Germany on Friday morning announced a complete ban on the activities of the Palestinian group Hamas while also ordering the disbanding of a pro-Palestine group accused of spreading anti-Israel and anti-Semitic ideas.
In a statement issued on Friday which was obtained by Africa Today News, New York, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said she implemented a formal ban on activity by or in support of Hamas, which is already designated as a ‘terrorist’ organisation in the country.
‘With Hamas, I have today completely banned the activities of a terrorist organisation whose aim is to destroy the state of Israel,’ Faeser said.
A Hamas official in Lebanon said the move showed that the country was in partnership with Israel on crimes against Palestinian people.
‘This prompts us to question whether the German political mentality is a Holocaust mentality that affects all peoples and is not limited to one party or another,’ Osama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, said in a news conference on Thursday.
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Faeser said she also is banning and dissolving the German branch of the Samidoun network, which she said “supports and glorifies” groups including Hamas.
Africa Today News, New York recalls that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had on 2nd October announced that the government would take action against both groups.
Samidoun was behind an October 7 action in which a group of people handed out pastries in a Berlin street in celebration of Hamas’s attack on Israel. At least 1,400 people were killed in the attack, most of whom were civilians, according to Israeli officials.
“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,” Faeser said, as cited by Deutsche Welle.
Since the attack, Israel has bombarded Gaza relentlessly and tightened its blockade on the territory, cutting off supplies of fuel and severely restricting water, food and electricity access.
Meanwhile, no fewer than 9,000 Palestinians have been killed in the bombardment, including 3,760 children, according to authorities in Gaza.