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inigyouyesterday at 8:28 AM5 repliesview on HN

In Germany you will get arrested if you publicly talk about Gaza and Israel


Replies

alsetmusicyesterday at 12:39 PM

To be fair, that'll happen in New York if you protest the internationally-illegal sale of real estate in Palestine taking place in a synagogue. Here's the event, a law was passed protecting religious institutions from protest (but was really for this).

https://theintercept.com/2026/05/11/real-estate-expo-israel-...

Obscurity4340yesterday at 11:03 AM

Can you cite that please? Theres more going on with a lot pf the Gaza/Israel stuff (that im not unsympathetic to) that can blur the lines somewhat

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xg15yesterday at 7:23 PM

German here. The law as written actually permits most of the speech: As long as you avoid a number of banned phrases and don't voice explicit support for groups classified as terrorist organizations, your speech is protected - in theory.

In practice, wondrous things may start to happen already long before you reach that threshold, such as police forgetting their own laws, your venue, backup venue and second backup venue suddenly all deciding they cannot host you, politicians trying to fire you - or you suddenly realizing that you're unable to access any kind of bank account or credit card because the EU put you on a sanctions list (behind closed doors, without telling you, with no option to appeal).

But none of that has to do with overregulation - on the contrary, those measures are often in violation of the law and courts have frequently decided in favor of pro-palestinian activists and axed them.

ks1723yesterday at 9:52 AM

This is just BS. I had and saw many public discussion also on German Marktätze on this topic, some quite heated. Nobody was arrested or removed from their job or otherwise sanctioned. But of course people were disagreeing. The right to free speech is not the right to freedom from contradiction!

cryo32yesterday at 9:19 AM

Having had that exact discussion with someone in Alexanderplatz right in front of the police building, nope.