The sheer scale of pro-Palestinian protests in major cities across the world since the start of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza has caught imperialist governments and their police forces offguard. Despite pressure to clamp down on solidarity actions, they have been unable to contain or prevent the demonstrations. The German state has been the most repressive among European countries – pro-Palestinian organisations have been banned and demonstrations violently attacked by the police. In France, the Macron government has put official bans on solidarity marches but has been unable to enforce this in practice. Here in Britain, despite calls from right-wing MPs and media for bans, protests have gone ahead largely unimpeded, although subject to stringent conditions, including bans on any protest outside the Israeli embassy since 9 October. The fight for Palestine in these countries now requires a fight against repression by the hundreds of thousands who continue to stand against imperialism’s defence of Zionist terror. Sarah Guebre-Egziabher reports.
Britain
To date approximately 200 people have been arrested on Palestine marches, overwhelmingly in London as the Met has sought ways of preventing the repetition of various chants. This number includes 90 right-wing protesters on 11 November. The other arrests include:
- Three FRFI supporters arrested for holding placards saying Victory to the Intifada and chanting the slogan; this was deemed to be incitement to racial hatred. Five more have been arrested for other offences. No-one in London has been charged and two in Newcastle have been informed that there will be no further action, while two in Glasgow face charges including police assault.
- Four Communist Party of Great Britain – Marxist Leninist (CPGB(ML)) members also arrested for incitement to racial hatred, this time for selling a pamphlet whose cover elided the Star of David with a swastika. Three members of the CPGB(ML) have been arrested under the Terrorism Act for distributing a ‘Victory to the Palestinian Resistance’ leaflet.
- Tony Greenstein, a long-term supporter of Palestine, has been arrested for supporting terrorism in an X statement referring to Hamas and its war against the Israeli occupation;
- Mick Napier, a leader of the Scottish PSC, for a similar offence.
Egged on by Zionist trolls and the tabloids, the Met have tried without success to prevent demonstrators expressing views offensive to racists. They tried to with ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ and merely incited its more widespread expression. ‘Victory to the Intifada’ has little chance of standing up in court as an expression of racial hatred, and so no charges have been laid as yet. Now London mayor Sadiq Khan has said that the Met are looking into whether ‘Yemen, Yemen do us proud, turn another ship around’ also expresses support for terrorism. Despite the number of arrests, few have been charged as it is going to be nigh-on impossible to make allegations of support for terrorism or incitement to racial hatred stick in court. Rather the Met is using these arrests to intimidate protesters.
The British media has taken an active role in demanding state repression, even acting as spies for the police. A journalist from the Daily Express far-right tabloid infiltrated Palestine Action, and his lurid report led the Met to arrest three PalAction activists who were allegedly planning to shut down the London Stock Exchange and cause ‘huge economic damage’. Three more were arrested at the Met’s behest in Liverpool. They face conspiracy charges.
France
France’s President Emmanuel Macron has taken an apparently more ‘neutral’ stance on Palestine and Israel than other Western imperialist leaders. He has condemned the relentless bombing of Gaza, while still affirming Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’. On 24 October, he symbolically visited both Tel-Aviv and Ramallah, meeting with both Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas. Positioning himself as a potential mediator in the conflict, Macron plays a double game: he wants to preserve France’s relationship with its former colonies in the Arab world, without compromising its ties with Israel.
Despite these gestures, French domestic policy towards pro-Palestine protest has been anything but measured. France is the only country in Europe apart from neo-fascist Viktor Orbán’s Hungary to ban all pro-Palestine demonstrations. On 12 October, French interior minister Gérald Darmanin told local Prefects not only that pro-Palestine protests were to be outlawed, but that any protest that did happen must result in arrests, and any foreign nationals arrested should be deported. This was a direct attack on the democratic right to assembly and to protest, and overt criminalisation of support for the Palestinian people.
Nevertheless, the French people and especially its Arab communities have resisted these bans. When notices of demonstrations have been submitted and rejected, the strategy taken has been to relentlessly submit more notices, as well as appealing to administrative courts using ‘référé-liberté’, an emergency legal procedure used when fundamental democratic rights are undermined. These tactics have enabled many demonstrations to go ahead, and when unsuccessful, protesters have defied the ban anyway.
Germany
Germany has undoubtedly been the most repressive in its treatment of the Palestine solidarity movement. Chancellor Olaf Scholz says that Germany has one place, and that is beside Israel. Long before 7 October, the German state was banning protests in support of Palestine.
Since the Al-Aqsa flood operation, Germany’s repression of Palestine activists has been even more intense. Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, was proscribed early in November. While there has not been an all-encompassing ban on Palestine solidarity protests, many such protests have been forbidden by local states and authorities, in particular in Berlin and Frankfurt. In universities such as Free University Berlin, students have been forcibly removed from their campuses and arrested for engaging in pro-Palestine protest.
Berlin itself, which has the largest concentration of Arabs and Muslims in Germany, has been the most repressive city. The Palestinian flag and keffiyehs have been banned in schools, and individuals in public spaces have been persecuted for wearing such symbols. Though repression of pro-Palestine sentiment has become a nation-wide policy, it has been most systematic in larger cities like Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich. Yet protests continue to take place: on 4 November, around 10,000 people demonstrated in Berlin, resulting in 60 arrests.
The German state has also overtly targeted communists, the most radical elements of the Palestine solidarity struggle. At the annual ‘Luxemburg Liebknecht Lenin’ protest which commemorates the assassinations of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht on 15 January, thousands joined in light of the current political situation in Germany and in Palestine. 16 people were arrested, and several protestors severely injured.
More so than ever, it is important for radical groups and specifically communists to be vigilant, organised, and steadfast in their dealing with state repression.
