Germany Enacts Total Ban on Support for Hamas, Dissolves Groups

The German government has announced a ban on pro-Palestinian charity Samidoun as well as activities in support of Hamas, little less than a month after the deadly terror attack against Israel that killed over 1,200.

A network of charities and groups in Germany that are not officially linked to Hamas but nevertheless may be perceived to be close to it, or which campaign for pro-Palestine causes have been banned, the country’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser announced on Thursday.

Hamas was already a banned as a terrorist organisation in Germany for 20 years, but until now loopholes in the law allowed adjacent organisations to continue operating. According to German press reports, the ban will clamp down on that, and the government will even seek to deport foreign-citizen supporters of Hamas.

The Minister said of the development: “With Hamas, I have today completely banned the activities of a terrorist organization whose aim is to destroy the state of Israel… There is no place for antisemitism in Germany, and we will fight it with all our might.”

Faeser made clear the move was partly in response to the spontaneous celebrations seen in German cities immediately after the October 7th terrorist attack against Israel. The Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, one of the German charities impacted by today’s ban was found to have given out cakes in the street demonstrations.  Faeser said, reports Deutsche Welle, that “Holding spontaneous ‘jubilant celebrations’ here in Germany in response to Hamas’s terrible terrorist attacks against Israel demonstrates Samidoun’s antisemitic, inhuman worldview in a particularly sickening way.”

She said of the Samidoun organisation that it: “spreads anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda as an international network under the guise of a ‘solidarity organization’ for prisoners in various countries.”

A spokesman of the German Central Council of Jews cited by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said of Samidoun that the group is a “front organisation of Hamas” and had been “behind many anti-Semitic riots across Germany”.

Anyone now supporting the groups is now committing a crime, and the German state can dismantle the organisations and confiscate their assets.

The German-language Neue Zürcher Zeitung reports concerns of police unions that the ban could lead to riots in the coming nights, with the paper noting: “Palestinian demonstrations have been announced for the coming weekend; Tens of thousands of participants are expected in Berlin alone.”

Editor’s Note:  This story was updated to reflect a revised number on the death toll from the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel.  The Israeli government estimate of 1,400 was revised to around 1,200, according to Reuters.