A top Western democracy is failing the free speech test over Gaza

By: Rachel Marsden

BERLIN — Protesters seeking to draw attention to the plight of Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire, as Israel continues to hammer Gaza under the pretext of targeting Hamas, gathered around the world for a day of action, including here in Germany where free speech appears to be a highly relative concept.

What’s particularly striking is the number of protesters, gathering by the hundreds for an hours-long march around the city center, who recount door-knock visits from authorities, either in the wake of their participation in one of the regular protests taking place around Germany, or after posting on social media. One young woman, a longtime human rights activist, said that she had lost count of the number of times she’s been arrested, and that she was charged with incitement for employing terms to qualify the actions of the Israeli government toward Palestinian civilians that are considered problematic within the context of Germany’s own dark history.

According to Section 130 of the country’s criminal code, it’s illegal to “insult, malign, or defame” a “national, racial, or religious group.” How, then, is someone supposed to voice opposition to a country’s foreign policy — particularly when the provision has become used to prosecute anything qualified as “antisemitism” in Germany’s endless efforts to atone for the atrocities of WWII- era Nazis?

Protesters mostly just wonder why Gaza civilians, undergoing what many of them qualify as “genocide”, should just be ignored in Germany to accommodate the fact that the country’s history has shaped its laws in such a way that criticism of the government bombing and shelling Gaza is a challenge.

Another protester, a young man in his 20s, said that he was visited by police at home as the result of a post made on social media challenging Berlin’s hoisting of the Israeli flag at city hall.

The polizei presence at the Jan. 13 rally itself even had a Gaza-style containment vibe (minus the violence), thanks to the cops. It was hard not to feel that one was doing something wrong just by being there. Within just a few minutes of the TV press arriving to document the event, an officer stormed over to even “profile” the media covering it.

Jewish peace activists who oppose the Israeli government’s handling of the situation in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on an Israeli music festival adjacent to Gaza, also came out in solidarity to these events, underscoring that criticism of Israel’s policies isn’t synonymous with hatred of its citizens.

Most would consider Germany to be a modern democracy, complete with basic rights to free speech and self-expression, yet last October, Berlin banned almost all pro-Palestinian protests, with a reported 1,000 police deployed to target any signage or speeches considered “antisemitic.” In one example, they took away a sign referring to Israel as a “terrorist state.” They also confiscated one calling German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “deadly assassins,” according to Al Jazeera.

The schizophrenia is also reflected by the highest echelons of German government. In the wake of Hamas’ attacks, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, “Our own history, our responsibility arising from the Holocaust, makes it a perpetual task for us to stand up for the security of the state of Israel.”

But then just two months later, he was changing his tune, writing on social media that “Israel must do everything possible to better protect the civilian population of Gaza,” while also selling €323 million worth of weapons to Israel — 10 times more last year than in 2022, including tank engines, combat drones, and submarines, according to the German press agency, DPA.

So much for the government’s previous policy of not sending weapons to active conflict zones. And it now appears to be on a bender, authorizing the sale of missiles and fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, with which Germany had previously taken issue over the Kingdom’s human rights record in Yemen and its treatment of journalists like Washington Post columnist and dissident, Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Why the change of policy?

“Saudi Arabia has taken on a constructive position (with) regards to Israel,” the German foreign ministry said.

Meanwhile, the German press has been rife with reports of “Hamas fundraisers” being rounded up by German authorities, with Der Spiegel reporting that “Germany was possibly to become a theater of operations – a base from which to attack Jews in the middle of Europe.”

Strange how that didn’t seem to be much of a concern when the country was importing Middle Eastern migrants en masse as Germany’s Western allies were busy leveling the place. Surely it’s just a coincidence that now that a considerable segment of German society is demanding more balance and fairness in favor of Palestinians in demanding that Berlin change its approach to the Israel-Gaza conflict to align with its own stated human rights and democratic values, Hamas suddenly becomes a problem for Germany and a pretext for cops to go busting down doors in the interests of national security.

COPYRIGHT 2024 RACHEL MARSDEN