German state repression of Palestine solidarity “comparable to authoritarian regimes”

Activists resist campaign to criminalise non-violent resistance to the Gaza genocide

~ Josie Ó Súileabháin ~

In the early hours of 16 July, police banged on Manar’s apartment door. When her husband answered, the armed officers from the State Office of Criminal Investigation (LKA) proceeded to search the flat for the Palestinian mother while her two children, aged 4 and 11, were getting ready for school.

After establishing she was not at home, police continued to Manar’s workplace. Her devices were seized in front of work colleagues, the public association with high-level crime directly threatening her employment status.

They had no subpoena, no prior contact, and no voluntary request. Manar was not accused of any crime. She was classified as a ‘witness’ to a ‘serious breach of the peace’ and ‘attempted prisoner liberation’ during the Nakba77 demonstration in Berlin on 15 May—yet the raid was conducted as if she was armed and dangerous. Police raided the homes of four other participants in the event.

“This was not just a raid”, said a collective statement released by PA Allies, Arrest Press Unit and Palestine Reveals. “It was a deliberate act of the German state to intimidate and criminalise a Palestinian mother and her family. It was an act of psychological violence—not only against her children, who now learnt that not even their home is a safe space—but also against Manar herself”.

As Freedom reported, repression at the Nakba77 event resulted in 88 arrests and over 36 people injured, some seriously, including two paramedics. The police charged into the crowd repeatedly, and punched and beat participants seemingly at random.

Those arrested were beaten while in handcuffs and within police vans and cells. Paramedics were attacked by intervening or attempting to provide medical attention to detainees with suspected head trauma. I witnessed accredited journalists being arrested and dragged away by police as they attempted to document arrests.

Politically motivated

Germany is estimated to have the largest Palestinian diaspora population in Europe, reaching up to 300,000 people. Over the last six years alone, there have been over 700 documented cases of state repression against this community across all areas of civic life, including education, media and cultural institutions.

In a report released by the European Civic Forum, Germany was identified as one of the most repressive EU states in relation to state reactions to Palestine solidarity. Alice Garcia of the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC) said that these practices are “unequivocally comparable to practices of authoritarian regimes”.

The German state criminalises Palestinian identity by weaponising of migration law, and uses deportations, visa cancellations and asylum denials to produce chilling effect to prevent immigrant activism and choke solidarity.

“Repression of Palestinians is a deep, structural phenomenon best described as racism”, say organisers from PA Allies and Palästina Spricht (Palestine Speaks) in a report. They point to “systematic dehumanisation, delegitimation, and exclusion of the Palestinians as a people, often through the framing of the figure of the Palestinian as a potential threat”.

The German media is complicit in this shielding of state-sanctioned police violence through one-sided narratives that depict protesters as aggressive, dangerous and a threat to public order and national security. The German Federation of Journalists (DVJ) complained in an open letter referring to alleged Palestine solidarity violence towards the press: “we are not the whipping boys of crazy radicals!”

Where no examples were specified, Palästina Spricht were able to offer multiple examples of police violence against protesters, including Palestinian youth, documented repeatedly since the 7 October Hamas massacres and Israel’s ensuing genocidal war on Gaza, and sent directly to Berlin authorities and the police. Yet no investigation was made, and even Reporters Without Borders Germany have failed to call out this pattern of police violence.

Instead, it was alleged that a police officer was violently attacked at the Nakba77 demonstrations, repeated in an echo chamber by the press, police unions, local authorities and Federal ministers to justify stricter police tactics and greater suppression of freedom of expression.

Forensis and Forensic Architecture have since revealed that the same policeman was seen entering the protest and violently tackling a participant to the ground, proceeding to punch and hit protesters around him. From what I witnessed, the violence began to escalate the moment Arabic was spoken by those on the loud speaker on the stage as the police began to move in.

Spiral into absurdity

On 11 February, Berlin police raided a café located on the Sonnenallee in Neukölln and arrested multiple people, including two Palestinian refugees from Gaza. One was taken to Tegel prison and later released, and the second was deported to Athens and left on the streets. In another case, a Palestinian was arrested during what they assumed was a regular appointment at the Berlin Immigration Office, and immediately deported to Athens, where after a period of detention he was left with a temporary travel document and released onto the streets with no housing, food or resources.

Later this year, police searched the apartment of Musaab Abu Atta, who was subsequently arrested. He has been held without charge since the end of February, and his lawyer describes this pre-trial detention as a politically motivated attrition tactic against him and his relatives. Communication has been heavily restricted and police have warned family members that they will be held under suspicion if they attempt visitation. Appointments are cancelled and contact can only be made indirectly through his lawyer.

It would be a mistake to judge this repression as Germany’s response to 7 October. Already in late September 2023, German police issued Abu Atta with a ban that prohibits him from attending political events, particularly with Samidoun, a Palestinian prisoner solidarity organisation he is active with. This stretched until October 31 or “until he leaves the country”, as the German immigration authorities believed his status as a Palestinian refugee from Syria is an “inaccurate” nationality. Since his arrival from Syria in 2015, Abu Atta has been subjected to surveillance, racism, stigmitisation and criminalisation.

As a teenager, Abu Atta was prosecuted for his support for Palestinian resistance through social media posts. So it was in the case of Palestinian artist Hamja Ahsan, where a report was made to the police based on his social media posts while living in England. In reaction to reports of SPD leader Olaf Scholz calling to “deport on a large scale those who have no right to stay in Germany,” Ahsan called him a “neo-liberal fascist pig” and was reported to the police by Volker Beck, head of the German-Israel Society.

“We must disrupt silence to end the genocide”, wrote Majad Abu Salama, co-founder of Palästina Spricht, before going to court for a number of social media posts. “I return to court again not as the accused but as the accuser. The true defendants are western imperialist regimes – Germany included – who funds the genocide and criminalises those who resist it”.

Palästina Spricht and other groups have made it clear that Germany is actively supporting and enabling Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, and it is in this context that repression is escalating. Abstention of the UN ceasefire vote, opposition to the ICJ genocide case, suspension of humanitarian aid through UNRWA and a total of €487 million in arms exports to Israel all make Germany complicit on an international level.

Abu Salama is a refugee from the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza. He has written pieces titled ‘Gaza broke out of prison’ and ‘Free Palestine from the river to the sea’ for Palästina Spricht. “These are not crimes, those are living stories of Gaza children under military blockade for decades including myself, friends and my siblings. These are truths voiced by a people refusing colonial erasure”, Abu Salama writes. “I’ve spent my life building strong, de-colonial, intersectional movements for justice across Europe, despite relentless smear campaigns, state surveillance and police brutality—I’ve stood tall. Because now, more than ever, the world must turn its full attention to Gaza.”

As with other defendents, Abu Salama is not charged with a crime. There appears to be no evidence, “just a judge who ‘felt’ I was guilty”, he writes. “Under political pressure, social media platforms and Telecom companies gave my private data to German authorities”, says Abu Salama, explaining that he “refuses to legitimise a system that censors the truth, shields genocide, criminalises the colonised and weaponises guilt against those demanding liberation”.

“Today, I witnessed yet another surreal moment in this countries spiral into absurdity,” Abu Salama wrote following his trial on July 1. His lawyer was forced to postpone the hearings until August after the court translator was unable, or unwilling, to translate key political terms such as ‘genocide’ from his statements. The translator cited a background in criminal rather than international law, but it is clear that even this is a way of silencing the Palestinian experience from the public record. Abu Salama is a refugee of a genocide, yet he is unable to name the very reason he is standing in a courtroom in Germany and not in the ruins of the Jabalia refugee camp.

Photos: Nakba77 demonstrations in Berlin, May 15, 2025. Josie Ó Súileabháin.

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