A Berlin court has convicted a pro-Palestinian activist of condoning a crime for leading a chant of the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” at a rally in the German capital four days after the Hamas attacks on Israel, in what her defence team called a defeat for free speech.
The presiding judge, Birgit Balzer, ordered 22-year-old German-Iranian national Ava Moayeri to pay a €600 (£515) fine on Tuesday, rejecting her argument that she meant only to express support for “peace and justice” in the Middle East by calling out the phrase on a busy street.
Balzer said she “could not comprehend” the logic of previous German court rulings that determined the saying was “ambiguous”, saying to her it was clear it “denied the right of the state of Israel to exist”.
Good old Germany, going back to the days of the State deeming some races as superior and having special laws to punish and silence those critical of the actions, no matter how murderous, of those the German State has deemed to represent a superior race.
You can take the NAZIsm out of Germany but you can’t take the profound racism and the authoritaristic tendencies out of the heart of the German Power Elites.