Mass Berlin demo illustrates growing divide between public and government position on genocide in Gaza.
Germany’s biggest demonstration to date in solidarity with Palestine brought more than 100,000 people into the streets of Berlin on Saturday, September 27. Initiated by a wide coalition of organizations – including Palestinian groups, peace and health associations, climate activists, and artists – the protest demanded an end to German-Israeli military cooperation and repression of solidarity movements, as well as support for Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
“We are taking to the streets to demand an immediate end to the genocide in Gaza and to stand up for the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, freedom, and dignity,” Basem Said of the Palestinian community in Berlin said of the protest’s demands.
“While everyone can see the mass atrocities being committed by the Israeli army in Gaza, the German government denies the systematic violence,” the organizers wrote in their call. Framed this way, the march explicitly challenged the principle of Staatsräson, Germany’s self-declared “reason of state” tying much of its political identity to support for Israel.
The demonstration comes as the divide between public and governmental positions on this issue widens. Recent polling shows that a majority of Germans – 62% – believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. That figure rises to nearly 80% among supporters of the left party Die Linke and over 70% among those of the Greens and the Social Democrats. Yet the government continues to deepen ties with Israel even as other European administrations have made minor concessions under pressure from mass mobilizations, such as symbolic recognition of Palestinian statehood at the UN General Assembly’s high-level week.
Source: Laurențiu Dragota/DKP Berlin
Similar behavior continued in the days leading up to the protest. On September 25, for example, German Minister for Economic Affairs Katherina Reiche met with her Israeli counterpart, emphasizing the “unique, deep and multi-layered nature” of the cooperation between the two countries. “Israel’s economy is not only resilient but globally recognized for its cutting-edge technology, entrepreneurial spirit and vibrant start-up economy,” Reiche was quoted saying. By that date, Israel had killed at least 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza, with hundreds of thousands more suffering starvation and violent displacement.
“The German government continues to hold on to its cause and support the Israeli government,” said Dr. Khaled Hamad, one of the signatories of the initiative Together for Gaza (Zusammen für Gaza). “German involvement in the genocide against the Palestinians must be stopped, and double standards ended.”
The organizers and supporters of Saturday’s events were diverse. Coordinators of the central event included the Palestinian community in Germany, eye4palestine, Amnesty International Germany, and medico international, joined by Fridays for Future groups, the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network, and Germans Against Genocide. They were echoed by journalists, writers, and left-wing political activists who launched the call for the demonstration. In total, dozens of organizations and initiatives participated in the preparation under the umbrellas of All Eyes on Gaza and Together for Gaza.
Demonstrations are expected to continue across Europe throughout October. In Germany, a peace protest is scheduled for the coming weekend, coinciding with German Unity Day. In Spain, Italy, Romania, Croatia, and other countries, actions in the following days will denounce government complicity after two years of genocide in Gaza and renew demands to end all ties with the occupation regime.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
German police move in to break up the Palestine Congress being held in Berlin on April 12, 2024. (Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
“Friends, we are here because vengeance is a lazy form of grief. We are here to promote not vengeance but peace and coexistence across Israel-Palestine.”
Prominent Greek leftist Yanis Varoufakis on Friday condemned the German government’s complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocidal attack on Gaza as well as its domestic crackdown on pro-Palestinian advocacy in an online speech originally meant to be delivered before a conference that was raided by Berlin police earlier in the day.
Varoufakis—a former Greek finance minister who heads the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25)—was scheduled to address the Palestine Congress, which was slated to run through Sunday in the German capital. However, hundreds of police officers blockaded the event venue on Germaniastraße in Templehof before storming the building and demanding organizers cut the livestream and end the event. Several people including at least one Jewish participant were led away by police.
“This is what democracy in Europe right now really looks like!” DiEM25 said on social media.
PALESTINE CONGRESS UPDATE: German police have begun arresting participants of the congress in Berlin before it has even started. The event was due to begin at 12pm local time but police are stopping people from entering demanding that organizers allow all German media entry.… pic.twitter.com/lZbjHcDGeX
In his speech, Varoufakis lamented that “a decent people, the people of Germany, are led down a perilous road to a heartless society by being made to associate themselves with another genocide carried out in their name, with their complicity.”
“You want to silence us. To ban us. To demonize us. To accuse us. You, therefore, leave us with no choice but to meet your accusations with our accusations,” Varoufakis said, referring to the German political establishment—including the leftist Greens.
"Now it's actually getting dangerous." Watch activist Salah Said report from the Palestine Congress where police have stormed the speakers' stage and shut off the electricity.
Police descended on the congress stage as a pre-recorded speech by founder of the Palestine Land… pic.twitter.com/fYz3WVGyyi
“So, let’s be clear: We are here, in Berlin, with our Palestinian Congress because, unlike the German political system and the German media, we condemn genocide and war crimes regardless of who is perpetrating them,” Varoufakis said. “Because we oppose apartheid in the land of Israel-Palestine no matter who has the upper hand—just as we opposed apartheid in the American South or in South Africa. Because we stand for universal human rights, freedom, and equality among Jews, Palestinians, Bedouins, and Christians in the ancient land of Palestine.”
Varoufakis’ speech comes as Germany faces an International Court of Justice case brought by Nicaragua and which accuses Berlin of complicity in the Israeli genocide in Gaza, where nearly 110,000 Palestinians—mostly innocent men, women, and children—have been killed or maimed by over the past six months.
The convening of the Palestine Congress, and the antagonism against it by authorities, coincides with a growing crackdown by German officials on pro-Palestinian voices in academic, artistic, literary, and other spaces.
Watch Varoufakis’ speech:
The speech that I could not deliver because German police burst into our Berlin venue to disband our Palestine Congress (1930s style). Judge for yourselves the kind of society Germany is becoming when its police bans the following words:
Read Varoufakis’ remarks as prepared for delivery:
Friends,
Congratulations, and heartfelt thanks, for being here, despite the threats, despite the ironclad police outside this venue, despite the panoply of the German press, despite the German state, despite the German political system that demonizes you for being here.
“Why a Palestinian Congress, Mr. Varoufakis?” a German journalist asked me recently. Because, as Hanan Asrawi once said: “We cannot rely on the silenced to tell us about their suffering.”
Today, Asrawi’s reason has grown depressingly stronger: Because we cannot rely on the silenced who are also massacred and starved to tell us about the massacres and the starvation.
But there is another reason too: Because a proud, a decent people, the people of Germany, are led down a perilous road to a heartless society by being made to associate themselves with another genocide carried out in their name, with their complicity.
I am neither Jewish nor Palestinian. But I am incredibly proud to be here amongst Jews and Palestinians—to blend my voice for peace and universal human rights with Jewish voices for peace and universal human rights—with Palestinian voices for peace and universal human rights. Being together, here, today, is proof that coexistence is not only possible—but that it is here! Already.
“Why not a Jewish Congress, Mr. Varoufakis?” the same German journalist asked me, imagining that he was being smart. I welcomed his question.
For if a single Jew is threatened, anywhere, just because she or he is Jewish, I shall wear the Star of David on my lapel and offer my solidarity—whatever the cost, whatever it takes.
So, let’s be clear: If Jews were under attack, anywhere in the world, I would be the first to canvass for a Jewish Congress in which to register our solidarity. Similarly, when Palestinians are massacred because they are Palestinians—under a dogma that to be dead they must have been Hamas—I shall wear my keffiyeh and offer my solidarity whatever the cost, whatever it takes.
Universal human rights are either universal or they mean nothing.
With this in mind, I answered the German journalist’s question with a few of my own:
Are 2 million Israeli Jews, who were thrown out of their homes and into an open-air prison 80 years ago, still being kept in that open-air prison, without access to the outside world, with minimal food and water, no chance of a normal life, of traveling anywhere, and bombed periodically for 80 years? No.
Are Israeli Jews being starved intentionally by an army of occupation, their children writhing on the floor, screaming from hunger? No.
Are there thousands of Jewish injured children with no surviving parents crawling through the rubble of what used to be their homes? No.
Are Israeli Jews being bombed by the world’s most sophisticated planes and bombs today? No.
Are Israeli Jews experiencing complete ecocide of what little land they can still call their own, not one tree left under which to seek shade or whose fruit to taste? No.
Are Israeli Jewish children killed by snipers today at the orders of a member state of the United Nations? No.
Are Israeli Jews driven out of their homes by armed gangs today? No.
If the answer to any of these questions was yes, I would be participating in a Jewish Solidarity Congress today.
Friends, today, we would have loved to have a decent, democratic, mutually respectful debate on how to bring peace and universal human rights for everyone, Jews and Palestinians, Bedouins and Christians, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, with people who think differently to us.
Sadly, the whole of the German political system has decided not to allow this. In a joint statement including not just the CDU-CSU or the FDP but also the SPD, the Greens and, remarkably, two leaders of Die Linke, joined forces to ensure that such a civilized debate, in which we may disagree agreeably, never takes place in Germany.
I say to them: You want to silence us. To ban us. To demonize us. To accuse us. You, therefore, leave us with no choice but to meet your accusations with our accusations. You chose this. Not us. You accuse us of anti-Semitic hatred. We accuse you of being the antisemite’s best friend by equating the right of Israel to commit war crimes with the right of Israeli Jews to defend themselves.
You accuse us of supporting terrorism. We accuse you of equating legitimate resistance to an apartheid state with atrocities against civilians which I have always and will always condemn, whomever commits them—Palestinians, Jewish settlers, my own family, whomever. We accuse you of not recognizing the duty of the people of Gaza to tear down the wall of the open prison they have been encased in for 80 years—and of equating this act of tearing down the Wall of Shame—which is no more defensible than the Berlin Wall was—with acts of terror.
You accuse us of trivializing Hamas’ October 7 terror. We accuse you of trivializing the 80 years of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the erection of an ironclad apartheid system across Israel-Palestine. We accuse you of trivializing Netanyahu’s long-term support of Hamas as a means of destroying the two-state-solution that you claim to favor. We accuse you of trivializing the unprecedented terror unleashed by the Israeli army on the people of Gaza, the West Bank, and Easr Jerusalem.
You accuse the organizers of today’s Congress that we are, and I quote, “not interested in talking about possibilities for peaceful coexistence in the Middle East against the background of the war in Gaza.” Are you serious? Have you lost your mind? We accuse you of supporting a German state that is, after the United States, the largest supplier of the weapons that the Netanyahu government uses to massacre Palestinians as part of a grand plan to make a two-state solution, and peaceful coexistence between Jews and Palestinians, impossible.
We accuse you of never answering the pertinent question that every German must answer: How much Palestinian blood must flow before your justified guilt over the Holocaust is washed away?
So, let’ s be clear: We are here, in Berlin, with our Palestinian Congress because, unlike the German political system and the German media, we condemn genocide and war crimes regardless of who is perpetrating them. Because we oppose apartheid in the land of Israel-Palestine no matter who has the upper hand—just as we opposed apartheid in the American South or in South Africa. Because we stand for universal human rights, freedom, and equality among Jews, Palestinians, Bedouins, and Christians in the ancient land of Palestine.
And so that we are even clearer on the questions, legitimate and malignant, that we must always be ready to answer: Do I condemn Hamas’ atrocities? I condemn every single atrocity, whomever is the perpetrator or the victim. What I do not condemn is armed resistance to an apartheid system designed as part of a slow-burning—but inexorable—ethnic cleansing program.
Put differently, I condemn every attack on civilians while, at the same time, I celebrate anyone who risks their life to TEAR DOWN THE WALL.
Is Israel not engaged in a war for its very existence? No, it is not. Israel is a nuclear-armed state with perhaps the most technologically advanced army in the world and the panoply of the U.S. military machine having its back. There is no symmetry with Hamas, a group which can cause serious damage to Israelis but which has no capacity whatsoever to defeat Israel’s military, or even to prevent Israel from continuing to implement the slow genocide of Palestinians under the system of apartheid that has been erected with longstanding U.S. and E.U. support.
Are Israelis not justified to fear that Hamas wants to exterminate them? Of course they are! Jews have suffered a Holocaust that was preceded by pogroms and a deep-seated antisemitism permeating Europe and the Americas for centuries. It is only natural that Israelis live in fear of a new pogrom if the Israeli army folds. However, by imposing apartheid on their neighbors, by treating them like sub-humans, the Israeli state is stoking the fires of antisemitism, is strengthening Palestinians and Israelis who just want to annihilate each other, and, in the end, contributing to the awful insecurity consuming Jews in Israel and the diaspora.
Apartheid against the Palestinians is the Israelis’ worst “self-defense.”
What about antisemitism? It is always a clear and present danger. And it must be eradicated, especially amongst the ranks of the global Left and the Palestinians fighting for Palestinian civil liberties around the world.
Why don’t Palestinians pursue their objectives by peaceful means? They did. The PLO recognized Israel and renounced armed struggle. And what did they get for it? Absolute humiliation and systematic ethnic cleansing. That is what nurtured Hamas and elevated it in the eyes of many Palestinians as the only alternative to a slow genocide under Israel’s apartheid.
What should be done now? What might bring peace to Israel-Palestine? An immediate ceasefire. The release of all hostages: Hamas’ and the thousands held by Israel. A peace process, under the U.N., supported by a commitment by the international community to end apartheid and to safeguard equal civil liberties for all.
As for what must replace apartheid, it is up to Israelis and Palestinians to decide between the two-state solution and the solution of a single federal secular state.
Friends, we are here because vengeance is a lazy form of grief. We are here to promote not vengeance but peace and coexistence across Israel-Palestine. We are here to tell German democrats, including our former comrades of Die Linke, that they have covered themselves in shame long enough—that two wrongs do not one right make—that allowing Israel to get away with war crimes is not going to ameliorate the legacy of Germany’s crimes against the Jewish people.
Beyond today’s congress, we have a duty, in Germany, to change the conversation. We have a duty to persuade the vast majority of decent Germans out there that universal human rights are what matters. That “never again” means never again. For anyone, Jew, Palestinian, Ukrainian, Russian, Yemeni, Sudanese, Rwandan—for everyone, everywhere.
In this context, I am pleased to announce that DiEM25’s German political party MERA25 will be on the ballot paper in the European Parliament election this coming June—seeking the vote of German humanists who crave a member of European Parliament representing Germany and calling out the E.U.’s complicity in genocide—a complicity that is Europe’s greatest gift to the antisemites in Europe and beyond.
I salute you all and suggest we never forget that none of us are free if one of us is in chains.
Demonstrators in Berlin take the streets in solidarity with Palestine (Photo: Montecruz Foto)
Germany is home to Europe’s largest Palestinian community, with roughly 80,000 Palestinians living in the country. For years, German authorities have tried to stifle Palestinian activism in the country, viewing it as a nuisance to its explicit policy of “unconditional support for Israel.” Demonstrations, such as one earlier this year to mark the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, have been sporadically banned in recent years and organizations, like the Palestinian prisoner solidarity network Samidoun, have also come under increasing scrutiny.
Yet the criminalization of solidarity with Palestine on a national level has taken on entirely new dimensions since October 7. After a small demonstration on Berlin’s busy Sonnenallee street on the evening of October 7, the German media and body politic have been up in arms about Palestinians supposedly celebrating terrorism and antisemitism on German streets.
Talking points that were two weeks ago only uttered by far-right AfD politicians are now being openly expressed by politicians from all parliamentary parties in Germany. Playing off the idea of “imported antisemitism,” the social democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz is now arguing that “we must finally deport on a large scale” residents who do not hold German citizenship and openly protest against Israel. The Christian Democrats (CDU) are even demanding that the recognition of Israel’s right to exist must become a precondition for German citizenship.
Samidoun has been made into public enemy number one, as the media presents the group as a bastion for “sympathizers of terror” that poses “a particular danger, because as a secular organization, they are building bridges between Islamists and radical leftists.” In a speech before parliament on October 12, Chancellor Scholz personally announced a ban on Samidoun along with a ban on the activities of Hamas in Germany.
In Berlin specifically, which is home to one of the largest Palestinian diaspora communities outside the Arab world, the authorities have been particularly hostile towards any signs of solidarity with Palestine. Since October 7, every demonstration explicitly or implicitly referring to Palestine has been banned, leaving the roughly 30,000 Palestinians living in Berlin with no means of expressing their anguish at the siege and bombardment of Gaza.
Solidarity groups have been trying to bypass this censorship by avoiding political statements and focusing on humanitarian campaigning, yet even demonstrations and slogans such as “Children in Gaza need help” and “Solidarity with the civilian population in the Gaza Strip” were banned. On October 13, the police went so far as to ban a demonstration registered by the group “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East” entitled “Jewish Berliners against violence in the Middle East.”
Sonnenallee, a busy street in the district in which many Arab migrants live, has become a focal point of dissent against Israel’s attack on Gaza. The police patrol Sonnenallee every evening with tight controls on the public squares. Racial profiling and brutal arrests are commonplace and often recorded and posted to social media. One particular video shows police officers stomping out a candle-lit vigil with their boots.
In a letter to all Berlin schools, the city’s Department for Education, Youth and Family set out strict guidelines on how to discuss the situation in Palestine with students. “Any demonstrative action or expression of opinion that can be understood as advocating or approving of the attacks against Israel or support for the terrorist organizations carrying them out, such as Hamas or Hezbollah, constitutes a threat to school peace in the current situation and is prohibited.” According to the letter, these may include the following: “visibly wearing relevant clothing (for example, the kuffiyeh known as the Palestinian scarf), displaying stickers and patches with inscriptions such as ‘free Palestine’ or a map of Israel in the colors of Palestine (white, red, black, green), and shouting ‘free Palestine!’ and demonstrating verbal support for Hamas and its terrorism.”
At one high school on Sonnenallee, a 61-year-old teacher attempted to confiscate a Palestinian flag from a 14-year-old student and ended up in a physical altercation with a second 15-year-old student. The parents’ association of the school tried to organize a demonstration under the slogan “No place for racism, no place for violence” as a reaction to the incident, yet it was promptly banned by the police, ostensibly as a “a precautionary measure”. The Central Council of Palestinians in Germany has since sent a letter in response to Berlin’s Department for Education, expressing their “great concern about the psychological and educational development [of their children]” in Berlin schools.
As other European states are witnessing mass protests in solidarity with Palestine, the German state has been able to use force and violence to prevent such scenes on German streets. Yet it is unlikely that the government will be able to ban these sentiments of solidarity indefinitely, especially as the images of Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza continue to circulate around the world.
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