German court convicts protestor for chanting ‘from the river to the sea’

A court in Berlin has convicted a protestor for leading a chant of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” back in October. Judge Birgit Balzer issued a £515 fine for German-Iranian Ava Moayeri.

Moayeri’s lawyer Alexander Gorski said the decision was “a dark day for freedom of expression”. Balzer took it upon herself to reject previously upheld arguments in German courts that the phrase was “ambigious” in meaning.

Erasing Palestinian struggle

Moayeri argued her use of the phrase was in support of “peace and justice” in Israel and Palestine. But Balzer said the phrase denies “the right of the state of Israel to exist”, because of the context of the Hamas attacks on 7 October.

But the chant refers to the land between the Mediterranean sea and the Jordan river. That means Israel and Israeli occupied Palestine. When it comes to context, the judge only appears to recognise the Hamas attack, not the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, ongoing since 1967.

An International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on 19 July not only found that Israel has maintained “effective control” over Gaza since it withdrew military bases and settlements there in 2005. The ICJ also found that Israel is an apartheid state, again breaching international law.

But of course, the only context here is the Hamas attack.

Pro-Israel crackdown

The Berlin conviction is not the first time Germany has engaged in what Moayeri’s lawyer called “state oppression” with regard to Israel.

Police shut down the Palestine Congress in Berlin in April and banned former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis as well as other speakers from the country.

Judge Balzer said that support for Israel was a key component of German identity due to Nazi responsibility for the Holocaust.

But the argument seems to be that a German should support Israel even as it carries out what the ICJ in January called a “plausible genocide” in Gaza, on top of the occupation and apartheid.

In 2019, Germany designated boycotting Israel, the use of basic economic freedom of trade and purchase, as outright “antisemitic”.

And in 2022, Germany banned Nakba Day demonstrations. These were remembering the massacres and displacement of Palestinians in the 1948 establishment of Israel.

German arms exports to Israel were up 10-fold in 2023, with the country supplying €326.5m of military equipment. The nation has continued arms sales to Israel since 7 October.

Featured image via Associated Press – YouTube