Zo wrote and read their testimony in English, and the court interpreter translated it into German. Any errors have been intentionally retained for authenticity
Five days into this trial, I would like to preface my opening statement with disbelief, grief, disappointment, shock, offence and disgust.
Disbelief, that this court has done everything in its power to neglect us of our right to a fair trial and confidential, spontaneous communication with our lawyers according to Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights – a human rights deed binding for member states.
Grief, that Germany´s fabric is so tightly interwoven with genocide that anti-genocide dissidents are an enemy of the state – allegedly threatening the State so greatly that we are being trialed in the Staatsschutzkammer[1], that we will be locked up for 16 months without a verdict, while condemned to a glass box in the courtroom like serial murderers, like animals, like scum.
Disappointment, that every single application to the judge on behalf of the accused has been rejected, except the one manipulated to humiliate us. What is the purpose of a trial when every single intervention from the defense representatives is rejected? What is the purpose of 42 scheduled trial dates over the span of 8 months, when we have been pre-judged? Is this a theatre or a courthouse?
Shock, that an official of this court carried a rubber chicken in the pocket of his uniform, squeezing it to make noises outside the doors of our cells in the basement. I had immediate fear that someone was making monkey noises in a racially-motivated hate crime. It was only when this “professional” of this high-security Oberlandesgerichtsgebäude[2] was even daring enough to squeeze this toy inside this very courtroom that I saw the rubber chicken poking out from his uniform pocket. Was this also an attempt to humiliate us?
Offence, that this court interrupted the opening statement of Daniel – while talking about genocide, and suicide in a German prison – to humiliate a member of public by choice of using the time designated to our trial to punish a person not on trial.
Should it not be the priority of this court to hear the perspective of the accused? Should it not be the priority of this court to avoid holding people unsentenced in prison for longer than is necessary?
Disgust, that the state prosecutor laughed his way through the opening Statement of Mr. Düsberg, who was detailing the brutality of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity – in particular the cold-blooded murder of children. Denying this on account of a misunderstanding – that the prosecutor was actually surprised which, coincidentally was expressed through smirking and suppressing laughter, he nonetheless relegated Mr. Düsberg’s statement to “having no legal relevance”. Is not presenting the motivation of an alleged crime a core element of every legal proceeding? Or was it surprise in realizing the extent of the genocide and realizing his position in protecting profiteers of the genocide?
Such reasons are why my expectation of a fair trial is reduced with every passing day. Nonetheless, I will raise my voice and deliver my opening statement with pride and a heavy heart:
My name is Zo and my surname is pronounced ‘Hailu’[3].
My ancestors are from Ethiopia, England and Scotland. I am a trans non-binary person, pronouns he/they.
As a proud African who has both suffered from British Imperialism and benefited from the institutions instructed through its imperial wealth, the liberation of my African siblings in Africa and the diaspora is my compass. My people’s history has been violently interrupted by Europe, and our continent’s destiny depends on bringing an end to imperialist extraction. It is European imperialism which has destroyed indigenous peoples’ communities, way of life, knowledge systems, languages, lives and livelihoods around the globe, and this is no different in Palestine. It is Britain who were colonising Palestine, signed away Palestine’s land to the Zionists that was not their land to sign away. This criminal deal is called the Balfour declaration of 1917.
Almost two decades before the Balfour declaration the Palestinian public and political figure Yusuf Diyaa El Din Pasha Al Kahlidi wrote to the father of modern Zionism extending sympathy for the plight of Jewish people in Europe, and pleading for Palestine to be left alone, warning Zionism would not only endanger Christian and Muslim Palestinians, but Jewish Palestinians, too, who constituted up to 5% of the indigenous population. His concerns were ignored.
Approaching the mid 20th century when anti-colonial liberation movements intensified around the world, the Zionist project rebranded itself from a colonial movement to a liberation movement. It is paradoxical nonsense for a movement to attach itself to British and late German and American imperialism, build a home on the rubble of stolen cities and villages, and call itself a liberation movement. Thus, I will continue to stand against injustice and act in solidarity with people resisting imperialism and other forms of oppression around the world.
I am brought before the Landgericht Stuttgart[4] today for civil disobedience against Elbit Systems. As an arms manufacturer and military technology developer, Elbit Systems is a key actor in the genocidal assault on Gaza and the military occupation of Palestine as a whole. A company which markets its weapons as “combat-proven”, using Palestine and Palestinian people for their sick military experiments. A company which profits from war crimes. A company which the German government has allowed to continue functioning on German soil. All the while saying “Nie wieder”[5].
I stand here in full solidarity with my Palestinian siblings in all of historical Palestine, those who have been forced into exile, and those who have been martyred since the colonization of Palestine. As we approach the 78th year commemoration of the Nakba — catastrophe in English — when the UN officialised the colonization of Palestine and over 700,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland, we — justice loving people — cannot repeat the fatal mistake of those who watched silently around the world. We cannot rest while the state called Israel continues its colonial expansion into the West Bank, Golan Heights, Lebanon and Gaza through military terror. We refuse to normalize the racist brutality of Europe, US empire backed Israeli apartheid and massacre.
It is here in Europe and in the US empire where weapons used in genocide and other crimes against humanity are produced. It is here in the so called Global North that consent for the murder of our Palestinian siblings is manufactured. It is here in Europe that powers grant impunity to the state of Israel, making public clowns of themselves and their double standards.
We, the ordinary people of conscience, must continue to learn and share the history of Palestine and fight for her future — a future without military occupation, apartheid, settler violence, genocide and ethnic cleansing, forced starvation, environmental destruction, generational trauma, racism, intentional water shortage, harassment and torture, and most recently the fascist death sentence which has been added to the long list of grave injustices. We must fight for a future where children grow up hearing birds, not drones, where children grow up in homes, not refugee camps, where they aren’t neglected of their education by forced hunger and two-ton bombs. A future where families can visit one another without tortuous military checkpoints, where celebrations are more frequent than funerals, where olive trees, Za’atar and Akkoub flourish. A future which greets the returning exiled Palestinians. A future with hope and dignity. A future with self-determination.
Life in Palestine is one of survival confronting settler-colonialism on the ground, and in existential struggle against erasure in rhetoric, literature and media. Understanding settler-colonialism is central to understanding how the Zionist project born in mid 19th century Europe realised the state of Israel, changing the fate of Palestine and her people ever since.
Colonialism describes the politico-economic relationship of a territory dominated by an external power, to extract its resources, human labour included. It is a process dependent on racism, dehumanization and exploitation.
Have you ever wondered how the cold miserable European states with little valuable natural resources and relatively small labour capacities are some of the richest, most powerful states globally? Surprise, colonialism. The British state has one of the largest bloodiest stains which is their colonial project. It is estimated that Britain accumulated today’s worth of US$54 trillion from the colonial pillaging of India alone. Having colonized (including but not limited to) today’s South Africa, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Nepal and Jamaica,
it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how Britain built its crumbling social welfare state – with stolen wealth.
Many are much less aware of Germany’s colonial pillaging. In 1884 to 1885 German colonizer von Bismarck hosted the so called “Kongo” Konferenz – the negotiations which brought greedy racist European imperialists together to partition Africa. Despite colonialism only being possible through insane physical and psychological violence, within 20 years of the partitioning of Africa, Germany made its way to the top of the list for just how savage its colonial rule was. In 1904/1905 Germany committed the first genocide of the 20th century in a war of extermination against the Herero and Nama peoples of today’s Namibia. Up to 80,000 Herero people and 10,000 Nama people were brutally murdered – 80% and half of their populations respectively. This is where Germany trialled and perfected genocide by way of concentration camps. However, it took the importing of this method home 30 years later, to make “Nie Wieder“ relevant and even part of the “Staatsräson”[6].
Moving on to settler colonialism as a specific manifestation of colonialism, firstly it’s clear from the name that this mode of colonialism relies on settlers – people immigrating to the territory in question and not just the construction of a colonial political administration. The settlers rely initially on external powers. In the 20th century before Palestine was partitioned and the state called Israel appeared on the map in 1948, the early Zionist settlers relied on military and diplomatic support from Britain, whose own highest priority was securing access to the Suez Canal and securing other geopolitical interests in the region. Similar relations can be traced in the early stage colonisation of turtle island – today’s settler colonial State known as the USA and the state we know as Australia whose European settlers, too, relied initially on British support.
The second particular feature of settler colonialism is the motivation to control the land of the territory being occupied, and not just its valuable resources. This raises the unavoidable question of how to control the land when there are people, in this case the Palestinian people, who already inhabit and cultivate the land? Coercion, land theft, forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, and finally culminating in genocide. The story is fundamentally the same in the origin of the settler colony “USA” in which the European settlers committed genocide against the peoples indigenous to the land, forcibly displacing the surviving people out of their homelands and into allocated areas known as “reserves”.
Let us return to 19th century Europe when modern Zionism was transformed from a Christian religious vision into a Jewish nationalist settler colonial project. Palestine was just one of a few options of where to establish a Zionist colony. Other options included in Uganda, Azerbaijan, and various locations in the so called Americas. In the context of increasingly violent antisemitism in Europe, it is no surprise Jewish people toiled with how to respond to this pervasive problem – to assimilate more deeply into the nations which they already belonged to, or to found a Jewish nation in of itself. Theodor Herzl, the man considered the father of modern Zionism advocated for the latter, likely inspired by the budding nationalist movements around Europe and his vision very quickly became one of settler colonialism.
Brought here today, accused of antisemitism by the state prosecutor in this anti-genocide and anti-colonial action against Elbit Systems, I want to be very clear about the following: I support self-determination wholeheartedly and for this reason it is not the Jewish nationalist pillar of Zionism we bring into question, but the settler colonial pillar of Zionism which has intentionally prevented Palestinians from self determination for around a century.
It is similar claims which the Palestinian liberation movement in Palestine and globally are accused of. In his book “10 myths about Israel“, historian Ilan Pappé comments on this, saying the following;
Begin quote “The official Israeli narrative or foundational mythology refuses to allow the Palestinians even a modicum of moral right to resist the Jewish colonisation of their homeland that began in 1882. From the very beginning Palestinian resistance was depicted as motivated by hate for Jews. It was accused of promoting a protean antisemitic campaign of terror that began when the first settlers arrived and continued until the creation of the state of Israel. The diaries of the early Zionists tell a different story. They are full of anecdotes revealing how the settlers were well received by the Palestinians who offered them shelter and in many cases taught them how to cultivate the land. Only when it became clear that settlers had not come to live alongside the native population, but in place of it, did the Palestinian resistance begin. And when that resistance started, it quickly took the form of every other anticolonialist struggle.” End quote.
With this, let it be known, that no amount of repression and weaponizing antisemitism will separate us from our Palestinian siblings in the anticolonial struggle.
So after the Nakba – the initial partitioning of Palestine, and the 1967 war in which the remainder of historical Palestine became militarily occupied, the state of Israel has escalated its colonial aggression in the last few years. The genocidal assault on Gaza by the Zionist state has become widely dubbed the first ever live streamed genocide.
As Gazan Palestinians have been terrorised by two tonne bombs, drones, snipers, white phosphorus and jets, regardless whether elderly or newborn, waving white flags, or sick in hospitals, the world has been terrorised by the blinding violence too. Bombing so relentless multi generation families have been massacred all at once. Parents collecting the pieces of their children into plastic bags. Limbs amputated on kitchen tables without anaesthetic or other necessary medical supplies. Voices begging for help from under the rubble of their bombed homes. People. Burnt. Alive.
These are not anomalous occurrences. They are all fragments of the systematic and intentional erasure of every sphere of life in Gaza. 2/3 of murdered journalists worldwide in 2025 were murdered by Israeli war criminals. Every hospital in Gaza has been partially or completely destroyed by Israeli war criminals. Hospital staff and ambulance responders have been targeted by Israeli war criminals. Schools have been targeted by Israeli war criminals. Refugee camps have been targeted by … Israeli war criminals. The project of so called Greater Israel. Emboldened Zionist politicians publicly announce their intention to continue genocide and ethnic cleansing in the region surrounding Palestine. This is why immediate civil action is a must.
In January 2024 the international court of Justice accepted the case brought forward by South Africa, ruling provisionally that there was already probable grounds indicating the state of Israel was committing genocide. Since then, the genocidal assault has intensified and an international arrest warrant for war crimes has been issued for the architect of the genocide, Netanyahu. And what has the German government done since? Continued with state visits and diplomatically supporting the state of Israel. Continued exporting weaponry and military technology essential for sustaining the genocide. Continued profiting from this very genocide.
“Nie wieder” and complicity in a genocide cannot coexist.
Theoretically an essential element of democracy is the separation of powers. So, while the executive branch, the German government has very clearly chosen complicity, what will the judicial branch, the Landgericht Stuttgart[6] in this case, choose: complicity (in genocide) or “Nie wieder”?
[1] ‘State Security Chamber of the Higher Regional Court’ while the trial is by the Regional Court
[2] Higher Regional Court Building
[3] “Hi Lou”
[4] Stuttgart Regional Court
[5] ‘Never Again’
[6] ‘Raison d’état’ or ‘State Reasons’
