This is a letter written on 3 February 2024 to Berlin’s Police President, Barbara Slowik, which first appeared at the Jüdische Stimme on 08 February 2024 . Having been at the same protests myself, I can confirm that the events are correct portrayed and not exaggerated.
Below: Berlin’s police attacking mourning Palestinians
📌Faşizmin ve emperyalizmin ahlakı yoktur!
Almanya Berlin’de, Araplar Filistin’de katledilenlerin anısına sokakta mum yaktılar. Berlin polisi mumları ayaklarıyla ezdi …#berlin #Sonnenallee #GazaHospital #FreePalestine_Now #IsraelTerorrist pic.twitter.com/IRCkZIdHG2
— Umut TV (@_UmutTv) October 18, 2023
Dear Frau Dr. Slowik,
We met this past summer while having a shared meal with a mutual friend at a Chinese restaurant in Berlin.
I wanted to write you as an American Jew living in Berlin, that I am absolutely shocked and horrified by the atrocities carried out by the Berlin police force in the past months. As a Jew living in Germany, the greatest threat to my safety is not the Muslim, Palestinian, or immigrant population, as the government wants us to believe, but the state itself, especially its violent articulation through the Polizei Berlin.
As a Jew, it has been critically important for me to stand against the genocide that is ongoing in Gaza. It is critically important for me to define what my Judaism means, and what it stands for, and what my political beliefs are. I have seen and learned of numerous accounts of Jewish and Jewish ally protestors being violently arrested, and sometimes even given false charges of Volksverhetzung or insulting police officers. I have personally witnessed some of these cases. The victims, who often Jewish, personal friends and/or friends working closely with Jewish communities, are attacked by police and sent into the vans. There are absolutely no ethical grounds to charge Jews or Jewish allies with anti-semitism, especially those who strictly follow the laws, which seem to become more arbitrary every day. There have also been intensive raids of Berlin establishments cherished by our communities. Most critically, the police’s violent criminalization of and assaults on the Palestinian community is beyond disturbing. As someone surviving the legacy of what Germany’s forefathers have done – that is the genocide of the non white christian Germany- I am absolutely shocked and saddened to see what the police do time and time again to Palestinian people.
I understand that the police may have orders; they may be following instructions. But so did Eichmann. And yes it is that serious. It is that urgent. And I will make that comparison. We as Jews in solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters and siblings are seeing the rise, again, of a white christian supremacist fascism, which is being carried out violently by the police force.
I have decided to leave this country for good not due to the so-called imported anti-semitism but by the very real anti-semitism, anti-Muslim racism and extreme anti-Palestinian violence of the German Police and state.
I beg of you with all of my heart to please do everything within your power to stop the violence, to stop the oppression. Stop the attacks on our precious communities. Stop the threats against all non-Aryans. Please listen, if you really want to protect the Jewish community, you must protect all minority groups, especially Palestinians; we are more similar than Germany likes to believe, and one group cannot be safe if the other is endangered. You have the power to make a change, you have the power to really make sure never again is never again. Please help to prevent another iteration of a German police force acting out unthinkable violence and oppression.
We have already been here before. I pray that this time, we can turn around before it’s
too late.
Yours Sincerely,
Jason Isadore Oberman
3.2.2024
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