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Divided solidarity: The two Pro-Gaza marches in Berlin and the question of unity

Berlin’s split Gaza protests reveal tensions between mass mobilisation and autonomous radical organising

Rafael Sergi
03/10/2025

Last Saturday in Berlin, more than 100,000 people marched against the genocide in Gaza. The number, impressive and necessary, did not produce unity. Two parallel demonstrations took place in the city: Together for Gaza / All Eyes on Gaza, organised by members of the Palestinian community in Berlin, cultural figures, NGOs, and the German party Die Linke; and a self-organised rally by grassroots movements, including PA Allies and the Alliance of Internationalist Feminists, under the motto United for Liberation, Fight Normalization, which focused on radicalism and independence. This was not a minor organizational detail: the split reflects a political fracture running through the movement. The question is blunt: who benefits from this division?

Two demos, two logics

Together for Gaza set off from Neptunbrunnen (Alexanderplatz) and culminated in the event All Eyes on Gaza at the Siegessäule. It was convened by members of Berlin’s Palestinian community alongside public figures such as Deborah Feldman and Michael Barenboim, and endorsed by Die Linke. The stage hosted speeches and musical performances, co-hosted by Palästinensische Gemeinde Deutschland, Eye4Palestine, Amnesty International Germany, and Medico International. It was a nationwide call to bring a broad front into the streets, reassuring people who had never protested before.

The second rally was called by grassroots movements, in particular PA Allies and the Alliance of Internationalist Feminists, the same groups that have consistently taken to the streets for two years against the genocide, met with relentless persecution by the police and the mainstream press. Their slogan was United for Liberation, Fight Normalization. Its route ran from Moritzplatz to Südstern, in Kreuzberg. Not a counter-event, but an assertion of autonomy.

The Together for Gaza platform articulated clear demands: the termination of all military cooperation with Israel, including transit and trade of weapons; an immediate and lasting ceasefire; unrestricted humanitarian access; an end to decades of illegal occupation and displacement; respect for international jurisdictions and enforcement of their decisions; release of Palestinian political prisoners and Israeli hostages; recognition of Palestinian self-determination; and protection of freedom of expression and protest in Germany. These are precise demands, rooted in urgency and international pressure: contingent objectives to halt the bombings, allow aid to enter, and reduce German complicity.

The two statements of the grassroots movements were equally plain but opposite in direction. “Unity” was called an illusion: silencing movements under the false claim of unity is a worn-out colonial tactic that separates the obedient from the aggressive. They lament the NGOisation: the transformation of struggle into a humanitarian project, the replacement of rage with the neutral language of human rights, and the belief that panels, conferences and reports cannot stop a genocide. “Human rights becomes the mask that makes pacification acceptable,” they wrote, “reducing genocide to a humanitarian crisis and colonisation to a dispute between two sides.”

They exposed media hypocrisy: the spotlight on white activists injured by police while Palestinian refugees remain invisible; the performative fury of NGOs that mobilise against the deportation of four European citizens while ignoring systematic deportations from the Global South. In short, they rejected pacification: the idea that institutional banners and mass optics can replace the slow, risky work of autonomous organisation. “Being among the masses is not inherently revolutionary,” they insisted; autonomy and clarity are what matter.

Both demonstrations originated within the Palestinian community in Berlin and Germany, which, like any community, is not monolithic. Legitimising one faction and delegitimising another reproduces the all-too-familiar dynamic of “divide and rule” in Germany, visible with the artificial division between “good Jews” and “bad Jews”, between those who align themselves with the pro-Zionist narrative and those who contest it. Repeating this pattern for Palestinians means playing the same political game that fragments solidarity.

The frustrations with the mass demonstration are understandable: many of the actors who participated had remained silent until recently; many have hesitated to use the term genocide to describe the situation; some diluted slogans such as “stop all wars” have appeared, flattening the well-defined roles of oppressors and oppressed into an immoral equivalence; some personalities who suddenly claimed visibility had previously been absent. These criticisms are real. Yet the purpose of a protest is not to demonstrate the ideological coherence of a movement, but to put pressure on politics. To intimidate power. To disrupt business as usual. To do so, numbers matter. On Saturday, those numbers were there.

The importance of a common front

When ideals harden into dogma and dialogue is cast aside, antagonism becomes an end in itself. That is not politics. It is political suicide. The constant hunt for enemies falls into the same trap.

Criticism of institutions and NGOs is not merely legitimate. It is necessary. Critique pushes organisations to expand their limits, prevents co-optation, forces accountability. But criticism must not automatically turn institutions into enemies. As Amnesty International’s president Agnès Callamard reminded, “NGOs do not stop genocide. Doctors don’t stop genocide. Human rights investigators don’t stop genocide. States stop genocide. Companies can stop genocide.” Governments and companies are the targets of pressure; NGOs, with all their flaws, are part of the infrastructure that can exert and sustain that pressure.

The same complexity applies to the United Nations. Yes, the UN is a device of Western state power with a long record of managing, not dismantling, imperial orders. Yet it remains the only global forum capable of projecting visibility at scale. It has repeatedly failed to prevent catastrophes. An alternative is urgently needed. Until then, using that window while continuing radical work from below is both pragmatic and necessary.

This logic extends to individuals. Francesca Albanese, criticised by one of the grassroots movements, operates within the structural limits of the UN, and still she has channelled the voices of millions, taking personal and professional risks. Of course she is not in Gaza; she does not endure bombardment. But she is an ally who amplifies visibility and hope. The same applies to Kitty O’Brien, beaten by police at a pro-Palestine rally, who also came under scrutiny: their injuries went viral because they’re white and European, and they’ve acknowledged that reality. Precisely because of that visibility, their wounded body exposed Germany’s police state and became a vehicle of attention and visibility. Treating such figures as categorical enemies is counterproductive; they are contingent allies who can shine light into systemic darkness.

Karl Marx’s conception of the united front is instructive: uniting for a common cause does not mean dissolving differences. A united front does not erase fault lines or tactical disagreements; it contains and recognises them. Struggles can run in parallel, sometimes irreconcilably, because they serve different purposes. Some wage institutional pressure, others build organisation from below; some push for immediate gains, others refuse to retreat from the horizon of total liberation. None of these paths are sufficient alone. Rejecting the need for a common front means abandoning the only instrument that can translate rage into political force: the capacity to strike together while remaining different.

Who benefits from division?

Not the Palestinian cause. Internal splits hand the state and mainstream media a perfect tool: depict one wing as undesirable and marginal, weaponise that image to criminalise the whole movement, and elevate “moderate” interlocutors to defuse pressure. The fracture often functions exactly as intended, to blunt the disruptive potential of protest.

Yet the mass demonstration was hardly distant from radical demands: it claimed a halt to the bombing, an end to arms trade, and recognition of occupation. These were contingent, winnable aims. People could have marched together to the point of convergence and then separated when demands diverged.

Organising also means educating, and education happens through dialogue. Bringing an autonomous bloc into a larger demo, with a real radical presence, could have been a strategy to win new adherents rather than to consolidate existing circles. Many arrived late and hid behind neutrality or the fatal rhetoric of “two sides.” Precisely for that reason, the mass demonstration was the terrain to push discourse, not to abandon with disdain.

The movement needs both rage and numbers. Prioritising ideological purity over political pressure will cost both. Prioritising numbers without political consciousness will cost its soul. Meanwhile, in Gaza, people are still dying from bombs, drones, and starvation. We cannot afford to squander time and energy on internecine purity tests. Walking together, step by step and as far as possible, will amplify pressure. And then, continue fighting separately where necessary, until total liberation is achieved.

News from Berlin and Germany, 1st October 2025

Weekly news round-up from Berlin and Germany

The Left Berlin
01/10/2025

NEWS FROM BERLIN

100,000 on the streets for “All eyes on Gaza“

“All eyes on Gaza,” co-organized by ‘medico international’, had more than 100,000 people, according to the ‘Die Linke’. Tsafrir Cohen, from medico, that even if actors such as the SPD, CDU, or Greens were still missing, the time when a “loud silence” was considered protest is over. The demonstration began at 4 p.m. Through the crowds, one could hear German, Arabic, English, Spanish. It was a multicultural event. There also were many testimonies such as from the German-Palestinian engineer Iman Abu Qomsan, who talked about her more than 80 relatives killed in Gaza. Source: taz

Union battles Lieferando

On 26 September, around 150 people, among workers and supporters, protested in front of Lieferando headquarters in Kreuzberg against the food delivery service plans to outsource more and more delivery couriers who were previously permanently employed to subcontractors (known as “fleet partners”). Labor laws are being systematically violated, according to the self-organized workers’ collective Lieferando Workers Collective. When asked by ‘taz’, Lieferando denied tolerating illegal business practices. “All fleet partners on our marketplace are instructed to use only employed drivers for Lieferando orders,” said a company spokesperson. However, given the conditions in the delivery industry, calls for effective regulation are growing louder. Source: taz

Arrest following cyberattack on airports – further problems at BER

A suspect has been arrested in England in connection with disruptions at Berlin, Brussels, and London Heathrow airports following a cyberattack. The man is suspected of computer misuse, as the British National Crime Agency announced. He was later released on bail. “Although this arrest is a positive step, the investigation into this incident is still in its early stages and ongoing,” said Paul Foster, head of the NCA’s cybercrime unit. In Berlin, as an airport spokesperson told ‘rbb’, it will take several more days before the check-in, boarding, and baggage handling systems are up and running again. Source: rbb

AfD must vacate federal headquarters

The Berlin Regional Court has ruled that the AfD must vacate earlier its federal headquarters in Wittenau. Thelandlord terminated the contract with the party after it held an election party in the courtyard of the building following the federal elections in February. When the party refused to move out, the landlord filed an eviction suit. The court has now ruled that the AfD must vacate the premises on different dates (the party had 3 leases with different expiration dates), by December 31, 2026. The regional court ruled that the AfD had violated the terms of the lease by holding the election party. Source: berliner Zeitung

NEWS FROM GERMANY

Trade unionist at DHL suspended for anti-militarism

“My name is Christopher, I’ve just come off the night shift.” With these words, Christopher T. addressed participants in a “March to Airport” protest against militarization at Halle-Leipzig Airport and against arms deliveries to Israel on August 23. Because he took part, T is now in trouble with his company, the logistics group DHL. He has been barred from entering the premises and has had his wages cut by around a quarter once he is no longer receiving the night shift allowance. T intends to take legal action against his dismissal. He did not attack DHL, only objected to this work serving the war effort. Source: nd-aktuell

Police investigate in Bremen arson at mosque

There have been several fires in the backyard of an ATIB (Union of Turkish-Islamic Cultural Associations in Europe) mosque in Bremen over recent days. The police confirmed three small fires. Last week, a wooden chair wasfound burning, followed shortly thereafter by a trash can. Finally, on 17 September, a garbage can also went up in flames. Since the mosque belongs to the ATIB, the state security service has also been involved in the investigation. It is not yet clear whether there was a racist motive. No one was injured in the fires. The police are asking the public for information. Source: islamiq

AfD – the “loser of the run-off elections”

For the CDU and SPD, the run-offelections for top municipal posts in North Rhine-Westphalia were mixed. Nevertheless, both parties were relieved – especially about the poor performance of the AfD. Despite the loss of Dortmund, known as the “heartland” of the SPD, the party has won back Cologne, the largest city in the state. Political scientist Oliver Lembcke (Ruhr University Bochum) also considers the satisfaction of the CDU and SPD to be justified. After the success of the AfD two weeks ago in the first round of voting with a result of 14.5%, the party is now “the loser of the runoff elections,” Lembcke emphasized. Source: tagesschau

Red Flag: Germany reintroducing conscription (really!)

In his weekly column, Nathaniel Flakin wonders: what could go wrong?

Nathaniel Flakin

When you see headlines about Germany reintroducing conscription, you’ll be forgiven for thinking of Hitler’s 1935 Law on Building up the Wehrmacht. But we are talking about a completely different law on a “new, attractive military service” passed by the cabinet on August 27, with a Bundestag debate scheduled for October 9.

The Federal Republic of Germany has Wehrdienst in the constitution. Back in 2011, it was paused indefinitely. Now, the government wants hundreds of thousands of additional soldiers—and not nearly that many people are volunteering.

Starting on January 1 of next year, the Bundeswehr will send a questionnaire to every 18-year-old about their interest in the army. Men will be required to fill it out, while for women it remains optional. By summer of the following year, men will be required to go to a physical.

The draft law would allow the government to conscript people by decree. This would not require a “state of defense”—it would be enough if the government decides that they want more soldiers than they can convince to volunteer (and gets approval from the Bundestag).

So while people say this isn’t compulsory military service, it actually is—it’s a soft launch for conscription, laying the foundations for compulsion in the near future.

Popularity

Germany’s massive rearmament program is very popular, at least for the moment. One survey from the summer showed 70% in favor of increased military spending, and 59% in favor of conscription.

Yet there are caveats: Among 18- to 29-year-olds, so the people who are supposed to fight, only 29% are in favor. Why not conscript boomers instead?

When asked if they would personally take up arms to defend Germany if it was under attack, only 16% said “definitely” and 22% said “maybe.” A large majority says they would probably or definitely avoid any fighting.

The decision to spend half a trillion euros on weapons is leading to austerity across the board. In the coming years, we will see cuts in education, health care, wages, and pensions—transportation costs are already going up. But many of these attacks have not popped up in household budgets.

So people are in favor of vaguely defined “defense” as long as they don’t think they have to make any personal sacrifices for it. As living standards decline, however, people will start to wonder how much money they want to put into the pockets of Rheinmetall shareholders. (Look at the car party factory in Wedding being converted to weapons production—there will be another demonstration on October 12).

A history professor once told me that demographics put us in “post-heroic age.” When people used to have six or eight or ten children, sure, they might be willing to relinquish one or two of them to the “holy fatherland.” But with just one or two kids? Maybe not.

Liberals

What bothers me most right now is not the imperialist warmongers, from the CDU to the Green Party—they are doing their jobs for the ruling class, after all. I am more upset by liberal and even lefty friends repeating a watered-down version of the militarist propaganda. This goes from Heidi Reichinnek of Die Linke affirming that of course “the Bundeswehr needs to be better equipped” to Berlin magazines accepting the premise that we might get attacked by Russia any day.

I would encourage people to think of any previous war from the imperialist epoch. At the time, they were always sold as “defense” — and in retrospect, everyone recognizes pointless slaughter in the interests of war profiteers. As the joke goes, a liberal is someone who opposes every war except the current one.

The imperialist powers are locked in escalating conflicts for zones of influence. Governments talk about “freedom” or “democracy” or whatever, but it’s all about whose corporations get to control disputed territories in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, etc. That was the basis of the 20th century’s wars—and it’s the basis of the coming wars as well.

The very politicians who say they want to “defend” our “freedom” are cutting funding for our schools and hospitals, and having us beaten up when we express disagreement. The capitalist state is only there to defend the capitalists.

I am willing to fight—but not for a state that serves Nazi billionaires. I am willing to fight for my class, which is international.

Red Flag is a weekly opinion column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears at The Left Berlin.

Palestine: Why recognition comes too little, too late

On the costs of delayed and unsubstantial recognition

Remo

Western countries are finally recognizing Palestine as a state, but this overdue gesture falls short in two ways. It is too little, because Palestine has long met the criteria of statehood under international law. And it is too late, because decades of political hesitation—coupled with Israel’s relentless expansion of illegal settlements—have eroded the very possibility of a viable Palestinian state.

Too little: Palestine is already a state

International law has long provided the criteria for statehood. The Montevideo Convention of 1933 requires a defined territory, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity for international relations. Palestine meets them all.

There is a permanent population of millions. There is a defined territory—even if its borders have been repeatedly violated since 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza. There is a governing authority in Ramallah, with legislative, executive, and judicial organs, however constrained. And there is no denying the capacity to establish relations with other states: Palestine has been recognized by more than 150 UN member states and admitted as a non-member observer at the United Nations in 2012. The usual objection is that Palestine lacks “effective control” of its territory, but that is a consequence of occupation, not a disqualification from sovereignty. International law is explicit: occupation does not erase a state, it only suspends its ability to exercise authority. If it were otherwise, Kuwait would have ceased to exist when Iraq invaded in 1990, or France during Nazi occupation.

The international community has long recognized this reality in principle, but has failed in practice. In 1947, the UN Partition Plan (Resolution 181) explicitly envisaged two states which, as reaffirmed in numerous resolutions since, should exist “side by side”. It was never implemented, as intercommunal tensions in Mandatory Palestine escalated into open war between Arab and Jewish forces. The newborn State of Israel emerged from this conflict, while the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank came under Egyptian and Jordanian control, respectively. Over the decades, the Palestinian state was further smothered in its cradle, even as UN resolutions continued to accumulate. The General Assembly recognized the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination in the 1970s, and in 2012, Resolution 67/19 conferred non-member observer state status to Palestine. In other words: Palestine is a state by law and by fact. What international law has confirmed, politics has long denied, and that denial has carried a devastating cost.

Too late: the West looked away while the land was taken

For decades, Western governments declared support for a “two-state solution” while privileging their economic and diplomatic relations with Israel. During this time, Israel entrenched what it called “facts on the ground”, such as settlements, roads, and infrastructure deliberately built to reshape the territory and foreclose Palestinian sovereignty.

Settlements in the West Bank, deemed illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, now number in the hundreds. According to the United Nations, in 2024 there were approximately 700,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), spread across about 350 settlements.

Moreover, in 2002 Israel began building a separation wall. While justified by Israeli authorities as a security measure, large portions of this barrier cut deep into land internationally recognized as Palestinian, annexing farmland, separating villages from schools and medical facilities, and undermining contiguous Palestinian territorial integrity. In 2004, the International Court of Justice in its advisory opinion declared that the parts of the Wall passing through occupied territory are illegal under international law because they violate, among other norms, the rights of property, freedom of movement, and the right to self-determination.

And now comes the E1 project: 3,400 to 3,500 housing units east of Jerusalem, designed to link the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim to the capital. This corridor would cut the West Bank in two, severing Ramallah from Bethlehem, making territorial contiguity geographically impossible and a Palestinian state less viable. These measures have not only fragmented Palestinian land, but also fractured the daily lives of its people—restricting movement, trade, and access to basic services. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has been explicit about its purpose: the plan, he declared, will “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.

The project does not stand in isolation. It reflects a long-standing political vision. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly framed the West Bank as the ancestral land of the Jewish people, has declared at Ma’ale Adumim that “there will be no Palestinian state” because “this place belongs to us”. Such statements underscore that the settlement enterprise is not an accident of policy but a deliberate strategy to ensure that recognition of Palestinian statehood—whenever it comes—arrives too late to matter on the ground.

The West’s partial, and conditional, recognition, does not erase the decades when such statements went unchallenged and when settlement expansion proceeded unchecked. Words now cannot reclaim the territory that bulldozers and concrete walls have already reshaped.

The cost of delay

This hesitation has had two devastating consequences. First, for Palestinians, it has meant the steady erosion of their land and rights. Every new settlement, every demolished home, every olive grove seized has made statehood less feasible. In the West Bank, land is carved away settlement by settlement; in Gaza, life itself is starved out. Both dynamics serve the same purpose: to ensure that Palestinian sovereignty remains a right on paper but impossible in practice.

Second, the delay has corroded the authority of international law itself. If clear rules—against annexation, against settlement, against occupation—can be ignored for decades, then what remains of the global order? If law cannot defend Palestine, how can it defend Ukraine against Russian aggression or the Philippines against maritime encroachment? Selective enforcement makes law indistinguishable from politics.

The zebra in the room

For now, Palestine remains the zebra in the room—obvious to anyone who looks, yet officially unacknowledged. It was Benjamin Netanyahu, then opposition leader, admitting it more than three decades ago: “When you walk into the zoo and see an animal that looks like a horse and has black and white stripes, you do not need a sign to tell you this is a zebra. It is a zebra. When you read this agreement, even if the words a Palestinian state are not mentioned there, you do not need a sign; this is a Palestinian state.” The zebra is still there. What has changed is that the cage has grown tighter, and the stripes are harder to see under layers of concrete and barbed wire.

Recognition today is not meaningless. Symbols matter, and Palestinians deserve the validation of their rights. But it is also insufficient. Recognition risks becoming a symbol of the West’s guilty conscience—a gesture too little, too late, for a people whose statehood exists in law but is vanishing. Unless it is given substance, recognition will remain only another entry in the long catalogue of promises to the Palestinian people that history has left unfulfilled.