A Propalestinian demonstration, forbidden to parade in a district where a major Jewish community lives in Strasbourg, turned into a static gathering this Saturday, to the chagrin of the organizers who denounced “attack on their freedoms”.
“We are very disappointed,” said Hervé Gourvitch, of the Palestine collective 67, who had attacked the prefectural decree prohibiting the perimeter in question, denouncing an “unacceptable questioning of the right to demonstrate and freedom of expression”.
“Being Jewish myself it shocks me even more”
“We refuse that there are Strasbourg districts in which it is forbidden to express their support for the Palestinian people,” he said before the 250 demonstrators, according to the police, gathered Place Broglie in the center of Strasbourg.
“Being Jewish myself it shocks me even more,” added Hervé Gourvitch, “we have the right to be Jewish and anti-Zionist”.
The demonstrators wanted in particular to parade in front of the building where Palestine emergency activists reside, to support them. The building was recently targeted by anti -Palestine tags and degradations, acts of vandalism condemned by the mayor of Strasbourg, the environmentalist Jeanne Barseghian.
A risk of overflows according to the administrative court
But the administrative court validated the prefectural decree. In a judgment rendered on Saturday, the judge in summary proceedings notes that the march was to “stand in a district in which a high proportion of members of the Jewish community resides”, and underlines the risk of “overflows”, “having regard in particular to the context of strong tensions which currently exists between the people supporting the policy of Israel with regard to the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip and those criticizing this policy”.
The judge considered that the prefecture of Bas-Rhin, which had not prohibited the demonstration and had proposed two alternative courses, took a “proportionate measure and did not bring a serious and manifestly illegal attack to the freedoms invoked by the applicants”.
