Germany’s Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, backed a bill to criminalize the denial of Israel’s right to exist on Friday, a motion that constitutional experts said could jeopardize freedom of expression.
According to the bill, anyone denying Israel’s right to exist or calling for its abolition would be punished with a prison sentence of up to five years under the regulation. The bill will be examined by the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, after its summer recess.
The modern state of Israel is a settler-colonial state, inherently built on genocide. Saying that it should be dismantled and replaced with something better shouldn’t be a crime, and making it one is ignoring nearly a century of context. Nearly a century of context inextricably linked to Germany, no less.