Germany has recently taken a chilling new step, signalling its willingness to use political views as grounds to curb migration. Authorities are now moving to deport foreign nationals for participating in pro-Palestine actions. As I reported this week in the Intercept, four people in Berlin – three EU citizens and one US citizen – are set to be deported over their involvement in demonstrations against Israel’s war on Gaza. None of the four have been convicted of a crime, and yet the authorities are seeking to simply throw them out of the country.
The accusations against them include aggravated breach of the peace and obstruction of a police arrest. Reports from last year suggest that one of the actions they were alleged to have been involved in included breaking into a university building and threatening people with objects that could have been used as potential weapons.
But the deportation orders go further. They cite a broader list of alleged behaviours: chanting slogans such as “Free Gaza” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, joining road blockades (a tactic frequently used by climate activists), and calling a police officer a “fascist”. Read closely, the real charge appears to be something more basic: protest itself.
It really blows my mind. Masha Gessen, Nancy Fraser, Yuval Abraham, Omri Boehm, and also others not mentioned in the article. Who the fuck gave Germany the right to decide who is a good pro-Israel Jew and who is a bad anti-Israel Jew? Germany of all countries, being in the business of labelling Jewish people as acceptable and unacceptable. The fucking nerve on these people.
What the actual fuck is going on with humanity?
People who want extreme ‘order’ are really good at organizing and fund raising, and breaking the law and daring the rest of us to do something about it. People who like making sure everyone has rights and those rights are protected aren’t.
Fucking seriously. Just how much of the world has always been a bunch of hateful shits who only needed a bigger asshole to kick things off?
Here we go again, only the US is joining them this time. 🙄
European far right party in the back taking notes. ‘Oh! So you can do that! Interesting.’
fascism in Germany! now I’ve heard everything
Germany repeating the history. Twice.
The article seems to say very little about the 4 people. What it does say is pretty light on facts about what they were involved in. Were they vistors? Students? Do they live in Germany? Do they work there? Have families there? Some factual context would be nice. And how/when were they arrested?
The author of the article links to their own earlier article in the Intercept that goes in detail: https://theintercept.com/2025/03/31/germany-gaza-protesters-deport/
The only event that tied the four cases together was the allegation that the protesters participated in the university occupation, which involved property damage, and alleged obstruction of an arrest — a so-called de-arrest aimed at blocking a fellow protesters’ detention. None of the protesters are accused of any particular acts of vandalism or the de-arrest at the university. Instead, the deportation order cites the suspicion that they took part in a coordinated group action. (The Free University told The Intercept it had no knowledge of the deportation orders.)
Some of the allegations are minor. Two, for example, are accused of calling a police officer “fascist” — insulting an officer, which is a crime. Three are accused of demonstrating with groups chanting slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine Will be Free” — which was outlawed last year in Germany — and “free Palestine.” Authorities also claim all four shouted antisemitic or anti-Israel slogans, though none are specified.
Two are accused of grabbing an officers’ or another protesters’ arm in an attempt to stop arrests at the train station sit-in.
O’Brien, one of the Irish citizens, is the only one of the four whose deportation order included a charge – the accusation that he called a police officer a “fascist” – that has been brought before a criminal court in Berlin, where he was acquitted.
All four are accused, without evidence, of supporting Hamas, a group Germany has designated as a terrorist organization.
Thanks. A few follow up questions. First, who is causing the deportation attempt. In the US we know these all come top down from trump. But is the executive branch in germany also in the hands of anti-immigration management? And is that the executive branch? Second, is guilt by association like this a thing for German citizens? And last, are these guys like university students? Or are they like tourist who came to protest or something? Thanks.
Are you asking me to play the role of a search engine for you? 😏
People have commented that there is a lot of misinformation out there on this. The best sources would be german sources probably. But I don’t know which sources in germany (or even the EU) are reliable. I know the US sources are NOT reliable on this subject.
However, the known record of German institutions cracking down on dissident Jewish voices(*) is a very good indicator of what’s going on here. Now, I’m not saying that any of these people are little saints, or that they did nothing questionable, but that there is a systemic bias in Germany against pro-Palestinian activism. Which is the more burning point than counting pennies of the particularities of each individual legal case.
(*) such as Masha Gessen, Nancy Fraser, Yuval Abraham, Omri Boehm and others.
So… me being a yankee… why is that? In the US it has to do with money of course. Selling weapons to Isreal makes a lot of people rich. But also I have been told that a lot of the power people in our democratic party are Jewish or something.
What kind of fascist world are we living in that “insulting a police officer” can be a crime?
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and calling a police officer a “fascist”
No, Germany, bad Germany. You’ve done this twice already, haven’t you fucking learned?
„It’s not holocaust when brown people are dying”
~white people
How can Germany “deport” an EU citizen? Is there any way for them to block an EU citizen from coming back into Germany?
How can Germany “deport” an EU citizen?
Have a half-dozen men with guns grab the person, shove them into the back of a squad car, drive them to a jail, make them wait in the jail until transport can be arranged, drag them to a plane, force them onto the plane, fly the plane to an Israeli-occupied territory, kick the person out of the plane into the hands of some genocidal Israeli lunatics, and leave.
Is there any way for them to block an EU citizen from coming back into Germany?
Tear up their travel documents, for starters. Sending them to a country where they are at extreme risk of permanent arrest, torture, and execution also works.
Ok so just like in America
Not at all, nothing in the post you replied to is actually true.
None of that is true. There is due process, no hit squads. They will have the ability to bring this to court (a process which they already started). And deportation would happen to where they come from, so other EU countries and the US.
Yeah, that’s the craziest thing. EU citizenship means you have freedom to be in any EU country. There is no “deporting” a citizen of the EU if you’re a country in the EU.
Yet here we are…
Why bother with the half measures.
Just take the mask off and send them to the torture prison in El Salvador with all the other baselessly accused and right denied.
Germany… forever pro-genocide cvnts
Name a more dynamic duo: German 🤝 being on the wrong side of history
German unification was a mistake.
Context for all the people who think this is some illegal bs: The group of protesters invaded a campus building, threatened staff, destroyed IT equipment, vandalised entire rooms and sprayed a hamas symbol on a wall
Yeah no let’s tolerate this <3
So arrest them and charge them with a crime?
Seeking asylum is not a ticket to wreak havoc at no risk
We’re talking about citizens here, Chungus. Citizenship imparts a set of rights and responsibilities. It’s not an easy thing to get. And we’re not supposed to have different tiers of citizenship, where some citizens are more equal than others. Legally speaking, a naturalized citizen is supposed to be indistinguishable from a native born one.
But with actions like this, you are saying that isn’t true. You can immigrate to a country, leave your whole family and life behind, and dedicate yourself fully and passionately to your new home. But it doesn’t matter. You’ll always be a second-class citizen. You will be treated differently by the legal system than a native born citizen. A native citizen won’t be punished with exile for an act of petty vandalism, but you will be.
This shows that Germany has truly abandoned, at a fundamental level, the idea of equal justice under the law. It is once again going down the path of Fascism, where citizens receive different rights based on their ethnicity, religion, and immigration history. Once you start having different tiers of citizenship, with different levels of protection, things get dark very quickly.
And while the injustice starts with immigrants, once you’ve established the precedent that the protections of citizenship can be arbitrarily stripped from people based on political convenience and pressure? It’s a short ride to the gas chambers. This is literally the legal foundation of the Holocaust.
You learned nothing from history, and you are doomed to repeat it.
If you can’t even stay out of severe trouble and be grateful for the asylum you don’t deserve your asylum spot. Many people are waiting to replace you.
The real umbrella term is tolerance, you embrace it and it covers you, you either fall in line and integrate or you’re out.
Nowhere is set in stone that you have a right to bring the shit that made you flee your country into your host country and escape consequence.
Good riddance, globalism is absolute shit.
It’s really really cute to see Germans/Europeans/Westerners pretending that antisemitism is an imported problem.
