A German court has acquitted a woman who made comparisons between Israel and the Nazi Third Reich, ruling that such comments are a form of protected speech.
The woman had previously been fined €2,400 by the Ludwigshafen District Court after she was convicted on two charges of using symbols of unconstitutional organisations, according to German outlet Beck-Aktuell.
The case related to posts she shared on her Instagram story, one of which featured the Israeli and Nazi flags, including a partially visible swastika, next to one another, while the other depicted a Star of David with a swastika drawn inside.
The letter post was accompanied by the hashtags #FREEPALESTINE and #GAZAUNDERATTACK.
Exhibiting the swastika is a criminal offence in Germany, whose criminal code bans the display of symbols associated with proscribed groups, though there are exceptions for its use in ways which oppose or do not promote their ideology, such as for educational or artistic purposes.
However, the Higher Regional Court of Zweibrücken overturned the woman’s sentence on appeal, finding that her posts were protected under legal guarantees of freedom of expression.
It ruled that the first post clearly indicated opposition to Nazi ideology, and that the comparison with Israel was cast in such a light.
As such, the court held that the woman’s use of the swastika was intended to “express sharp criticism of the methods of the State of Israel while being accompanied by a clear distancing from, or condemnation of, Nazi wrongdoing”.
It also found that the posts did not reach the threshold to be considered incitement to hatred under Germany’s strict laws regarding discussion of the Holocaust, saying they did not amount to denial, trivialisation, or minimisation sufficient to “disturb the public peace”/
The woman was acquitted of all charges.
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