Germany has recently taken a chilling new step, signalling its willingness to use political views as grounds to curb migration. Authorities are now moving to deport foreign nationals for participating in pro-Palestine actions. As I reported this week in the Intercept, four people in Berlin – three EU citizens and one US citizen – are set to be deported over their involvement in demonstrations against Israel’s war on Gaza. None of the four have been convicted of a crime, and yet the authorities are seeking to simply throw them out of the country.
The accusations against them include aggravated breach of the peace and obstruction of a police arrest. Reports from last year suggest that one of the actions they were alleged to have been involved in included breaking into a university building and threatening people with objects that could have been used as potential weapons.
But the deportation orders go further. They cite a broader list of alleged behaviours: chanting slogans such as “Free Gaza” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, joining road blockades (a tactic frequently used by climate activists), and calling a police officer a “fascist”. Read closely, the real charge appears to be something more basic: protest itself.
I get where you’re coming from. It’s a hard legacy to inherit, but honestly most European countries have terrible events in their past. Germany’s is just the most recent.
It’s sad that travelling as a German is so awkward. Americans can be ignorant jerks, so that doesn’t surprise me much. Few of them know how mainstream Nazi thinking was there before they entered the war. They treat us British as occupiers that they had to kick out, rather than the ancestral home of their founding fathers. Best to brush them off.
With many other places WW2 kicked off a series of occupations that only finished with the fall of the Soviet Union. It’s still raw.
There is no absolution. There’s just time.
(Germany needs a good therapist)
You’re focusing on Israel as being the answer. Israel is not the Jewish diasporas. What Israel wants is not the same thing as what the Jewish people want. What about all the Jews around the world that see Israel killing in their name and are disgusted by it? They then see Germany by Israel’s side?
Ukraine, on the other hand…defending a nation against a clear aggressor. A foreign policy slam-dunk, yet it’s France and the UK taking the lead.
Be a rock. Be solid. A good world citizen. Be worthy of the world’s trust and then you will be trusted.