Pro-Palestinian protests commemorating the third anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel were competing for attention with other domestic issues across Europe.
Demonstrations of solidarity with Palestinians on Wednesday faced arrests or restrictions in Germany, Britain and the Netherlands. In France and Spain, they were overshadowed by mass protests over education and housing.
Turnout fell from the pro-Palestinian rallies around the first anniversary of Oct. 7 in 2024, when tens of thousands marched across cities including London, Rome, Paris and Berlin.
Larger rallies could happen this weekend. In London, a march organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign on Oct. 10 is expected to draw about 10,000 people, according to local media. The Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs forecasted that Oct. 10 will be the largest single day of protests this year, counting 357 pro-Palestinian demonstrations worldwide between Oct. 1-14.
One of the largest protests on Wednesday was in Berlin, where 700 people gathered in the city’s Kreuzberg neighborhood. They included Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist who joined a flotilla attempting to carry aid to Gaza last year. Berlin police said they made more than 30 arrests and initiated investigations into “propaganda-related and violent offenses.”
Thunberg told independent journalist James Jackson after the protest ended, “People keep flooding the streets protesting against genocide, and the police keep using extreme brutality against those protesters… That says everything about who they are protecting.”
In London, the Metropolitan Police arrested 11 people on Wednesday at pro-Palestinian protests across the city. Five people were arrested at a protest outside the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the largest Jewish communal organization in Britain, and accused of inciting racial hatred.
The Board of Deputies said in a statement, “On the anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, masked protesters demonstrated outside our office today, chanting about ‘intifada’ and harassing our neighbors.”
The Metropolitan Police previously imposed strict restrictions on a student march that drew about 100 people, according to the BBC. Police said the march could not legally be banned despite calls to move it to a different day, adding, “We know how concerned Jewish communities are at the timing of this event.”
Hundreds more people gathered for pro-Palestinian rallies at universities in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Protesters at the University of Edinburgh demanded the school “divest” from Israel, the Independent reported.
In the Netherlands, about 150 people demonstrated in Amsterdam’s Dam Square. Some carried banners that said, “We support Hamas,” and burned an Israeli flag while chanting, “Long live the 7th of October,” the Dutch broadcaster NOS reported. Mayor Femke Halsema disbanded the protest after some participants refused to follow the set route. Halsema said that no criminal offenses were committed, although she called some banners and slogans “shocking and distasteful,” according to NL Times.
Pro-Palestinian rallies in France were dwarfed by mass protests against deteriorating school conditions, drawing hundreds of thousands to the streets and sparking thousands of arrests over recent days.
A Paris demonstration organized by the group Urgence Palestine, initially barred by police, was allowed to continue on Wednesday after the city’s administrative court suspended the ban. About 60 people were expected to attend, according to the court.
The police said the organizers risked offending the Jewish community by choosing the date of Oct. 7, noting the anti-Zionist slogans chanted at a previous demonstration on the second anniversary of the Hamas attacks.
Administrative judges said in their decision, “The fact that the date chosen to organize this event may be shocking does not, in itself, constitute a disturbance of public order and does not in itself infringe upon human dignity.”
In Spain, tens of thousands of protesters were focused on the country’s housing affordability crisis, demanding help for renters after lawmakers failed to pass emergency housing measures.
A rally for Palestinians in Madrid took place on Sunday, rather than the Oct. 7 anniversary, drawing thousands of protesters but fewer than previous years. Nearly 92,000 marched in the capital and about 70,000 in Barcelona ahead of the second anniversary of Oct. 7 last year.
A protest of about 100 people in Barcelona on Wednesday was called by Samidoun, a group linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is designated by the United States as a terrorist organization. Protesters called the Hamas attacks a “heroic operation,” according to the Spanish outlet Crónica Global.
As the Year Turns, Support the Journalism You Trust. JR covers the stories shaping Jewish life around the world — with the depth this moment calls for. As you reflect on the year ahead, consider a gift that keeps independent Jewish journalism strong.
