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Rebecca Seidler remembers April 23 of this year very well. She and her father-in-law came to downtown Hanover to observe a pro-Palestinian demonstration. The group "Palestine Speaks" called on its "comrades, brothers, sisters and freedom fighters" to rally for "solidarity with Palestine" and "sanctioning of the Israeli colonial regime".
Because anti-Semitic incidents had repeatedly occurred at similar gatherings in recent years, Seidler wanted to see the demonstration for himself in order to be able to document any incidents. Seidler is the managing director of the Liberal Jewish Community in Hanover. Her father-in-law, the former Lower Saxony SPD member of parliament Michael Höntsch, spontaneously decided to hold up an Israel flag in silent protest - and was pushed to the ground.
Seidler received mail from the Hanover police department earlier this week. In a fine notice, she is accused of having committed an administrative offence. A fine of 128.50 euros will be imposed on Seidler, it says. The police allege that they held an open-air meeting without reporting this to the responsible authorities.
Read the fine notice here
The pro-Palestinian gathering was "peaceful and trouble-free" at that point; the police officers could not have heard inflammatory and violent calls. "Twelve people from the local Jewish Liberal Community in Hanover" were said to be in the immediate vicinity of the pro-Palestinian assembly, making "yells with political content" and visibly holding up an Israeli flag.
Rebecca Seidler cannot understand the fine notice. "The fight against anti-Semitism is criminalized," she says. "We are made into perpetrators."
A video available to WELT shows that inflammatory exclamations were by no means omitted at the pro-Palestinian rally. The demonstrators repeatedly shouted “Child murderer Israel” and thus demonized the Jewish state. The so-called ritual murder legend, according to which Jews would murder children and use their blood for ritual purposes, is already known from Christian anti-Judaism in the Middle Ages. Posters read, for example, "Israel's sniper specifically kills children" and "Zionism = racism".
According to Seidler, only three members of her community were there. She happened to meet a local Green Party politician and a board member of the German-Israeli Society in Hanover, who were also present to observe the meeting. The group consisted of six to seven people. When the mood on the part of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators became more and more tumultuous and heated, she asked the state security service present to call for reinforcements, as she believed the situation could escalate quickly.
Shortly thereafter, Seidler's father-in-law, Michael Höntsch, was physically attacked. A man tried to snatch the Israel flag from him and pushed him to the ground. Höntsch then fainted for a short time. At the time, the 67-year-old had a cane and an oxygen device with him. A video of the scene is available to WELT. The police then took the personal details of the 55-year-old attacker and initiated an investigation on suspicion of bodily harm.
After the attack, the police commander approached Seidler and asked her if she would like to report a meeting, she says. "I told him I'm doing everything I can to de-escalate and I can do it if he thinks it's the right way to do it. I was then informed that there would be a lawsuit against me, which irritated me a lot.”
After she gave the police officer her personal details, she was expelled from the place together with the group. She immediately broke up the demonstration that had now been reported, since there was no police protection at the place allocated for it.
"I would have liked the police to have protected my father-in-law from being attacked instead of underestimating the situation," says Seidler. "And I would have wished that the pro-Palestinian rally would be broken off after the attack." At the beginning of the meeting, conditions were read out according to which no anti-Semitism and hatred could be fueled and the slogans could only be shouted in German. "None of this was complied with." Seidler is now examining whether to lodge an appeal against the fine notice.
When asked by WELT, a spokesman for the Hanover Police Department said that the pro-Palestinian assembly had been peaceful and trouble-free until people proactively sought contact with the demonstrators, "along with showing an Israeli flag." As a result, there was a loud interaction between the people with an associated assault. After the “conflict parties” were separated by the police, the people were declared as an assembly and restricted to a specific location.
A leader of the meeting made herself known to the police and showed herself to be cooperative. "The Hanover police have initiated administrative offense proceedings for violating the Lower Saxony Assembly Act," the police spokesman continued.
The chairman of the Values Initiative Association for Jewish-German Positions, Elio Adler, considers it "intolerable" that protests against hatred of Israel have legal repercussions for Jews. “It is a fatal sign of civil society engagement when it is criminalized. The police should have shown more tact at that moment.”
"Kick-off Politics" is WELT's daily news podcast. The most important topic analyzed by WELT editors and the dates of the day. Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, among others, or directly via RSS feed.
