Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman is in Berlin, Germany, this week, where the crackdown on pro-Palestine speech is shaped by the German policy of Staatsräson, or “reason of state.” The concept refers to Germany’s commitment to the existence of the Israeli state in light of the Holocaust. Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in 2023, Staatsräson has manifested itself as German military aid to Israel and heavy policing of Palestine activism inside Germany.
“Germany’s guilt regarding the Holocaust” has been “abused to justify the support of the genocidal war of Israel against the population in Gaza,” says Berlin-based lawyer Alexander Gorski, who recently represented the “Berlin Four,” three European Union citizens and one United States citizen whom Germany attempted to deport for participating in pro-Palestine campus protest. Gorski, who also represented the British Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah and the leftist Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis when they were denied entry into Germany ahead of a pro-Palestine conference in Berlin, discusses Germany’s use of immigration law to crack down on anti-Zionist activism, which he says the state wholly conflates with antisemitism.
“Germany has a historic responsibility for challenging antisemitism, but at the same time, what we should learn — especially as Germans — from the Holocaust, that ‘never again’ means never again for anyone,” says Gorski.
