Alexander Gorski is a Berlin-based lawyer who specialises in migration and criminal law, and who has represented several clients involved in the pro-Palestine movement. When The Berliner went to visit him at his office in Reinickendorf on Thursday afternoon, they had planned to discuss his recent success in getting the deportation orders against the so-called “Berlin Four” – EU nationals Shane O’Brien, Roberta Murray and Kasia Wlaszczyk, and US citizen Cooper Longbottom – overturned.
But Gorski had just been dealt a blow in another pro-Palestine case. With just an hour to go before the city’s annual Nakba Day demonstrations were due to start, Berlin’s High Administrative Court ruled that protesters could not march as planned and must remain stationary, in a designated area of Südstern, overturning an interim measure Gorski had obtained to ensure their freedom of movement. The annual protest, which was banned in 2022 and 2023, this year resulted in violent clashes between police and protesters, with at least 50 people arrested.
Here, Gorski discusses media silence around Israel, complicity by politicians, and the chilling effect that police crackdowns on pro-Palestinian and migrant activism could have for other marginalised communities.
*The conversation has been edited for length and clarity
Tell me what’s just happened.
The Berlin Administrative Court is a disaster when it comes to freedom of assembly, and since a couple of weeks [ago] they are saying that pro-Paelstinian demonstrations cannot march any longer, because there are a lot of crimes being committed, so there can only be stationary demonstrations. So obviously their rights are restricted in the sense that they are standing still.
I did a representation [on behalf of the protest organisers] and then I filed a measure for interim relief, and then the administrative courts surprised me this morning – we won. We’ve never won one of these challenges since October 2023.
We won at the Administrative court, but then the police issued an appeal to the High Administrative Court and then we lost. Legally it’s so completely meaningless. It’s true that when you allow [the protesters] to march, probably more crimes will be committed. The Nakba is very emotional.
What sorts of crimes?
Resisting police officers and speech, mainly. People shouting, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.
People, especially migrants, have no faith whatsoever in German mainstream media.
Every year, police crackdown on Nakba Day protests in Berlin. Is this judgement more severe than what’s happened in previous years?
No, it’s a continuation. But it was striking that the Higher Administrative Court decided that the restriction is fine, that it’s not a breach of the right of freedom to assembly. This to me is just incredible. And so now people in Neukölln are not allowed to walk through their streets to commemorate the Nakba in the part of Europe with the biggest Palestinian diaspora [estimated at 300,000 people].
So that’s it, there’s nothing more you can do?
For now, yes. I mean the demonstration started 12 minutes ago. We lost this one.
Let’s talk about the good news you’ve had – that the Berlin Administrative Court has ruled in favour of “The Berlin four”. Tell me about how things have progressed.
As of May 9th, we won all the measures at the Berlin Administrative Court, meaning that all four people can stay until their appeals, which can take up to one or two years. The court made it very clear that the facts presented by the Migration Office in the expulsion orders do not suffice to issue those orders. So, we won for now, but I also think we will win from here on.
Are you pleased?
I’m not pleased. I think it’s fucking ridiculous that we have to go to court about something that is obviously illegal, and then should celebrate the court doing the bare minimum. I don’t think we should celebrate.
How are they feeling about it?
I think at first there was a huge disbelief, like, “what are [the Immigration Office] even doing?” And then especially in the first days and weeks of the procedure there was a certain element of panic, and insecurity and fear, because, obviously, all four of them have their lives here. They are very socially involved, politically involved, and they have their partners, friends, and their workplaces, their places of study here. Berlin is the place where they chose to make their life, and that was put into danger [by the immigration services]. This is so blatantly illegal and politically motivated and it’s also stupid. It’s so dumb.
And only Shane had charges against him, didn’t he? [O’Brien was brought before a court for calling a police officer a “fascist,” but was acquitted]
None of them have ever been criminally convicted. All of them have criminal procedures against them, as most people who are very active in the pro-Palestine movement have, but obviously this decision by the Immigration Office was disastrous. And then the idea to go public was, “okay, I think we’re gonna win this legally, but if there’s no public attention brought to it, then what good is a victory?”
So the decision to go public was made, and to do it first through English media, then have it followed by German media, because we knew that none of the big German news outlets would publish this story in a way that would capture the gravity of the attack on basic freedoms, because the German media landscape is part of the problem.
Tell me about that.
After October 7th 2023, I and other lawyers representing such cases were approached by big mainstream media here, but the critical content they then commissioned was never published. I think there’s an incredible bias and a lot of self-censorship among journalists here and I think it’s very, very shameful.
I don’t know if you’ve heard about this book by Omer El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This but I think it’s very true what he says because in 2023, 2024, no big media outlet would report critically on the police violence, on the migration policies, on the assembly bans. Mainstream journalism was just silent and very complicit in this erosion of basic rights and freedoms, and so I think it’s understandable that people, especially migrants, have no faith whatsoever in German mainstream media.
So our conscious decision was to take this to an English speaking outlet, and we decided on The Intercept because of its history of publishing critically on the issue. [After that] I had several dozen requests from German media who then decided to report on it, and so there was both national and international attention. I think that was necessary because, ok, it’s a legal case, but what does it mean for this historic moment? What does it mean for this democracy, for the rule of law? I think for that, it was essential to have public outreach.
I’m from Britain, and from an outsider’s perspective it seems a clear-cut violation of human rights to punish people for protesting peacefully on this issue. But in Germany you have the concept of Staaträson. What does that really mean within the German consciousness and why does it play a part in these sorts of cases?
It is something extra-legal, meaning it doesn’t have any legal basis. It is like a metaphysical aim of what the federal republic of Germany was about. When Western Germany was founded in May of 1949, Israel was just having its first birthday. It wasn’t the military superpower it is today and it needed arms and money, and Germany was willing to give both. So it was a relationship of mutual benefit that then committed Germany to do certain things. That’s why the Staaträson first of all was like a foreign policy issue, though it was not called ‘reason of state’ back then.
But then over the decades it developed, especially since the 90s, after German reunification, when Germany became super proud of its ‘memory culture’. Then it also became something for interior policy, something that carved out an identity of the ‘new Germany’. The ‘reason of state’ became something where Germans were the ones defining what is antisemitism or not, and there’s unconditional support for whatever Israel does. Obviously, there’s a lot of anti-Semitism in Germany. A lot.
And it’s on the rise, as well. The number of anti-Semitic offences recorded by police in Berlin has almost doubled year on year since 2022 – they recorded over 1,800 offences last year.
It’s definitely true and it’s mostly on the right. I’m not saying that there’s no anti-Semitism in other parts of society – there is. But if you look at the figures, it’s mainly the organised right wing.
Since October 7, we have seen the complete perversion and justification of one genocide by lessons supposedly learned from a genocide that we, as Germans, committed and are still responsible for.
This is how authoritarianism works everywhere. It will expand to other groups.
The police took action quickly after October 7th, 2023, and they banned protests in Berlin for much of that month. What effects have you seen since then on people’s ability or their willingness to protest in support of Palestinians?
There is definitely a culture of fear. If you depend on having a residence here, if you’re not a German citizen, if you are afraid of those stressful situations, and of police violence, it keeps people from protesting and speaking out, definitely. And it shows. I have clients and I need to tell them, “Look, you need to prolong your residency. Don’t get in trouble”. And not getting in trouble right now definitely means to not attend certain demonstrations.
Is there a legally sensible way to attend a demonstration at the moment?
No, because the police crackdown is so intense. The pro-Palestinian movement is everything the police hate – it’s leftists, it’s Muslims, it’s brown and black people, it’s queer people and it’s people wearing hijab. This is what I perceive.
I think it’s important to speak out, but I also speak from a position where I’m a white male lawyer. If I do these kinds of immigration cases, I get invited to speak on panels or on radio stations about them, but if my migrant colleagues do the same thing, they get hate mail, they get rape threats. There are a lot of reasons not to speak up. And in the case of clients, sometimes we have situations where people and their families depend on them getting residency for their job.
How do you think Chancellor Merz’s position on Israel is going to shape things in terms of the pro-Palestine movement here? Earlier this year he invited Netanyahu to Germany, and said he would ignore the ICC’s arrest warrant against him.
Look, I’m not obsessed with the issue of Palestine, not at all. I do this work because I’m a lawyer in Berlin and I identify with fundamental rights and freedoms, and the need to uphold those. The attack is obviously strongest on the pro-Palestine movement and migrants at the moment, but it means an erosion of basic rights and freedoms for everyone. This is how authoritarianism works everywhere. It will expand to other groups.
And I think about the silence of the media community, of a lot of journalists, of basically all the politicians in this country, there are so few members of parliament [who will speak up about this]. The silence there is just incredible. It’s incredible.
The borders are closed now for asylum seekers. I mean, two or three years ago, if that had happened, there would be an outcry. There would be big reports on the front pages of The Guardian and The New York Times. But now, because people are so tired, [the government] can just get away with it.
Israel has been blocking aid to Gaza since the start of March. Do you see any shift in how German people – and the authorities – are feeling about the conflict since that escalation?
Germany is still delivering arms [to Israel] and so I think the shift that some people are perceiving right now is just a shift in narrative in the sense of “Oh, this is bad. There’s kids starving.” But it was clear on October 8th 2023 what would happen and it happened. So I think the problem is that there won’t be fundamental changes to German foreign policy because the pressure is not big enough.
