This viral video shows German police chasing and arresting a 10-year-old pro-Palestine protester on 21 September in Berlin. Despite Germany’s legal protections for free speech and assembly, the country’s support for Israel appears to take priority over protests or gatherings supporting Palestine. News reports say German police have arrested many people at pro-Palestine demonstrations, but the child’s arrest shocked many.
Some have accused Germany of washing its hands of Holocaust guilt at the expense of Palestinians occupied by Israel and the Africans that Germany colonised during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Author and researcher Denijal Jegić has written that German support for Israel is used as a cover to ramp up racist anti-immigration policies and downplay homegrown anti-Semitism.
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), one of Germany’s leading parties, has argued the words’ free Palestine’ have no place in Germany, denouncing the phrase as a ‘war cry of an internationally active terror gang.’ Former German chancellor Angela Merkel has stated Israel’s security and existence is tied to modern Germany’s foundation, given the atrocities that Germany committed against Jews in the Holocaust during World War II.
The German government has not only provided political and diplomatic support for Israel but has also fast-tracked arms exports to facilitate the Israeli military onslaught in Gaza, which has k*lled more than 41,000 Palestinian civilians or as many as 186,000 as of early July, according to a Lancet medical-journal report.
Video credit: Resistance New Network on Telegram (@PalestineResist)