Six German federal state governments have said that they would support revoking the German citizenship of dual nationals who have been charged with an antisemitic crime.

German states favour revoking citizenship from dual nationals for antisemitism

According to a poll of Germany’s 16 federal state governments, conducted by German magazine FOCUS, six federal states would support a law under which Germans with dual citizenship could have their citizenship revoked if they were charged with an antisemitic crime.

State governments in Bavaria, Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein, Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate would be in favour of the law.

While Bavaria has submitted such a motion to the Bundesrat - which represents Germany’s 16 federal state governments - the motion has not been considered, and it is still unclear whether such a law would be constitutional.

Since the German constitution forbids revoking citizenship if it would make the holder stateless, only people who have dual German citizenship would be at risk of having their citizenship revoked for being charged with an antisemitic crime.

Berlin court rules pro-Palestine chant antisemitic

In Germany, it is legal to criticise the actions of the Israeli government but illegal and considered antisemitic to publicly call for the end of the state of Israel.

In August 2024, it was on these grounds that a judge in Berlin prosecuted a German-Iranian protestor for chanting “from the river to the sea”, the first case in the capital which saw the protest phrase at the centre of a trial.

Judge Birgit Balzer ordered 22-year-old Ava Moayeri to pay a 600 euro fine, rejected Moayeri’s lawyers' defence that the phrase is a “central expression of the global Palestine solidarity movement” and said the phrase “denied the right of the state of Israel to exist”.

So far, however, there is no nationwide consensus on if the phrase is officially considered antisemitic. While Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (SPD) has said it could amount to “antisemitic incitement”, a court in Bavaria ruled that the phrase could not be definitively banned.

Germany’s crackdown on pro-Palestine solidarity groups has been increasingly criticised on the international stage in the past year. Shortly after the Hamas attacks on October 7 and the consequent Israeli bombardment of Palestine, the UN urged Germany to “ensure the freedom of opinion and expression is fulfilled by avoiding discriminatory treatments by police officers against activists, in particular to the peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters."

At a demonstration in Berlin on October 19, police were criticised for using police dogs for the first time to disperse those protesting Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Palestine.

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