Growing international criticism of German anti-Palestinian repression
For several years now, the Palestine solidarity movement in Germany has faced severe repression. Yet after 7 October 2023, this harassment reached new levels: In the first weeks following the Gaza uprising and the beginning of the genocide, demonstrations were broadly banned in a number of German cities – especially in the capital, Berlin. Both Hamas and the international prisoner solidarity network “Samidoun” were declared illegal by executive order, and the slogan “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” was classified as a prohibited “symbol” of Hamas.
To this day, censorship, criminal charges and brutal police violence against pro-Palestinian demonstrators remain commonplace. Events are regularly cancelled – even UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, was denied access to university venues in Munich in February 2025. Repeatedly, police have conducted house searches because individuals “liked” posts online, used the phrase “From the river to the sea…”, compared Israel’s actions to Nazi crimes, or accused German politicians of complicity in war crimes.
According to estimates, police have opened around 10,000 criminal investigations related to Palestine solidarity over the past 24 months. In May 2024, the Berlin Palestine Congress was forcibly shut down by authorities; internationally recognised guests were denied entry to Germany. Six months after the bans on Samidoun and Hamas, the group “Palästina Solidarität Duisburg“ (Palestine Solidarity Duisburg) was outlawed as well, and further bans are reportedly being prepared by German authorities, including against the international BDS movement. Since the beginning of this year, there have also been multiple deportations of Palestinians and pro-Palestinian foreign nationals. The legal aid organisation “3ezwa” estimates that several thousand people across Germany are currently at acute risk of expulsion or deportation.
Criticism from NGOs, the EU and the UN
This campaign to suppress freedom of _expression_ – which is openly racist and particularly targets Arab and Muslim communities – is drawing increasing international attention. As early as late October 2023, Human Rights Watch (HRW) raised the alarm, criticising, among other things, the handling of pro-Palestine demonstrations by German authorities. Soon after, criticism also came from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). In mid-May 2025, the European Legal Support Center (ELSC) launched the “first available database on anti-Palestinian repression in Germany”. At that time, the database already documented 766 cases of censorship, surveillance, bans on demonstrations, arrests, workplace and financial repression, relevant laws and resolutions, intimidation, and migration-related reprisals.
In June, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights felt compelled to send a letter to the German Interior Minister. In it, he referred to “reports of excessive use of force by police against protesters, including minors,” expressed “concern” that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition “has been interpreted by some German authorities in ways which lead to the blanket classification of criticism of Israel as antisemitic,” and “recalled” that EU member states “have both an obligation to refrain from undue interference with human rights and also positive obligations to safeguard these rights by securing their effective enjoyment for everyone.”
Last week, the United Nations intervened again. Six independent experts called on Germany “to halt criminalisation and police violence against Palestinian solidarity activism.” They, too, focused on police brutality, but also explicitly criticised the criminalisation of the slogan “From the River to the Sea Palestine will be free.” Their concluding statement declared: “Germany must support, not suppress, actions aiming to stop atrocity crimes and genocide.”
What is going on with Germany?
International media now report regularly on the state-driven anti-Palestinian repression and violence in Germany. Images of police officers beating peaceful demonstrators with their fists circulate around the world. Journalists and analysts attempt to explain to a bewildered international audience why a state that so often invokes human rights, freedom of _expression_ and the rule of law acts in such a repressive and inhumane way. Frequently, reference is made to Germany’s “special historical responsibility” arising from the Holocaust. But this explanation is part of the myth.
In reality, the issue has always been about power and money: After the Second World War, West Germany had to rehabilitate itself in the eyes of the Western public. The Federal Republic was built by men who, only yesterday, had been committed Nazis – politicians, bureaucrats, judges, officers, police and intelligence agents who had all taken part in the crimes of the fascist regime, including mass murder and world war. The focus on the genocide of the Jews – the second-largest group of victims after the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe (who were, however, the enemy during the Cold War) – coincided with Israel’s emergence as an outpost of Western imperialism. The so-called “reparations payments”, which went not to Holocaust survivors or their descendants but to the “Jewish state”, in fact served as a programme for the economic development and militarisation of the Zionist regime in Palestine. The phrase “historical responsibility” thus functions as a euphemism, much like the colonial “protection treaties” and “protectorates”.
What Germany has created through its “ideology of guilt” is unique: instead of denying or relativising its own crimes, it has singularised, dehistoricised and fetishised them. Germany is perhaps the only country that does not deny a genocide it itself committed, but rather invokes it to justify its imperial foreign policy – even to the point of supporting another genocide.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.