Berlin’s Gaza syndrome: Kids reported to cops, Palestine slogans censored

Berlin is home to the biggest Palestinian diaspora outside the Middle East, with an estimated number exceeding 30,000.

Located in the southeastern side of Berlin city centre, Neukolln district has much of Berlin’s Arab population, including the Palestinians.

Formerly a vibrant borough, with the falafel restaurants and middle eastern shoppers at Sonnenallee street, also known as Berlin’s Arab street, the district is no longer full of life. Instead, fear of police violence and sadness stemming from the Gaza war is palpable here.

In the past four months since Israel engaged in a bloodbath in Gaza, the German police have been on the prowl, ready to pounce on any pro-Palestinian solidarity protest.

The social atmosphere has become so hostile that teachers are calling the police on kids.

May Zeidani, a sociologist and human rights activist in Neukolln, has taken strong note of the German state's heavy-handed tactics against solidarity activism for Palestine.

Parents in Neukolln are worried for their children, says Zeidani, “Kids are being told not to say anything in school. They are told not to say they are Palestinians or write or say Free Palestine”.

Zeidani's mother is Jewish, and her father is a Palestinian Muslim. Although she has been living in Berlin for over 20 years, she paints a dark picture of the future of Germany and expresses a lack of hope for the country.

"I never expected anything, neither from Israel nor from Germany. I really don't believe either of them has any moral backbone or anything like that," Zeidani tells TRT World.

First, she said, officials in Berlin imposed restrictions on freedom of assembly in October 2023. In the following months, most pro-Palestinian rallies were banned.

While a handful of rallies were allowed to pass through the streets of Berlin, a highly disproportionate number of police personnel were deployed to such gatherings. In a November protest, at least a thousand armed policemen were manning a march of about 8000 people.

Berlin’s public prosecutor has been making attempts to criminalise the famous Palestinian protest chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The case has been pending in the court since October, however.

Several schools in Berlin have banned keffiyeh scarves, Free Palestine stickers and Israeli maps sprinkled with the colours of Palestinian flag.

White supremacy and Zionism

Zeidani initially thought that the German state's pro-Israel radicalism was a case of a psychotic disorder rooted in the country's fascist past.

However, upon learning that German society has largely remained unmoved by the systematic extermination of Roma community during the Nazi Holocaust and still feels no guilt about it, she started exploring the race angle.

She now believes that the German state's love affair with Israel mainly stems from the "construct of whiteness." For Zeidani, Jewish people have successfully associated themselves with European whiteness through Zionism, which is squarely a racist nationalist aspiration, akin to white supremacy.

"They (Jewish people) immediately became part of the ruling elite in the sense that they are not excluded from power positions as they used to be in the past when they pushed for an Israeli state," she says. "Their position in American society, along with the creation of a colonial nation-state in Israel, helped them construct this power balance and perception of whiteness."

On Germany's part, Zeidani describes it as a "lack of moral backbone." "They (the German state) understood the Holocaust was horrible because they murdered Jews, but they did not take the next step to recognize that the Holocaust was horrible because they murdered humans," she says.

As an activist for 19 years, she has focused on making German people more aware of their past and evoking a sense of empathy among them, but she has not seen much change in that direction.

She did not give up and instead concentrated on creating a community for those affected by racism rather than reaching mainstream society.

Zeidani's father is from Nazareth, which was occupied by Israel in 1948 for about 15 years until fully annexing it.

While her mother always wanted to leave this ancient city, her father wanted to stay put because he thought that if he left, the Zionists would win. Her mother eventually came to terms with that and ended up staying with her husband.

"This is the reason why Palestinians do not want to leave now—they would not make it easier for Israel," Zeidani says, drawing parallels between her father's decision to remain in Nazareth and thousands of Palestinians in Gaza who refuse to cross over into Egypt and become refugees.

Zeidani's Israeli-Palestinian identity and the way she came to Germany to study make her different compared to other Palestinians living in Neukolln.

Most Palestinians in Neukolln are refugees who came to Germany in the late '80s and '90s after the second intifada. As refugees, they did not have the right to work at the time.

Since Israel waged war on Gaza, Palestinians in Neukolln are in mourning. Every now and then, they hear the news of a loved one getting killed at the hands of Israeli forces.

Workplace discrimination

Pro-Palestine solidarity can cost you your job or employment opportunity in Neukolln. "People cannot find jobs because of their anti-Zionist positions," Zeidani says, adding that she personally faced such discrimination in 2016.

It was an administrative position at Humboldt University where she had studied for a bachelor's degree.

The job description was to process applications for support in university fees, she says. And when she called to know the result, the person on the phone asked her, "Are you the one who supports Palestine?" and then bluntly told her, "You did not get it."

"I also know of other people who were excluded from job interviews because they are against the [ongoing] genocide [in Gaza]," she says.