The Berlin police lied and the lie is now used to justify repression

On May 15, a pro-Palestinian demonstration was held in Berlin to commemorate the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing and expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. What unfolded that day was not only a case of police violence, but a coordinated effort by German authorities, the media, and politicians to turn fiction into fact in order to further criminalise Palestinian protest.

According to a public statement issued by the Berlin police , a demonstrator had violently assaulted one of their officers, resulting in serious injury and hospitalisation. The police claimed the officer was dragged into the crowd, deliberately attacked, knocked to the ground, and then trampled or kicked by protesters. The message was clear: Pro-Palestinian demonstrators are violent, irrational, and dangerous.

But this entire story is a lie.

Video evidence, meticulously analysed by Forensis, an independent research agency founded and led by members of Forensic Architecture, has unequivocally disproven every single one of the Berlin police’s claims. The footage shows an officer with the number BE24111 written on the back of his uniform jacket advancing into the crowd with colleagues to arrest a protester. As they push people around, BE24111 starts punching protesters in the head and kicking them. He appears to injure himself during this violent fit and retreats with his colleagues.

There is no violent mob. No one is dragging him into the crowd. No one knocks him to the ground. No one kicks him. On the contrary, the footage shows demonstrators actively distancing themselves and shielding one another from BE24111’s assault. It was the officer, not the crowd, who carried out violence.

Despite the truth being uncovered, the damage has already been done.

The Berlin Police’s false narrative was quickly amplified by media outlets and government officials, unleashing a wave of fearmongering and political opportunism. A police union representative appeared on Welt TV channel and described the demonstrators as a “gang of murderers” who “would have killed the officer if they could have”.

The tabloid BILD ran a headline reading: “Jew haters kick police officers”  and quoted Stephan Weh of the German Police Union as saying, “when a colleague is dragged into a crowd and trampled, losing consciousness multiple times, we have to say it’s pure luck that he survived the night […] This madness must end before one of our colleagues loses his life at such a gathering.”

The Public Prosecutor’s Office stated it was “an attack on the organs of the rule of law” and launched a formal investigation into the incident under charges of “dangerous bodily harm” and a “serious breach of the peace”. The very people assaulted by police may now face criminal prosecution based on events that never happened.

Germany’s Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt also seized the moment, declaring in the Bundestag: “An officer at an anti-Israel demo in Berlin was dragged into a crowd by aggressive demonstrators and seriously injured… The police need the best possible equipment and appropriate powers. We will make this clear in the law.”

The state is not just spinning falsehoods; it is also bent on using them to legislate repression. This is part of its overall strategy to criminalise pro-Palestinian activism, protest and speech under the guise of fighting extremism.

On June 10, less than a month after the incident, the State Office of the Protection of the Constitution, a state security agency, released its 2024 report, in which it categorised multiple pro-Palestinian organisations as “extremist” groups, including Jewish Voice for a Just Peace, BDS, and Palestine Speaks. This categorisation will likely result in more intense surveillance, potential police raids on group members, and even bans on organisational activities.

Other groups have already been proscribed. In May 2024, Palestine Solidarity Duisburg association was banned and its website shut down by the Interior Ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia state. Previous to that, in November 2023, the federal government banned the pro-Palestinian group, Samidoun.

The state has come after not just groups but also individuals. In April, three European Union nationals and one US citizen were threatened with deportation for their pro-Palestinian activism. A year earlier, Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta, a UK-based Palestinian surgeon, was barred from entering the country to speak at an event.

My husband and I were placed on a black list after we were supposed to speak at the same event. For a year now, we have been subject to interrogation, harassment, and invasive searches every time we travel outside the country.

Various “symbols” of pro-Palestinian solidarity have also been suppressed. The phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was officially banned by a Berlin judge in August 2024, for allegedly expressing support for terrorism. Then, in an even more chilling move, the city of Berlin banned all Arabic-language chants at demonstrations in April of this year, effectively criminalising an entire language and silencing entire communities, particularly the Palestinian one, which is the largest in Europe.

Meanwhile, police brutality at pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Germany has become disturbingly routine. Protesters are regularly kettled, beaten, and arrested without cause or explanation. What once might have seemed exceptional is now standard operating procedure.

The fight to end German complicity in genocide is being violently suppressed, both in the streets and in the courts. State-sponsored censorship, racialised policing, and violent erosion of civil liberties are carried out under the false banner of public safety.

While the German state continues to claim that it is “atoning for its past” by cracking down on anti-genocide protests, in Gaza, the genocide is raging at full force. Bombings continue, little children are starving to death, and aid seekers are massacred at aid distribution zones. The Israeli military is pushing forward with plans to create a large concentration camp for Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip in preparation for their ethnic cleansing.

Acting to stop this horror has never been more urgent.

In these dark times, those who stay silent about the German state’s lies and repression must consider carefully what they are acquiescing to. Today, it may be the pro-Palestinian activists and people of conscience who are criminalised, but tomorrow it will be others. German democracy is collapsing, and state repression will not stop at a racialised community of protesters.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.