GERMAN PARLIAMENT BANS RED INVERTED TRIANGLE SYMBOL USED BY HAMAS

Tue 09 July 2024:

Germany’s House of Representatives voted to ban the red inverted triangle symbol used by the Al-Qassam Brigades in its videos, the German ASB Zeitung news website reported on Thursday.

According to the outlet, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) filed an urgent motion to impose the ban on the triangle, which is used in the videos to mark the Israeli military targets of resistance strikes.

The motion secured a majority in parliament however opponents said a blanket ban on symbols was legally and constitutional and questionable.

Burkard Dregger, spokesperson for the CDU faction’s interior policy, stated that the goal is for the Berlin Administrative Office to prohibit the use of the symbol. “Secondly, the federal government should extend the Hamas ban to include the prohibition of the Hamas triangle,” he added.

For his part, Martin Matz from the SPD explained that Hamas uses the symbol to mark people as targets, justifying the prohibition of its use. However, he did not mention that the targets shown in the Palestinian Resistance group’s videos only include Israeli soldiers, military personnel, and vehicles.

Opposition parties, including the Greens, Left, and AfD, did not support the motion.

Vasili Franco from the Greens argued that total bans are not covered by the rights of assembly or freedom of opinion.

Niklas Schrader from the Left indicated that the motion is inappropriate and represents ineffective symbolic politics. He noted that the red triangle has a long history and is also used by other organizations facing criminalization, suggesting that if the triangle is to be banned, it must be clearly distinguished.

Since Israel launched its genocidal military campaign on Gaza, the Palestinian resistance has released videos of its attacks on occupation forces with a red triangle used to highlight the target of the upcoming strike.

Though it is not clear why this symbol was chosen, many have speculated that the red triangle was used because it appeared on the Palestinian flag.

Deeper Meanings

The red triangle started as a functional tool in well-produced videos released by the Al-Qassam Brigades.

“To understand the function of this triangle, we needed to understand the story behind it, thus explaining, without a single word, why Palestinians resist,” Palestinian analyst and editor of The Palestine Chronicle, Ramzy Baroud, said in a recent article, explaining that the “functionality of the red triangle was transformed to even greater meaning, deeper symbolism.”

“As millions of people continued to protest Israeli atrocities in Gaza, many carried banners and flags of the Red Triangle. For them, this symbol not only represented more than Palestinian Resistance in Gaza, but the need for action everywhere else,” Baroud added.

While some suggested that the red triangle was inspired by the red triangle of the Palestinian flag, this mark could also simply be a technical choice to let the viewers know where they needed to look.

However, according to Baroud, “what truly matters are the deeper meanings of all of this.”

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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