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Posted on 11/25/2025 7:22:46 AM PST by Miami Rebel
Germany’s antisemitism czar has urged a law to ban pro-Palestinian slogans such as “From the river to the sea,” renewing a fraught debate over the country’s historic allegiance to Israel and freedom of speech.
Felix Klein’s initiative would ban chants that could be interpreted as calling for Israel’s destruction. His proposal has the support of German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and is now being reviewed by the Justice Ministry, he told Haaretz on Wednesday.
“Before Oct. 7, you could have said that ‘From the river to the sea’ doesn’t necessarily mean kicking Israelis off the land, and I could accept that,” said Klein. “But since then, Israel has really been facing existential threats, and unfortunately, it has become necessary here to limit freedom of speech in this regard.”
Klein, the first holder of an office titled “Federal Government Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight against Antisemitism” since 2018, added that he believed the law must be passed even if it is challenged in court for violating free speech.
Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and the subsequent and devastating Israel-Hamas war in Gaza tore at the seams of Germany’s national doctrines. The war triggered a sharp rise in antisemitic and Isalmophobic incidents across the country. It also exposed charged questions about when Germany prioritizes its responsibility toward the Jewish state, which became central to German national identity after the Holocaust, and when it upholds democratic principles.
The legal boundaries of pro-Palestinian speech are already far from clear-cut. Currently, courts decide whether a person chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in support of peacefully liberating Palestinians or in endorsement of terrorism. In August 2024, the German-Iranian activist Ava Moayeri was convicted of condoning a crime for leading the chant at a Berlin rally on Oct. 11, 2023.
Shortly after the Hamas attacks, local authorities across Germany imposed sweeping bans on pro-Palestinian protests. Berlin officials authorized schools to ban the keffiyeh, a symbol of Palestinian solidarity, along with slogans such as “Free Palestine.”
Jewish and Israeli activists were caught up in the crackdown. In October 2023, a woman was arrested after holding a poster that said, “As a Jew and Israeli: Stop the genocide in Gaza.” And police prohibited a demonstration by a group calling themselves “Jewish Berliners against Violence in the Middle East,” citing the risk of unrest and “inflammatory, antisemitic exclamations.”
Earlier this year, German immigration authorities ordered the deportation of three European nationals and one U.S. citizen over their alleged activity at pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Three of the orders cited Germany’s “Staatsräson,” or “reason of state,” a doctrine enshrining Germany’s defense of Israel as justification for its own existence after the Holocaust.
But that tenet is not used in legal settings, according to Alexander Gorski, who represents the demonstrators threatened with deportation. “Staatsräson is not a legal concept,” Gorski told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in April. “It’s completely irrelevant. It’s not in the German Basic Law, it’s not in the constitution.”
Jewish leaders such as Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor and president of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, have argued that anger toward Israel created a “pretext” for antisemitism. “It is sufficient cause in itself to fuel the hatred,” Knobloch said to Deutsche Welle in September.
In recent months, two German establishments made the news for refusing entry to Jews and Israelis. A shop in Flensburg, which posted a sign saying “Jews are banned here,” is vulnerable to German anti-discrimination law. Not so for the restaurant in Fürth whose sign read, “We no longer accept Israelis in our establishment,” according to anti-discrimination commissioner Ferda Ataman, who said the law does not apply to discrimination on the basis of nationality.
Klein said he has also initiated legislation to expand that law to protect Israelis and other nationalities.
He has a longstanding relationship with Jewish communities in Germany, starting with his Foreign Office appointment as the special liaison to global Jewish organizations. In that role, he helped create a “working definition” of antisemitism for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016. That definition has sparked contentious debate, as critics argue it conflates some criticisms of Israel with antisemitism.
Klein believes that anti-Zionism does largely fall in the same bucket as antisemitism. “I think in most cases it is — it’s just a disguised form of antisemitism,” he told Haaretz. “When people say they’re anti-Israel, what they really mean is Jews.”
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And to some extent, at the behest of Jewish groups.
I've posted this often...
In the 1990s, a few years after German reunification, Germany announced a new law restricting Turkish Muslim immigration.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center raised the alarm, announcing that Germany was reverting to its racist Nazi past. (I still remember hearing the news report on KABC-AM on my car radio.)
Germany quickly rescinded the law, reopening its doors to Muslims immigrants, eager to prove to Jewish groups that Germany was no longer a racist, Nazi nation.
And Jewish support of Muslim migrants in Germany has continued...
In Germany, Jewish funds help keep Mediterranean migrant rescue missions afloat.
Pushing for Muslim immigration and then complaining about anti-semitism is called...
Chutzpah.
“Chutzpah is the quality of audacity, for good or for bad. A close English equivalent is sometimes “hubris””
Thisis coming from the same batch of arseholes who doomed Germany with their asinine prohibition on Holocaust denial. Once you ban some speech, let the gov’mt say that is “hate” speech, you slide into ultimate tyranny.
Many Germans blamed WW2 on the Versailles treaty. Total BS since the punishments in that were no worse than previous treaties. Regardless, this attack on ANY measure of free speech is equivalent. And, the result will be catastrophic.
> Yes.
This flies in the face of every single allied leader of World War 2. As Dwight Eisenhower said: "Germany is not going to forget who won World War 2." You can bet your sweet a$$ that he meant both Nazi symbology and Nazi anti-Semitism.
We toppled statues of Saddam Hussein the very day our forces entered Baghdad. Was this wrong too? Should we have first taken a vote?
How about Afghanistan? Should we have turned around, perhaps a month after 9/11, and allowed monuments to Osama bin Laden, or celebrations of "heroic martyrs" the 9/11 attack?
Should Ho Chi Minh and his henchlings have been allowed to "peaceably" organize the Communist Party of South Vietnam in the year 1965-73? How about Pol Pot in Cambodia?
Losing wars of terror and aggression always means curtailing of freedom of action of the losing side, and rightly so. Only an absolute fool and patsy would do otherwise.
The First Amendment is a uniquely American invention and current policy (with obvious errors in practice like “hate crimes”).
But in Europe, your betters are allowed to lock you up for wrong-think.
I’d argue for a real freedom of speech there than any sort of obstructions like this one.
Von Alpen zu der Nordsee, Deutschland wurde Frei sein!
Excuse my German, it’s rusty.
“what have been total foreign aid and military aid dollars of all kinds from America to Israel and Ukraine over the last 3 years?”
Grok:
Israel: $29.9B
Ukraine: $175.0B
All in all, I’m okay with cutting aid to Israel so that they can run their own policy without Washington’s interference.
So how about that Ukraine spend? Do you spend 580% more time criticizing it? Or just Israel?
I'm sure it does.
But it's been 80 years.
We toppled statues of Saddam Hussein the very day our forces entered Baghdad. Was this wrong too?
1. We should never have attacked Iraq. Stupid, pointless, expensive war, based on lies.
2. It's been 22 years. Let them have statues of Saddam if they want.
How about Afghanistan ... month after 9/11 ... "heroic martyrs" 9/11 attack ... Ho Chi Minh ... Communist Party of South Vietnam in 1965-73 ... Pol Pot ...
It's been 80 years.
Losing wars of terror and aggression always means curtailing of freedom of action of the losing side, and rightly so.
Like we imposed on the Confederacy for 12 years. And then Reconstruction ended.
WW2 ended 80 years ago
It's long past time to end all free speech restrictions in Germany.
Interesting decision considering the Zionist origins of the phrase.
Are the Germans going to ban Irgun emblems as well?
Many of us have had an incredible number of posts attacking spending on Ukraine over the past couple of years.
For that we get attacked as Putin Puffers or something.
You just cannot win around here.
My point is that Liz seems intent on anything that can be framed against Israel. So she focuses on the spending on ISRAEL but never (to my review) UKRAINE.
Thereby I sense and essentially prove a unique bias she has.
I’m totally not involved in the Ukie / Russ flame wars. The whole thing is an absolute waste, in my opinion. Peace should have been grabbed a couple of years ago.
One stupid posting here -— an annoying Israeli ***-kisser
—— says he’s “okay with cutting US aid to Israel.”
Not to give US taxpayers a break, mind you
but to let frickin’ money-grabbing Israeli parasites
run “their own policy without Washington’s interference.”
This creep “pledges allegiance to a foreign country”
......Israeli pigs feeding at the tax-paid govt trough.
US patriots, Call Congress
US Capitol switchboard (202) 224-3121.
Call the White House
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
TTY/TTD Comments: 202-456-6213
Or send a letter to the White House
Message: More of our tax dollars pouring into the Middle East hellhole is asinine. The US Dept of Homeland Security (DHS) has stupidly established an “international office” in Tel Aviv, Israel but, predictably, there is no information available to let taxpayers confirm the exact date of its establishment.
US taxpayers already pay plenty for a US government presence in US-dependent Israel.......which has been ongoing for decades. The US Embassy Branch Office opened in Tel Aviv in 1966. Not to mention the billions subsidizing Israel’s military and economy.
Reality Check
Taxpayers subsidize the broader security partnership between the US and Israel through legislative acts like the 2012 Enhanced Security Cooperation Act and the 2014 Strategic Partnership Act, which have fostered “cooperation” on matters such as joint cyber-security projects.
Even as Israel failed US taxpayers miserably
not giving the US intel about 9/11 planned in Israel’s backyard.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office in Tel Aviv: Specific establishment dates for the DHS international office in Tel Aviv are not available in the provided search results.
US-Israel security partnerships:
The United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012 strengthened military cooperation, including joint training exercises and access to U.S. military hardware, as reported by whitehouse.gov.
The US-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014 designated Israel a “major strategic partner” and led to the establishment of a center for joint cybersecurity projects, according to a report from AIPAC.
Ongoing cooperation exists through initiatives like “US security assistance programs” and “joint exercises,” says the obedient US Dept of State.........they are the people who gave us USAID.
Free speech is not ala carte
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