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Anti-Semitic slogans at “Revolutionary May Day” demonstration in Berlin: Participants demonise Israel and call for an “Intifada”

As in previous years, there were anti-Semitic incidents at this year’s “Revolutionary May Day” demonstration in Berlin. Several participants carried placards and banners with anti-Semitic messages. Anti-Semitic chants were repeatedly shouted from within the demonstration.

In addition to the anti-capitalist, socially critical focus, this year’s left-wing demonstration focused on the issue of racism and discrimination. The group Migrantifa Berlin was in charge of the organisation. The motto of the meeting, which started at 5 p.m. on Hermannplatz in the Berlin district of Neukölln, was “Yallah Klassenkampf”. Also part of the rally were several anti-Zionist groups such as “Palestine Speaks”, “Jewish Antifa Berlin”, “Queers* for a Free Palestine” and “Jewish Anti-Fascist League”

Shortly after the meeting began, demonstrators shouted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. The slogan is directed against Israel, which is seen as an “occupying power” and which no longer exists in the new order of the region envisaged by anti-Zionists. However, the demand for the destruction of Israel, the centre of Jewish life today, is anti-Semitic.

Participants in the 1st of May demonstration also shouted “Apartheid Israel”. This was also an anti-Semitic statement, because the accusation that Israel is an apartheid state – like the former regime in South Africa – aims to demonise and delegitimise the Jewish state. The group “Queers* for a free Palestine” also declared their fight against apartheid, racism and Islamophobia on a banner, but did not explicitly mention Israel. BDS chants were also heard at the traditional left-wing demonstration. The participants thus showed solidarity with an anti-Semitic movement that advocates a boycott and the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel, repeatedly resorting to classic anti-Semitic stereotypes.

One demonstrator had a poster with her calling for “international solidarity against Zionism & apartheid”. This is also a widespread motif of anti-Zionist anti-Semitism: Zionism, the national liberation movement of Jews, is seen as a racist endeavour. While large sections of the left have always shown solidarity with liberation movements in the global South, this solidarity quickly comes to an end with the Jewish people. Instead, Israel, as the only democracy in the Middle East, must be accused of being a racist state that despises human rights.

Some participants in the traditional leftist demonstration did not shy away from explicit calls for violence and terror against the Israeli civilian population. In the early evening, they shouted “Stop the war, stop the war, Intifada until victory”. Even if this slogan seems pacifist at first glance, it is by no means so: Intifada refers to violent attacks and terrorist attacks against the Israeli population in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

On its website, the “Jewish Antifa Berlin” declares its solidarity with the anti-Semitic BDS campaign, which advocates a boycott and, in effect, the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel. The group “Jüdischer antifaschistischer Bund” (Jewish Anti-Fascist League) is a newly founded group that has only been publicly visible since April 2021. The participation of such Jewish groups in anti-Zionist events always serves to exonerate themselves from criticism from the outset.

All in all, the pictures from the front block of this year’s “Revolutionary May Day” demonstration were occasionally more reminiscent of the anti-Israel Al-Quds march than of an emancipatory left-wing demonstration against discrimination. The people of Berlin will probably be spared the anti-Semitic Al-Quds march this year. It is therefore all the sadder that a demonstration with the aim of anti-discrimination has become the site of anti-Zionist anti-Semitic slogans on this May Day 2021 in Berlin.

Anti-Semitic slogans at “Revolutionary May Day” demonstration in Berlin: Participants demonise Israel and call for an “Intifada”