Germany is now launching EU pro-Palestine citizens. This is a new chilling step | Have hauenstein

A The repression of political dissent is well started in Germany. In the last two years, institutions and authorities have canceled events, exhibitions and prizes on declarations on Palestine or Israel. There are many examples: the Frankfurt book fair indefinitely postponement a award ceremony for Adania Shibli; The Heinrich Böll Foundation withdraw the Hannah Arendt Award from Masha Gessen; The University of Cologne revoke a chair for Nancy Fraser; No other terrestrial director Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham be defamed by German ministers. And, more recently, the philosopher Omri Boehm be disinfiled From speaking to the anniversary of this month on the liberation of Buchenwald.

In almost all these cases, the accusations of anti -Semitism affect, even if the Jews are often among those targeted. More often, they are the liberals that guide or tacitly accept these cancellations, while the conservatives and the far right wind and rejoice them. While the vigilance against the increase in anti -Semitism is undoubtedly justified, especially in Germany – This concern is increasingly armed as a political tool to silence the left.

Germany has recently made a new chilling step, reporting its will to use political opinions as reasons to curb migration. The authorities are now moving to deport foreign citizens for participating in pro-Palestine actions. Like me reported this week In interception, four people in Berlin – three EU citizens and an American citizen – are destined to be expelled for their involvement in events against the Israel war in Gaza. None of the four was sentenced for a crime, yet the authorities are trying to throw them out of the country.

The accusations against them include an aggravated violation of the peace and obstruction of a police arrest. Last year reports suggest that one of the actions in which they had been involved included use in a university building and threatening people with objects that could have been used as potential weapons.

But deportation orders go further. They cite a broader list of alleged behaviors: sing slogans such as “Gaza Free” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, joining road blocks (a tactic often used by climate activists) and defines a “fascist” police officer. Read carefully, the real accusation seems to be something simpler: protest itself.

All four are also accused-senza test-of Hamas and singing anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli slogans. Three of the deportation orders explicitly cite Germany of Germany to defend Israel, his so -called Relationshipor reason of state, as justification.

Legal experts told me that by invoking Relationship In deportation procedures it is legally doubtful. A recent parliamentary revision has reached a similar conclusion, noting that Relationship – often mentioned to justify German foreign policy towards Israel, including the incoming chancellor plan, Friedrich Merz, a Invites Benjamin Netanyahu Despite a stopping mandate of the active international criminal court, it does not bring any legally applicable weight.

This type of repression is not new in Germany. The lawyer Alexander Gorski told me that he managed similar cases in which the law on migration was used against people of Arab or Palestinian origin – often triggered by a post on social media, comment or even just a “similar”.

Today, politicians throughout the German political spectrum habitually invoke the history of the country to silence the criticisms of Israeli politics – supporting an accused state Apply the apartheid in the West Bank and, as a growing consensus between human rights experts, commit genocide In Gaza.

The use of the immigration law for the Police Political Protest sends a clear message to non -citizens in Germany: talk and you could risk losing your status or being expelled. The measure that this plays in the hands of the far -right alternative Für Deutschland (AFD) seems lost for most of the so -called political center of Germany. For the Afd, Relationship It has become a convenient shield: a way to feed resentment against migrants presumably “import” anti -Semitism and reject a wider and more inclusive culture of memory, often rejected in an reductive way such as “postcolonialism”. Everything is cloaked in the language of unshakable support for Israel.

The AFD has recently ensured About 20% of the vote in the federal elections of Germany. A few weeks before the elections, Elon Musk expressed his party support during a live discussion with his leader, Alice Weidel. At some point, Weidel absurdly called Adolf Hitler “a communist” and said that “Palestinians of the left“In Germany they are anti-Semites. As outrageous as they were these observations, they reflect a wider trend that the liberal center involuntarily has contributed to normalizing-a drift that exploits the anti-Palestinian sentiment to feed extreme right revisionism.

While the established parts of Germany still formally reject cooperation with the AFD, their growing accommodation of the Retoric in particular Afd-in style on the migration-cacconte a different story. During the elections, the parts throughout the spectrum, from the Greens to the Democratic Union Christian (CDU), spoke of migration as a threat to safety and promised closer deportations and checks. In this climate, Palestine has turned into a little litmus test for asylum policy.

Last year, Merz said that Germany would not have accepted refugees from Gaza, stating: “We already have quite young anti -Semites in the country”. After the newly elected MP Die Linke Cansın Köktürk recently appeared in Parliament wearing a scarf reminiscent of a Keffiyeh, the members of the conservative CDU have prompted these symbols to Parliament. This objection was not raised when the Parliamentary Afd Torben Braga he wore a blue corn flow – a used symbol by the Austrian Nazis in the 1930s – in the same room. Braga said it was not a flow of corn and defined the accusation “absurd”.

With a new conservative government in power, the repression of the Palestinians and migrants-days well started with the so-called traffic light coalition-is destined to intensify further. Germany is a crossroads: it can choose to support the principles that it claims to represent or continue along a path of authoritarianism. For now, the direction seems unmistakably clear.

• Hauentein is a journalist and author of Berlin. He worked as a senior publisher in the cultural department of Berliner Zeitung, specialized in contemporary art and politics

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