In this series of articles, we explore how the German state prosecutes politically active Palestinians outside the judicial system. The standard model—”break law X, be fined Y or appear in court and receive sentence Z”—can be circumvented using asylum, residency, and citizenship laws. These techniques deliberately hide behind a wall of legal jargon and a veneer of dysfunctional bureaucracy. But in reality, they are purposeful, targeted, and exert severe psychological, financial, and material pressure on the affected people.
In the last article, we covered the case of Khaled, a Palestinian organiser and worker who came to Germany as a student 12 years ago. Through a targeted campaign of bureaucratic attacks that spanned over four and a half years, he found himself unable to find a job, register his marriage, or travel to visit his family back home. Khaled’s case describes the situation of thousands of Palestinian students and refugees, who are subject to the brunt of the German repressive apparatus. Without due process, they are prosecuted for their Palestine solidarity completely outside the realm of the legal and penal system.
Such policies, when pushed to the extreme, can have catastrophic consequences. This brings us to the story of B. M.: a Palestinian mother and organiser, former Samidoun activist and practising nurse, who lived with her husband and one-year-old son in Frankfurt am Main. The young family was visiting Jordan so the baby, who was born in Germany, could meet his grandparents for the first time. In August 2024, on their way back from the two-week visit, the young family was told their son was not allowed to board the plane back to Germany.
Assuming it to be a bureaucratic mistake that would be resolved quickly, B. M. stayed in Jordan with the baby while the father flew back to Germany for work. Four months later, the German embassy in Amman sent the family an official letter stating that the baby was deemed a “security threat” and therefore denied entry into the country.
After months of legal limbo and attempting to resolve the situation with a team of lawyers, the young parents were faced with two impossible choices: either B. M. leaves her one-year-old baby back in Jordan and joins her husband in Germany, or she stays with the baby and loses her residency. The story ends with the young family reuniting again in Jordan in May 2025 and leaving Germany for good. The Verfassungsgericht (the Federal Constitutional Court) ruled three months later, in August 2025, in favour of the young family. In other words, the court ruled that the decision to deny the re-entry of the baby—imposed by faceless bureaucrats in the Ausländerbehörde (foreigners’ office), confirmed by faceless bureaucrats in the German embassy in Amman, and rubber-stamped by faceless judges in Berlin in two separate instances—was completely illegal.
But the damage was already done. Not only was the family forced out of the country, but for a year they were extrajudicially subjected to extreme psychological, financial, and existential pressure. This was not a random procedural error, nor was it a legally ambiguous situation. It was an extrajudicial targeting of a Palestinian woman through her child for her struggle for a liberated Palestine.
These policies, of course, have a longer history in west Germany. In the aftermath of the Munich operation of 1972, “well over 1000” Palestinian students and workers were deported from west Germany, and at least 1500 Palestinians and Arabs with valid visas and residency permits were refused entry into the country. These stories must remind us that police brutality is only the tip of the iceberg. It is German bureaucrats, the sons and daughters of Eichmann, who, with a stroke of a pen, an ignored email, feigned ignorance, or through legal loopholes, destroy the lives of those the state deems “unwelcome” in ways that police brutes can only dream of.
