Court in Germany Fines Protester for ‘River to the Sea’ Chant
A German court ruled on Tuesday that a protester who shouted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” at a rally in Berlin in October had condoned criminal acts — the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Israel — and gave her a fine of 600 euros, about $650.
The slogan, which has radically different interpretations, was later banned in Germany, viewed as basically constituting a call for the elimination of Israel. The court case had been seen as a test of that law.
The judge in the case, Birgit Balzer, said that the phrase, which the protester chanted at a rally less than a week after the Oct. 7 attacks, “could only be understood as a denial of Israel’s right to exist and an endorsement of the attack,” according to the district court in Tiergarten, an area of Berlin, where the case was tried.
The Israel-Hamas conflict has underlined the delicate balance in Germany between freedom of expression and the country’s relationship with Israel. One of the foundations of Germany since the Holocaust is support for Israel, a principle known as a Staatsräson, or “state reason.” Since Oct. 7, activism in Germany has been roiled by that tension, with cancellations, bans and fierce debates about what can and can’t be said about Israel and the war.
The protester who was fined, Ava Moayeri, is a 22-year-old German of Iranian descent. She had been facing a maximum sentence of three years in prison. In an interview after the decision, her lawyer, Alexander Gorski, said, “This is a rather dark day for freedom of expression in Germany,” and he disputed the judge’s characterization of the phrase.
“From my perspective, the slogan should never be part of a criminal investigation; if some people are unhappy with the phrase they should be able counter it with their own ideas — that is how a liberal democracy should work,” Mr. Gorski said. “But instead, the German state and Berlin are raining down with repression on the pro-Palestinian movement.” He added that his client planned to appeal.
The phrase used in Ms. Moayeri’s case has been banned in Germany since November, when Nancy Faeser, the interior minister, outlawed activities supporting Hamas, which the country considers a terrorist group. The ban includes the use of the slogan, which has a complicated history dating to at least the 1960s. It is a reference to the land between the Jordan River, which bounds Israel to the east, and the Mediterranean Sea on the country’s western coast. Some argue that the phrase represents a call for peace and the defense of human rights in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the past several months, German leaders — and courts — have wrestled with the many interpretations of the phrase. The German justice minister, Marco Buschmann, has said that the slogan is tantamount to “condoning the killings committed in Israel” in the Oct. 7 attacks.
Although the phrase predates the Oct. 7 attacks, Mr. Buschmann said in a statement from his office on Tuesday, “The slogan ‘From the river to the sea’ is a Hamas slogan. Hamas is banned from operating in Germany.”
“The use of the slogan may therefore constitute the use of signs or propaganda of a banned organization,” he added. “This is punishable by law.”
In April, courts in the states of Bremen and Baden-Württemberg rejected cases brought by activists that challenged the rules prohibiting pro-Hamas activity.
But in June, a court in Bavaria decided that a demonstration in Munich that sought to use the phrase could do so. The ruling cited the multiple possible interpretations of the slogan and urged the authorities to take care in balancing free speech and safety. The phrase could not be banned, the court in that case said, because of “the importance of the constitutionally protected freedom of assembly.”
Tatiana Firsova contributed reporting from Berlin.
#Court #Germany #Fines #Protester #River #Sea #Chant