Yesterday (Friday) morning I went off after a minimalistic indulgent breakfast of vanilla ice cream and rhubarb compôte, to the Unter den Linden area to observe a protest outside the Foreign Ministry.
The protest was about the situation in Ethiopia again. The slogans that the crowd chanted were very vague, and the event would be lasting another 4 hours, so I settled on the steps of the Friedrichswerdersche Church to absorb the atmosphere etc. before deciding if I'd introduce myself, ask more specifically why the protest was happening, and take photos.
Tiny ants were scrabbling over the stone steps, and tourists speaking German or French went in and out of the church through one door, which was ajar, or looked at the elaborate bas-relief scenes on the door that wasn't ajar.
At least 7 police officers were standing around in lighter summer uniform: a big contingent considering that there were only around 20 protestors. One or two more officers were on guard as always at the ministry entrance.
I began reading a book that I've bought to do background research on Ethiopia's history, and rather unwisely kept sitting on the church steps although it was squarely in the sun. (At least I had sunblock along and was using it.)
After a while I heard a putt-putting sound. 5 police motorcyclists came rolling up just to where I was, and parked in formation. Their senior officer stepped off his bike and began to tell the others his plans of where to conduct the protest march later, so in between focusing on passages in the book my ears were twitching. I have a fascination for security protocol and tactics, so I was hoping to overhear things.
The motorbicycles would have made a striking foreground for a photo, if I found the right angle, focus, etc. But since I hadn't introduced myself to the protestors and didn't want to 'creep' on the police, I didn't even attempt it.
After a while I changed my position, took 2 photos of the crowd from a distance for record-keeping purposes, and then decided to leave. I was worried that it was unprofessional not to wade in and ask questions. But I didn't want to risk again becoming a mouthpiece for ethnonationalist propaganda about a situation I'm not terribly well informed in.
In general, not just with Ethiopia by any means, I worry about covering protests where I have the feeling that protestors think that fighting and war are glorious, and that a few deaths, rapes, or tortures inflicted on the other side either 'didn't happen' or are just the eggs in the proverbial omelette. I don't think this helps anybody or makes the world a better place, and there are other protests that just feel more helpful.
I've tried to give the benefit of the doubt once or twice, because it isn't always easy to 'prove' my impression — only to find corroborating evidence later that suggested that I could have just followed my instincts.
***
On Tuesday there was a hubbub at the Free University.
I'd skipped a morning Greek class because I would have been 1 hour late, and instead was trying to catch up on all of the homework for it, as well as meditating what to do journalistically that day.
Then the local news website ran a story saying that police were dissolving a pro-Palestinian protest camp there.
Two different accounts (maybe both are true) exist: 1. that the university administration had right away ordered the police to dissolve it; 2. that the university administration and police wanted it dissolved because anti-Semitic words and phrases had been spoken.
It's old news to me but maybe not to everyone that the Berlin police has been dealing with potential anti-Semitic speech at protests about Israel and Palestine by banning specific phrases.
e.g. "From the river to the sea." A debated phrase and theoretically could be used in a peaceful if rather impractical sense. But police take the more pessimistic view and presume that usually it means that the person who uses the phrase would like to see Israeli citizens displaced by violence from the area around the Jordan River.
One shouldn't say anything that means that Israel isn't allowed to exist as a nation-state.
Flag-burning is out.
And there are a few other things that, if protest organizers do their job, are clearly listed at the beginning of an event.
I don't know if 'F*k Israel' has been banned, but I've definitely heard it in two protests (on and off campus) recently. At the first protest, the demonstrators were also saying 'F*k Germany' while, based on their fluent German language skills, being German citizens or at least residents; so I didn't see it as especially hateful, just rude, in that context.
Generally a protest can be shut down when these words are spoken, but sometimes individual people are just removed from the protest and everyone else can continue.
In my personal point of view, and I have to stress that when I'm in journalistic mode I don't take a stance on this, there is nothing wrong with applying a few rules here.
I think it's nonsense to say that words aren't deeds, when protestors use written messages and chants as tools to transmit their message. (Either words have power or they don't!)
Admittedly maybe one shouldn't only be applying rules in the framework of pro-Palestinian protests.
*
Last year I observed a Nakba protest where one speaker said amongst other things that the 'land was soaked with the blood of martyrs' and that Palestinians 'would be ready for the next Intifada.'
She was very young and, to be clear, this was before the Hamas massacres in October.
But I didn't like how her words trivialized, not just the deaths of Israeli civilians, and Israeli soldiers who after all are often conscripts, in past intifadas; but equally the Palestinian lives that had been taken away, and the grief of their families, without achieving lasting justice and quality of life for Palestinians.
I wasn't impressed by the Jewish demonstrators who'd organized the event, either, for being silent about it.
That said, I'm becoming an old lady. Not everyone has been around long enough to remember the regular tragic news reports about buses full of dozens of unarmed people being blown up, etc., as well as the other bloodshed during the second intifada.
*
Anyway, I cycled to campus to observe the situation. The camp itself had I think already been disbanded.
Because fire alarms were ringing in all parts of the building complex (the Rost-, Silber- and Holzlaube) around it, I decided to obey the law and not to try to enter it to get a good photo of the courtyard.
As police and firefighters were roaming the building, apparently nudging a few students to leave who'd decided to ignore the alarms and keep working, I felt this was a good decision in the end although it wasn't very satisfying from a photographic standpoint. Later there were rumours in a newspaper that alarms were triggered by pepper spray, but otherwise everyone assumed as I did that the alarms had been released on purpose.
Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protestors were roaring away near the Thielallee (the Berliner Zeitung reported that the protestors were more mad at police than at each other). They were just being told to disband per police megaphone as I left.
More students sat/strolled near the building/leaving after doing quiet study indoors. Blue-and-black-uniformed maintenance men stood outside the Habelschwerdter Allee entrance. Firefighters emerged after their unenviable voyage through the labyrinth of Rost-/Silber-/Holzlaube corridors. Everyone looked at ease.
Of course, the students were likely feeling blissful because their classes were cancelled. But I also wondered if there was widespread sympathy for protests against the high death toll in the Gaza Strip. (If I were a proper journalist, of course I'd have asked.)
I was also kind of relieved that universities were becoming a locus of public discourse and protest again. Because when I studied at the Freie Uni, before Instagram activism became a thing, it seemed as if nobody were really engaged in social or political issues at all, just neutrally pursuing their academic careers.
At 7 p.m., the university president released a statement talking of dire damage to 40 fire alarms.
Either the building maintenance staff, who seemed to be I'll add wholly unacknowledged and unthanked for it, had done a vast clean-up job; or he was telling fibs.
Because: the next day I had a class, also walked around a few more hallways on Wednesday, and didn't see any damage whatsoever.
Anyway, all of the above has to be read with a pinch of salt. I made one or two mistakes in my assessment of the situation before, and this is just a 'best guess' portrait.
What's galling is that I'm quite happy to be caught up in trivialities like these (also like just having scruples about how to report on deaths in Ethiopia, instead of doing the reporting) and to ignore the essentials. When in the Gaza Strip the deaths continue, an elderly hostage has died, and the famine and the destruction of homes seemingly has no end.
*
While it means that the concert I'll be attending soon at the Barenboim-Said Academy won't count as balancing my pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli reporting after all, as many Israelis would likely interpret the academy as a one-sided pro-Palestinian institution, it was a relief to read what Michael Barenboim told RBB in an interview about the protest.
"[...] ich sehe nicht gerne, dass einfach massenhaft unschuldige Menschen umgebracht werden, auf dieser industriellen Skala schon gar nicht." ('I don't like seeing that innocent people are just being killed en masse, even less so on this industrial scale.')
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