We are all aware of the level of repression against the Palestine movement in Germany since 2023. While the police crackdown has clearly increased in the last 2 years, it is not new. Systematic repression of Palestinians and their supporters was part of German Staatsräson long before October 7th.
In May 2019, the German government passed a non-binding resolution criminalising BDS. The resolution, which was supported by all mainstream parties, has no legal status, but had two direct effects. Firstly, it increased the uncertainty of venue owners, local councils, and academic institutions, which made them less likely to allow “controversial” (ie pro-Palestine) events. Secondly, it emboldened the forces of repression and censorship, who felt more confident to go onto the offensive.
In an article in die Zeit, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum argued that the Bundestag resolution created “a climate of legal insecurity, which leads to institutions racking their brains, not about the quality of a project, but about the political stance of those involved vis-a-vis the Middle East conflict”, resulting in a “form of advanced self-censorship.”
In 2021, 15,000 people demonstrated on Nakba Day in a united action which was not just confined to Palestinians. It was also the largest demonstration for Palestine in Germany for a generation. This made the German State see the growing Palestine movement as not just a distraction, but a formidable threat, resulting in harsher crack downs.
In the period between the BDS Bundestag Resolution and October 7th, theleftberlin.com was relaunched as a website, concentrating more on news and campaigning, particularly around Palestine solidarity. We’ve put together some of our coverage from that time in this article to provide a far from exhaustive overview of anti-Palestine repression in Germany before October 7. These examples show that the repression did not start in 2019 any more than it did in 2021 or 2023, but that with each year past it has only intensified.
“Cancel Culture” comes to Germany
The month after the BDS resolution was passed, Peter Schäfer, then director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, was forced to quit over a pro-BDS re-tweet.
A few months later, Palestinian-German academic Dr Anna-Esther Younes had been invited to present her report on Islamophobia in Europe at a conference “Strategies against the Right” organised by Die LINKE Berlin. The day before the event, she was uninvited because she was “probably close to BDS” and was compared to the right wing murderer who had recently attacked a synagogue in Halle. It was later discovered that the Antisemitism Research and Information Centre and Mobile Advice Against Right Wing Extremism had compiled a secret dossier on Younes and sent it to Die LINKE.
In Spring 2020, Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe was disinvited from speaking at the Ruhrtriennale festival, for comparing South African apartheid to the oppression of Palestinians. The disinvitation was ordered by Germany’s unelected antisemitism commissioner Felix Klein. Academics conducting research on the memory culture in Germany, Irit Dekel and Esra Özyürek reacted to Mbembe’s exclusion saying it was “not an isolated event but part of a long series of other high-profile cases in which Arab, Turkish, African, and Jewish background Germans and non-Germans, a significant number of them women, have been accused of antisemitism or of promoting antisemitic sentiments.”
In October 2022, the German teaching union GEW, invited Israeli anti-Zionist academic Dr. Shir Hever to talk to them about Child Labour in Palestine. Before the lecture took place, it was cancelled by the GEW, who claimed that Hever was an antisemite. They based this judgement on a secret letter from Dr. Michael Blume, the antisemitism commissioner of the state of Baden-Württemberg.
Restricted Spaces
One of the most obvious effects of the resolution was the generation of a feeling of uncertainty among venues. With a few honourable exceptions, it is now almost impossible to book a room in Berlin for a meeting on Palestine. This is not because most venues are pro-Israel – rather that they fear being tarred with accusations of antisemitism and possibly losing financial support.
The war on venues is particularly strong in places which depend on state funding for their existence. This is particularly strong in the academic world. For example, in October 2020, the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee withdrew funding for The School for Unlearning Zionism, a series of online events and an exhibition, both organised by Jewish students.
The repression reached its height post October 7th, when in December 2023 the multicultural centre Oyoun was closed down for hosting an event organised by the Jüdische Stimme (Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East) – sister organisation of the Jewish Voice for Peace. The Berliner Senat justified closing down Oyoun, by accusing the centre of “hidden antisemitism.”
But Oyoun, which has played a stalwart role in defending Palestinian rights, had been subject to state repression for many years. In June 2021, The Left Berlin and others tried to organise a workshop “Is it possible to talk about Israel/Palestine in Germany?” at the anti-racist Offenes Neukölln festival. Speakers included Wieland Hoban, board member of the Jüdische Stimme.
We were uninvited from the festival because “it might be possible that antisemitic statements would be made”. We were able to carry out the meeting online, but Oyoun, which had originally agreed to host the event, were told in no uncertain terms that hosting the event would lead to them losing their funding.
Job losses
In September 2021, German broadcaster WDR announced that prize-winning German-Palestinian journalist Nemi El-Hassan would not be presenting a science show as planned, because she had liked tweets by the Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish, pro-Palestinian organisation. As an Open Letter in support of El-Hassan reported, Bild Zeitung regularly, and without foundation, branded her an “Islamist”.
In July 2022, Deutsche Welle fired 7 Palestinian journalists using dubious claims of antisemitism which were later disproved in court. One of the 7, Farah Maraqa, told Novosti Hoboctn: “my experience at Deutsche Welle wasn’t an isolated case. It’s part of a much larger pattern of repression that Palestinian journalists in Germany and across Europe face.”
I have already mentioned Palestinian academic Dr. Anne-Esther Younes being uninvited by die Linke. Anna was also deprived of many job opportunities. As Hebh Jamal reported for The Left Berlin in 2022, “Since completing her Ph.D, Younes had issues with applications, so she stopped applying for jobs in Germany or engaging with academia. One academic employer told Younes that if they hired her they would ‘lose funding, be torn apart in the media for hiring me, and their institutions would be destroyed.’”
Censorship of the Arts
Between June and September 2022, the documenta15 Art exhibition in Kassel, the first to be curated by an Asian artist or collective, ended in chaos, as the curators Ruangrupa were accused of antisemitism, following an intervention from the German Chancellor. Exhibitors Taring Padi were forced to remove a 100m2 mural.
Another participant at documenta15, Hamja Ahsan reported being ”stalked, abused, and called a terrorist by members of the SPD” and described as an extremist by Beatrix Storch from the AfD because of her support of BDS.
In 2022 and 2023, Jewish South African artist Adam Broomberg was repeatedly attacked in the mainstream press by Stefan Hensel, Hamburg’s commissioner for combating antisemitism. Hensel claimed that Broomberg was a “hateful antisemitic person who supports terrorism against Jews”. The false claims were not challenged by other journalists, and led to Broomberg losing grants and his teaching job.
Artists were particularly punished by their support for BDS. In October 2019, Lebanese-American artist Walid Raad was denied a cash prize from the German city of Aachen after refusing to condemn BDS. In September 2019, the city of Dortmund withdrew its decision to award the British-Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie a literature prize, citing her support for BDS.
Following October 7th, the cancellations and repression intensified. In November 2023, Christine Streichert-Clivot, Saarland’s Minister of Culture and Education, cancelled an exhibition by Jewish South African artist Candice Breitz. As Candice acidly remarked at the time: Streichert-Clivot “is likely to go down in history as the first Minister of Culture to preside over the cancellation of a major exhibition by a Jewish artist at a German museum since the Nazi era”.
Police violence
One of the aspects of state repression with which we are most familiar is heavy-handed policing of demos. This, too, did not start in 2023. In May 2021, police violently attacked a rally commemorating the victims of Israel’s attack on Sheikh Jarrah. The following April, Berlin police banned all demonstrations for Palestine until the 1st May.
From 13th-15th May 2022, all demonstrations commemorating the Nakba received a similar ban. According to the European Legal Support Centre: “the police disrupted a Palestinian cultural event on 13 May in Neukölln, banning any political public speech, attempting to stop the distribution of books on Palestine on a discretionary basis, and preventing attendees from dancing the traditional Dabke, claiming that it was a form of ‘political expression’.”
Two days later, police violently attacked people mourning the murdered US-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Some people arrested that day were later found non-guilty in court. Others received fines for taking part in an illegal assembly.
In April 2023, all demonstrations related to the 75th anniversary of the Nakba were once more banned by the Berlin government. In May 2023, after the Jüdische Stimme was finally allowed to organise a rally, the rally was shut down by police after some attendees shouted: “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Conclusion
The censorship and repression reported here are just the tip of the iceberg, and is mainly limited to incidents which we directly covered on our small website. Many events are not included, not least the self-censorship of venues, academics, and artists who decided not to speak out on Palestine either because it made their lives easier, or because the dominant German narrative that Palestine is “too complicated” made them feel too uncertain to put their heads above the parapets.
I would hope that one of the side-effects of the mass demonstration for Gaza on 27th September 2025 will help initiate a shift in this narrative, that it will become easier for isolated individuals to speak out for Palestine, and more difficult for the German State to repress them.
Censorship on Palestine – in Germany and elsewhere – depends to a large extent on how much our side is willing to accept, and how much their side is able to impose. As said, the BDS resolution, which helped initiate the new wave of repression, had no legal status, but served to embolden the forces of repression. I hope, and believe, that the new round of resistance will strengthen our ability to resist.
It didn’t start on October 7th, but it didn’t end there either. We can learn from repression, and resistance in the past, in order to strengthen resistance in the future–and the present.