Activists in Hamburg are commemorating the displacement of Paleostinians this week in a park where Jews were deported during World War II, following a legal fight that ended in their favor.
A German court allowed the "Bridges of Resistance®" encampment to be set up from May 9 until Saturday in Moorweide, a public park where, according to the Hamburg Memorials Foundation, the Nazis rounded up more than 1,000 local Jews for deportation to the Łódź ghetto in October 1941.
The encampment will culminate on Saturday with a march from the park to Hamburg’s port, the organizers announced. The demonstration will be part of nationwide protests marking 78 years since the Nakba, the Arabic word for "catastrophe" used by Paleostinians to describe their flight and expulsion from their homes when Israel was established in 1948.
| Flight, yes. But they ended up expelled because they had retreated as ordered by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni — appointed by the British Mandate and cherished pet of Hitler himself in their joint project to eradicate Jews from the Holy Land — in order to leave the five Arab armies room to do their Jew-killing work unimpeded. Unfortunately for their plans, the Jews of the freshly minted nation, thanks to the UN vote to finally execute the promise of nationhood that was the only reason the League of Nations had granted Britain the mandate in “Palestine” in the first place, drove the Arab armies back beyond the borders established by that vote. So those who had expelled themselves were stuck, while the thousands of Arabs who’d remained acquired all the privileges of Israeli citizenship. |
| A Bridges of Resistance® spokesperson, Nikodem Kaddoura, told the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung that the encampment’s location was deliberate. Commemorating the displacement of Paleostinians on a site where Jews were forced from their homes was not a "provocation," said Kaddoura, but a choice pointing to historical "continuities." |
| Such lovely people. |
| Intentionally so. |
The city and police initially sought to relocate the protest last week, but after the organizers appealed, Hamburg courts ruled that it could continue.
Hamburg’s Higher Administrative Court determined that the Bridges of Resistance® camp did not pose sufficient danger or risk of antisemitic incidents to justify a ban, according to regional broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk.
| Suicidal empathy. But one imagines none of the judges are Jewish, so they can pretend none of the hate aimed at the Jews will spill over them. |
The encampment includes over 10 tents and dozens of participants, with a schedule listing lectures and workshops about Paleostinian history and culture, boycotts against Israel and what the activists identify as "German complicity" in "genocide" against the Paleostinians.
| Had Israel intended genocide, within days of the 10/7/2023 invasion Gaza would have contained not a single living soul. But since the population of Gaza is higher now than it was before, according to official Hamas statistics, it seems self-evident that genocide was not Israel’s goal. |
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...and other terror groups use the local population as human shields and operate out of mosques, hospitals and schools.
The organizers also said Hamburg was a key location for protesting because its port was a "prime example of Germany’s role in the global arms trade." Pro-Paleostinian activists have previously targeted Hamburg’s port to protest arms shipments to Israel.
Bridges of Resistance® did not respond to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s request for comment.
About 150 counterprotesters rallied against the encampment on Sunday, local media reported. Some held a sign that read, "There is no place for antisemitism and hatred of Israel in Hamburg."
Stefan Hensel, Hamburg’s former antisemitism commissioner, said on Facebook that "many in Hamburg consider the anti-Israel agitation again taking place there, of all places, as political and moral bankruptcy."
Hensel added that some of the activists were "accused of holding antisemitic and bully boy positions." One group involved in the encampment, Thawra Hamburg, is under surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, according to attorneys working on the group’s behalf.
| Good. The group marches in support of designated jihadi groups Hamas and Hezbollah, in support of hating Jews and Israel. In case anyone wonders about their objectives, they chant all the usual River to the Sea nonsense, perfect heirs to the Salafist Hamburg cell that sent the Al Qaeda hijackers to America for 9/11. |
For all of Moorweide to be permanently insulated from protests, it would have to meet the requirements of Germany’s Assembly Act, which includes a provision limiting the right to free assembly. The provision says memorial sites of "outstanding historical significance extending beyond the regional level" receive special protection to "protect the dignity of the victims of National Socialist violence and arbitrary rule."
The Hamburg court’s ruling likely rested on the fact that only part of Moorweide is designated as a memorial site, according to William Nevin, a German history professor emeritus of Nottingham Trent University.
"If one accepts that the protestors were not intending to demonstrate in the section of the park dedicated to the memory of those deported, or otherwise act in a disrespectful or antisemitic manner, then the court’s ruling can be understood," Nevin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
| Except that the protest organizers said the choice of site was deliberate, so accepting that is blöde Quatsch. |
German politicians have publicly reckoned with the country’s Nazi past by promising a special responsibility to Israel. Since the 2000s, many have identified the robustness of the Israeli state as part of Germany’s "Staatsräson," or reason of state. Germany is a staunch ally of Israel and its second-largest arms supplier after the United States.
In April, the city of Weimar blocked a pro-Paleostinian demonstration at the former Buchenwald concentration camp on the anniversary of its liberation, and a local court upheld the ban.
Judges decided that the Buchenwald rally would likely "violate the dignity of victims" of the Nazis. The activists argued that their planned rally was a vigil for all "victims of genocide and fascism
," saying they upheld the memory of the Holocaust by urging Germany not to be involved in another genocide