Since October 7, 2023, the Palestine solidarity movement in Germany has grown exponentially in response to the steadfast resistance of the Palestinian people and the horrors of Israel’s genocide on Gaza. Tens of thousands of people across Germany have regularly taken to the streets in support of Palestine. For countless people, especially young people, Palestine has been the spark drawing them into political life and organization for the first time.
At the same time, the movement has faced extreme repression since October 7, 2023. Several organizations and events have been banned outright, like the Palestine Congress in Berlin in 2024. Also in Berlin in particular, police have unleashed brutal crackdowns on Palestinians and Palestine activists.
Thousands have been reported to the authorities simply for chanting slogans such as “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” or even for using the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s crimes in Gaza. Others have lost their jobs for their solidarity with Palestine. By early 2024, German authorities began barring entry to foreigners with any connection to Palestine – the most absurd case being a Palestinian baby whose entry was deemed a supposed threat to “Germany’s security”. This year, the first expulsions and deportations of Palestinian activists, as well as US, Irish, and Polish supporters of Palestine, have begun. Some of these, however, have so far been blocked by court rulings.
Read more: What’s really behind Germany’s unshakeable support of Israel?
All of this takes place under the banner of the so-called German “Staatsräson“ (“reason of state”), a doctrine declared by former Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Israeli parliament in 2008. It proclaims that Germany stands unconditionally at Israel’s side. But this is not the first wave of repression against the Palestine solidarity movement in Germany. And when it comes to the expulsion and deportation of Palestinians, the Federal Republic carries a dark tradition dating back to the early 1970s.
Munich, 1972: “Black September Commando”
The 1972 Summer Olympics took place in Munich from August 26 to September 11, 1972. On September 5, Israel’s team was kidnapped by a Palestinian commando group calling itself “Black September”. The fighters had two goals. The first was to draw attention to the situation in Palestine. In a press release issued by the commando group, it was stated, among other things, that: “When Rhodesia was refused permission to take part in the Munich Games, the Israeli regime in Palestine should also have been excluded.” The 46-member team of the racist settler regime in Zimbabwe (then “Rhodesia“) was banned from participating after 27 African countries threatened to boycott the Olympics. The South African apartheid regime had already been suspended by the International Olympic Committee in 1964. The second goal of the Fidayeen was to secure the release of 200 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli custody.
The operation did not go as planned and ended in a bloodbath: two Israelis were killed and three Palestinians wounded right at the start. The German authorities were willing to meet the Fidayeen’s demands and the Libyan ambassador offered to mediate. But the Israeli ambassador in Bonn and an emergency team flown in from Tel Aviv gave clear instructions: no negotiations, no exchange of prisoners! Instead, the Palestinians were to be lured into a trap, even though they had made it clear that they were prepared to go to extremes. The German authorities assured the Fidayeen that they would be allowed to fly out with the hostages to Cairo. The Olympic team had agreed to this too, provided that they would actually be exchanged for the Palestinian hostages there. But instead, they were attacked on the airport grounds: German police fired on the Palestinian fighters with snipers, submachine guns and tanks, while the Palestinians responded with handguns and hand grenades. In the end, 11 Israelis, five Palestinians and a German police officer were killed.
As the name suggests, the “Black September” organization was a response to the Jordanian “Black September”. In September 1970, the Jordanian regime began to openly confront the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). According to some estimates, 20,000 Palestinians were killed in the bombing of Palestinian refugee camps that served as bases for the different factions of the liberation movement. The fighting ended in the summer of 1971 with the defeat of the PLO which then fled to Lebanon.
The first operation of the “Black September” organization was therefore an act of retaliation: they killed the Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi al-Tall in November 1971. However, none of the group’s various actions in the period 1971-73 attracted as much international attention as the failed hostage-taking operation in Munich. This was in no small part due to Steven Spielberg’s 2005 action thriller “Munich” and the 2024 feature film “September 5” by Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum.
West Germany, 1972: Mass deportation of Arabs
After the massacre, the Social Democratic-led government of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) launched a broad campaign of repression and a media smear campaign against Palestinians and their organizations in West Germany began immediately. Significantly, the hostage-taking operation continues to be incorrectly referred to as an “assassination” or “attack” in the German narrative – similar to how the “Al-Aqsa Flood operation” is unanimously named the “terrorist attack of October 7”. The magazine Stern wrote at the time, “The Federal Republic is at war. With the Arab terrorists and with the governments of those countries where they can hatch their murderous plans unhindered.”
Social Democratic Member of Parliament Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski declared: “Citizens from countries that tolerate and support terror can neither work nor study in our country. We know that, unfortunately, we will also hit innocent people in the process.”
And so it came to pass: about two weeks after the operation in Munich, German authorities began storming student and worker dormitories, as well as residential neighborhoods and meeting places of Arab communities.
Hundreds of people were arrested and interrogated for hours. By early October 1972, some 300 people had been expelled or deported. At least 1,500 Palestinians and Arabs were refused entry to the FRG during the same period. At the same time, visa requirements were extended to include those Arab states for which it had not previously applied, namely Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya.
On October 3, 1972, the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) and the General Union of Palestinian Workers (GUPA), both affiliated with the PLO, were banned by decree of the Federal Republic of Germany’s Ministry of the Interior. At the time, almost all of the approximately 1,000 Palestinian students living in West Germany were members of the GUPS. According to the authorities, the GUPA had a similar number of members. The two organizations were accused of endorsing “terror”, financially supporting the Palestinian resistance, and propagating violence against the German police. They were also said to endanger “public order in the Federal Republic of Germany”.
The ban coincided with the start of the next wave of deportations. It is not known how many people from Arab countries were deported during this period. But in 1974, one commentator spoke of “well over 1,000” deported people. Some were also deported to countries where they were known to be politically persecuted, such as Jordan and Israel.
Repression and solidarity: then and now
The bans on GUPS and GUPA in Germany still exist today. And recently, further bans have been added: in November 2023, the international prisoners’ solidarity network Samidoun was banned in the Federal Republic of Germany. Almost a year later, in October 2024, it was classified as a “terrorist organization” by the United States and Canada. In May 2024, the local group Palestine Solidarity Duisburg (PSDU) was banned in Germany, of which the author of this text was a member. Samidoun and PSDU, unlike GUPS and GUPA, were never accused of financially supporting the Palestinian resistance. In the case of Samidoun, the official reason for the ban is “cheering on terror”; in the case of PSDU, it is “mental support for terror” (“geistige Unterstützung“).
In the 1970s, the repression and racism against Palestinians in West Germany sparked a broad solidarity movement that included students, human rights activists, and different churches. Demonstrations of tens of thousands were organized and several books were published on the case. Meanwhile, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) invited the expelled Palestinian students to come to East Germany to finish their studies – free of charge. Today, the situation in Germany looks different: the anti-Palestinian agitation of the ruling parties and the media is comparable and perhaps even worse. There is a large and strong movement for the rights of Palestinians, in which many German students are active. But overall, the German student body appears to be caught between political apathy and liberal racist and Zionist thinking. The churches openly support the general anti-Palestinian hate campaign. There is no “other German state” with a pro-Palestinian agenda anymore. And there is no peace (anti-war) movement in the FRG worth mentioning – what little that exists often distances itself from Palestine (due to fear of being labeled “antisemitic”). The ban on Samidoun received only very isolated criticism from some small communist groups. It was only the PSDU ban that galvanized a part of the Palestine movement, because it became clear to them that anyone could be next. The authorities and the government are openly preparing further bans on pro-Palestinian associations, as well as a ban on the BDS movement.
The only thing this country has been spared so far is mass deportations. But these were already announced by the Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz immediately after October 7: “We have to deport on a large scale”, he had proclaimed at the time. Individual deportations have already taken place, and further deportations are being pursued. Ulrich Wimmer of the pro-Palestinian legal aid fund 3ezwa tells Peoples Dispatch: “In just six weeks, around 200 people who had received expulsion orders came to our counseling center in Berlin.” The group estimates that several thousand people across Germany are already facing these expulsions or are at immediate risk. However, the expulsion of pro-Palestinian EU and US citizens has so far been blocked by the courts.
Meanwhile, the future German government, made up of Social Democrats and conservatives, is working diligently to further shred the rights of foreigners and migrants. In addition to faster and more mass deportations, they also plan to expatriate people with dual citizenship if they are “anti-Semites” or “terror supporters”. Some immigration authorities deny German citizenship to applicants who refuse to affirm the so-called “right of Israel to exist.” The protest against this is limited, partly because human rights and refugee NGOs do not want to tackle the “hot” topic of Palestine. It is only in the last few months that Amnesty and Medico Germany, for example, have been calling for demonstrations for Gaza and speaking up a little louder when they make the accusation of genocide.
The alienation and fear of people with Arab and Muslim backgrounds in Germany has been greater since October 2023 than perhaps ever before in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. While racism is frequently attributed solely to the right-wing AfD, the last 23 months have made it clear that the AfD represents only the nationalist end of a much broader, deeply racist coalition stretching from the so-called “progressive” and “greens” parties to the far right.
Leon Wystrychowski is a former member of the Palästina Solidarität Duisburg (Palestine Solidarity Duisburg, PSDU). The Organization was banned by the German state in 2024.
The post From “Black September“ to October 7: Anti-Palestinian repression in Germany then and now appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.
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