STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT. A large-scale rally “against Islamophobia” was held in the northern German city of Hamburg on Saturday. According to the authorities, the event was organized by a person linked to an “established extremist group.”
Around 1,100 demonstrators took part in the rally, according to police data cited by dpa news agency and published by the city authorities on their official portal. Photos and videos shared on social media show a large crowd occupying a significant area along Steindamm Street in the city center.
Participants were seen holding placards and posters reading: “Germany = dictatorship of values,” “Caliphate is the solution,” and “Palestine has won the information war.” The demonstrators also repeatedly chanted “Allahu Akbar” throughout the event.
According to the organizers cited by the German media, the rally was organized to protest against what they called Islamophobic policy and the alleged media disinformation campaign against Muslims in Germany. Speakers accused the politicians and journalists of “cheap lies” and “cowardly reporting” amid the continued conflict between Israel and the Gaza-based Hamas militant group.
People on social media also claimed that the speakers called for an Islamic Caliphate to be established in Germany. Some of the videos published on social networks showed one of the speakers praising a caliphate as a “system that … provides security” while stating that it is “hated” and “demonized” in Germany. The crowd can be seen responding to those statements with “Allahu Akbar” chants.
The rally organizer was identified by the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper as Joe Adade Boateng, 25, a German citizen and a self-styled “imam” spreading what the paper described as “Islamist propaganda” on social media, including TikTok.
According to the media reports, the man was also a member of the “Muslim Interaktiv” group – an organization officially designated by the German domestic security service (BfV) as an “established extremist group.”
The status does not lead to an automatic ban in Germany but allows security officials to target a group’s members with all intelligence tools available, including covert surveillance, confidential informants, and phone tapping.
The German police said they had deployed large forces to the event, which ended “peacefully” without any incidents. No major police presence can be seen in the videos that were posted on social media, though.
The group also held an unannounced rally in October last year, which ended in clashes with police. The demonstrators were pelting the officers with bottles and stones at that time, injuring three of them. Criminal proceedings were then initiated against 20 rioters.
In February 2023, “Muslim Interaktiv” also held a protest against Koran burning in Sweden, which was attended by 3,500 people, according to the media.
The development sparked concerns among some politicians. Kazim Abaci, a migration policy spokesman for the Social Democratic faction in the Hamburg parliament, called it “unbearable” that Islamists were allowed to freely march through the city streets. According to the Hamburger Morgenpost, Herbert Reul, the Interior Minister of the German neighboring state of North Rhine-Westphalia, had also been calling for a “Muslim Interaktiv” ban “for a long time.”
Germany’s Muslim community has not done enough to condemn the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which carried out a deadly attack on Israel on October 7, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said in a video address published.
“The scale of the Islamist demonstrations in Berlin and other cities in Germany is unacceptable and needs a tough political response,” Habeck stated.
“This is also needed from the Muslim associations. Some have clearly distanced themselves from the actions of Hamas and from anti-Semitism, and have sought dialogue. But not all of them – some have been too hesitant to do so, and it’s been too few overall,” the vice chancellor added.
Habeck stressed that Muslims living in Germany must be protected from “right-wing extremist violence,” but, at the same time, “they must clearly distance themselves from anti-Semitism so as not to undermine their own right to tolerance.” He went on to denounce those who “downplayed” the Hamas attack, which claimed the lives of 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, as an “unfortunate incident.”
Germany has seen a surge in anti-Semitism in recent weeks, including an attempt to firebomb a synagogue in Berlin. On Tuesday, the country’s leading tabloid Bild published a 50-point manifesto titled “Germany, we have a problem!” The newspaper warned about the growing level of extremism in society, including hatred of Jews.
Dozens of people were arrested in Berlin on Friday as German police moved to clear a pro-Palestinian protest camp set outside the Chancellery building two weeks ago.
The activists residing in the camp, which consisted of 20 tents, have been demanding an end to German weapons shipments to Israel as the Jewish state continues its siege of Gaza. The protesters have also decried the criminalization of the Palestinian solidarity movement.
German authorities have accused the demonstrators of incitement to hatred and using unconstitutional symbols and forbidden slogans. The protestors are also alleged to have breached restrictions such as those protecting green areas.
“Protection of gatherings cannot be guaranteed at this point because public safety and order are significantly at risk,” police spokesperson Anja Dierschke was quoted as saying by the DW news outlet.
According to police, some 150 officers were deployed to the Chancellery to tear down the tents. Seventy-five arrests were made of protesters and other supporters who allegedly violated the Freedom of Assembly Acts.
The demonstrators, meanwhile, have insisted that the German authorities had no right to clear out the camp.
“We’ve been peaceful but we’ve been harassed by the police every single day who have given us the most stupid restriction,” said one activist named Nassar. “They’ve forbidden us from using languages which aren’t German or English, they have criminalized our prayers, our songs, our workshops, and now their official reasoning is that we had a sofa which was damaging the grass … In Germany, damaging the lawn is worse than committing genocide,” Nassar told DW.
“Welcome to Germany, where killing 35,000 people is worse than harming a little bit of grass,” another protester commented, referring to the total death toll cited by Gaza health authorities amid Israel’s relentless retaliatory assault on the Palestinian enclave.
Israel’s siege comes in response to the October 7 Hamas attack on the Jewish state, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage.
US police arrested more than 80 protesters as part of a crackdown on pro-Palestine demonstrations which have gained momentum across American university campuses.
A wave of demonstrations from Massachusetts to California began last week after students at New York’s Columbia University set up tent camps, demanding that universities cut ties to Israel and divest from companies allegedly contributing to the Gaza conflict. They also publicly called for a ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave.
Companies being targeted include Amazon and Google, which are part of a $1.2 billion cloud-computing contract with the Israeli government. Microsoft, whose services are used by Israel’s Defense Ministry and Israeli civil administration, has also been condemned, as well as arms manufacturers profiting from the war such as Lockheed Martin.
Students at schools including New York University, Harvard, and Yale demand that the US government “cease all funding for Israeli weapons and stop giving them any more money to continue this genocide,” Cameron Jones, part of Columbia’s Jewish Voice for Peace movement, said in a video statement.
Visiting the campus at Columbia, US House Speaker Mike Johnson denounced the protests as “mob rule” and condemned what he called a “virus of anti-Semitism” at colleges nationwide.
“And it’s detestable, as Columbia has allowed these lawless agitators and radicals to take over,” he claimed, calling for the resignation of the university’s president. Activists deny that the protests are anti-Semitic, and say Jewish students are largely involved in organizing the demonstrations.
Hundreds of Columbia faculty members staged a walkout on Monday to criticize the university leadership and express their solidarity with the protesters. Demonstrators condemned the Columbia president’s decision to call police onto campus. History professor Christopher Brown publicly branded it “unprecedented, unjustified, disproportionate, divisive and dangerous.”
The rallies have led to mass suspensions and hundreds of student arrests in New York and other cities. At least 34 people, including a photojournalist, were detained after police stormed the campus at the University of Texas in Austin on Wednesday, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. At least 50 more were detained by police at the University of Southern California, local media reported.
A surge of demonstrations followed the deadly attack on Israel by the Palestinian armed group Hamas in October. The students are protesting Israel’s relentless retaliatory assault on Gaza, which has caused unprecedented destruction in the enclave and left more than 34,000 people dead, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Riot police have arrested more than 100 protesters at Northeastern University in Boston, amid a nationwide crackdown on anti-Israel activism. University authorities claim that the demonstrators were calling for the deaths of Jews.
Demonstrators set up tents on Northeastern’s campus earlier this week, following the lead of students at New York’s Columbia University and around 40 other educational institutions in the US and Canada.
Officers from the Boston Police Department, Massachusetts State Police, Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department, and the university’s own police force surrounded the encampment shortly after dawn on Saturday morning, before moving in and restraining around 100 demonstrators with zip ties, WBZ News reported.
Massachusetts State Police said that 102 people who refused to disperse were arrested and will be charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. Northeastern University said that anyone who produced a student ID was released and would face disciplinary, but not legal, consequences.
“What began as a student demonstration two days ago, was infiltrated by professional organizers with no affiliation to Northeastern,” the university claimed in a statement. “Last night, the use of virulent antisemitic slurs, including ‘Kill the Jews,’ crossed the line. We cannot tolerate this kind of hate on our campus.”
The Massachusetts chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), however, claimed that anti-Semitic chants were not started by the protesters, but by “pro-Israel counter-supporters” attempting to discredit the pro-Palestinian side. Video footage shared by the DSA on Saturday apparently shows protesters shouting down someone who tried to start a chant of “Kill the Jews.”
Two reporters at the scene “heard someone say the statement, but could not identify who said it,” the Huntington News, a student newspaper, wrote on social media.
Protesters at campuses across the US have demanded that their universities “divest” from companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Lockheed Martin that have contracts with the Israeli government. They also want the US to stop giving money to Israel, citing its “genocide” of the Palestinians in Gaza.
The protest movement has drawn support from some progressive Democrats, but condemnation from establishment lawmakers in both parties. On Friday, New York Representatives Richie Torres and Mike Lawler introduced a bill that would appoint “anti-Semitism monitors” to federally funded college campuses and strip money from those that fail to sufficiently crack down on alleged hatred against Jews.
The bill was introduced two days after police arrested hundreds of protesters in similar raids on 21 campuses nationwide. Hundreds more were detained on Thursday and Friday, including 118 at Boston’s Emerson College.
Several student groups that have organized protest “camps” at major US universities have received money from activist billionaire George Soros, the New York Post reported.
Protests that began earlier this month at Columbia University in New York City have since spread to 40 universities and colleges in the US and Canada, including Harvard, Yale and UC Berkeley. The Columbia protest was organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Within Our Lifetime.
All three have received funding from Soros’s Open Society Foundations through a network of nonprofits, the Post claimed, citing its own research. Other major donors to the student groups were identified as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and former Wall Street banker Felice Gelman.
None of the groups responded to the Post’s requests for comment.
The outlet also named three “fellows” of the Soros-funded US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), paid several thousand dollars to organize campaigns on campus. Two of them are former interns for congressional Democrats.
Activists have demanded that universities “divest” from companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, as well as Lockheed Martin, that have contracts with the Israeli government. They also want the US government to stop giving any more money to Israel, citing its “genocide” of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Leader of the pro-Israel group Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, blamed the protests on “campus proxies” of Iran in an interview with MSNBC.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that “anti-Semitic mobs have taken over leading universities” in the US and were calling for “the annihilation of Israel.” He compared the protesters to German Nazis in the 1930s and said their actions had to be “condemned and condemned unequivocally.”
