On Monday, around 1,000 workers, school pupils and university students demonstrated in Berlin-Neukölln against Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. Various pro-Palestinian groups, the Berlin Student Coalition, as well as the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) and its youth organisation IYSSE had called for the strike and rally.

Countless local residents and shopkeepers supported the demonstration and march, which led from Richardplatz to Hermannplatz, spontaneously joining in and speaking out. Many students had brought self-made posters, on which they condemned the continued silence of the university administrations and the government’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes. Students also joined in and streamed the demonstration on social media.

In the previous days, members of the IYSSE had distributed hundreds of leaflets at the Tesla plant in Brandenburg and at BMW in the north of Berlin, calling on workers to support the demonstration, for the current strikes at Deutsche Bahn national rail carrier and other companies to be extended and for “every transport of weapons, ammunition and war equipment to Israel” to be halted. A video in which IYSSE spokesperson Gregor Link spoke in front of the Tesla building in Grünheide and called on workers to strike against the genocide in Gaza was widely shared on Tiktok and other social media platforms.

In a speech on Sonnenallee, Link explained that the strike was directed “against Netanyahu’s genocide in the Gaza Strip … which is supported by all the parties in the Bundestag [federal parliament], by the German government and by all its allies.” According to Link, the airstrikes that have been carried out against Yemen and Lebanon in recent days show that the massacre in Gaza is “part of the ruling elites’ attempt to redivide the world.” “They are heading for a third world war in which nuclear weapons could be used at any time. We must not allow that!”

Link emphasised that it was not possible to stop the mass murder in Gaza and the development of world war by appealing to governments. “The German government and its allies are not at all interested in the opinion of the population. They react to pressure from below with dictatorship and a police state.”

Only an international movement of the working class against capitalism could put an end to the genocide, he said. Link called for “connecting the strikes and the growing opposition to inflation and exploitation with the struggle against the genocide in Gaza” and arming them with a revolutionary socialist perspective. “A system that cannot survive without war and fascism must be overthrown. It is time for us to take up the revolutionary traditions of socialism.”

At the end of his speech, Link recalled the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg exactly 105 years ago and quoted the great Marxist: The working class must “draw the conclusion that imperialism, war, the theft of countries, genocide, breach of law, violent politics can only be fought by fighting capitalism, by opposing the global political genocide with social revolution.”

There was loud applause for the speech. Many other participants, shop owners and local residents also spoke out and strongly condemned the genocide and the complicity of the German government. Tariq from the Berlin Student Coalition stated that “a new movement of students against imperialism” was developing. It was also directed against “the institutions that have never broken with their colonial, racist and Nazi past.”

The Berlin police had mobilised hundreds of officers to monitor the strike and rally and intimidate local residents. The weekend before, the Berlin police had used massive force against participants in the annual Lenin-Liebknecht-Luxemburg demonstration.

But the protesters in Berlin’s Neukölln district were not intimidated by this. They repeatedly chanted slogans against the genocide, the one-sided media coverage, and the censorship of those expressing critical positions at universities. Members of the SGP collected dozens of signatures in favour of the party’s participation in the European elections.