Last Thursday evening, my sister Kitty O’Brien sent a photo in to the family WhatsApp captioned “Cops broke my arm”.
The photograph showed Kitty, who had returned to Germany from Ireland healthy and happy just a day earlier, in a sling. Now Kitty had cuts to the nose, dark swelling under their eyes and tubes protruding from their nose and ears.
We had spent time together with our family that weekend, quietly celebrating our younger sister’s Leaving Cert results. That Monday, Kitty (who uses they/them pronouns) had done some face-painting at a back-to-school barbecue for the youth project I work at. It was a normal, lovely few days together with family and Kitty was enjoying a well-deserved break from a busy job and relentless activism in Berlin.
After the text came the videos: distressing clips which showed Kitty being repeatedly punched in the face by German police at a pro-Palestine protest in Berlin. Kitty was covered in blood and their arm was being violently twisted by one of the policemen. I was lucky I spotted Kitty’s message before I saw this on social media. The videos spread faster online than our family could share the news. Our Dad clicked on a video link in another group chat before he knew what had happened. Our grandma read an article online before she knew Kitty was in hospital.
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Many people we knew were shocked at the brutal treatment of Kitty by the German police. But my family were not surprised. Nor was anyone who had been talking to Kitty about their activism in Berlin for the past two years. This wasn’t the first time Kitty, or their comrades, had been violently assaulted by German police at a pro-Palestine protest.
Kitty is a member of the Irish Bloc, a group formed by Irish activists and residents in Berlin in February 2024 to protest at the repression of Palestinians in Germany and their homeland. Since then, it has expanded beyond its Irish core to become one of the biggest pro-Palestine organising groups in the country. It has also organised céilí fundraisers, co-ordinated BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaigns and lobbied Irish and German diplomats.
The stakes and risk attached to protesting in support of Palestine are far higher in Germany than in Ireland. Until recently, the Irish Bloc had been registering their protests with the authorities. However, all that seemed to achieve was to give advance notice to German police, who arrived in ever larger numbers and more violently cracked down on protests.
Germany has implemented a series of measures that restrict and ban many forms of pro-Palestine action. For example, in April, Kitty was arrested after leading pro-Palestine chants in Irish at a registered protest, following a police ban on the use of languages other than German and English at protests. The reason given for the arrest was that there was no translator present, despite the Irish Bloc having requested a police-provided one.
That same month, two Irish citizens were threatened with expulsion amid claims they were a public security risk following pro-Palestinian demonstrations. There was an escalation of violent police crackdowns at these gatherings. While white Irish protesters have been targeted, there is substantial evidence from NGOs that there was a higher threat to non-whites and Muslims, who suffered disproportionate levels of police violence at protests.
In May, at an event organised to commemorate the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing and violent displacement of Palestinians by the Israeli army and settlers in 1948 – Kitty was forcefully grabbed by two German police, thrown to the ground and one of the officers forcefully sat on their neck. We all knew Kitty was in danger in Germany before Thursday’s events. They were a target for the German police. My mom had been trying to convince Kitty to leave Berlin and come back to Ireland. The last thing my Mom said to Kitty at the airport on Wednesday was to “please be careful of yourself”.
The police broke Kitty’s arm, fractured their nose and may have inflicted lifelong nerve damage to Kitty’s right hand, which they are unable to move. My sister’s “verbally aggressive” behaviour at the protest justified this use of force, German authorities have stated.
The videos of Kitty are a vivid illustration of a disturbing intolerance to free speech at the heart of the EU. German police have long been guilty of using violent force against pro-Palestine activists and the violence seen in the videos was, in Kitty’s words, “the rule of the Berlin police – not the exception”. Kitty’s assault demonstrates the growing tolerance of authoritarianism within Germany, and German society’s ongoing struggle to reconcile its relationship to the Holocaust with the reality of the genocide in Gaza.
Kitty is not a violent extremist. Kitty moved to Berlin two years ago to pursue a career in costume design and became involved in the pro-Palestine movement for the same reasons tens of thousands of people across Ireland march in solidarity with Palestine every week. They and their comrades are trying to peacefully protest against the moral apathy and political distraction surrounding the horrifying annihilation of 63,000 Palestinians. How has this made them a politically sanctioned target of police violence? Why are protesters who are standing up for international law being assaulted with impunity in the heart of the EU?
Germany is the second-largest supplier of arms to Israel after the US and it appears it would only ever change its stance on Palestine if the US were to permit it. Germany serves to block EU sanctions against Israel’s persistent violations of international and humanitarian law. Europe is left to sit and watch the brutal destruction of Gaza and its people, bewildered at its own inaction.
Tokenistic political gestures and moral condemnation of Kitty’s assault here in Ireland will not achieve much, unless it is accompanied by greater co-ordinated pressure across the EU to hold Germany’s role in Gaza’s destruction and the violent policing of pro-Palestine activists to account. Until then, violence against Palestinians and peaceful protesters like my sister will continue unchecked.
Jack O’Brien is a youth worker and activist
