Germany\u2019s antisemitism czar has urged a law to ban pro-Palestinian slogans such as \u201cFrom the river to the sea,\u201d renewing a fraught debate over the country\u2019s historic allegiance to Israel and freedom of speech.<\/p>\n
Felix Klein\u2019s initiative would ban chants that could be interpreted as calling for Israel\u2019s destruction. His proposal has the support of German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and is now being reviewed by the Justice Ministry, he told Haaretz<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore Oct. 7, you could have said that \u2018From the river to the sea\u2019 doesn\u2019t necessarily mean kicking Israelis off the land, and I could accept that,\u201d said Klein. \u201cBut since then, Israel has really been facing existential threats, and unfortunately, it has become necessary here to limit freedom of speech in this regard.\u201d<\/p>\n Klein, the first holder<\/a> of an office titled \u201cFederal Government Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight against Antisemitism\u201d since 2018, added that he believed the law must be passed even if it is challenged in court for violating free speech.<\/p>\n Hamas\u2019 Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and the subsequent and devastating Israel-Hamas war in Gaza tore at the seams of Germany\u2019s national doctrines. The war triggered a sharp rise in antisemitic<\/a> and Isalmophobic<\/a> incidents across the country. It also exposed charged questions about when Germany prioritizes its responsibility toward the Jewish state, which became central to German national identity after the Holocaust, and when it upholds democratic principles.<\/p>\n The legal boundaries of pro-Palestinian speech are already far from clear-cut. Currently, courts decide whether a person chanted \u201cFrom the river to the sea, Palestine will be free\u201d in support of peacefully liberating Palestinians or in endorsement of terrorism. In August 2024, the German-Iranian activist Ava Moayeri was convicted of condoning a crime<\/a> for leading the chant at a Berlin rally on Oct. 11, 2023.<\/p>\n Shortly after the Hamas attacks, local authorities across Germany imposed sweeping bans on pro-Palestinian protests. Berlin officials authorized schools to ban the keffiyeh<\/a>, a symbol of Palestinian solidarity, along with slogans such as \u201cFree Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n Jewish and Israeli activists were caught up in the crackdown. In October 2023, a woman was arrested<\/a> after holding a poster that said, \u201cAs a Jew and Israeli: Stop the genocide in Gaza.\u201d And police prohibited a demonstration<\/a> by a group calling themselves \u201cJewish Berliners against Violence in the Middle East,\u201d citing the risk of unrest and \u201cinflammatory, antisemitic exclamations.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this year, German immigration authorities ordered the deportation<\/a> of three European nationals and one U.S. citizen over their alleged activity at pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Three of the orders cited Germany\u2019s \u201cStaatsr\u00e4son,\u201d or \u201creason of state,\u201d a doctrine enshrining Germany\u2019s defense of Israel as justification for its own existence after the Holocaust.<\/p>\n But that tenet is not used in legal settings, according to Alexander Gorski, who represents the demonstrators threatened with deportation. \u201cStaatsr\u00e4son is not a legal concept,\u201d Gorski told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in April. \u201cIt\u2019s completely irrelevant. It\u2019s not in the German Basic Law, it\u2019s not in the constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n Jewish leaders such as Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor and president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, have argued that anger toward Israel created a \u201cpretext\u201d for antisemitism. \u201cIt is sufficient cause in itself to fuel the hatred,\u201d Knobloch said to Deutsche Welle<\/a> in September.<\/p>\n In recent months, two German establishments made the news<\/a> for refusing entry to Jews and Israelis. A shop in Flensburg, which posted a sign saying \u201cJews are banned here,\u201d<\/a> is vulnerable to German anti-discrimination law. Not so for the restaurant in F\u00fcrth whose sign read, \u201cWe no longer accept Israelis in our establishment,\u201d according to anti-discrimination commissioner Ferda Ataman, who said the law does not apply to discrimination on the basis of nationality.<\/p>\n Klein said he has also initiated legislation to expand that law to protect Israelis and other nationalities.<\/p>\n He has a longstanding relationship with Jewish communities in Germany, starting with his Foreign Office appointment as the special liaison to global Jewish organizations. In that role, he helped create a \u201cworking definition\u201d of antisemitism for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016. That definition has sparked contentious debate, as critics argue it conflates some criticisms of Israel with antisemitism.<\/p>\n Klein believes that anti-Zionism does largely fall in the same bucket as antisemitism. \u201cI think in most cases it is \u2014 it\u2019s just a disguised form of antisemitism,\u201d he told Haaretz. \u201cWhen people say they\u2019re anti-Israel, what they really mean is Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n Power the news that matters to you<\/strong>. Before 2025 ends, help JTA’s independent, award-winning newsroom document Jewish history in real-time.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s antisemitism czar has urged a law to ban pro-Palestinian slogans such as \u201cFrom the river to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-585616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115590196315593242","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}