As soon as I heard that antizionist groups in Leipzig were organising a demo there in front of the linxxxnet and conne island, I wanted to come and support. Left the house early to get to the train station to meet with the people with whom I went to the demo. We took the train there, and should have arrived in Leipzig 30 minutes before the start of our demo, but there was lateness and train cancellations because of police operations and apparently emergeny medical operations taking place in Leipzig central station, and also on the way through Sachsen-Anhalt. We were wondering if this was some kind of tactic to put a cap on the number of people who were going to make it to Leipzig for the demo. As both the zionist groups affiliated with the above mentioned places and the anti zionist groups organising the demo put out a call for people to come from all over. The train stations were absolutely filled with Babylon in Magdeburg and Halle. We wore our kufiyas the whole journey, and Babylon, people who looked like they might be fascists, as well as lefty looking punks were all giving us the evil eye. We were only a small group from my city and were happy to run into some familiar faces because we were worried about being such a small group and needing to travel through Leipzig to get to our demo, as people wearing kufiyas have been attacked in that city. I have already felt unsafe in other supposed antifascist places, knowing that there are sections of the radical German left who are willing to use violence against those they percieve as anti-semites.

It was important for me to come to this demo after having had many terrible interactions with people on the topic of Palestine and the Zionist entity ranging from people who call them selves ‚Anti-Deutsch‘ to people who make fun of the ‚Anti-Deutsch‘ but are still Zionists. Both before and after the Al Aqsa Flood Operation took place, but especially after the resistance operation of 07.10.2023, I’ve needed to end relationships with people who I had previously thought were safe and reasonable. I have been active in the anarchist, radical left/antifascist, and anti zionist sphere in multiple countries on multiple continents, and it is only in the deutschsprachige Raum that I’ve met antifascists who say „antifa heisst solidarität mit ‚Israel'“. This needs to be cleared up and it makes it difficult for me to find people with whom I can operate in this land. (Let me just throw in here, that all my associates in other lands who haven’t been here are all very surprised to learn that this is a thing).

Anyway back to the demo. On the way there, we learned that Babylon had forced our people to change the planned demo route, and that we wouldn’t go near linxxnet or conne island. I was also shown a picture of a post on instagram where the names of the groups who organised our demo were featured with pictures of the pagers used in the zionist attack on Hezbollah members last year, which is a murder threat. I also learned that there were 7 or 8 counter demonstrations registered as well in Leipzig. We ended up arriving in Leipzig-Connewitz around an hour later than expected, so 13:30 we arrive and walk out of the train station, having added a couple more people to our impromptu crew on the train from Halle. As soon as we came on to the street(Bornaischer strasse), we were confronted with one of the counter demonstrations heading toward the Connewitzer Kreuz, which is where our people had already been demonstrating since 13h. Definitely a couple hundred people, with ‚israeli‘ flags, banners saying stuff about antisemites and the ever stomach churning „antifa heisst solidarität with ‚israel'“. Anyway they definitely noticed and yelled some shit at us and flipped us off and were in general very intimidating but none of them approached us and we stopped a bit away from the street as their demonstration went past. We didn’t want to be walking alongside them in the same direction. From that point on we felt like we were behind enemy lines. Very unfriendly graffiti on the walls, looks like you can’t say anything remotely in favour of Palestine on the walls here without it being edited. Everybody who we met was staring us, which this is Germany, people here fucking eyeball you. But it was more than usual. But so we moved along the road following the zionist demonstration at a respectable distance and eventually it became clear we’d have to take some side streets to get to the palestinian demo. Babylon was fucking everywhere. Moving around in huge groups in formation like they thought the revolution was about to start.

We met someone who pointed us in the direction of the zionist demo which by this point had arrived at the connewitzer kreuz, and happily told us how we were going to get beat up. We investigated the situation that way and it looked fucking dangerous so we decided to circle around some more on the smaller streets. Large up the nice person who gave us a heart sign and told us we were awesome. We were walking these streets always looking over the shoulder wondering if someone was gonna jump us or throw something at us. One love to the couple of dudes who we met from Leipzig who were also trying to find a way to our demo without walking through the zionist horde. We finally managed to see our demo and had to a walk through a thicket of very unfriendly looking and acting punks. Then we found that the whole street was blocked with guard railings and babylon told us that we needed to head even further north and that there’d be problems if we hopped the barrier. so we headed north and finally found a place where babylon let us on to the road and we could finally join our crowd. Our small impromptu crew joined the crowd and I felt like we were in the belly of the beast, fully surrounded by babylon and various zionist punks trying to intimidate us. Babylon was constantly blaring warnings to us saying that we weren’t allowed hoods, sunglasses, or masks. They also threatened us with police operations to detain people violating this command, and actually carried some out(mdr claimed there were no arrests on the day, but I’m not sure I believe it). We would always shout slogans when babylon blared these messages through the loudspeaker. Let me just also say that babylon’s arabic is shit. Normally I can identify arabic when its being spoken but babylon just sounded like baby babble when they tried blaring their warnings in arabic. I tried also listening to the speeches being held, but with all the noise around, and german being my second language, it was hard to understand them. So I contented myself with speaking with other demonstrators and shouting slogans, and observing the situation. I think around 15h was when our group started marching, heading towards the city centre.

We marched off and it felt good to be underway, shouting many of the slogans, which you’ll find at every antizionist demo in the country, in German, English and Arabic. There were Zionists lining the whole way through south Leipzig on the way to the city centre. They were trying to provoke us, flipping us off, telling us that they were shit. They also were filming us and taking pictures, and the cops were insisting the whole time that anybody covering their face would be arrested. The amount of cops were unreal, and it didn’t feel like they were there to protect us. It felt like they were there to try to intimidate us further. But we continued.

I want to also say as a point of criticism in our own ranks, that many (white) people who claim to be in solidarity with Palestine are confused. I saw someone in our demo holding a sign that said ‚fuck hamas, free palestine‘. It is incomprehensible to me that people in our own ranks who think they are solidarisch with Palestine and the Palestinians condemn resistance factions and operations. Especially when if you actually bother to learn the ideology and history of hamas, you will find out that they are pretty much a bog-standard national liberation movement/anti colonial resistance group. Other things that made me unhappy with my own group, were that when we called slogans like ‚death to the IOF‘, or „fuck you ‚israel‘ viva palestine‘, or anything in Arabic, some of the punks in our own ranks would try to drown out these calls with bog standard calls that you might hear at other demonstrations by the radical left in Germany that have nothing to Palestine, anti colonialism, or anti zionism. I really think that people in our ranks need to understand that solidarity with colonised people is necessary, even if they don’t necessarily correspond to your political ideology. Palestinians have been resisting a genocidal settler colonial project, since the early 1900’s, for them its a matter of life and death, and being able to exist in their country. Its a whole country, filled with people with political ideas from all over the political spectrum, and they deserve to be able to exist on their land, without needing to deal with the zionist colonial entity. The goal of our struggle is to end the zionist colonial project, so that the Palestinians can have a chance at self determination. It is very possible that given the history of the various Palestinian political factions, the Pan-arab nationalist movement, and the geopolitical situation over the last 60 years or so, that if the colonial project ended, it wouldn’t be leftist groups who come to power in an independent Palestine. Hamas was voted into power back in 2005, and its likely that if elections were held in the West Bank and Gaza today, and Hamas decided to run candidates (which is not a guarantee), that their party would again either be the largest party or gain an outright majority. Its an uneasy space that people in the Global North need to occupy, if they want to seriously solidarise with anti colonial struggles internationally. This kind of selective solidarity based on ideological affinity, or based on the idea that ‚we‘ know what is best for Palestine, and that we have all the answers for them, is just more colonial thinking. If you want to know why the left in Palestine is currently relatively marginal, especially compared with the 60’s and 70’s go do some historical research.

I needed to get that paragraph out. Anyway, we continued to the city centre. At some point some asshole provoked some people from our ranks, and then the cops got involved and dragged someone of ours off. We were stopped for a while when that happened, but eventually we continued. There were some beautiful rap performances from Masur, Tenor and Thawra, I believe the names were. Loved the call and response with ‚Tatendrang‘ and ‚Klassenkampf‘, hip hop is high culture, and you should study it. That person Tenor was such a dope rapper as well. Large up every time. I need to see if I can find they music somewhere because it was beautiful and so much Deutschrap is trash, including these white antifa rappers. They don’t understand the technical aspects of the art, but that’s a whole separate story. Large up Tenor and Masur and Thawra, we love you, love the message, love the wild styles.

There was a Jewish woman who gave a speech in English, which was directed at all of our lovely zionist friends who were lined up along the street on our way from South Leipzig to the city centre. Didn’t catch most of it because our crowd was pretty rowdy and still yelling while she talked, except for the people at the very front. What did she say that motherfuckers need to hear? That its fully ridiculous that a bunch of Germans, the descendants of people who carried out the Holocaust, who failed to learn from their own history, go around acting like they know what is best for the Jewish populations of the world. This is another great example of the colonial mentality that pervades the German radical left (that the colonial mentality is present through the radical left and anarchists in other countries in Europe and occupied Abya Yala is something that I have no interest in denying, but it is particularly strong here, like I said before, in no other context have I met antifascists who say „solidarity with ‚israel'“).

We finally made it to the city centre, and our crew was feeling marginally less like we were going to be surrounded and jumped by some unholy combination of right wing nazis, leftist zionists, and fucking babylon. There were still some zionist punks w ith banners waiting to yell abusive shit at us at various points in the city centre, but we were getting a lot more love from other people who were out and about in the city centre. At some point, the cops pulled more people out of our demo again, and we stopped and didn’t go forwards again until they let them go again. At some point people in our demonstration let off some pyrotechnics, the German language mainstream media was in tears about it, they are pathetic. We continued to Augustusplatz, where a couple of final speeches were held, while nazis with cameras tried to film the speakers. They wore masks, and there were friendly people from the crowd holding up flags and banners so that no one could film the truck they were giving the the talks from. At the end the speakers warned us multiple times, that we risked being attacked by various groups if we would go around in kufiya in small groups or alone, they recommended that those of us who needed to go the central station should go in a large groups, to lower the risk of being attacked. As the demo was finishing up in Augustusplatz, there were large groups of zionists waiting for us, and babylon was also there in huge numbers. Our impromptu group had broken up by this point, as some of the people we met, didn’t want to stay to the very end, so the crew out of my city attached ourselves to a large group which took the tram to the train station. Happily we didn’t face more than verbal abuse from the zionists as we made our way from the Augustusplatz to the tram stop. We spoke with a very nice woman in the tram, who hadn’t been present at the demo, but expressed her support and respect for us turning up. We were able to get into the train and make it back to our city without being beat up or arrested. One love to the woman from Halle I met on the train out of Leipzig, was lovely to speak with her and compare experiences between our cities in Germany and different countries where we have been active.

We ended up making it back home safely. We were glad to have been able to come down to Leipzig and support our people there. It looks like a terrible place to be for anybody who is not a zionist, especially those of us who are active in the antifascist arena. So much respect to the people who live there and have to deal with it every day. I don’t think that the demo will have changed the situation on the ground there much, but I’ve seen it as an ethical and political duty almost to turn up to Pro-Palestinian/Antizionist demonstrations and support for the more than the last 10 years. Seeing the situation in the radical German left and anarchist scene really saddens me, and my intention is to continue this struggle until the situation changes or until I emigrate from this shit country. One love to the free people of the world, and a big kiss my hairy ass to every Zionist in Germany or anywhere else, you fucking dickheads. To all my peeps, peace and good luck.

Surely, it is a struggle until victory or death

passiert am 17.01.2026