How much the conflict in the Middle East affects life in Munich was demonstrated at the weekend at the Jewish sports club TSV Maccabi. Contrary to its intention to hold training and games as usual despite the increased threat situation, the club was forced to cancel the football games planned for the weekend at short notice for security reasons, as board member Armand Presser told the SZ on Sunday.
You now have to decide from day to day. However, this has not changed the club’s fundamental attitude of wanting to maintain training and game operations, emphasized Presser.
On Friday evening, despite the interim ban, up to 300 people gathered at Munich’s Odeonsplatz. Some of them had Palestinian accessories with them. According to their own statements, the police broke up the meeting and took several people into custody.
On Saturday, however, the ban on a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Munich was observed. “It was nothing at all,” reported a police headquarters spokesman on Saturday afternoon. The potential participants were aware that the meeting had been prohibited. Those responsible have promised not to advertise the event anyway. According to the police, no further demonstrations have been registered for next week at the moment. However, she does not rule out the possibility that the situation will change again. If Israel launches the ground offensive, which has not yet begun due to bad weather over the weekend, demonstrations could take place again. According to the police, you have to “expect anything.”
Munich has banned all pro-Palestine demonstrations
Munich, like other cities in Bavaria and Germany, has decided not to accept any more pro-Palestinian demonstrations. According to the city, at one such meeting on Monday, “anti-Semitic statements were made several times and statements that could also be seen as approval of the terrorist attacks.” Criminal proceedings were therefore initiated for insults and incitement to the detriment of the Jewish population.
The chairwoman of the Israeli religious community for Munich and Upper Bavaria, Charlotte Knobloch, also criticized the approval of pro-Palestinian rallies in German cities. “It’s a shame when politics in a country like Germany allows people to dance in the streets out of joy over the murder of Jews,” Knobloch told the newspaper Augsburg General. If there were no laws to prevent such events, “then we should just create them.”
Events like those recently in Munich made them angry: “We had our event on one side of the Munich town hall complex, on Odeonsplatz. And on the other, on Marienplatz, there is agitation against Israel.”