German Police Remove 2 Israel Flags

New video shows the removal of two Israeli flags and not just one as was first thought. Instead of slapping a yellow Star of David on armbands, now they are removing the Jewish star. (hat tip Kasper)

 German police break into private home to remove Israeli flag to appease "peaceful" protesters:

UPDATE: Michael translates for us:

These pictures tell the story: police tearing down the Israeli flags which some of the demonstrators had been throwing stones and snowballs at, chanting "Israeli child murderers" and "Allah is great". Now the German Jewish Council is criticising the police :

(0.19)
"The attitude of the police leads us to believe that there is a double standard here. Why should a harmless flag be removed, with forced entry into an apartment to tear it down, yet all the banners carried by the Palestinian supporters and all the chanting calling for the destruction of Israel and for people in Israel to be killed, all quite openly shouted out, those banners are allowed yet the Israeli flag has to be taken down. We cannot see the justification in this."

(0.55)
Now the young man who hung the flag from the window the previous Saturday can see the pictures on the internet, but he doesn't want to speak publicly through fear of possible reprisals by violent Islamists.

(1.08)
"I would never have thought that freedom of opinion in Germany would have become so controlled that the Star of David flag could be seen as provocative and that the police would give in to Islamists."

(1.20)
These accusations are flatly rejected by the Duisburg police, who today reiterated that forced entry into the flat and the removal of the flag was justified, as was the limiting of the freedom of expression of the man who had displayed the flag.

(1.37)
"The main criticism is this: firstly, the people throwing stones should have been arrested, the people chanting "F***ing Jews" should have been arrested and there should have been better security arrangements provided."

(1.56)
"We had thousands of demonstrators getting more and more worked up, the police then have to get involved, property was being damaged and at that point we came to the decision that the flag was causing it."

(2.14)
The police feels its actions were justified as (they say) the crowd calmed down again once the Israeli flag had been removed.

UPDATE: From Jerusalem Post: German police ban Israeli flags

A video that appears on YouTube shows an angry crowd in front of the apartment house and the police forcibly seizing the Israeli flags. The confiscation of the flags was greeted by cheers from the anti-Israeli protesters.

The student told the online magazine Spiegel that he wanted to show "solidarity with the sole democracy in the region," and complained about societal indifference in Germany toward Hamas rocket attacks on Israel.

"Can anyone imagine the German police going into a private home to remove a Hamas flag?"

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said in a statement.

"This type of response will only encourage more aggressive and violent behavior by anti-Israel demonstrators and send the message that in Germany, Jews and supporters of Israel do not enjoy the full protection of the law,"

he said.

Responding to Zuroff's criticism of the police conduct as "cowardly" and "incomprehensible" as well as to the outrage of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Duisburg Police Chief Rolf Cebin posted a statement on the police Web site on Wednesday, saying "I deeply regret that feelings, especially those of our Jewish fellow citizens, were hurt.

"The removal of the flags was, as we see it today, the wrong decision," Cebin said.

Comments

[Richard]

I don't know how this works in Germany, but here in the US law enforcement is supposed to operate within the law. Of course this doesn't always happen, I mean in Chicago the police amount to organized crime. It begs the question for both Germany and the US though, who polices the police?

[katelynn]

Some things don't change..

[dm60462]

Thay also break into private homes to remove homeschooled children.

[dm60462]

Richard, from which oriface did you pull the statement like "in Chicago the police amount to organized crime"? Front line denfenders working without a contract for 18 months, getting shot, stabbed and having their homes targeted by criminals - that's "organized crime" in your book?

[dented_uk]

An airways Jet is down in the Hudson River.
I hope everyone is okay. x

[dented_uk]

{{It is freezing cold here in the UK, but I know its far worse in the USA. Hoping everyone is safe and rescued quickly}}

[dented_uk]

Its sinking quite quickly, omg.

[Richard]

There have lots of notoriously dirty police departments at different places and times. In the Los Angeles county area where I live the local sheriffs were well known for drinking in public and discharging their firearms after work in the nearby park. LA also has the Rampart division scandal to live down. In the 80's in San Diego the police were well known for trampling on citizens rights. I got a traffic ticket there and then that was quite expensive and for something I didn't do, my father was not too pleased with me. When he shared the story with his administrative assistant who was dating a local cop, she came back and told him that her cop boyfriend acknowledged that the San Diego Police were well known among law enforcement ranks to be dirty.

My understanding of Chicago is from my brother's experience living in Chicago. The cop down the street from him would throw parties that involved drugs and providing underage girls with alcohol. Other cops who attended the parties would illegally park in neighbors' spaces and when the neighbors called the police to complain, the police would hassle the neighbors. I know it's PC to defend cops from any criticism, especially after 9/11, but come on. Was it Gore Vidal who said, "The problem with the nation's police is that we cull them from the same ranks of society as our criminals"?

I have a work buddy who knows a cop. He too is a defender of the police, but he tells the story of when his buddy saw a patrol car parked in front of a known drug dealers house and his uniformed colleague was in the process of entering the house when he pulled up to provide assistance if required. His fellow cop told him to beat it, that he didn't see anything. Hmm, what do you think he was up to?

I love the way you tried to spell orifice. Any way Google is still a good orifice for some things, despite being in Obambi's pocket and sandboxing Pamela for doing the great job of investigative journalism she does.

http://www.officer.com/web/online/Top-News-Stories/Chicago-Police-Corruption-Probe-Under-Way/1$32424

http://gangresearch.net/cpdhistory.htm

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/feb/11/nation/na-cops11

http://www.ipsn.org/police_corruption/fbi_pr_police_drug_arrests.htm

I'm not down on all cops though. It seems I get a speeding ticket every time I drive across Nevada and I am impressed with the professionalism of the Nevada Highway Patrol every time we chat.

[dented_uk]

Everyone on board seems to be okay, phew! Well done Mr. pilot.

Back to my grindstone.

[Crusty]

The uniforms, flags, symbols and party names may have changed in Germany since the end of the Third Reich but the underlying twisted principles remain the same. Suppression of unpopular thought while allowing the mobs to rule the streets. Trampling on the rights of the innocent "for their own protection." We should have learned so much from WWII but in fact we've learned so little.

[Diffie]

they also said or criticized that there were only 280 policemen against 10000 radical muslims, which was called totally inappropriate: referencing to the fact, that in the case of 10000 neonazis marching near to anything jewish, the police would have shut everything down.

this weekend in this city there is another prohamas-protest, but a counter-protest, too, which includes radical leftists, conservatives, nationalists, maybe ethnonationalists, jewish groups, an anti-islam-group... a wide and bright mix. i cant wait to see how this counter-protest turns out.

[Kristopher]

The flag was causing damage?

Exactly how does an inanimate object, like a flag, perform this feat?

[IndieJones]

I think Germany may be on its way to becoming the 4th Reich.....Hamazi-nazis!

[JewishOdysseus]

I can confirm that this epiode has led to widepread condemnation of the police action by national and local leaders from the CDU (center-right), SPD (left), and the Greens [!], far-left. There are several investigations ongoing to examine what discipline needs to be meted out to the police.

I for one was gratified to see such a fast, strong, and widespread reaction.

It also appears that this town (Duisburg) is a big center of jihadim in Germany, bursting with Islamist immigrants and their offspring...Many Germans are quite afraid of them...Sound familiar?

[chainsaw]

The real problem here, that is being overlooked, is today it is the Israeli flag taken down...tomorrow it will be the Israeli people taken down.

The Israelis are the proverbial canary in the coalmine.

What country flag or people, or religion, will be next in line after the Israeli's? Will we say or do anything to save ourselves?

We had better become more vocal about these illegal and outrageous acts against humanity, that are committed by the followers of a supremacist death cult ideology, founded in the seventh century, by a sex crazed pedophile, who heard voices.

[Clairvaux]

I was awfully shocked, when I read about this in the German media, and, as a German, I really am ashamed about this blatant violation of our rights for free speech. But you can be sure, there are many people in Germany, who stand behind Israel and won´t tollerate the way, Islamism is trying to spread hatred and antisemitism any longer. We say No to Islamic hegemony.

Shalom

Clairvaux

[KJV]

The German people never fail to amaze me, first they followed HITLER to hell now they are following the Moslems there.