Berlin, once the capital of Hitler’sThird Reich, has banned an inverted red triangle that is historically associated with Nazi concentration camps and is now used by Hamas and anti-Israeli protesters to call for violence against Israel. 

Berlin’s ordinance, which bans the symbol at protests and in the context of the Israel-Hamas war, was approved by the state senate. The Telegraph reports that the German lawmakers concluded that the triangle is a threat to Jewish people and supporters of Israel. The symbol has been used at Berlin to target politicians including the city’s mayor, Kai Wegner, who cracked down on anti-Israel protesters who were occupying a university, the outlet notes.

The symbol was also used last month to deface the home of the director of the Brooklyn Museum, Anne Pasternak, who is Jewish. Activists also scrawled “Anne Pasternak Brooklyn Museum White Supremacist Zionist” outside her door. The red triangle was first used by the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, to indicate and Israel Defense Soldier they hoped to target. 

While Germany’s government has been a  supporter of Israel since the days following October 7, Berlin is also home to Europe’s largest Palestinian diaspora community. Jews living at Berlin have been subjected to harassment and a number of attacks, the Anti-Defamation League reports. These attacks include the beating of a Jewish student, an attack on a  man and woman speaking Hebrew, and private homes being marked with the Star of David. 

The inverted red triangle is used as an anti-Israel symbol and can be used as a call for violence, the Anti-Defamation League notes. It appears in Hamas propaganda videos to mark targets and is also used online or on social media in an emoji form. The triangle, the organization explains,  is “used to represent Hamas itself and glorify its use of violence in many popular anti-Zionist memes.”