The Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which collects intelligence on extremist groups and reports to the German Interior Ministry, on Tuesday denounced the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement as “hostile to the constitution.”
Berlin’s BDS chapter was listed for the first time as a “proven extremist endeavor hostile to the constitution,” the office said as it announced its annual report on threats to the free democratic basic order and the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany, as well as its states.
The conclusion came after gathering info on “the anti-constitutional ideology of the BDS campaign, which denies Israel’s right to exist, as well as its central role within Berlin’s anti-Israel scene,” the office said.
The report noted that “supporters of BDS in Berlin justified and/or glorified the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023,” in which approximately 1,200 people, primarily civilians, were murdered.
The worst single-day massacre against Jews since the Holocaust “was welcomed in official statements as a ‘liberation struggle against settler colonialism’ or as a breakout from the ‘open-air prison’ of Gaza,” it said.
In addition, “signs with stereotypical antisemitic imagery were repeatedly displayed” at BDS protests, according to the report.
While the core group of BDS Berlin consists of some 30 activists, there is significant overlap with Islamist extremist and terror groups, the report charged.
Berlin’s Islamist scene continued to grow in 2024 to 2,440 individuals, up by 60 since the year prior, the report noted, linking the surge to an increase in Hamas’s support base, now estimated at some 200 people.
“Islamist attacks in Germany underscore the persistently high threat level posed by this spectrum. Within the Islamist scene, propaganda spread via social networks serves as a key driver of radicalization, increasingly targeting young people and even children,” it said.
Germany became the first European country to declare the BDS movement against the sole Jewish state as antisemitic in 2019.
The non-binding motion, which was passed by the Bundestag on May 17, 2019, said that the campaign, which seeks to inflict economic damages on Israel, was “reminiscent of the most terrible chapter in Germany history” and triggered memories of the Nazi slogan “Don’t buy from Jews.”
In November, an overwhelming majority of the German parliament’s lower house again voted in favor of a resolution calling to exclude all boycotters of Israel from public funding and acknowledging the link between immigration from Muslim countries and antisemitism.
It marked the first time that the legislature named Muslim immigration as a driver of Jew-hatred—a controversial statement in a country where many consider welcoming refugees the implementation of a lesson learned during Nazism, alongside the need to oppose antisemitism.
In 2023, Germany saw a 95% increase in reported antisemitic incidents over 2022. Half of the 5,164 cases, the German Interior Ministry said, occurred after Hamas’s murder and hostage-taking spree on Oct. 7.
