The sense of obligation the German state feels towards Israel has collided with the freedom of expression and assembly of critics of Israel
On a scrappy intersection in Berlin police officers in riot gear sit inside a row of 14 trucks and watch as demonstrators gather. Mixed in age and ethnicity, demonstrators carry signs and banners ranging from creative to provocative to problematic.
No one takes their right to march more seriously than Berliners. Germany’s demonstration capital has around 5,000 registered marches annually, on average 14 daily. All such demonstrations are overseen and accompanied by Berlin police. On its website the Berlin police describe marches as “an elementary component of a democratic community”.
A Berlin-based Irishman “Martin” – not his real name – was one of those grabbed as he stood on the sidelines of a pro-Palestinian demonstration last April. “About 20 of them stormed in and launched at me, I went down backwards on to the ground,” he recalls. “I was punched on my right side, kicked in my left ribs, I hurt my back.”
Many marchers see the police response as ordered by German politicians facing a growing dilemma. Many of those who lined up to condemn the Hamas murder of at least 1,300 Israelis last October struggle now to respond to Israel’s killing of an estimated 40,000 people in Gaza. With a 40-minute delay, the march gets under way and takes more than an hour to cover a kilometre. A collection of different pro-Palestinian groups, the loud, sometimes angry, chants include: “Israel is a terrorist state”, “Zionism is a crime, get your hands off Palestine” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – the latter banned since November in Germany as a “hallmark” of Hamas.
The next day’s police report says that protesters, despite repeated warnings, “used banners as screens” and shouted “pro-Palestinian and inciteful slogans”.
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