The Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Berlin announced Tuesday that the BDS movement has been classified as “unconstitutional.”
The head of the office, Michael Fischer, explained that the movement’s status in Berlin’s antisemitic and anti-Israel landscape has significantly strengthened over the past year.
Fischer clarified that BDS’s ideology is based on “explicit denial of Israel’s right to exist.” According to him, BDS activity goes beyond boycotting cultural events or Israeli economic products. “The goal is to make the existence of Israel impossible in the international context. It is aimed at its destruction,” Fischer stated.
Keep on pressuring. Anti genocide is not anti semitic. Remove the politicians who are pro genocide. Do not repeat 1940
The problem is that there are anti-semitic people marching with the anti-genocide crowd which doesn’t seem to bother them.
As the old saying goes “if you don’t have a problem marching with nazis, you’re a nazi”
If they can’t be bothered tp differentiate themselves from and exclude antisemites, then I can’t differentiate them anymore.
there are anti-semetic people among the anti-genocide people, I don’t know enough about BDS in Germany to say but we should be careful to allow anti-semetic thinking (both from the islamic side as the neo-nazi side) to get a foot in de door through the anti-genocide protests. totally agree with you on everything you say though, don’t get me wrong.
You are right on that.
I agree in principle, and personally challenge antisemitic thinking where I recognize it, but I don’t think it’s possible to completely inoculate a protest movement (let alone an armed struggle on site) against the criminal actions of what is a de jure Jewish state from negative sentiment towards Jews. It is asking the impossible. Oppressed people and their allies will hate their oppressors and that hate will spill over to cover an entire ethnic or religious group. Until some form of justice and peace can be restored. In every case we should be against the targeting of civilians.
Just from the polemic style and tagesspiegel it was clear that it must have been from Sebastian Leber.
Am Alexanderplatz forderten sie mehrfach den Boykott israelischer Waren. Klingt für viele nach „Deutsche! Wehrt euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden!“
He equates Israel with all Jews, which has antisemitic connotations.
Sie wollten bloß die israelische Apartheid abschaffen.
Äh, Apartheid?
He thinks that calling Israel an Apartheid state would be antisemitic. That aged like milk.
Zu seinen Kernforderungen gehört, dass alle palästinensischen Flüchtlinge nach Israel zurückkehren dürfen, dazu deren Kinder, Enkel und Urenkel. Ein solches Rückkehrrecht wäre weltweit einmalig. Israels Juden wären fortan in der Minderheit. Ob dieser Staat dann noch Israel heißen könne, müsse die neue Mehrheit entscheiden, sagt Deeg. Als Europäer solle man sich da nicht einmischen.
He claims that a right of return for forcefully displaced people would be “globally unique”. In fact it is an “inalienable right” by the UN resolution 3236. Also he then says that this would put Jews into a minority in Israel. He then suggests that this would be an existential threat to Israel. However he does not bother to consider what this means about the kind of state Israel is.
Die führenden Köpfe sagen ganz offen, dass sie keine zwei Staaten, also Israel neben Palästina, dulden werden. Dass der Judenstaat verschwinden muss und es dann nur noch einen Staat Palästina gibt.
“The leading heads” he claims, without noting who exactly that is supposed to be. This is in stark contrast to all the people he names by full name in the article. Also calling Israel “Judenstaat” - “The state of the Jews” rings racist/antisemitic. A more neutral formulation would be “jüdischer Staat” - “Jewish state”.
Wenn die BDS-Mitglieder Israel einen „Apartheidstaat“ nennen, meinen sie nicht etwa Menschenrechtsverletzungen im Westjordanland. Sie glauben, dass der Staat auch die 20 Prozent seiner eigenen Bürger, die arabischstämmig sind, als Menschen zweiter Klasse behandle.
He claims that Palestinian Israelis would not be discriminated against in Israel, despite that being well reported.
I will provide an excerpt from Amnesty International
Palestinian citizens of Israel, who comprise about 19% of the population, face many forms of institutionalized discrimination. In 2018, discrimination against Palestinians was crystallized in a constitutional law which, for the first time, enshrined Israel exclusively as the “nation state of the Jewish people”. The law also promotes the building of Jewish settlements and downgrades Arabic’s status as an official language.
The report documents how Palestinians are effectively blocked from leasing on 80% of Israel’s state land, as a result of racist land seizures and a web of discriminatory laws on land allocation, planning and zoning.
The situation in the Negev/Naqab region of southern Israel is a prime example of how Israel’s planning and building policies intentionally exclude Palestinians. Since 1948 Israeli authorities have adopted various policies to “Judaize” the Negev/Naqab, including designating large areas as nature reserves or military firing zones, and setting targets for increasing the Jewish population. This has had devastating consequences for the tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouins who live in the region.
Thirty-five Bedouin villages, home to about 68,000 people, are currently “unrecognized” by Israel, which means they are cut off from the national electricity and water supply and targeted for repeated demolitions. As the villages have no official status, their residents also face restrictions on political participation and are excluded from the healthcare and education systems. These conditions have coerced many into leaving their homes and villages, in what amounts to forcible transfer.
Leber wents on to equate these people with terrorists by claiming:
In den allermeisten Gesetzen werden Religion oder Ethnie gar nicht erwähnt, sie gelten für jeden Staatsbürger gleichermaßen. Zum Beispiel die Sicherheitsgesetze, die Terroranschläge verhindern sollen. Israelgegner argumentieren nun, solche Anschläge würden statistisch gesehen häufiger von Nichtjuden als von Juden verübt - deshalb seien Maßnahmen dagegen rassistisch.
“Most laws dont mention religion or ethnicity, they apply to everyone equally. For example security laws to prevent terror attacks. Enemies of Israel argue these would be committed more often by non Jews than Jews, which is why the measure would be racist.”
Again he provides no information who those “enemies of Israel” are supposed to be that made these claims according to Leber.
So assuming what Leber quotes in individuals to be true, there would be some things to legitimately criticise. However Leber is known to polemizise and violate journalistic standards, including disrespecting his source. He claimed a different Berlin newspaper had altered an interview with Roger Waters to make him look better. In the process he leaked confidential communications. https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/mensch-metropole/roger-waters-so-verzerrt-der-tagesspiegel-die-wahrheit-li.2200289
Otherwise he is busy bringing hot takes on social media to generate outrage. He is presented as an expert on the left, antisemitism and Israel. His “non fiction books” as an author are books like “33 Men report from heart-wreaking rebuffs, embarassing losses and reciprocated feelings”, “Partying for advanced learners” and “Ernie vs. Bert and 99 other duels.”
Leber is a clown, who realized that with polemics around Israel/Palestine he can get attention while enjoying the backing of the political mainstream. His “journalism” remains lackluster and anything he writes needs to be taken not with a big grain of salt, but with a bag of salt.
Well sourced and argued
In that case it’s a no no. But at the same time, Germany has been going after people who are just pro Palestine.
For all those english speaking people here: The “Office for the protection of the constitution in Berlin” is the Landesverfassungsschutz Berlin. First of all: Nothing is really happening here, BDS is not banned. The Verfassungsschutz (as problematic as he is) is just reporting on groups who have anticonstitutional goals.
You can download the report here:
https://www.berlin.de/sen/inneres/verfassungsschutz/publikationen/verfassungsschutzberichte/
This is the part on BDS:
Translation:
The aim of the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) campaign is to “end the occupation” of “all Arab lands” by Israel “Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands”)40, i.e. ultimately the abolition of the Israeli state. The binding ideological leitmotif of the network behind the BDS campaign is thus the negation of Israel’s right to exist. The instrument of the comprehensive boycott aims to inflict considerable damage on the state and the population that is equated with it. For one of the conceptual masterminds of the BDS campaign, the duo-listic contrast between the Israeli “oppressive regime” on the one hand and “almost the entire Palestinian population” on the other is at the heart of the Middle East conflict, whereby Israel is unilaterally assigned the role of being solely responsible for the conflict.41 At its core, the BDS campaign aims to demonize and delegitimize Israel. Hostility towards Israel is a key element of the Berlin BDS network. Its supporters and supporters reject Israel’s right to exist. On the internet, for example, some of them called for an “intifada” or the “annihilation of the Zionists” .42 For years, they have been involved in individual boycott campaigns, such as against , a sporting goods manufacturer accused of collaborating with of the Israeli soccer league.43 Finally, Berlin BDS supporters justified and/or glorified the terrorist attack by HAMAS on October 7, 2023.44 In official statements, the attack was described as a “liberation struggle against settler colonialism” or welcomed as an escape from the “open-air prison” Gaza.45 They were also an integral part of the anti-Israel scene, which was responsible for a large number of anti-Israel events. They initiated and organized these events in alliances with left-wing extremist and Islamist groups, such as the VPNK. Signs with stereotypical anti-Jewish imagery were repeatedly displayed at these events. Speakers from the BDS campaign denied the brutal dimension of the terror of 7 October 2023. At a demonstration on 2 March under the slogan “Solidarity with Palestine” , a BDS speaker also openly explained that the slogan “From the river to the sea […]” undoubtedly meant the ‘abolition’ of the “colonial project” of Israel.
Irrespective of everything else, the very beginning of the article is already wrong and sensationalist: The Verfassungschutz doesn’t outlaw stuff, they have no power to do so. What them classifying things means is that they have an easier time justifying covert information gathering, inserting moles etc.
They have no executive powers whatsoever, all they’re doing is collecting information and writing reports.
…also, the report doesn’t mention anything about “unconstitutional”. Here it is, 2024 one, page 30, BDS is listed under “Extremist organisations with near-east relation”.
According to the Jerusalem Post:
The intelligence document cited examples of BDS that were widely condemned as antisemitic by German politicians and experts in the field of antisemitism. One of the outbreaks of BDS-animated antisemitism outlined was the storming of an Israel event at Humboldt University. At least three highly aggressive pro-BDS activists lashed out at Israeli survivor of the Holocaust Deborah Weinstein and MK Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid) who participated at the event titled: Life in Israel – Terror, Bias and the Chances for Peace.
Among the audience were at least three BDS activists: Stavit Sinai (an Israeli Jewish university lecturer), Ronnie Barkan (an Israeli Jewish math teacher) and Majed Abusalama (a Gaza Palestinian born in the Jabalia refugee camp, shot in a leg by an Israeli soldier during a nonviolent protest[8]). According to Michael Spaney from DIG, “several minutes” or “about 10 minutes” into Aliza Lavie’s lecture, one of the activists started shouting at her before being removed from the hall, and then two others started speaking and/or shouting against Lavie and against Israel before being removed too. The activists were accusing Israel of apartheid and accusing Israel, and Aliza Lavie specifically, of war crimes in Gaza. Lavie said the activists told her “the blood of the Gaza Strip is on your hands” and called the politician a “child murderer” (a reference to the 2014 bombardment and airstrikes in Gaza). Lavie and her group reportedly left the hall through a back exit to avoid a group of about 20 protesters at the main entrance.[4][5][9] Describing the way the activists were removed from the hall by DIG members, Michael Spaney from DIG said they were “nicely maneuvered out” of the hall (though they were “lashing out”), while the BDS activists said Stavit Sinai was punched in the face.[1][2] Ronnie Barkan said that a video shown to the judge during the trial showed the moment Sinai was punched.[3]
So basically, actions by 2 ISRAELI JEWS (and an actual victimized Palestinian) are used as evidence of antisemitism.
Yet another case of German bureaucrats lecturing Jewish people about what is and what isn’t antisemitism. Picking good and bad Jews, which is of course …antisemitism.
Reminds me of this quote:
There is, as the Israeli-born architect and academic Eyal Weizman has acidly put it, a certain irony in “being lectured [on how to be properly Jewish] by the children and grandchildren of the perpetrators who murdered our families and who now dare to tell us that we are antisemitic”.
Shame on German institutions for their betrayal of both anti-zionist Jews and of course of Palestinians, victims of countless crimes against humanity that Germany turns a blind eye to. Shame, shame, shame.
The head of the German Israeli Society DIG - Volker Beck demanded in an interview in January 2024 as the head of the DIG that aid to Gaza should be weaponized to press free hostages.
“Müssen die Lieferung von Hilfsgütern stärker mit der Befreiung von Geiseln verbinden”
The DIG recently sparked controversy as a restaurant catering at one of their events serving a drink “Watermelon meets Zion” with watermelon “shredded, pureéd and hacked”. The poster shows a lion with an Israeli flag and watermelons with faces in the background.
The DIG said it felt sorry and can see why people felt offended although the poster would be “obvious satire”.
I don’t see how that’s relevant.
Describing the way the activists were removed from the hall by DIG members, Michael Spaney from DIG said they were “nicely maneuvered out” of the hall (though they were “lashing out”), while the BDS activists said Stavit Sinai was punched in the face.[1][2] Ronnie Barkan said that a video shown to the judge during the trial showed the moment Sinai was punched.[3]
DIG is accused by the Jewish antizionist protestors to have assaulted them. I provided context that over the last year and a half they have been advocating or being apologetic towards violence and calls of violence. So them punching antizionist Jews seems plausible to me, for which i added the context.
I see, thanks. Do Kahanists have such free reign in Germany? That’s troubling to read.
I dont think that there is ideological ties to these. What we have in Germany is a very problematic amalgamation of a few ideologies.
First of all it is important to understand that Antisemitism has been alive and well in Germany past World War II. The proclaimed “Memory Culture” only started to gain traction in the West in the 80s. In the former GDR there was much more “Memory Culture” but it revolved around overemphasizing the struggle of communists and other political antifascists, who were one of the many groups mass murdered in the concentration camps. for the first 30 or so years after the war, the tactic was to largely just be silent about the past.
When Germany reunited it was met with a lot of fear by surrounding countries that Germany could become not only powerful but also hostile and imperialist against its neighbors again. To improve the image of a peaceful nation Germany embraced the narrative of the “memory culture”. A country that has worked through its past and learned from it. This narrative was especially important as the economic consequences of the reunification served as a breeding ground for militant Neonazis who committed Pogroms against migrants and other attacks and were quite visible inside Germany. Meanwhile there was one big issue. There was hardly any Jewish people left in Germany. Still today there is approx. 200.000 Jewish people, less than 0.3 % of the total population and among them many people with Israel-German dual nationality. So German politics looked towards the state of Israel to grant them the rubber-stamp of having adorned for the past.
From there on the Israeli influence on the Jewish society in Germany grew and politics increasingly looked to embrace Israel as evidence of having adorned for the past.
Over the past 15 years or so a new aspect came in. By ramping up racism against Arabs in Israel, but also in all of the western world it became attractive in Germany to create the narrative of “imported Antisemitism”. This is especially embraced by the right and far-right, who are looking to free themselves of the “inherited guilt”. By making “the Arab” the source of Antisemitism in the public discourse Germans could legitimize their racism and free themselves of their guilt. “See it is them who are the Antisemites, not us!”. For Israel this served a similar purpose. By making the Palestinians in particular and Arabs in general “Antisemites” questions about the legitimacy of opposition to Israel could be silenced. There would be no need to look into the veracity of statements like accusing Israel of apartheid. That statement is simply antisemitic and expression of evil, no need to look further…
Finally this morphes into Fascists like the AfD embracing Israel as it servers to justify ethno-nationalism. It also serves to attack progressive political movements from the left as “antisemitic” for not being in blind support of Israel. This helps to circumvent questions of the imperial history of Germany, Germanies other genocides and of course the question of colonial dimensions to Israels expansionism, the interest of weapons manufacturers in perpetual war and the broader context of Western geopolitics in the Middle East.
Here you can see a banner that is showing it quite well imo. The subtext reads “against left, right and islamist antisemitism”. They put “left” first as this seems to be more important than the “right”. Meanwhile Antisemitic crime, especially violent crime in Germany is largely perpetuated by the far right, such as a terror attack on a Synagogue in 2019.
If you put these pieces together, you can see why German politics are so hellbent on doubling down for Israel. They would have to leave their Lalaland in which Germany is the good guys. They would need to face the rising Fascism in Germany and relate it to their own policies and acknowledged how they enable it themselves. They would have to acknowledge how they attacked Jewish people who oppose Israel and they would need to acknowledge that they never made Germany a safe and welcoming place for Jewish people.
There are barely any Kahanists in Germany. And I was targeted by the few there are like ten years ago because naive me used to hang around some but started avoiding them when the genocidal views came out of them.
I am all for the boycott of Israel because of it’s human rights violations and the genocide going on right now. But I oppose the BDS movement due to often antisemitic proponents in it.
Berlin just going full fash. How 1930s of them.
Criticising Berlin for forbidding hatred against jews is a new height of stupidity.
Israel exists, just accept that
BDS of South African apartheid set a precedent that shook white nationalists to their bones.
We’re watching the modern western liberal consensus on free markets collapse under the weight of a few Palestinian activists saying “Sell your soda stream stock to oppose genocide”. Now it’s going to be illegal to divest from Israeli private business because… Israel exists? Because ethno-nationalism is a natural right?
The fascist project of national ethnic purity seems to be as alive in Berlin today as it was 70 years ago.
In the US, many laws have been passed, and more proposed, to punish entities who boycott Israel. Entities being individuals, corporations, cities & towns, etc.
And you know what I say to that as an American? I will boycott whoever the fuck I please, whenever I please, for any reason or none at all as I see fit. And if corporations are people too, my friend, then they have the right as well to self-determine who they’ll buy from and who they won’t. And while we’re at it, so do municipalities, and private clubs, any other collection of people singular or plural.
I find such craven obeisance in service of Israel to be personally offensive, and any American who pays attention to how Israel actually behaves with their own two eyes is likely to come to the same conclusion if they are confronted with the issue and think about it for five seconds.
Anyway, that may be a factor behind loud support of boycotting Israel from random American leftoids.
Removed by mod
The account I’m responding to is a 3h old troll sock puppet. Don’t feed the troll.
