Rule in Crisis
Rule in Crisis
On the ban of the Palestine Congress.
The widespread solidarity with Palestinian suffering is causing discomfort for the German state.
The ban of the Palestine Congress marks a turning point in the response of the Federal Republic.
And despite extensive coverage from left-wing media, the bourgeois press seems unable to grasp the full extent of the repression.
The Palestine Congress scheduled from April 14 to 16 in Berlin was “initially transformed into a police congress“. (jW)
From Friday to Saturday, under the motto “We accuse!“, German responsibility for the Israeli horror against the Palestinian civilian population was to be accused and blamed.
After months of harassment and attempts to ban, the event was eventually allowed late and with only 250 participants – with 900 police officers present both inside and outside the building – 3.6 officers per supporter.
The sudden limitation of participants was justified by ” insufficient escape routes“, yet space for 900 officers apparently still remained.
According to legal counsel Nadja Samour, the event was able to take place only due to ” hours of negotiations with the police“, who reportedly exerted “extreme pressure” on the venue’s landlord through bureaucratic force.
The event (in a closed space!) was then quickly reclassified as a demonstration, although it was not one.
The long-fought beginning of the event was met with thunderous applause and many livestream viewers.
However, the demonstrative resistance quickly lost momentum; after a two-minute (!) video message from Palestinian researcher Abu Sitta, who had already been banned from entering, local repressive measures borrowed a piece of Israeli military tactics—simply cutting the power.
I think it goes without saying, but of course, banning video presentations has no legal basis; cutting off power and other supplies is unlawful.
After two hours of proceedings, the participants were called to leave the hall shortly after the power outage, at 17:24, and the event (“demonstration”) was declared over.
The dissolution involved, among other things, being forcibly expelled from the room.
The reason for the dissolution: there was no reason; police admitted that ” no crimes” had been committed.
For the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), all of this is acceptable.
Faeser praised the police for their ” tough crackdown on the congress” and declared that they do not tolerate ”
When a representative of the federal government was later asked at the federal press conference what kind of “Islamism” was meant, since the conference was organized by leftists and among others Jewish organizers, she confidently referred to the definition of Islamism, although this only underscored the hypocrisy of the ban.
Long searches for “Hamas propaganda” can be made, even though anti-Germans and the Federal Republic agree that everything darker-than-white from the area between Jordan and the Mediterranean is Hamas per se.
We know how arbitrary the propaganda against this state regarding Israel has become, but now the Anti-Semitism Commissioner of the Federal Government wants to revoke the charitable status of the “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East” because he opposes their Palestine solidarity—this seems to cross all bounds of reason and turn into arbitrariness.
For days, the BMI has refused to clarify whether they banned the event’s star guest, Greek former Minister Yanis Varoufakis, from entering.
The Federal Police claimed on Monday that they had “ not issued any entry or residence ban in accordance with § 11 AufenthG”.
This is true; it was not an entry ban, but a ” request for national entry denial (…) limited to the period of the event from April 10 to 14, 2024.” (Frankfurter Rundschau)
So, not an entry ban but an entry refusal—then everything is clear.
When confronted with the blatant lie about Varoufakis, the BMI simply responds with “information on individual cases is not possible.”
Just to clarify; Yanis Varoufakis is not just any Palestine activist, he is a member of the Greek parliament, former finance minister, and arguably the most prominent leftist in current Greek politics.
When bourgeois rule faces a crisis, the “fundamental democratic rights” are the first to be sacrificed.
The contradiction between ruling and the people, intensified by the state-critical attitude of the majority society, forces the bourgeois state to secure its power even if it means sacrificing the right to assembly and free expression—and if there are no grounds, then it must resort to imagination.
“The resurgence of »protective custody«, which no longer bears that name in German police laws over the past decade, or the invention of »clan crime« by interior ministers and their agencies are symptoms. Crises make security agencies nervous, but when declaring war readiness, fundamental and civil rights are initially suspended on a case-by-case basis. There is still room for an emergency order, which is already in planning. If the military, duty-bound and inclined, is already testing the destruction of strategic targets in Russia with TAURUS cruise missiles, police chiefs are contemplating »order« in the hinterland.” (Arnold Schölzel, JW)