Demonstrators at a pro-Palestinian protest in Basel, Switzerland, called for “Death to Zionism”, defended Hamas as a “resistance organisation” and expressed support for the destruction of the State of Israel, The Jerusalem Post reports.
The demonstration took place as Basel marked the anniversary of the First Zionist Congress, giving the protest particular significance in a city with a historic connection to the birth of modern Zionism.
The “Free Palestine, Death to Zionism” demonstration was held in Basel last weekend, coinciding with the 129th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress, convened by Theodor Herzl in the Swiss city in 1897.
Shannon Seban, Executive Director of European Affairs at the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), attended the demonstration undercover to document what participants were saying and interviewed protesters during the event.
Several demonstrators openly compared Zionism with fascism and Nazism.
“Zionism is like fascism,” one protester told Seban. “A very genocidal ideology.”
Another demonstrator argued that Zionism should be prohibited entirely.
“It’s an ideology that should be illegal, or just abolished in general,” the protester said, comparing Zionism with “ideologies in the Second World War, like Nazism”.
Participants also defended Hamas, the terrorist organisation responsible for the 7 October 2023 attacks in Israel, describing it as a “resistance organisation” while expressing support for the elimination of the State of Israel.
Following the demonstration, Seban wrote to Basel Mayor Conradin Cramer to raise concerns about what she had witnessed. She described the scenes as “deeply disturbing” and said protesters had confronted the authorities.
“The atmosphere was confrontational, with demonstrators defying police instructions,” she wrote.
Seban also referred to information released by Basel-Stadt Cantonal Police. According to the police report she cited, officers checked 174 people during the demonstration and confiscated several items.
“174 people were controlled, while a baton, protective goggles, face-covering equipment, and propaganda bearing Hamas symbols were seized,” Seban wrote.
While praising the police response, she argued that the demonstration raised wider concerns about the normalisation of extremist and antisemitic rhetoric in public spaces.
“I commend the police for their intervention,” she said. “But these events raise a broader question — how can Basel, a city with such a unique place in Jewish and Zionist history, ensure that calls for hatred, violence, and the glorification of terrorism are not normalized in its streets?”
Seban asked Mayor Cramer for an opportunity to discuss further measures that Basel could take and ways in which CAM could cooperate with the city in confronting antisemitism and extremism.
The demonstration comes amid continuing concern about the scale of antisemitism across Europe. CAM’s Antisemitism Research Center recorded 2,962 antisemitic incidents across the continent in 2025, representing an increase of nearly 50 per cent compared with 2024.
The Basel protest has added to concerns about the increasingly blurred boundary between political criticism of Israel and rhetoric that targets Zionism as a whole, compares it with Nazism, glorifies Hamas and calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Its timing in Basel — the city where Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress more than a century ago — gave those calls an especially provocative historical context.
photo credit: REUTERS/ARND WIEGMANN
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