talked about.

Can you tell us more about that?

It was the first attempt to establish a German colony. The Welser merchant family from Augsburg co-financed the Spanish conquest of America. In return they got Venezuela and called it little Venice. It didn’t go well for the Germans as a colony, but people kept migrating and profiting from it, including during the Third Reich. The most recent example is a very important site of the walk, the Global Stone Project in Tierpark. Here a German artist took a rock which is important to the Pemón indigenous community in Venezuela, and dumped it in the Tiergarten to become part of his so-called “peace project”. So one of the stories is how this indigenous community fought for 20 years to get it back.

These overlapping histories are really hard to lay out as a written interview, but that speaks to the power of the audio walk where you deftly tie these together, in a way that an interview can’t.

All these are examples of connections, so I’m convinced that these worlds are shared. And I think that’s very important for the left, where we often end up fighting because we lose sight of the connections of our struggles.

Thank you for your time, Miriam.

Macron shows his contempt for democracy

France is still waiting for the President to name a new Prime Minister


24/08/2024

Seven weeks ago, President Macron’s party was defeated at the parliamentary elections in France, losing over 90 seats (they were already running a minority government before the poll). But Macron has so far refused to nominate a left Prime Minister, despite the fact that the left alliance (New Popular Front) is the largest group of MPs in the National Assembly, with over 185 seats to Macron’s 160. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a leader of the France Insoumise (France in Revolt), has accused the president of being “an autocrat” who is “causing chaos”.

Macron declares war on the France Insoumise

Meanwhile, Macron has been trying to squeeze every last bit of political capital out of the success of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, subjecting athletes to embarassingly long hugs, while his cronies try to cobble together some kind of left-right coalition. The priority, say the anti-democratic Macronists, is to exclude “extremists of the Left and of the Right” – that is to say, the France Insoumise, the most radical of the four parties in the left alliance, and the fascist National Rally. So they are searching for a Prime Minister, preferably from some left party, who rejects the NPF’s radical programme and hates the France Insoumise. The traditional right Republicans are backing Macron up, by saying that they will immediately propose a vote of no confidence if the new government includes ministers from the France Insoumise, but not if there is a soft left alliance with Macron.

Macron has in effect declared war on the France Insoumise. After Rima Hassan, an FI Euro MP, published a pro-Palestinian tweet pointing out that even the United Nations did not treat the events of October 7th like they treat terrorist attacks, and that outside of the Western powers, almost noone dismisses Hamas as a terrorist organization, Macron organized 51 of his MPs to demand that Rima Hassan’s parliamentary immunity should be lifted and that she should be tried for supporting terrorism. He is hoping that this sort of fabricated “scandal” will split and weaken the New Popular Front. The right wing media will be trying, disgustingly, to claim there is a link between principled opposition to genocide in Gaza, and the horrific antisemitic attack on a synagogue in La Grande Motte in southern France this weekend.

In his speech at the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Allied landing in the South of France, Macron hit peak hypocrisy, declaring “We must not give into division”. This is the president who made everyone work two years longer, and slashed unemployment benefit, while abolishing the wealth tax, viciously repressing the yellow vests and demonizing Muslims.

Can Macron split the Left alliance?

Macron’s zombie government, who have officially resigned, are continuing their work against us. Darmanin, interior minister, is rabidly stoking islamophobia, because he knows the left fightback on this issue will be muted. A Muslim preacher from Pessac in the South West of France is threatened with deportation because he defends Palestine and because he has declared that France “is an Islamophobic country.” And a major mosque in Marseille is being threatened with closure by the police on trumped up charges.

Austerity continues too. The ex-Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has sent letters to the ministers of health, education and others, telling them they should cut hundreds of millions of Euros in real terms from their budgets over the next year. Even centre-right MPs like Charles de Courson are protesting that “it is not good for democracy” for a government which has in theory resigned after its election defeat to do this.

On August 23rd, Macron met with the heads of all political parties, promising to choose a Prime Minister shortly afterwards. He is hoping to be able to avoid following democratic procedure and naming Lucie Castets, a candidate who is loyal to the radical NPF manifesto, and upon whom the four left parties have agreed.

In this slowly developing but deep crisis, the four parties of the left alliance (France in Revolt, Socialists, Communists and Greens) are revealing their political differences, although none has yet broken ranks to form an alliance with Macron’s people. Faced with Macron’s refusal to appoint Lucie Castets, the France Insoumise has threatened to launch an impeachment procedure against him. This initiative was denounced by the Communist Party leadership, and Socialist and Green leaders distanced themselves from such a “disruptive” suggestion.

The mass media are running a frenzied campaign to present Macron’s choices as sensible and good for the country, although left leaders are regularly interviewed at length (if aggressively) on TV. Alternative media are playing an important rôle, especially for left activists and sympathizers: a 90 minute analysis of the present political situation by Jean-Luc Mélénchon got 400,000 views on YouTube, as did a recent television interview with Marine Tondelier, leader of the Green Party.

Preparing the fightback

The end of August is the traditional time for political summer schools in France. Over five thousand people are attending the four-day France Insoumise summer school in Valence ; 116 meetings will be involved. Major speakers include Lucie Castets, Olivier Besancenot of the New Anticapitalist Party, and Assa Traore, who has been an inspiring campaigner against police violence and racism since her brother was murdered by police in 2016. The Communist Party is holding its summer school over three days, with 66 meetings. Two thousand five hundred activists listened enthusiastically to Lucie Castets at the Greens’ summer school on 22 August, and several hundred people are gathering for four days on the South coast at the summer school of the New Anticapitalist Party. Everywhere activists are debating about the best strategy in a completely new institutional crisis, and an ever more polarized situation.

Macron’s attempt to split the left and persuade the centre left to ditch all radical policies has not yet worked. He may be obliged to allow the formation of a minority government by the New Popular Front. Such a government might have difficulty passing legislation (although there may well be a majority in the House for certain welcome measures such as reversing last year’s rise in the standard retirement age or establishing minimum agricultural prices to protect small farmers). But passing new laws is not the only thing governments do. A number of important clauses in the NPF programme could be carried out by a left government without a vote in parliament: for example dissolving the most racist police units, raising the minimum wage and minimum pension, raising public sector wages, freezing prices of basic foodstuffs, and recognizing the state of Palestine.

What happens in parliament in the next few months is important. Whatever government is formed will be a minority government and further elections cannot be held till next June. But mass mobilization will be key. We may need mass action to force Macron to name an NPF Prime Minister. We will certainly need mass action to support the enacting of the reforms in the programme when resistance from the rich and powerful turns out to be even more vicious than the radical left leadership thinks it will be. And if Macron takes his contempt for democracy further and hand picks his left-right alliance government, mass strikes and demonstrations will be needed to throw them out. And if no minority government can survive, we must demand that Macron resigns and that a new president is elected.

Urgent appeal: Help us build a water well to survive the war

Fundraiser for Nilin Village


22/08/2024

To our friends and to all the people in the world who believe in our freedom.

My name is Saeed Amireh. I am Palestinian, from the West Bank village of Nilin.

This is our desperate call for help.

For many years, my village has been suffering. Nilin has been surrounded on four sides by illegal Israeli settlements and the Israeli apartheid wall built on our land.

The original inhabitants of Nilin have been forcibly displaced to other parts of the West Bank and outside of Palestine.

Israeli crimes against my village include arrest, shooting, killing, terrorising us day and night. They want to cut us off from all means of life and existence. We are unable to farm the land, the main source of income for so many families.

When the war started on the 7th October, the Israeli soldiers began a different strategy of revenge in the West Bank. They introduced a new level of brutality and violence which we have never before experienced.

They blocked the entrance of Nilin, isolating it completely from other Palestinian villages and cities. They started a huge campaign of arrests and shootings. They invaded day and night to make our lives hell. We have no medical care and people can’t attend hospitals or go to work.

Farmers can’t farm their lands or harvest our olive groves. If anyone approaches the fields, they are shot dead or arrested and placed in administrative detention. What happens in Israeli prisons has been widely documented.

Worst of all is the strategy of starvation they are practicing against us. Since the 7th of October until today, the people of Nilin have no work or any means of income. The price of food has skyrocketed due to the war.

Our people are helping each other by sharing what they have. Shops have been lending food to those in need, in the hope they can repay them when the war is over.

Now, our people have nothing left to offer. The shop owners are in huge difficulty because they cannot be repaid as the war continues.

I, with my friends, have been doing all we can to organise food parcels and buy what is necessary for the families most in need. We have been campaigning as much as we can for help from people who could donate and help us to survive this war.

Today the village is not only suffering from starvation and the absence of security, but also from daily attacks by Israeli settlers. They continue to provoke us and cut off water to the village. We sometimes spend many days without water.

Some in the village who are capable of constructing a water well have started to dig to prepare for the worst happening. We fear a regional war will break out and Israel will cut off our access to water permanently. They continue to provide us with deadlines for when they will attack us.

We don’t feel this war is ending any time soon and we must prepare for what’s coming.

During this difficult time, my family and village cannot afford to construct this well to provide water, which is the most vital element on this earth for existence! We need water to drink, cook, clean and avoid many diseases.

This is a plea to our friends and all people of the world who believe in our freedom. Please donate what you can to help us to construct a water well in Nilin and help us to avoid starvation. Please help us overcome this huge challenge for existence that we are facing, as fast as possible, before it’s too late.

The water well will be designed to gather the rain water. It will be filled manually and filtered. If any further donations are given, they will go directly to food parcels for the families most in need.

Please share this message. Thank you so much and God bless you all.

Saeed Amireh

Support Saeed’s fundraiser here.

Free Gaza / Beats Against Genocide

Rally and Concert for Gaza


21/08/2024

For over 10 months, Israel has been carrying out a genocide in the Gaza Strip. While tens of thousands of civilists have been slaughtered with German weapons and the support of the German government, legitimate protest here in Germany against this war crime is criminalisd and suppressed with brutal police violence. In particularly in the area around Sonnenallee in Neukölln in recent months we have witnessed how a whole community had been reduced to solence and their grief has been suffocated.

In order to oppose Germany’s support for the mass murder in Gaza and the criminalisation of Palestinian voices, we are organising a large protest rally on the last Friday of the school holidays together with a rap concert. Solidarity with our siblings in Gaza! Solidarity with the vicims of anti-Palestinian police violence in Berlin!

Action – Free Gaza / Beats Against Genocide with Ali Bumaye, S Castro, Secret Act, DJ Craft, Tenor, Camaro, Nassiemog

Friday, 23rd August from 6.30pm, Berlin Südstern (NOTE: the police have moved the event from its original venue)