In a shocking, yet expected step, Berlin police raided and shut down the “Palestinian Congress”, as it kicked off on Friday, April 12. The Congress was planned to be a three-day event featuring speakers from around the world, including Ghassan Abu-Sittah, Salman Abu Sitta, Noura Erakat, and Ali Abunimah among many others.
The conference, organized by Palestinian, Jewish, and international groups, aimed to discuss the genocide in Gaza, and Israeli crimes against the Palestinians, and serve as a tribunal for Israel and one of its biggest supporters and arms providers: Germany.
“The fact that we managed to be here and hold this conference is by itself an act of resistance,” said Palestinian journalist Hebh Jamal in her opening remarks at the conference.
Jamal did not know that her speech would be the only speech that would be given of the planned three-day schedule. Government intimidation
Jamal was referring to the charged public atmosphere that proceeded the Congress. For weeks, since the event was announced, the German authorities, the police, and the media have been working to prevent this one event from happening.
German media called it, among other things, a “Congress of Israel haters,” a conference of “terror apologists” and ran a smear campaign against the speakers. Politicians called to ban entry to speakers at the conference and the Berlin Senat came very close to banning it.
Regardless, the government took many steps in the weeks ahead of the Congress to pressure and intimidate organizers. Houses of activists involved in the conference were raided and a fundraiser event for the Congress was banned. In addition according to the organizers, two venues canceled hosting the event due to police pressure and threats, and Berlin authorities also froze the bank account of the Jüdische Stimme / Jewish Voice, one of the organizers of the Congress, and where all contributions for the event were collected.
On the day of the conference, the police deployed 2,500 police in the vicinity of the venue and inside the hall.
The police allowed only 250 participants into the event, out of 800 participants who had reserved their tickets in advance. And if that was not enough, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah was denied entry to Germany and deported back to the UK. He was scheduled to speak at the Congress in the evening about what he witnessed in Gaza.
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In an exclusive interview with Middle East Eye, Ghassan Abu Sittah, a British-Palestinian doctor who has become known for his work in Gaza, detailed how he was detained at an airport in Germany and subsequently denied entry.
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As the event was about to start, two dozen of the hostile and anti-Palestinian journalists who had led the incitement campaign against the conference were let inside by the police even though they were not accredited by the Congress organizers. It looked like an ambush. Those 25 were also included in the official headcount, which meant 25 fewer registered participants were allowed in.
After the conference started, everyone was relieved that despite everything “we made it,” no matter how tense and unsafe people felt in the heavy presence of the police inside, accompanied by hostile media members who wandered around filming people. There was a small sense of victory in the face of the past long, exhausting, and horrifying six months in a country that doesn’t see the grief and anger of its Palestinian community as legitimate.
However, this moment of small victory didn’t last long.
The German police had one mission for the day: to shut down this event. They were just waiting for the right moment. If there was no right moment, they would create one. Police raid event, cut electricity
The next speaker after journalist Heba Jamal was renowned Palestinian scholar and author Salman Abu Sitta, who was participating remotely through a pre-recorded video.
Two minutes into the video, dozens of police suddenly stormed the center of the hall in front of the screen and the stage and stopped the streaming.
As the police stormed the stage of the Palestinian Congress to stop the event, one organizer screamed: “They are currently embarrassing themselves, let them embarrass themselves!” Everyone nodded.
The police first claimed that Abu Sitta said something that would incite violence or hatred. When the organizers asked them to pinpoint the sentence, they said they needed to check. They didn’t know.
After this, they claimed that Salman Abu Sitta was banned from “political activity” in Germany. To them, this remote speech was considered a breach. But the event lawyer, Nadja Samour, explained that the police had screened the participant list in the morning and didn’t flag anything regarding Abu Sitta. The organizers suggested that organizers not screen the remainder of Abu Sitta’s speech but continue with the rest of the speakers.
The police also wanted to prevent the live streaming of the event, out of a hypothetical fear that a speaker might say something that might include incitement. When organizers argued against such a hypothetical assumption the police broke into the venue’s electricity room and cut off the power. The police then decided to ban the entire event altogether for the entire three days and ordered everyone to evacuate the venue.
As people started to leave the hall the police made several arrests of activists including two Jewish activists. Yes, in Germany there is only one type of Jew that is seen as legitimate: one that takes no issue with Israel’s genocide.
According to Samour, the police told organizers that the order to shut down the conference came from “ganz oben” (“the very top”). She said while they could not confirm that, there was clearly broken communication between the federal police and the Berlin police. It is unclear where the decision came from and how and when it was communicated to the police on site. Growing authoritarianism
In a display that reflects the position of most German politicians, the German Minister of Interior, Nancy Faeser, welcomed the banning of the Congress and said: “It’s good that the Berlin police have declared a tough crackdown on the so-called Palestine Congress in Berlin. We are keeping a very close eye on the Islamist scene.”
Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian sentiments have characterized the public discourse on Palestine here in Germany before October 7 and have only gotten worse. Police repression and crackdowns are a normal occurrence and not arbitrary.
While the organizers vowed to challenge the decision at the court they warn those repression tactics aim to exhaust the movement.
“We know that the world is watching and that they see that Germany is exhibiting its antidemocratic authoritarian tendencies more and more for each passing day”, say the organizers of the Palestinian Congress.
“For all the energy that is being consumed and wasted and absorbed by this repression, the most important thing is to continue speaking about the genocide,” said Wieland Hoban, chairman of the Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East, a co-organizer of the Congress.
“We are proud to be here today, this is already a victory, and they won’t stop us,” said co-organizer Karin de Rigo from the group DIEM25. Palestinian Congress organizers give a press conference a day after Berlin police raided and shut down the three-day event, April 13, 2024. (Photo: Abir Kopty)
Congress organizers held a press conference on Saturday, April 13, the day after the event was raided and canceled by police to respond to the shocking events.
They clarified that the ban issued by the police also applies to any alternative event organized to provide a venue to the speakers, whether online or in person.
“What happened yesterday should go around the world, Germany should be shamed and blamed,” filmmaker and activist Dror Dayan said at the press conference. He also called for the cultural and academic boycott of Germany.
Organizers noted that they still had not received any written orders stating the restrictions given to them orally by the police.
“The behavior of the police in the weeks preceding the event and during the event itself is not a behavior of a police, this is the behavior of a mafia,” organizers said.