Berlin police ban pro-Hamas signs

Two weeks after a Berlin rally in which protesters called for the death of Jews, police in Germany’s capital announced a ban on signs supporting Palestinian terrorist organizations and on calling for Israel’s destruction during far-left demonstrations on Monday marking May Day.

Citing public safety, instructions posted to the police website on Saturday stressed that “any advertising” for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) or Hamas was banned.

The police also emphasized that “identification marks, symbols or emblems of these organizations may not be shown on flags and banners, nor on the clothing of the participants or in any other way.”

They also prohibited statements calling for “the annihilation of the State of Israel and/or its inhabitants or are otherwise likely to convey a readiness to use violence.”

The PFLP, the second-largest faction in the Palestine Liberation Organization, is a hardline Marxist organization that carried out a series of high-profile lethal airplane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s, and continues to attack Israelis.

Hamas, the radical Islamic group that has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007 and openly seeks Israel’s destruction, has engaged in a series of conflicts with Israel since then and fired many thousands of rockets at Israeli cities.

Berlin’s police also banned signs supporting Hizb ut-Tahrir, a nonviolent fundamentalist organization seeking to reestablish an Islamic caliphate.

Without referring explicitly to Israel, the announcement also banned flag burning or the utterance of slogans “that are defamatory towards parts or individuals of an ethnic or religious group, incite hatred or impair the human dignity of others, as well as defamatory statements.”

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