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In Germany they can't publicly gather to protest Israel's actions either, not legally anyway. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/26/complete-censorship

In Germany they can't publicly gather to protest Israel's actions either, not legally anyway. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/26/complete-censorship-germanys-palestinian-diaspora-fights-crackdown https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/26/complete-censo...

meijer 3y ago
There are regular pro Palestine protests in my German hometown. And they do condemn Israel's actions.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  I know some people who are regularly protesting in Germany also, but my understanding is that they knowingly break the law in doing so. Is this not correct?
  - hnbad 3y ago
    It's complicated. Germany has pretty strict laws against "incitement of hatred". Additionally it's illegal to deface, damage or destroy a foreign flag. Also demonstrations and protests need to be registered in advance with proof of proper security and safety measures. Germany is also very biased in favor of Israel and has (like the US) adopted the stance that an attack on Israel is an attack on Judaism. This has led to Jewish anti-Israel protestors being arrested. In theory it is possible to have a "spontaneous" protest without leaders but in practice this means the police will designate the loudest persons in the crowd as leaders and claim that they organized a protest without a permit and arrest them for that. Also the political bias favoring Israel means pro-Israel counter-protestors are likely to be tolerated more than anti-Israel protests. And of course anti-genocide is conflated with anti-Israel and pro-Hamas, again like in the US. But yes, most political protests are illegal because they are not formally organized with the authorities (and even with organized protests you often have break-out protests deviating from the permitted route/location or overstaying). From personal experience I can tell you though that unless the police can pin anything on you (e.g. trespassing, resisting arrest, "attacking a police officer"[0]) this usually only ends up with the police roughing you up a bit maybe and then recording your identity before dropping you off somewhere else with a temporary restraining order. [0]: This is worth mentioning because it explains the low police numbers for injured protestors in Lüzerath compared with the video evidence of police charging unarmed protestors: being injured by a police officer is considered evidence for attacking a police officer as unless there is evidence for the police officer doing anything wrong the assumption is that they followed the guidelines for escalating force, i.e. they must have had a good reason. It's also worth mentioning that in many places riot cops do not have any visible unique identification so reporting any claim of police brutality at a protest is usually fruitless as the alleged perp can not uniquely be identified and you need an individual person to accuse. Protest medics thus have stopped giving detailed statistics as merely keeping a tally would help the police in tracking down "suspects" by visiting the nearby hospitals (which they did e.g. after Lüzerath). So tl;dr: depending on your demographic, your cause and which police you end up being surrounded by, it's relatively safe to take part in an illegal protest in Germany as long as they can't prove you did anything illegal and don't get hurt.
    - AlecSchueler 3y ago
      Based of your tl;dr would you say they that the original assertion was true in practice, that they generally "can't publicly gather to protest Israel's actions either, not legally anyway."
      - hnbad 3y ago
        I'm not sure whether there have been any pro-Palestine or even simply "anti-war" protests that were properly registered, not disrupted and not dissolved by the police but I guess it depends on your definition of "legally". I would say in practice it's very difficult to have any protest opposing Israel's actions in Gaza without a high risk of ending up in a place where the police decides to dissolve it. But I think in practice the two biggest reasons for that are a) the topic is likely to attract protestors who decide to express opinions that are illegal (or are deliberately interpreted that way) and b) most protests tend to be dissolved by the police eventually because even ones that follow all the rules usually spin off or feed into spontaneous protests that don't.
      - bakuninsbart 2y ago
        You are allowed to protest against Israel, but you have to be extremely careful about how to phrase it, as a lot of things can get you arrested for anti-Semitism, even when it is arguably factual. So things like calling Israel an apartheid state, calling Israel fascist or warning of a genocide might land you in jail.
        AlecSchueler 2y ago
        So basically you can protest legally as long as you don't protest against certain things the government protects. I'm gonna stand by my original assertion. It's like saying you can publish whatever you like in China as long as you don't mention Tianamen Square.
- riedel 3y ago
  This article is clearly an oversimplification on aljazeera's side [0], which a bit also highlights a problem with their journalism. However, I guess this is harmless against some tabloids that are far from being banned. [0] https://www.dw.com/en/israel-gaza-demonstrations-what-is-allowed-in-germany/a-67276649 https://www.dw.com/en/israel-gaza-demonstrations-what-is-all...
vr46 3y ago
I would likely be arrested if I wore my UK-created anti-fascist Football Fans Against Apartheid/Free Palestine pin, so it’s going into a drawer. Zionism has drowned all voices, my Jewish friends are being harassed for dissent too.
- vixen99 3y ago
  https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/hamas-covenant-israel-attack-war-genocide/675602/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/ha... Really, objectively, I am wondering what on Earth any country X would do faced with a statement from an enemy Y as in :- The complete and utter destruction of X as an essential condition for the liberation of Y and the establishment of a religious state based on [ Y's religious theocratic laws ] Any form of coexistence is clearly not on the table. For the context please read the link in the Atlantic article.
  - dbspin 3y ago
    In this case it's akin to the bullied child crying 'I'll kill you', from his puddle of blood on the ground. Israel's own conduct in Gaza and the West Bank is the primary threat to the existence of the state. Not two million impoverished people who've been crushed under an imperial boot since the theft of their land almost eighty years ago. Israel is a wealthy, post industrial US backed, nuclear power. Hamas are a convenient boogyman allowing them to further consolidate their control over land that international law recognises as occupied [1]. [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
    - vixen99 3y ago
      Yes but how about answering the question because lives depend on it. What should Israel do? Live with Hamas and the 80% of Palestinians who support them? Give up and move ten million people (including some ~20% Muslims & Arabs) to somewhere else? Where? Let's get serious! Again, what to do? How about a constructive response including your advice to Israel under these circumstances. I have no dog in the fight, criticize Israel how you like (undoubtedly much of it justified) but what's the solution? If there is none forthcoming, and there has not, then we move to Clauswitz. Whatever he meant with his famous dictum, that says there is no alternative. Appalling, much like the Ukraine/Russia horror show.
dudeinjapan 3y ago
Considering what happened in Germany the last time it held mass gatherings to protest against Jews, better to err on the side of caution.
- pdinny 3y ago
  This type of conflation is extremely dangerous. Criticism of the actions of the government of Israel is not the same thing as anti-semitism (a real and very bad thing). To make this claim essentially gives the government of Israel the go ahead to do absolutely anything without any possibility of criticism, because that criticism is never engaged with on the basis of its content but dismissed as anti-semitism.
  - Clubber 3y ago
    >Criticism of the actions of the government of Israel is not the same thing as anti-semitism Unfortunately, it seems the protesters themselves often don't make the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism.
    - AlecSchueler 3y ago
      I've seen thousands upon thousands of people protesting with my own eyes but never caught onto anything anti semitic. In fact I often see Jewish groups attending as well. I'm sure there often are people espousing vile views, that's a statistical inevitability almost, but it's clearly far from the norm.
      - Clubber 3y ago
        I'm just going on what the news says, and you know how the news likes to misrepresent stuff for clicks, but here's a few articles on the topic. https://abcnews.go.com/US/student-protesters-denounce-antisemitism-amid-criticism-pro-palestinian/story?id=109643275 https://abcnews.go.com/US/student-protesters-denounce-antise... https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/israel-hamas-war-protests-boston-jewish-students/ https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/israel-hamas-war-protest... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/03/college-gaza-protests-antisemitism https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/03/coll...
BurningFrog 3y ago
For some reason, Germany has very strict rules and traditions against any hint of anti-Jewish activities.
- vacuity 3y ago
  And there is certainly anti-Semitism mixed in with the protests, but I think Germany is still overdoing it. Silencing plenty of valid speech has a cost, too.
- licebmi__at__ 3y ago
  One would have thought that a proper stance is to be against any kind of mass killings, yet given the attitude on the topic of Namibia we do know there are first and second class victims.

meijer 3y ago

There are regular pro Palestine protests in my German hometown. And they do condemn Israel's actions.

AlecSchueler 3y ago
I know some people who are regularly protesting in Germany also, but my understanding is that they knowingly break the law in doing so. Is this not correct?
- hnbad 3y ago
  It's complicated. Germany has pretty strict laws against "incitement of hatred". Additionally it's illegal to deface, damage or destroy a foreign flag. Also demonstrations and protests need to be registered in advance with proof of proper security and safety measures. Germany is also very biased in favor of Israel and has (like the US) adopted the stance that an attack on Israel is an attack on Judaism. This has led to Jewish anti-Israel protestors being arrested. In theory it is possible to have a "spontaneous" protest without leaders but in practice this means the police will designate the loudest persons in the crowd as leaders and claim that they organized a protest without a permit and arrest them for that. Also the political bias favoring Israel means pro-Israel counter-protestors are likely to be tolerated more than anti-Israel protests. And of course anti-genocide is conflated with anti-Israel and pro-Hamas, again like in the US. But yes, most political protests are illegal because they are not formally organized with the authorities (and even with organized protests you often have break-out protests deviating from the permitted route/location or overstaying). From personal experience I can tell you though that unless the police can pin anything on you (e.g. trespassing, resisting arrest, "attacking a police officer"[0]) this usually only ends up with the police roughing you up a bit maybe and then recording your identity before dropping you off somewhere else with a temporary restraining order. [0]: This is worth mentioning because it explains the low police numbers for injured protestors in Lüzerath compared with the video evidence of police charging unarmed protestors: being injured by a police officer is considered evidence for attacking a police officer as unless there is evidence for the police officer doing anything wrong the assumption is that they followed the guidelines for escalating force, i.e. they must have had a good reason. It's also worth mentioning that in many places riot cops do not have any visible unique identification so reporting any claim of police brutality at a protest is usually fruitless as the alleged perp can not uniquely be identified and you need an individual person to accuse. Protest medics thus have stopped giving detailed statistics as merely keeping a tally would help the police in tracking down "suspects" by visiting the nearby hospitals (which they did e.g. after Lüzerath). So tl;dr: depending on your demographic, your cause and which police you end up being surrounded by, it's relatively safe to take part in an illegal protest in Germany as long as they can't prove you did anything illegal and don't get hurt.
  - AlecSchueler 3y ago
    Based of your tl;dr would you say they that the original assertion was true in practice, that they generally "can't publicly gather to protest Israel's actions either, not legally anyway."
    - hnbad 3y ago
      I'm not sure whether there have been any pro-Palestine or even simply "anti-war" protests that were properly registered, not disrupted and not dissolved by the police but I guess it depends on your definition of "legally". I would say in practice it's very difficult to have any protest opposing Israel's actions in Gaza without a high risk of ending up in a place where the police decides to dissolve it. But I think in practice the two biggest reasons for that are a) the topic is likely to attract protestors who decide to express opinions that are illegal (or are deliberately interpreted that way) and b) most protests tend to be dissolved by the police eventually because even ones that follow all the rules usually spin off or feed into spontaneous protests that don't.
    - bakuninsbart 2y ago
      You are allowed to protest against Israel, but you have to be extremely careful about how to phrase it, as a lot of things can get you arrested for anti-Semitism, even when it is arguably factual. So things like calling Israel an apartheid state, calling Israel fascist or warning of a genocide might land you in jail.
      - AlecSchueler 2y ago
        So basically you can protest legally as long as you don't protest against certain things the government protects. I'm gonna stand by my original assertion. It's like saying you can publish whatever you like in China as long as you don't mention Tianamen Square.
riedel 3y ago
This article is clearly an oversimplification on aljazeera's side [0], which a bit also highlights a problem with their journalism. However, I guess this is harmless against some tabloids that are far from being banned. [0] https://www.dw.com/en/israel-gaza-demonstrations-what-is-allowed-in-germany/a-67276649 https://www.dw.com/en/israel-gaza-demonstrations-what-is-all...

vr46 3y ago

I would likely be arrested if I wore my UK-created anti-fascist Football Fans Against Apartheid/Free Palestine pin, so it’s going into a drawer. Zionism has drowned all voices, my Jewish friends are being harassed for dissent too.

vixen99 3y ago
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/hamas-covenant-israel-attack-war-genocide/675602/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/ha... Really, objectively, I am wondering what on Earth any country X would do faced with a statement from an enemy Y as in :- The complete and utter destruction of X as an essential condition for the liberation of Y and the establishment of a religious state based on [ Y's religious theocratic laws ] Any form of coexistence is clearly not on the table. For the context please read the link in the Atlantic article.
- dbspin 3y ago
  In this case it's akin to the bullied child crying 'I'll kill you', from his puddle of blood on the ground. Israel's own conduct in Gaza and the West Bank is the primary threat to the existence of the state. Not two million impoverished people who've been crushed under an imperial boot since the theft of their land almost eighty years ago. Israel is a wealthy, post industrial US backed, nuclear power. Hamas are a convenient boogyman allowing them to further consolidate their control over land that international law recognises as occupied [1]. [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
  - vixen99 3y ago
    Yes but how about answering the question because lives depend on it. What should Israel do? Live with Hamas and the 80% of Palestinians who support them? Give up and move ten million people (including some ~20% Muslims & Arabs) to somewhere else? Where? Let's get serious! Again, what to do? How about a constructive response including your advice to Israel under these circumstances. I have no dog in the fight, criticize Israel how you like (undoubtedly much of it justified) but what's the solution? If there is none forthcoming, and there has not, then we move to Clauswitz. Whatever he meant with his famous dictum, that says there is no alternative. Appalling, much like the Ukraine/Russia horror show.

dudeinjapan 3y ago

Considering what happened in Germany the last time it held mass gatherings to protest against Jews, better to err on the side of caution.

pdinny 3y ago
This type of conflation is extremely dangerous. Criticism of the actions of the government of Israel is not the same thing as anti-semitism (a real and very bad thing). To make this claim essentially gives the government of Israel the go ahead to do absolutely anything without any possibility of criticism, because that criticism is never engaged with on the basis of its content but dismissed as anti-semitism.
- Clubber 3y ago
  >Criticism of the actions of the government of Israel is not the same thing as anti-semitism Unfortunately, it seems the protesters themselves often don't make the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism.
  - AlecSchueler 3y ago
    I've seen thousands upon thousands of people protesting with my own eyes but never caught onto anything anti semitic. In fact I often see Jewish groups attending as well. I'm sure there often are people espousing vile views, that's a statistical inevitability almost, but it's clearly far from the norm.
    - Clubber 3y ago
      I'm just going on what the news says, and you know how the news likes to misrepresent stuff for clicks, but here's a few articles on the topic. https://abcnews.go.com/US/student-protesters-denounce-antisemitism-amid-criticism-pro-palestinian/story?id=109643275 https://abcnews.go.com/US/student-protesters-denounce-antise... https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/israel-hamas-war-protests-boston-jewish-students/ https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/israel-hamas-war-protest... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/03/college-gaza-protests-antisemitism https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/03/coll...

BurningFrog 3y ago

For some reason, Germany has very strict rules and traditions against any hint of anti-Jewish activities.

vacuity 3y ago
And there is certainly anti-Semitism mixed in with the protests, but I think Germany is still overdoing it. Silencing plenty of valid speech has a cost, too.
licebmi__at__ 3y ago
One would have thought that a proper stance is to be against any kind of mass killings, yet given the attitude on the topic of Namibia we do know there are first and second class victims.