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Anti-AfD Protest Turns Violent in Berlin
I am a Jewish pro-Palestine solidarity activist originally from the New York area and now based in Berlin. My grandmother was a Holocaust survivor from Cologne who fled to the United States during the Second World War at the age of 16. Her parents and much of her family were murdered during the Holocaust. I came “back” to Germany about five years ago, a decision born largely out of the desire for intergenerational healing for me and for my grandmother, who was alive at the time. I learned German and was able to speak to her in her native language in the last few years of her life. I told her stories about living in Germany, she met some of my friends and she was grateful for the ways in which the country and its people had apparently evolved and atoned for their ugly history.
Uncovering the Truth Behind German “Memory Culture”
In the past few years as I have educated myself, become active in the movement for Palestinian liberation and extracted myself from the extreme Zionist conditioning and brainwashing baked into the fabric of my upbringing, my appreciation for German “Erinnerungskultur” (“memory culture”) has steeply devolved into the realisation that the entire concept is pure, empty, self-congratulatory propaganda. It is grounded in the intentional, racist displacement of anti-Semitism and responsibility for the Holocaust from the Germans who perpetuated it to the Arabs, Muslims and, above all, the Palestinians, who they now demonise and scapegoat as a deflection and distraction.
Standing Up Against Oppression
While actual incidents of anti-Semitism go largely unpunished, those of us standing in solidarity with Palestine are accustomed to brutal, state-sanctioned violence, repression and surveillance from police and the German government in response to peaceful protests and boycotts. This has intensified massively since the genocide in Gaza began in October, regularly under the guise of accusations of anti-Semitism and “Judenhass” (“hatred of Jews”). We are accordingly committed to remaining loud and visible, including through our refusal to be excluded from the fight against rising fascism and the extreme-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD).
Challenging Fascism at an Anti-AfD Demonstration
On February 3, I attended an anti-AfD demonstration in Berlin as part of the pro-Palestinian bloc with the revolutionary Marxist group Sozialismus von Unten (“Socialism from Below”), in which I am an active member. I had quite a bit of trepidation about going to this protest after the violent, racist and disturbing experiences of my Palestinian and pro-Palestinian comrades at anti-AfD protests over the past few weeks. Folks protesting the AfD while showing solidarity with Palestine have been ruthlessly harassed, attacked, reported to the police and violently removed by both demonstrators and cops all over Germany.
Confronting Anti-Semitic Violence
After about an hour, I came into contact with a representative of the 25 percent of that poll. An older German man with an aggressive expression approached me, stopped in front of me and half-shouted, “So what do you think the similarities are between the AfD and Israel?” I could tell he had no intention of engaging in a reasonable conversation but nonetheless began trying to explain. After a few words, he rolled his eyes and spat at me.
It is hard to describe the particular shade of red I saw, the sourness of the blood pumping to my head, the bitterness of the fury on my tongue. It looked like the lifeless faces of my great-grandparents at the mercy of Nazis, deported and murdered in the Warsaw Ghetto as they have appeared in my dreams since I was a child. It felt like the fierceness with which I will unconditionally defend the Palestinian resistance, the right of every people to resist their oppressor in any single form, until my last breath. It tasted like the rage and incredulity that have boiled in the corners of all of our mouths as we scream at the top of our lungs, watching the world passively observe the slaughter of Palestinian men, women and children for more than four and a half months – silent, complicit and accompanied by the relentless echo of more than 75 years of occupation, apartheid, theft, ethnic cleansing, lies, dehumanisation and unforgivable injustice.
Challenging Deep-Rooted Prejudices
A friend of mine recently said to me, “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust.” These words have rung in my ears and sat in my chest with nowhere in particular to go, a hard, ugly truth at the core of German society that precisely reflects my experience living in it. It is bewildering, it is comical, and it is accurate.
From the neo-Nazis of the AfD to “anti-Deutsche” leftists who claim to be combatting German anti-Semitism by obsessively and unconditionally supporting Zionism, many of today’s Germans are brimming with repressed rage towards Jews. Whether they are aware of it or not, this is resoundingly apparent in the deep, hysterical hypocrisy of a reaction such as that of the man at the demonstration – spitting in a Jewish person’s face for standing against fascism and genocide on the basis of her personal, generational relationship to fascism and genocide and becoming enraged at being identified as an anti-Semite accordingly.
Embracing Diversity and Unity
The sick, decades-long collaboration between Israel and Germany and the widespread assertion that Israel’s security is “Germany’s reason of state”(“Staatsraeson”), which upholds Zionist socialisation in the interests of political, racist ends, has created an atmosphere of fear, shame, guilt and ultimately self-righteousness that permeates much of German society. It punishes questions, dissuades education and quashes the necessary understanding of Judaism as a broad, differentiated and historically diasporic culture that existed long before Zionism – and will exist long after.
This designation of all Jews and all Judaism as a single uniform entity, necessarily speaking the same language (modern Hebrew), holding the same values (Zionism) and sharing an identical culture (which in Germany, must be determined by Germans), is, in fact, the precise definition of anti-Semitic, Nazistic racial segregation and the othering, dehumanising rhetoric they employed in its service. The rigid and inherently anti-Semitic conception of Jews as an undifferentiated people “native” to one land, characterised by the nationalist settler-colonial Zionist movement, has merely served as a continuation of Hitler’s work. It has erased secular Judaism in Europe. It has eradicated the Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian and other Hebraic languages. Eighty years after the Holocaust, it has succeeded in upholding the view of Jews as a monolith, a foreign nuisance separate from German society, the attempted annihilation of whom can now be exploited to justify the annihilation of another group.
Continuing the Fight for Justice
Calling out the root causes and social backdrop of this moment make them available and necessary for all to grapple with. As so many are stepping into the streets, it is our responsibility to arm them with the facts as fuel, to enable every single person to raise their voice and know decisively what they speak for and what they speak against. We will continue – with more resolve than ever – in the fight for a free Palestine and in mobilising in this way against racism, Zionism, (actual) anti-Semitism, fascism and genocide. We will repeat it again and again until the rhythm of our words becomes the heartbeat of a society that attempts to snuff out our resistance but will ultimately fail at doing so: Never again means never again for anybody.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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