A Berlin court has convicted a pro-Palestinian activist of condoning a crime for leading a chant of the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” at a rally in the German capital four days after the Hamas attacks on Israel, in what her defence team called a defeat for free speech.
The presiding judge, Birgit Balzer, ordered 22-year-old German-Iranian national Ava Moayeri to pay a €600 (£515) fine on Tuesday, rejecting her argument that she meant only to express support for “peace and justice” in the Middle East by calling out the phrase on a busy street.
Balzer said she “could not comprehend” the logic of previous German court rulings that determined the saying was “ambiguous”, saying to her it was clear it “denied the right of the state of Israel to exist”.
She said this opinion could be covered by the freedom of expression in Germany but that the slogan’s use had to be evaluated in the context of “the biggest massacre of Jews since the Shoah – that is the elephant in the room”.
The case, heard under tight security, was one of several since the 7 October Hamas attacks in Israel and the subsequent destruction of Gaza that have examined Germany’s strict limits on pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Moayeri’s lawyers called it the first trial in Berlin that centred on the use of the politically charged phrase.
Balzer said the slogan was particularly controversial in Germany, which considers support for Israel to be a matter of Staatsräson, or reason of state, at the core of its national identity due to its responsibility for the Holocaust.
She added that Germans had an obligation to make Jews in the country feel “safe and comfortable”, particularly in the face of a rise in antisemitic crimes since 7 October.
About 100 protesters gathered outside the courthouse could be heard chanting “Free, free Palestine” as the verdict was read out. Moayeri smiled at 20 supporters who were allowed to attend the hearing, many of them wearing keffiyehs, and was met with cheers when she left the building. Two members of the public shouted “against repression” after the judge closed the trial.
The sentence for Moayeri, who had no previous criminal record and described herself as an activist for feminist and refugee causes, came in below the €900 fine demanded by state prosecutors, who later said they would consider an appeal.
Condoning a crime can result in a prison sentence of up to three years.
Moayeri’s lawyer, Alexander Gorski, condemned what he called a win for “state oppression” of protesters and said he would challenge the verdict before a higher court.
The defendant was one of the co-organisers of a protest on 11 October near the Sonnenallee in the capital’s diverse Neukölln district, a bustling boulevard that has been the scene of several pro-Palestinian protests, some of them violent.
However, Moayeri told the court that the rally in question, which was held in the late morning, had been organised in response to media reports that a teacher had hit a pro-Palestinian student and that the protesters had gathered to condemn “violence in schools”.
Two police officers who had been dispatched to the scene of the protest, which was banned by Berlin authorities, disputed that account in court, saying that participants had waved Palestinian flags and worn keffiyehs and that none of the chanted slogans mentioned school safety.
Moayeri’s legal team said the slogan must be seen as a “central expression of the global Palestine solidarity movement” with a historical origin predating Hamas. They said Moayeri should be taken at her word that she rejected “any form of antisemitism”.
“Between the river and the sea” is a fragment from a slogan used since the 1960s by an array of activists with different agendas. It has a range of interpretations around the world, from the genocidal to the democratic.
The full saying is a reference to land between the Jordan River to the east and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, encompassing Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
The German legal framework assessing the slogan is complex, with courts zigzagging between more and less severe interpretations.
Last November, the interior minister, Nancy Faeser, banned Hamas activities in Germany as well as “from the river to the sea”, which she declared to be a Hamas slogan.
In February, the justice minister, Marco Buschmann, said the phrase could constitute “antisemitic incitement” and be understood as “condoning the killings committed in Israel”.
German police have frequently used the saying as justification to revoke permission for organised protests, or made its avoidance a condition for granting their permission.
A Bavarian court ruled in June that the phrase expected to be used in an upcoming demonstration in Munich did not constitute a crime and could not be banned outright, finding that the “benefit of the doubt” around the slogan must prevail.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany, which represents the roughly 200,000-strong community, criticised that decision as “incomprehensible”.
“Hamas’s battle cry means the annihilation of Israel and the expulsion and destruction of the Jews living there,” it said, adding it was the German state’s “urgent duty” to “create clarity” about the phrase.
