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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Palestinian Solidarity Activists Attack Downtown Berlin Weapons Industry Targets <br></h1>March 20, 2024 -
<span class="gmail-post-author">By Unicorn Riot </span>
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<p>Berlin, Germany — In the middle of the night on Sunday, March 17, a
group of anarchist Palestinian solidarity activists attacked a building
in downtown Berlin containing the offices of two entities currently
contributing to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The activists used a
converted fire extinguisher to blast the building facade with red paint,
and tag other parts of the building with pro-Palestine graffiti. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The offices at Friedrichstraße 60 in Berlin are home to ThyssenKrupp
Marine Systems (TKMS), which manufactures the Israeli Navy’s Sa’ar 6
corvettes, warships that allow the Navy <a href="https://www.naval-technology.com/news/israeli-navys-saar-6-corvettes-used-to-strike-gaza-ground-targets/">to bomb Gaza from the sea</a>. </p>
<img width="450" height="253" alt="" src="https://unicornriot.ninja/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Berlin_weapons_corp_offices_red_paint_daytime-1200x675.png" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">Red paint seen on the entrance to Friedrichstraße 60 in downtown Berlin during the daytime on Monday, March 18, 2024.
<img width="450" height="299" alt="" src="https://unicornriot.ninja/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/1600px-Korvette_der_Saar-6-Klasse-1200x797.jpg" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
<img width="450" height="253" alt="" src="https://unicornriot.ninja/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Saar-6-pic0014-1200x675.jpg" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
Israeli Naval Service Sa’ar 6 corvette warships seen docked
at a ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) dock in Kiel, Germany (L) and
firing bombs while at sea (R). Photo credits: Marco Kuntzsch/Wikimedia
Commons (L) and IDF Spokesperson Unit (R)
<p>The Friedrichstraße 60 building also contains the offices of
Bundesverband der Deutschen Sicherheits- und Verteidigungsindustrie, a
lobbying group for German weapons manufacturers known as <a href="https://www.bdsv.eu/about-bdsv.html">BDSV</a>. </p>
<img width="450" height="253" alt="" src="https://unicornriot.ninja/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/TKMS_Arms_Genocide-1200x675.png" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
<img width="450" height="253" alt="" src="https://unicornriot.ninja/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Shame_on_BDSV-1200x675.png" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
Anarchists acting in solidarity with Palestine tagged
offices used by Israeli-genocide-enabling weapons manufacturers
ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) and Bundesverband der Deutschen
Sicherheits- und Verteidigungsindustrie (BDSV), among others, in
downtown Berlin on the night of March 17, 2024.
<p>To find out more about the action and the broader context from which
it arose, Unicorn Riot interviewed several participants who took part in
the action, who responded to written questions collectively. All
respondents requested to be quoted anonymously for their safety.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Unicorn Riot: Tell us about the recent action.</strong></p>
<p>Anonymous Participants: Our autonomous crew has been researching arms
dealers and locations of those responsible for what’s happening in
Gaza, with the determination to hold them accountable. They have blood
on their hands. Now we put it on their front doors.</p>
<p>We especially wanted to target this building after a recent demonstration on the 11th of March called “<strong>Stop Arming Israel</strong>,”
led by other Palestine solidarity activists. It brought attention to
this address being the headquarters to the largest lobby for weapons
manufacturers in Germany.</p>
<p>BDSV is a lobby group that advocates for the interests of the German
defense industry and represents many arms companies, including <strong>Rheinmetall</strong>, <strong>Diehl Defence</strong>, <strong>Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems</strong>, Kraussmaffei and more. <strong>Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems</strong><em>,</em>
whose office is in this building, builds submarines and warships for
the Israeli Navy. These warships are being used right now to attack
Gaza. </p>
<img width="450" height="300" alt="" src="https://unicornriot.ninja/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/INS_Drakon_Israeli_submarine_of_German_submarine_class_Dolphin-AIP_modified_version-1200x800.jpg" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
<img width="450" height="300" alt="" src="https://unicornriot.ninja/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Extended_sail_and_hull_section_amidships_of_Israeli_submarine_INS_Drakon_of_German_submarine_class_Dolphin-AIP_modified_version-1200x800.jpg" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
The Israeli military submarine <em><a href="https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/08/israel-launches-new-submarine-first-in-world-with-modern-missiles-in-sail/">INS Drakon</a></em>
seen being worked on at the ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) yard in
Kiel, Germany in 2023. Photos credit: Marco Kuntzsch/Wikimedia Commons
<p><strong>UR: What motivated you to act?</strong></p>
<p>Anonymous Participants: We are heartbroken and infuriated and
couldn’t stay passive in the face of ongoing colonial violence and
genocide. There are extremely high stakes in this fight. As anarchists,
we believe fighting to free Palestine is fighting to free us all from
the brutality of state power and settler colonialism. </p>
<p>Everyday, we see on our screens people being killed by the hundreds.
We see them dying of organized starvation or being bombed when waiting
for food aid. We see hospitals, infrastructure, schools, being
demolished in a clear attempt to leave nothing for the Palestinian
people to return to, to clear Palestine off the map.</p>
<p>We often feel powerless at demonstrations in Berlin and will make
those in power listen by any means necessary. It’s past time to
escalate. We must ensure a stop of the genocide as fast as possible. </p>
<p>And we will prevail. We are part of a bigger international movement
organizing to stop the war machinery in its tracks: comrades shutting
down arms factories in the UK and the US, the Yemeni blockading
of the Red Sea, dockworkers in Italy, Belgium and Spain stopping
delivery of military goods to Israel, Indian unions organizing against
labor deals with Israel, boycotts and protests all around the Middle
East, McDonalds losing huge profits in Egypt and elsewhere, etc. We hope
that this is one of many actions that will take place in Germany, and
that others will join us in making accountable the people in our city
responsible for the murder of thousands of Palestinians.</p>
<p><strong>UR: What is the connection between German companies and the ongoing ethnic cleansing occurring in Palestine?</strong></p>
<p>Anonymous Participants: Germany is Israel’s second biggest arms supplier, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/15/which-countries-have-stopped-supplying-arms-to-israel">supplying 28% of Israel’s weapons</a>,
including warships, aircraft, tanks, missiles, submarines, engines, and
military vehicles. Weapons exports from Germany to Israel have
increased tenfold since 2023, mostly since October. The German
government subsidizes this as military aid and directly funds the
weapons used to massacre the people of Gaza. For example, 1/3 of the
price of the warships sold by our target <strong>ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems</strong>
are subsidized by the German government. This is about more than trade.
Germany is gifting weapons to Israel and actively participating in the
genocide. </p>
<p>Along with our target <strong>TKMS</strong> and arms lobby <strong>BDSV</strong>,
the streets of Berlin’s city centre are riddled with the offices of
German, U.S. and Israeli companies profitting from the genocide of
Palestinians: <strong>Rheinmetall</strong>, <strong>Hensoldt</strong>, <strong>Diehl Defence</strong>, <strong>MTU Aero Engines</strong>, <strong>Lockheed Martin</strong>, <strong>Elbit Systems</strong>, <strong>Israel Aerospace Industries</strong>, as well as the German company<strong> Siemens</strong>,
which provides technology and equipment to Israeli prisons and is in
regular business with Israeli authorities for population and traffic
control in the occupied West Bank. We hope our action inspires further
targeting of these companies. </p>
<p><strong>UR: Is there a historical reason why it feels particularly
important for Germans to act in solidarity with Palestine in this
moment? </strong></p>
<p>Anonymous Participants: In part, the state of Israel exists because
of Germany’s violence during the Holocaust and WWII. Germans therefore
have an especially strong responsibility to fight the genocide that is
happening in Gaza.</p>
<p>Despite this, Germany is once again on the wrong side of history.
Germany has continuously backed Israel on a global stage, going so far
as to claim this position as Germany’s <strong>“Staatsräson”</strong>
(reason of state). Manifest here is a logic of German guilt: since we
[Germans] were responsible for the systematic extermination of the
Jewish people during the Holocaust, we [Germans] have a special
‘historical responsibility’ to support Israel.</p>
<p>With this being said, antisemitism is still alive and well in German
society. It is seen clearly in the presence of right-wing extremists and
neo-Nazi networks in the parliament and police forces, as well as in
the troubling abstraction of Jewishness by those who have been trained
to ‘remember’ the Holocaust in particular ways, but know very little
about the history of Zionism nor the cultural diversity within the
contemporary Jewish diaspora. The excuse that support for Israel
apologizes for the horrors of the Holocaust has failed to address this
deeper and ongoing antisemitism in Germany. </p>
<p>Since October 7th, the existing state political discourse around
‘imported antisemitism’ has grown stronger. Despite the fact that the
grand majority of antisemitic crimes in Germany are committed by the
white German far-right–for example <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/28/in-germany-growing-suggestions-that-antisemitism-is-imported">95% in 2020</a>–German
politicians frame antisemitism as coming from the non-E.U. migrants
that have moved here in the past decades. When in reality, it has more
to do with the fact that Germany never truly de-Nazified.</p>
<p>Behind all of this ideology is Germany’s much longer colonial and
racist legacy. There have never been reparations made or ‘justice’
served for the Herero and Nama genocide committed in Namibia in the
early 20th century. And presently, the German state is a leader in
Europe’s militarized border regimes and systematic anti-refugee/migrant
discrimination. </p>
<p>If Germans want to meaningfully undermine the genocidal legacies of
empire, then the answer is clear: they must untangle themselves from the
propaganda of the German state and begin to reflect on how deeply
embedded racism is in the social being of German identity. If disavowing
Zionism means disavowing Germanness, then perhaps it is time to
consider this prospect. </p>
<p><strong>UR: Help us understand the context for this action. What is the Palestinian solidarity movement in Berlin like?</strong></p>
<p>Anonymous Participants: The Palestinian solidarity movement here is
in a difficult position because of Germany’s political culture around
Palestine/Israel. Even the (non-international/non-migrant) left has
aligned itself with the German political elite, based on the premise
that Germany’s post-Holocaust responsibility requires the unconditional
support of the Israeli state. As a result, the Palestinian solidarity
movement has been marginalized and under attack both by repressive state
actors as well as the white German left. </p>
<p>Part of the left’s support for Zionism can be attributed to the
prominent ‘Antideutsche’ movement, whose anti-fascism is deeply
intertwined with their support of a Zionist state. While it may sound
surreal to radicals the whole world over, it’s ‘normal’ in Germany to
see anti-fascist flags flown next to Israeli flags at demos, or to have
self-described leftists organizing demos in solidarity with Israel.
People from the Antideutsch scene have physically attacked Palestine
solidarity events and activists (including anti-Zionist Jewish
activists), and called the cops on Palestinian people carrying
Palestinian flags. Late last year, there was an attack by white leftists
on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cy5TltWsyr9/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D">a radical BIPOC collective space</a>
in Leipzig, where they broke their windows, threw pig fat, and left
behind a statement claiming this Islamophobia was ‘anti-fascism.’</p>
<p>Even for German activists who are not outwardly pro-Israel, there is a
widespread discomfort with being associated with any criticism of
Israel, which has caused many political groups to fracture over the last
few months. Most of us have gotten into fights at home, in our
political organizations, in our friendship groups, and/or at work.
Despite there being a small number of anti-Zionist German groups, the
Palestine solidarity movement is primarily made up of internationals and
migrants who may risk deportation after arrest. This gives the movement
unique obstacles.</p>
<p>Lastly, Berlin is home to one of the largest Palestinian diasporic
communities in Europe, and here solidarity with migrants should mean
solidarity with Palestine.</p>
<p><strong>UR: What has repression been like against Palestinian solidarity activists in Germany?</strong></p>
<div><p>Anonymous Participants: Repression against Palestinian
solidarity in Germany has been systematically enforced for a long time.
>From the streets, to the Parliament, to cultural and educational
institutions. Yet since October, police intimidation, house raids, new
laws, and arrests without clear legal basis have escalated to extremes.
Police commonly follow protesters after a demonstration — mostly young
Palestinian men, and beat them up or arrest them. Using a slogan such as
<strong>“from the river to the sea” </strong>routinely results in
arrests. Activist groups and individuals have experienced spontaneous
police raids and the confiscation of electronics.</p><p>NGOs that
support Palestine, and institutions such as the cultural center Oyoun,
led mostly by migrants and BIPoC people, have been shut down and had
their state funding cut. Artists and academics have been canceled from
events or lost their funding for their solidarity with Palestine, even
for social media posts. Notably, Jews make up about 1% of Germany’s
population, but have been the target for 30% of ‘cancellations’ in
German arts and culture, claiming that Jewish people themselves are
antisemitic for supporting Palestine. Activists have been the
targets of mainstream media doxxing campaigns that threaten their
safety, both Palestinians and anti-Zionist Jews. </p></div>
<p>Laws are being proposed that make getting a German passport or visa
extension difficult if the state can find evidence that you are
pro-Palestinian. Student movements organizing for Palestine have been
framed hatefully, with Berlin’s universities are currently debating a
law to allow “politically-motivated expulsion” in the Higher Education
Act. </p>
<p>Even young schoolchildren have been impacted. Kuffiyehs are forbidden
in schools, and flyers were distributed in elementary schools in
migrant neighbourhoods that propose to ‘debunk’ the Nakba, calling it a
myth, while propagating right-wing settler framings in support of
Israel. This is psychic warfare against youth. In Nordrhein-Westfallen
teachers are even asked to report to police if a child expresses that
Israel is commiting genocide.</p>
<p>All this goes to say — the repression is extreme, fascist and out-right terrifying. And it’s only getting worse. </p>
<p><br><strong>UR: If there are Jews involved in your action, and you feel comfortable talking about that, please do. </strong></p>
<p>Anonymous Participants: There is one person in the crew with Jewish
ancestry and a strong connection to Judaism. Their Jewishness only fuels
their dedication to the liberation of all people, both Jews and
Palestinians. We will not let our ancestors suffering be weaponized
today in Palestine.</p>
<p><br><strong>UR: Anything you want to say that I’m missing?</strong></p>
<p>Anonymous Participants: If you want to understand more about the
history of the situation in Germany, we could suggest the following
resources:</p>
<ul><li><a href="https://thedigradio.com/podcast/the-german-question-w-emily-dische-becker/">The Dig Radio: ‘The German Question with Emile Dische-Becker’</a></li><li><a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/the-strange-logic-of-germanys-antisemitism-bureaucrats">Jewish Current: ‘The Strange Logic of Germany’s Antisemitism Bureaucrats’</a></li><li><a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/zionism-uber-alles/">Dissent Magazine: ‘Zionism <strong>Über</strong> <strong>Alles</strong>‘</a></li><li>Jewish Currents: ‘The Trouble With Germany’: <a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/the-trouble-with-germany-part-1">Pt. 1</a> | <a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/the-trouble-with-germany-part-ii">Pt. 2</a></li></ul><br></div></div></div>
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