Germany’s Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Speech Just Got Even More Unhinged
A German judge has ruled it is a crime to ask, ‘Have we learned nothing from the Holocaust,’ while protesting against Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza.
“Have we learned nothing from the Holocaust?”
Asking this question in Germany is not just a matter of historical reflection, provocation, or even bad taste. A judge ruled that it is, in fact, a crime – arguably answering the question in the process.
Last week, a court convicted an activist who held a sign asking this question in protest against Israel’s killing of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza in November 2023. The judge convicted her of incitement to hatred, arguing the sign “trivialized” the Holocaust because it compared the war in Gaza to the Holocaust, and by this point, only 8,500 Palestinians had been killed by Israel, compared to 6 million Jews killed by the Germans and their collaborators during World War II.
Forget for a second that slightly fewer people were killed at Srebrenica in 1995 – a mass killing widely recognized as a genocide, including by Germany. And forget too that the activist was fined about $1,700 – the same amount a truck driver had to pay for negligent homicide after running over someone lying in the road and killing them. Forget even that the country’s top news magazine, Der Spiegel, asked this very same question on its cover nearly a year ago. This case was different because it related to Palestine, the single biggest taboo subject in a German political atmosphere obsessed with overcoming the past by repeating its mistakes.
The ruling smacks of a political judgment, not least because previous cases have found that calling abortion a “babycaust” in Germany is legal. Some Holocaust references are more equal than others, apparently.
“With this decision, the debate in Germany has reached a new low,” the defendant’s lawyer told me, adding that the defense had included quotes from Holocaust survivors who go even further in comparing Israel’s assault on Gaza with the crimes of the Nazis.
The crackdown comes as Israeli Holocaust historians – Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg, Daniel Blatman – actively call Israel’s war a genocide, in some cases making much more direct comparisons to the Holocaust than a simple question. “I had never imagined in my most horrific nightmares the reality in which I would read testimonies about mass murder carried out by the Jewish state, which in their chilling resemblance remind me of testimonies in the Yad Vashem [Israel’s memorial to Holocaust victims] archives,” Blatman wrote this week in a piece for Israeli newspaper Haaretz titled, “Invoking Never Again in Israel, as More Children Die.” Would he be charged in Germany too?
German antifascists have a slogan, “Prevent the beginnings!” which was prominent at the marches of over 1 million people against the far-right a year ago when discussions to deport non-ethnic Germans were made public. But how can you tell when the beginning is if you criminalize historical comparisons?
On the same day as last week’s judgment, the provocative Irish rap band Kneecap had their appearances at German concerts and music festivals canceled by organizers for the political message during their Coachella appearance, where they said, “Fuck Israel, Free Palestine” and accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians. And on Monday, prosecutors found that singing “foreigners out” to the tune of 90s Eurodance, a far-right meme, is covered by freedom of speech. So, asking a question about historical responsibility is illegal incitement, but cheering for mass ethnicity-based deportations isn’t? Jawohl (yes, sir!), as they say.