The federal and state interior ministries are proposing to tighten criminal law in order to be able to take better action against anti-Israel statements. This emerges from an exchange of letters between the Federal Ministry of the Interior by Nancy Faeser (SPD) and the Federal Ministry of Justice by Marco Buschmann (FDP), about which the Mirror reported. Last December, the Conference of Interior Ministers called for it to be examined whether a… “Public denial or denial of Israel’s right to exist that is capable of disturbing the peace should be better covered under criminal law” could. The result: The Federal Ministry of the Interior is now calling for certain forms of speech against Israel, which have so far been legal, to be criminalized.
To this end, according to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the passage in the criminal code on incitement to hatred should be expanded to include endangering “foreign interests”. “This alternative offense would be fulfilled if hatred or violence against the population in Israel were incited,” writes Interior State Secretary Hans-Georg Engelke in a letter to his colleague Angelika Schlunck in the justice department. So far, only those who incite hatred or violence against a population group in the country and thus endanger “public peace” in this country have been punished as sedition. People in other countries, such as Israel, do not fall under this criminal protection.
Israel is not to be mentioned in the law
The proposed change in the law would now enable courts to punish public statements in Germany – for example at demonstrations – if they incite hatred in a way that affects the republic’s “foreign interests”. There should be no specific mention of Israel in the law. The reason: Otherwise it would be constitutionally problematic, as legal experts recently warned at an expert hearing in the Bundestag’s Legal Affairs Committee. Freedom of expression in Germany should only be restricted with a “general law” that takes everyone equally seriously, not with a special law for Israel.
According to the Interior Ministries’ proposal, it would be left to the interpretation of the courts in each individual case whether they really interpret the protection of Israelis in Israel as such a “foreign concern” – or even the protection of other populations around the world against whom aggressive statements have been made in this country are. The regulation against sedition, Section 130 of the Criminal Code, provides for a punishment of three months to five years.
Criminal law is federal law. The Federal Ministry of Justice is responsible. However, people there are skeptical. The need for action is “currently not” apparent, he quotes Mirror from the answer from Secretary of State for Justice Schlunck to her colleagues from the Ministry of the Interior. The existing legal options against such incitement simply have to be “consistently applied”.
Incitement against Jews can be punished, says Justice Minister Buschmann
When asked, a spokeswoman for the ministry confirmed that the stance that Justice Minister Buschmann last took in an interview with the portal in the fall remains T online had described. “If there are gaps in the courts’ practice, we have to close them,” Buschmann said there. “But we shouldn’t fall into activism.” The following applies to “incitement against Jews” or “endorsement of crimes”: “All of this can already be punished today in proportion to the guilt.”
Faeser’s Interior Ministry has already created facts on a single point – even without the involvement of the Ministry of Justice or the Bundestag. The slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was declared a symbol of the banned Hamas by a ministerial order from Faeser’s house at the beginning of November. The result is that the slogan is now considered a symbol of a terrorist organization – punishable under Section 86a of the Criminal Code with a fine or up to three years in prison. The first criminal proceedings are already underway in individual federal states.
The slogan means that Palestine should be free, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, i.e. over the entire area on which the State of Israel currently extends. If the new suggestions from the Federal Ministry of the Interior were implemented, then this would only be the beginning. The judiciary could then soon pursue various other formulations that express the desire to eliminate the current state of Israel.