edit because I am getting pushback at Germany being at fault here, here is some context.
During the past months, Palestine solidarity protesters in Berlin have been reportedly subjected to police violence, leaving some injured and requiring medical care. Dozens were reportedly arrested, some for simply chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. This slogan is widely used by the global Palestine solidarity movement yet has been treated by German authorities as expressing support for Hamas, the experts noted. While some courts upheld fines or bans deeming the slogan as “condoning violence”, other courts recognised it as protected under freedom of expression. Moreover, the experts expressed concern that, during protests marking the two-year anniversary of the 7 October Hamas-led attack and the subsequent genocide in Gaza, arbitrary arrests, detentions, and police violence were reported, including officers punching non-violent activists in the face; while the police in Berlin reportedly imposed a last-minute ban on protests without evidence-based justification.
In February, Berlin police ordered that speeches and slogans at a Palestinian solidarity demonstration be conveyed in German and English only. When protesters chanted in Hebrew and Arabic at a demonstration on 8 February, the protest was immediately violently dispersed by police.
In March, at a peaceful protest in Berlin, a woman was repeatedly hit in the face and on the head by a police officer. Similar violence by police officers was documented during protests on Nakba Day as well as at the Internationalist Queer Pride event in Berlin in July.
In February, the Christian Democratic Union Party led a parliamentary inquiry into the financing of civil society organizations. The inquiry consisted of 551 questions, aimed at assessing the political neutrality of state-funded organizations, particularly those campaigning against racism and for migrant rights. It thereby put such organizations under general suspicion.
On 20 March, the Administrative Court of Berlin ruled as unlawful the use of pain-compliance holds by the police to remove peaceful climate protesters from a previously dispersed gathering.
In March, the Berlin immigration authorities notified four foreign – EU and US – nationals of the termination of their residency status due to their involvement in student protests in support of Palestinians in 2024. None were convicted of any criminal charges. Leaked correspondence indicated that the Berlin Ministry of the Interior had pressured the immigration authorities to deport the four. All the cases were successfully challenged in preliminary proceedings and the deportations temporarily halted.
In May, following a Nakba commemoration protest, the Berlin Police claimed that an officer had been seriously injured at the hands of demonstrators. This allegation was used by police spokespeople, the mayor and the federal minister of interior to demand new police powers against protesters acting in solidarity with Palestinians. However, an independent investigation later discovered that the police officer had injured himself while beating protesters.
On 26 November the Administrative Court of Berlin ruled that the dissolution of a pro-Palestine conference in 2024 had been unlawful.
A state that grounds its legitimacy in universalizable norms cannot coherently say that the burdens produced by its special responsibility to Jews may simply fall on those who happened to live in the territory where the Jewish homeland was established—a land Jews had long regarded as their ancestral home. To avoid offloading the costs of its own past to others, Germany bears not only general human-rights duties to Palestinians, but also particular duties of non-complicity, protection, and repair toward them.
At this stage, I find these broader implications of the German responsibility toward Israel insufficiently reflected in German politics, and painfully so. But generational changes seem to be in the process of changing German attitudes in this direction.