A Berlin court has convicted a pro-Palestinian activist of condoning a crime for leading a chant of the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” at a rally in the German capital four days after the Hamas attacks on Israel, in what her defence team called a defeat for free speech.
The presiding judge, Birgit Balzer, ordered 22-year-old German-Iranian national Ava Moayeri to pay a €600 (£515) fine on Tuesday, rejecting her argument that she meant only to express support for “peace and justice” in the Middle East by calling out the phrase on a busy street.
Balzer said she “could not comprehend” the logic of previous German court rulings that determined the saying was “ambiguous”, saying to her it was clear it “denied the right of the state of Israel to exist”.
People 100% do use it both ways. That the court convicted and fined them without showing which one it actually was. And rejecting their defense stating that it wasn’t intended in that way. Is very troubling.
It’s absolutely plain to see that Germany is erring too far in a different direction so it’s not seen as attacking Jewish populations in any way. But as a result they are helping push back other vulnerable populations. I don’t think it’s the good look they’re hoping it was.
Using it both ways should not be a problem regardless.
There is nothing wrong with being against a less than 100 year old settler state that’s actively engaging in genocide. The land and the people do not have to be under the jurisdiction of a racist ethnostate.
What would actually help is not continuing to conflate Israel with Judaism.
calling for the destruction of a country is never ok, and is always a problem
Free Palestine is not a call for the destruction of Israel. It is a call for a Free Palestine.
Yes.
“From the river to the sea” on the other hand is a call for the destruction of one or the other. Neither is ok.
Free Ireland did not mean the destruction of the Protestants. End to Apartheid South Africa did not mean the destruction of the Afrikaners and the other whites. A free democratic Palestine can and should be the national home for Israelis and Palestinians with equal rights freedoms from the river to the sea.
So for the people who think like you do, it’s an explicit rejection of a two state solution, and publicly declaring that the only path to peace is one state shared by everyone.
I’d like to understand why you think a one state solution is the most viable path to peace?
Honest to god, my ideal peace solution was for a long time the two state solution. But I don’t think that is feasible any more. The Israelis killed that option by installing 700k settlers in the best lands of the place where a Palestinian state could have existed. These people will never vote to leave their homes, and they will never accept to be transferred to palestinian jurisdiction. The Israelis have also completely integrated the economy and the everyday life of the Palestinians in their apartheid system in a way that I just don’t see realistic to untangle. So, at this point, realistically, at best, “two state solution” in practice would mean Bantustans and Reservations. At worst, it is just a stalling tactic of “warfare by negotiation” to eat up the salami while pretending the other side has no interlocutor.
Put simply, the Israelis worked very hard for 30 years to create “facts on the ground”. Those are now just the facts. And Israelis have to reckon with the consequences of the facts they created.
The single democratic state solution on the other hand just cuts the Gordian knot. Human rights for all, a truth and reconciliation process, humanity has done this before. It’s not guaranteed to work, but nothing is, and what’s happening now isn’t working either.
Calling for the destruction of a STATE is fine. I for one am glad that the racist state of Rhodesia is no more. I am sure a lot of Czech and Slovakian people are glad to get rid of Czechoslovakia. It’s not the same as calling for the destruction or removal of people.
No reasonable person would hear “destroy Mexico” and think “oh, he must really dislike the government and state of Mexico”. They will automatically assume that you mean to bring about the destruction of Mexico *\including the people who live there*.
if you truly intended to advocate merely for the immediate dissolution of the state, you would have said so.
Both ways? It is unambiguously a call for genocide.
It only means genocide to Israelis because they can only fathom Israel as a mono-ethnic state with all others genocided. Anyone supporting a free and united Palestine supports the multicultural community that has been in the area for millennia.
You don’t know much about the region do you?
New Germans same as the old Germans.
Tell us more about your missed historylessons
Good old Germany, going back to the days of the State deeming some races as superior and having special laws to punish and silence those critical of the actions, no matter how murderous, of those the German State has deemed to represent a superior race.
You can take the NAZIsm out of Germany but you can’t take the profound racism and the authoritaristic tendencies out of the heart of the German Power Elites.
The only thing the Germans learnt from the Holocaust is that the Jews are entitled to carry out their very own Holocaust.
You should not equate jewish people with Israel. There are lots of Jews who are against Israel, and even more who are opposed to Israel’s genocide.
I know that Israel itself tries to equate Israel with Judaism and Jews, but it smacks of anti-semitism.
It’s the wretched German government who are equating Jewish people with israel.
Free speech in Germany is dead.
That said, if I were in Germany, I would use a different phrase. Maybe “stop the genocide in Gaza, ceasefire now”.
That would just be way more effective in actually rallying support.
But I’m not in Germany, so Free Palestine, from the river to the sea.
That doesn’t fucking rhyme, dude. People like the chant because it rhymes and is fun to chant. It’s not that deep.
I am fully aware of that.
But in the German context, I am not sure if it is effective.
Perhaps someone can make a nice rhyme against genocide.
“Germany sides against genocide”, or something. Maybe something that rhymes in German.
You can’t say “stop the genocide in Gaza” in Germany either. People have been fined for that before. Apparently it counts as “hate speech against jews”.
Nazi Germany never went away it seems.
Never did. Lmao, they literally had nazis in government after WW2. They had ex nazi ministers. All the nazi army generals stayed in the Bundeswehr. Their intelligence services were filled to the brim with Nazis and aided nazi criminals in escaping prosecution, literally tipping Adolf Eichmann to escape the Mossad. Their nazi built companies never paid for what they did. Hell, they’re still funding and naming public buildings after their nazi grandpas. There’s absolutely nothing true about this so called german “denazification” other than some superficial virtue signalling.
Why must it be evaluated in the context of “the biggest massacre of Jews since the Shoah” and not “the biggest massacre of Palestinians since the Nakba?”
Because in this case it was said on the 11th of October, before Isreal began its genocidal attacks on Gaza but after Hamas murdered over 1000 Isrealis.
Israel began their genocidal attacks on Gaza 76 years ago.
Germany being antidemocratic as usual. Nothing new here.
Not following what you mean here as I am unfamiliar with Germany’s justice system, but how would a judge be democratic? Criminal trials having the whole country vote on what the individual result would be? Or are you saying they democratically voted for free speech, and this judgement did not follow that?
I would say this is consistent with Germany’s rules about not having Nazi emblems, which would also be against free speech one could argue.
Unfortunately I don’t think you can easily write a law that said, ban people calling for violence against people do to their race, gender, nationality, or other discriminating factor, except when we don’t want it too.
Or are you saying they democratically voted for free speech, and this judgement did not follow that?
Exactly what I’m saying. Germany is expanding it’s undemocratic arsenal of laws to suppress anything that doesn’t fit its political and foreign policy agenda.
