In Germany, rallies for Gaza and resurgence of anti-Semitism

A red banner opens the procession which advances at a walking pace on the Kottbusser Damm. “ Only the end of occupation will be the beginning of peace,” it is written in white letters. In Berlin, several thousand demonstrators, often with keffiyehs around their heads or necks, chant two slogans in unison: “Free Palestine!” and “Viva Gaza”. This is the largest demonstration in Berlin since the attack by Hamas.

On the sidewalks, veiled women slalom between onlookers to push strollers in which children wave the black, green and white flags with the red triangle. Germany is home to one of the largest Palestinian communities outside the Middle East. Estimates put it at 175,000 or 225,000 members. Thousands of demonstrators also gathered on Saturday in Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and Stuttgart. Berlin is also the city with the most Turks in the West and they came in numbers to express their solidarity. Mehmet, an electrician in his forties, “could no longer remain passive and watch the atrocities shown by the news channels continuously”. A teenager with curly brown hair trembles with anger as he shows shocking images of Gaza on his cell phone to a group of journalists at the head of the convoy. Angry teenager takes us to task: Why isn't the media showing this video from Gaza?

Halfway along, at the height of a kebab seller with windows open onto the street, the procession is stopped by a double cordon of police officers in navy blue uniforms. A green and white police truck slowly backs up. The loudspeakers issue a warning: “Organizers, stop comments contrary to the law and the right to demonstrate or the police will be under a legal obligation to intervene. » A man and a woman shouting anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas slogans were pulled from the crowd by officers at the start of the demonstration, according to witnesses. A police officer in charge of communications specifies that two other pro-Palestinian demonstrations were banned in the center of the capital, for fear of clashes with another gathering, against anti-Semitism and in solidarity with Israel which was held on Sunday.

Also read “We don’t say “Allah akbar”, but we mean it very strongly”: in Paris, thousands of demonstrators chant their support for Palestine

Due to demonstrations regularly punctuated by anti-Semitic excesses, the deputy for the Interior of the Berlin Senate wanted to impose a general ban. She had to bow to justice, in the name of the right to demonstrate. The gathering ends peacefully at nightfall. However, “the streets will not remain calm if the Jews return to Gaza in force,” predicts Jibril, a protester with a full beard. Calls from antifa on social networks to join Hermann Square in the evening have had no effect. Those broadcast in the week of “breaking everything” TikTok influencers are also.

However, the evenings in Neukölln were not always so calm. It has now been two weeks since pro-Palestinian rallies have been punctuated by incidents, mortar fire against the police forces which left several injured in its ranks. In an atmosphere reminiscent of last New Year's Eve, trash cans and four cars were burned. Dramatic and dismaying eighty years after the Shoah, Molotov cocktails were thrown during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday in the direction of a Jewish cultural center, in the center of the capital.

The device thrown by pedestrians shouting “ Free Palestine! ”, according to a police officer on duty, missed his target. As in the country's worst times, Stars of David were painted on walls or doors of buildings. Without the police being able to determine whether these inscriptions are the work of right-wing, left-wing extremists or Islamists. In an interview given on Friday to the RND media group, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, judges that “ the threat currently comes more from the Arab side than from the far-right scene in Germany.” He also denounces the “racist and xenophobic” climate established by the far-right party, AfD.

On Sunday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged to eradicate anti-Semitism, during the inauguration of a new synagogue in Dessau, in the east of the country. He promised “zero tolerance for anti-Semitism in Germany.”