Repression and resistance: the Palestine movement in Germany

During Berlin’s Internationalist Queer Pride on Saturday, 26 July, more than 15,000 people marched through the streets of the German capital under the slogan “None of us are free until all of us are free”. Our numbers grew as we marched through the working-class neighbourhood Neukölln, picking up many locals watching from the footpaths who were drawn in by the parade’s central demand: end the genocide in Gaza. It was not long before riot police, stalking us in massive numbers from the start, launched an unprovoked attack. Dozens of us were beaten and arrested, myself included, and the march was forcefully dispersed well short of its destination.

In Germany, this sort of police response has come to be expected at Palestine rallies, especially in Berlin. As in most other countries, there has been a steep rise in support for the Palestinian cause, especially among young people, and the German state is resorting to desperate and draconian measures to stop the rising tide.

Since October 2023, the German state has cracked down on Palestine activism by raiding homes, shutting down events, cancelling art exhibitions, cutting off funding to cultural institutions and issuing deportation orders to foreign nationals who dare to criticise Israel.

More than 30 raids on activists have taken place since October 2023. These raids—which usually happen at night and involve dozens of heavily armed police—serve one purpose: intimidation.

In April 2024, the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace was raided by the Berlin police. A three-day conference they were hosting was shut down, and several organisers were arrested, including Udi Raz, a Jewish Israeli living in Berlin. Only months earlier, Raz had been fired by the state-funded Jewish Museum for describing Israel’s actions in the West Bank as apartheid.

In another case in December 2023, the Berlin home of Salah Said, a German-born Palestinian activist, was raided by police, who confiscated personal items and electronic devices. He was raided two more times over the following eighteen months, despite never being accused of any crime.

Since October 2023, several cultural organisations and exhibitions have been cancelled, and artists threatened with deportation. The Folkwang Museum in Essen cancelled a planned exhibition curated by Haitian artist Anaïs Duplan, citing his support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. In Berlin, the cultural centre Oyoun lost all public funding after hosting a Jewish-led pro-Palestine event.

Several academics have been fired or had their professorships rescinded after voicing support for the BDS campaign, including Nancy Fraser, a Jewish American who was stood down by Cologne University for calling Israel an “ethno-supremacist state”.

But possibly more disturbing than all of this has been the criminalisation of everyday acts of resistance by ordinary people, especially Arabs and Muslims, showing solidarity with the Palestinians.

In February 2025, Berlin police implemented a racist ban on Arabic chants at demonstrations, citing “public order” concerns. Despite this ban, and despite arrests, protesters have defiantly continued to chant in Arabic. During the Pride march, “Al-Hurriya li-Filastin” (Freedom for Palestine) was chanted by thousands of Arabic and non-Arabic speakers alike. The phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” has been criminalised, and Palestinian flags and keffiyehs are banned in all schools across Berlin.

However, none of this has stopped the movement from growing.

At the start of Israel’s latest assault on Gaza in October 2023, pro-Palestine rallies were banned and several attempts to march were met with arrests, pepper spray and hundreds of riot police. In the days and weeks following Israel’s ground invasion, protesters continued to defy the ban. A candlelight vigil held by Jewish Voice for a Just Peace was a protest form that the authorities hesitated to crush, which created space for demonstrations immediately afterwards that managed to reclaim the streets.

In Neukölln, “illegal” spontaneous gatherings in support of Palestine turned into organised demonstrations, and on the night of 18 October 2023, riot police cracked down on a large pro-Palestine gathering. This time, the protesters—mostly young, local residents of Middle Eastern background—fought back. Protesters used fireworks, stones and Molotov cocktails to fight the police, and built barricades in some places. Over the next three nights, police used water cannons, pepper spray and mass arrests to subdue the protests. The police were subsequently forced to soften somewhat their hardline stance, fearing further rioting.

By 21 October, demonstrations were allowed, and about 5,000 attended a protest in Berlin. The right to protest had been won on the streets.

In the following weeks, rallies were mostly limited to major cities like Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg, and usually numbered less than a few thousand. In the past twelve months, however, hundreds—sometimes thousands—have repeatedly protested in other major cities including Leipzig, Freiburg, Stuttgart, Münster and Cologne.

In Berlin, the rallies have grown into the tens of thousands over time, reaching a peak on 21 June this year, when a demonstration called by two influencers on Instagram drew more than 50,000 people. These are numbers never before seen for Palestine protests in Germany.

The growth of the protest movement mirrors a recent change in public opinion. Despite the rabidly pro-Israel German media, public opinion has shifted strongly in favour of the Palestinians.

The newspaper Die Zeit found that support for Palestine among under-30s has risen from 53 percent in 2019 to 63 percent today. In the same poll, 43 percent of respondents said they would support a pro-Palestine demonstration, even if Hamas flags were present.

A poll conducted by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper this year found that 57 percent of Germans now hold a negative view of Israel, up from 23 percent in 2022. Another poll conducted by the public broadcaster ZDF in May found that only 13 percent of Germans support Israel’s actions in Gaza, and 80 percent think Israel’s actions are unjustified. It cannot be overstated how big a shift this represents in a place like Germany.

Germany is arguably the staunchest supporter of Israel after the United States. The term Staatsräson, or “reason of state”, is used by politicians to argue that Germany can atone for the Holocaust only by making the survival, security and success of the Israeli nation a core reason for its own existence. Exactly why the Palestinians should have to pay the price for the Holocaust is never clarified. But unwavering support for Israel is much more about the priorities of German imperialism than about atoning for the Holocaust.

As the post-World War Two geopolitical map shifted from rivalry between European colonial powers to the Cold War stand-off between the US and the USSR, Germany became America’s key European ally. Even after the fall of the USSR, the US maintained more troops and military bases in Germany than in any other European country—and still does. Germany is one of the most powerful countries in the world. It leads the European Union, the world’s largest economic bloc, and benefits immensely from the geopolitical status quo. Reining in Israel would mean reducing the West’s influence in the Middle East, which is unacceptable for Germany, America and its allies.

The German state justifies its violent repression of pro-Palestinian protests by labelling participants as antisemitic. And if you label something antisemitic in Germany, you can do whatever you want to it.

There has also been a long and steady campaign of Islamophobia and anti-migrant sentiment in Germany (particularly towards Middle Eastern migrants), led by mainstream parties. It’s a convenient scapegoat tactic when the economy is stagnating, housing is becoming unaffordable and public services are crumbling. When an entire religious and ethnic group is dehumanised, it becomes that much easier to meet its protests with outright violence.

While most political parties, including the Social Democratic Party and the Greens, have backed this genocide, the left party Die Linke has moved in the right direction. Die Linke has at times acted shamefully by suppressing pro-Palestinian voices within the party, insisting that Israel has a “right to defend itself” and hesitating to use the word genocide. But there is a growing pro-Palestinian movement within Die Linke that has forced it to call rallies and field pro-Palestinian candidates for election.

In this year’s federal election, Die Linke built a strong grassroots campaign in parts of Berlin, led by activists who had been involved in local struggles for Palestine, against police racism and against evictions and deportations. The Die Linke candidate for Neukölln (one of twelve Berlin boroughs), Ferat Kocak, won 30 percent of the candidate vote and was elected to parliament. This was a 17-point increase from the 2021 election, in which Die Linke won just 13 percent of the same candidate vote.

Berlin-wide, Die Linke increased its vote by nearly 8 percent and won the overall party vote with 20 percent, easily beating all other parties. There was a surge of support in neighbourhoods with high Arab, Muslim and Turkish populations, as well as increased support from young people.

In the mainstream media, a shift has taken place in the past few months towards accepting some criticism of Israel and allowing support for the Palestinian cause. News organisations that until recently parroted Israeli talking points have started to change, ever so slightly, their coverage of the war on Gaza. The horrifying images of starving children are difficult to spin and defend. But the Palestinians’ determination to live, along with the growing protest movements, have surely also played a part.

In Germany and elsewhere, something is happening that is rare to see: the realisation by masses of people that the entire facade of Western democracy, freedom and human rights is nothing more than a bunch of lies that can be discarded at a moment’s notice. People will not soon forget how the entirety of the Western world’s political and media establishments aided and funded this live-streamed genocide.

The Germans have a phrase regarding the Holocaust: “nie wieder”, or never again. Never again will we allow genocide to happen. More people in Germany are coming to realise that “nie wieder ist jetzt”. Never again is now.