Berlin police delete Al-Quds Day from ‘diversity’ calendar

Last Monday, the Berlin tabloid B.Z. reported that the 2022 calendar of the Berlin police includes not only religious festivals such as Christmas or the Holocaust-Memorial Day Yom Hashua but also al-Quds Day. The day, whose name comes from the Arabic name for Jerusalem, was proclaimed in 1979 by the Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini and propagates the fight against Israel and the destruction of the Jewish state.

The entry of Al-Quds Day in the Calendar of Diversity had previously triggered criticism. Volker Beck, a long-time member of the Green Party in the German parliament, described the listing of the day in the calendar as a "terrible blunder and the opposite of diversity competence". Al-Quds Day is "a day of hatred and incitement", said Beck, active against anti-Semitism for many years.

Mission-relevant event

On the same day as the article in B.Z. appeared, the police in the German capital announced that Al-Quds Day had been deleted from its calendar. "Including it in the Calendar of Diversity was a mistake that should not have happened, but which does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the fundamental attitude of the Berlin police," a spokesperson for the authorities told the German website katholisch.de on Monday afternoon.

The controversial day had been included in the initially published version of the calendar "exclusively as a mission-relevant event". However, since the choice of the calendar title was wrong concerning Al-Quds Day and similar relevant events, the first version has since been removed from the Berlin police intranet and is currently being revised.

Demonstration

The calendar was created to give the staff of the Berlin Police an overview of commemorative and public holidays in the state of Berlin and to present relevant days, the spokesperson continued. He also emphasised that the Berlin Police respects and upholds human dignity as the supreme value of the rule of law. "The intensive and permanent educational work against anti-Semitism, xenophobia, racism and any kind of extremism is already given high priority in the training of police officers and is firmly anchored in the curriculum as an independent guiding theme as well as a seminar offer," said the spokesperson.

Al-Quds Day, which falls every year on the last Friday of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, will take place this year on 29 April. Until 2019, a demonstration was regularly held in Berlin, which included shouting anti-Israel slogans such as "Child Murderer Israel". In 2020 and 2021, the rally did not take place. It is unclear whether the demonstration will be held again this year.