For those who doubt the headline, trust me, I speak from experience.
"‘We Jews are just arrested; Palestinians are beaten’: Protesters in Germany"
In Germany, phrases including ‘from the river to the sea’ are banned and police are arresting people for using them.
People take part in a demonstration in support of Palestinians in Gaza, in Berlin, Germany, on November 10, 2023 [Liesa Johannssen/Reuters]
"German-Israeli activist Iris Hefets was arrested for the first time in Berlin just a few weeks after the start of Israel’s war on Gaza last October – for holding a sign which read, “As a Jew and Israeli, stop the genocide in Gaza”.
That time, the police told Hefets, a 56-year-old psychoanalyst who is a member of the anti-Zionist activist group Jewish Voice for Peace, it was down to a blanket ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
She was released shortly afterwards but says: “I didn’t think I would get detained for that – I was naive it turns out.”
She was arrested a second time on November 10 for “inciting racial hatred” when she held the same sign – her charge was recently dropped. Her third arrest was for a sign warning that “Zionism kills”. Again, she was released soon after but, this time, her sign was confiscated.
Hefets has lodged a complaint with the police to get her sign back, and intends to put it in a future “museum of Palestinian liberation”, she says.
She believes that, for the latter two arrests at least, the decision to detain her was made on the advice of a new special police task force which “is the contact point available for all police forces in connection with the Middle East conflict”, a Berlin police spokesman confirmed to Al Jazeera. The task force was set up on October 30 last year – shortly after Israel’s war on Gaza began.
This “Besondere Aufbauorganisation” (BAO) task force, which is part of the Landeskriminalamt (LKA) – the police intelligence centre – keeps an eye on “left-wing and foreign ideologies”, including communist groups and pro-Palestine groups, the police spokesman confirmed. It issues guidance and instructions to police forces about what phrases and words used by activists may be deemed illegal. For example, the Berlin police spokesman told Al Jazeera that, in Berlin, using the phrase “from the river to the sea” is currently considered a crime"“The criminal classification of .. slogans is carried out in close consultation with the Berlin public prosecutor’s office,” the Berlin police spokesman said."
"Free speech under attack in Germany"
"Palestinian protesters seem to be bearing the brunt of police crackdowns on protests in Germany – “We Jews are just getting arrested, the Palestinians are being beaten,” Hefets says. One example was the brutal arrest of a hijab-wearing protester at a sit-in in Berlin central station this past weekend, which was captured on video and posted to social media channels."
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5G8_BzMw9C/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_video_watch_again
Thank you for sharing this blog with friends and family. You are helping to overcome the deafening silence from the commercial media on most topics, they just don't want us to know about.
This blog is not monetized, it is strictly produced as a public service.
No comments:
Post a Comment