Naming the violence. The role of law and legal reasoning in the repression of the Palestine-solidarity movement in Berlin since October 2023

Abstract

Since October 2023 Berlin authorities have responded to protest and expressions of solidarity with Palestine with extensive restrictions. These measures are often implemented through legal instruments, particularly in the fields of criminal law, assembly law and immigration law. This thesis examines the role of law and legal reasoning in the repression of the pro-Palestinian movement in Berlin. For this, it draws on a theoretical framework constructed around Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler and Robert Cover, who critically engage with legal violence and its obscuring function. The analysis considers the case as situated within the context of German Staatsräson, understood as a political commitment to Israel that enters the legal discourse at the constitutional boundaries and operates through the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. It analyzes a corpus of publicly accessible court rulings from the Berlin case-law database, to understand the mechanisms underlying the doctrinal construction. The findings show that legal reasoning in administrative decisions restricting Palestine-solidarity in many cases translate contested political meaning into security-relevant danger through doctrinal constructions and prospective assessments, thereby authorizing state intervention. Judicial review sometimes disciplines these measures, e.g. by correcting weak prognoses or disproportionality, but it does not fully address the deeper classificatory premises and thus leaves the underlying framing of danger intact for future cases.