- cross-posted to:
- world
- cross-posted to:
- world
A Berlin court has convicted a pro-Palestinian activist of condoning a crime for leading a chant of the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” at a rally in the German capital four days after the Hamas attacks on Israel, in what her defence team called a defeat for free speech.
The presiding judge, Birgit Balzer, ordered 22-year-old German-Iranian national Ava Moayeri to pay a €600 (£515) fine on Tuesday, rejecting her argument that she meant only to express support for “peace and justice” in the Middle East by calling out the phrase on a busy street.
Balzer said she “could not comprehend” the logic of previous German court rulings that determined the saying was “ambiguous”, saying to her it was clear it “denied the right of the state of Israel to exist”.
That’s not an entirely unreasonable decision. The slogan is not one of peaceful coexistence but of maximalist territorial claims. It was a supremacist slogan when the Zionists coined it, and remains one when appropriated by the other side.
Being free in your homeland doesn’t imply anything about Israel except the dissolution of its apartheid, occupying systems. At least when used as a Free Palestine chant. When the Zionists say it, it does imply a supremacist mindset but mostly because we’ve seen them use it to justify a genocidal settler colonialist colony.
It’s like the difference between the US saying from coast to coast during the manifest destiny phase, and comparing it to Native Americans saying from coast to coast they’ll be free after they’re being put into reservations and have been getting pushed West.
How many other countries can you be fined for supposedly threatening?
The second part of the phrase determines what it means. “Will be Israel” is a supremacist slogan. “Will be free” is a call equality and an end to oppression.