ELSC is taking legal action against German Domestic Intelligence Services for surveilling Palestine solidarity groups
The European Legal Support Center (ELSC) is representing three Palestine Solidarity groups in Germany taking legal action to challenge the German Domestic Intelligence Service(Verfassungsschutz)’s surveillance.
The groups, Thawra Hamburg, BDS Berlin and Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East – EJJP Germany e. V. (Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost), aim to push back against an escalating effort to intimidate and repress Palestine solidarity by German intelligence services.
We have already secured a partial legal win in one of those cases. However, there are ongoing proceedings. The groups are launching a public campaign to raise awareness, expose and challenge the Verfassungsschutz role in silencing Palestine solidarity.
The groups were listed by the Verfassungsschutz in their annual reports as “extremist endeavour as corroborated by hard evidence” under the category of “secular pro-Palestine extremism” and subjected to intensive surveillance by several German secret services under the umbrella of the German domestic intelligence service for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz).
The groups and their cases:
Thawra Hamburg:
On 26 January 2026, following legal intervention from ELSC partner lawyer Ammar Bustami the Administrative Court Hamburg (Verwaltungsgericht Hamburg) issued an interim ruling (Hängebeschluss) ordering the Hamburg State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz Hamburg) to immediately suspend surveillance and listing of the group Thawra Hamburg until conclusion of the expedited proceeding (Eilverfahren).
The court acknowledged that the secret service is potentially violating fundamental human rights guaranteed by the German constitution and has yet to provide convincing legal arguments for subjecting the group’s political activities to secret service surveillance and intervention.
The court has since reiterated this substantive assessment but declared to be unauthorised to conclusively judge the case due to procedural hurdles.
Following that, our legal team has decided to end the legal proceedings after securing clear court instructions against the secret service’s listing of the group. We intend to use these guidelines infurther legal action – if the secret service ignores the court in its future measures against the group. The group has joined the public coalition of Palestine solidarity groups to challenge the surveillance measures and its implications on the solidarity movement and mobilisation.
Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East: Ongoing legal proceedings
In late 2025, ELSC partner lawyers Florian Meinel and Ammar Bustani have also initiated similar expedited proceedings at the Administrative Courts in Berlin and Cologne against the German Federal Ministry of Interior and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, on behalf of the Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East e. V.
In response, the German secret service and their legal defence team have provided the courts with material proving their extensive surveillance of the Jewish association and their individual members – including social media posts dating back to 2019. The secret service’s accusations of the group’s alleged “extremism” include: “raising awareness on Nakba Day for the ethnic cleansing of Palestineat the time of the establishment of the State of Israel”; calling for “full equal rights for all between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean without exception”; and “demonising the State of Israel as genocidal”.
A central accusation and alleged proof of their extremism against the group is their support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) call to end Israel’s impunity.
The first hearing is public and will take place on 27 April at 10 am at the Berlin Administrative Court (Verwaltungsgericht Berlin, Kirchstraße 7, 10557 Berlin).
BDS Berlin
The ELSC through partner lawyer Ammar Bustani is also supporting the Palestine solidarity group BDS Berlin in an upcoming similar case against the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Deploying the secret service against Palestine Solidarity: Framing, surveillance and the violation of fundamental rights
Last year, the ELSC has published the first public database on anti-Palestinian repression in Germany which documents years of monitoring. The database reveals how being listed in reports by the domestic intelligence services, or being surveilled unknowingly, can lead to severe consequences for people’s citizenship applications, freedom of movement and residency status, cancellation of public events, police raids and criminal cases. Although observation by intelligence services is unrelated to the legal status or legal conduct of groups or individuals, their listing serves to delegitimiseand isolate Palestine solidarity groups and hinder support to their mission.
The secret service’s weaponisation of migration laws to discipline and intimidate migrants for exerting constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of expression and political association, is particularlyalarming. In 2025 the ELSC has successfully intervened at the German constitutional court to end the separation of a baby from their parents after the Verfassungsschutz had flagged the family.German migration authorities had initially declared that allowing the one-year old child to re-enter Germany could possibly constitute a “security risk” over an unconcluded and inaccessible secret service investigation into the mother’s involvement in the Palestine solidarity movement in Germany.
While particularly shocking, this is not an isolated case. Berlin’s Mayor, Kai Wegner, has recently welcomed stripping a Berlin resident of their German citizenship after the secret service reported the person for a social media post of two masked men holding a Palestine flag with the caption “Heroes of Palestine”.
The deployment of the German secret service against civil society to spy on and prohibit public expressions of Palestine solidarity is a direct result of the German parliament’s anti-BDS resolution in 2019. The ELSC has consistently warned about this development and is supporting the Palestinian-Jewish-German initiative, Bundestag 3 for Palestine (BT3P)’s legal challenge against the Bundestag anti-BDS resolution.
The resolution had urged the German state to counteract and oppose anyone who could be associated with the BDS movement. As a result, German and international solidarity groups, intellectuals, academics, and artists have faced numerous denials of public spaces, suspension of fundings, withdrawal of prizes or invitations to events, and cancellation of speeches, all based on accusations of vaguely defined association with the BDS movement. This has led to a deeper layer of institutional censorship, denunciations and intimidation. Anti-Palestinian actors are denouncing expressions ofPalestine solidarity to the German secret services who operate in an unconstitutional legal “grey zone”.
One case that illustrates the mechanism and its consequences is brought up by the case of Jüdische Stimme, represented by ELSC, against the public university Karlsruhe Institute of Technology(KIT): In 2024 the university’s executive board had banned a lecture by the political economist Dr. Shir Hever for being a member of the group – citing secret service reports. Hever was invited to speak about the consequences of German university’s collaboration with Israel’s military research by local student groups critical of the university’s increasing involvement in the Israeli arms industry.
The Representative of the Hessian State Government for Jewish Life and the Fight against Anti-Semitism Uwe Becker has since called to ban the association Jüdische Stimme entirely in response to the German secret service’s assessment. In 2023 a court ruled Uwe Becker’s calls in his position of mayor of Frankfurt am Main to ban a public event featuring a member of the association JüdischeStimme to be illegal for violating the requirement of objectivity.
Escalating secret service deployment against civil society in Germany
Our legal actions against the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution, for its unlawful and blatant anti-Palestinian repression must be understood in the context of an increasingly bold deployment of the secret service, against civil society and political activities in Germany.
After the Die LINKE party overwhelmingly accepted a resolution to oppose the “the apartheid regime and the genocide ongoing in Palestine”, in its Lower Saxony Branch convention, the domestic secret service announced they are “continuously investigating these antisemitic tendencies”.
The intervention of Germany’s culture minister against the Berlinale showcases how the surveillance is linked to but not limited to anti-Palestinian repression. At the festival director Abdallah Alkhatib won the Best First Feature Award for his film “Chronicles From the Siege” and used his speech at the prize ceremony to call out the German Government complicity in genocide while raising a Palestinian flag on stage. This triggered a massive backlash with German Government Commissioner for Culture Wolfram Weimer calling this statement “malicious and poison”. When director Jun Li made similar statements at the Berlinale last year and accused Germany of supporting genocide in Gaza, the Berlin police’s department for political crimes (Staatsschutz) opened investigations.
It has since become apparent that German Government Commissioner for Culture Wolfram Weimer is heavily deploying the German secret service to covertly examine applicants before grantingcultural funding. Other ministers in the German Government have announced a massive increase in the deployment of the secret service against civil society and political organisations.
Support our campaign
In light of these developments, the ELSC has planned to accompany our legal interventions with a public campaign to address the anti-Palestinian repression committed by the Verfassungsschutz. We have a series of events and publications around the topic planned and will announce them soon. You can support our campaign financially here and subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated!
