Capital punishment

by JINOY JOSE P.

Dear reader,

For someone who has spent nearly a decade in pure-vanilla business journalism, I have a love-hate relationship with financial markets. I love their Byzantine complexity—perhaps the only sector that truly mirrors human life, where simple processes become Rube Goldberg machines of mathematical absurdity. Like in life, the winners are not the straightforward ones following the rules. They are the ones gaming the system, finding loopholes within loopholes, building empires on milliseconds, and exploiting inefficiencies that should not exist in the first place. That is one aspect of the markets that I hate.

Charles Ponzi understood this perfectly. In 1920, he promised investors an unbelievable 50 per cent return in just 45 days. It was a simple scam—he merely paid early investors with money from later ones, creating an illusion of profits. Ponzi’s scheme collapsed spectacularly, branding financial markets forever as playgrounds for the cunning and unscrupulous.

Ponzi famously quipped before his fall, “I landed in this country with $2.50 in cash and $1 million in hopes, and those hopes never left me.” It seems today’s high-frequency traders have transformed that audacious hope into algorithmic certainty, turning Wall Street and global markets into a video game where the house always wins—as long as you own the house, the console, and the fibre-optic cables connecting them.

The core challenge facing modern markets is not just speed—it is the arms race between those who build the systems and those who exploit them. High-frequency trading (HFT) firms now execute over 50 per cent of all US equity trades, operating in timeframes so minute that a sneeze could cost millions. These digital desperados have created a parallel universe where geography matters more to traders today than geology once did to oil barons. Being a millisecond faster than your competitor is now worth more than being right about a company’s fundamentals.

The evolution from ticker tape to today’s algorithmic mayhem reads like a heist movie directed by someone with a PhD in theoretical physics. Consider this: In 1987, during Black Monday, panic engulfed trading floors within a single session, with the Dow plunging 22.6 per cent in less than 7 hours. Today, a flash crash can wipe out a trillion dollars of market value in just 36 minutes—as happened on May 6, 2010—before algorithms even realise they have been spooked by their own shadows.

Michael Lewis captured this absurdity brilliantly in Flash Boys, showing how HFT firms drilled through mountains to lay straighter fibre-optic cables, shaving microseconds off trade execution times. One firm, Spread Networks, spent $300 million to build a cable between Chicago and New Jersey that was 827 miles long—100 miles shorter than the existing route. That difference translated to about, hold your breath, three milliseconds, which industry insiders estimated could mean tens of millions of dollars gained per millisecond saved.

The techniques these firms employ would make Charles Ponzi blush. Take “quote stuffing”—flooding markets with thousands of orders per second, only to cancel them nanoseconds later, creating a smokescreen that slows competitors’ systems. Or “spoofing”, where traders place large orders they never intend to execute, manipulating prices before darting in for the actual trade. It is akin to playing poker while openly showing fake cards to confuse the table.

Reports say Renaissance Technologies, perhaps the most successful quant fund ever, employs more PhDs than many universities—mathematicians, physicists, and signal processing experts who have never taken a finance class but can spot patterns in market noise that traditional traders miss entirely. Their Medallion Fund, after rocky initial years including a 4 per cent loss in 1989, went on to average 66 per cent annual returns before fees, with net returns of 39 per cent after their substantial 5 per cent management and 44 per cent performance fees.

That’s a performance making Warren Buffett seem as cautious as someone hiding cash beneath a mattress.

The infrastructure behind this digital gold rush is equally absurd. Firms pay millions for “co-location” services, placing servers physically inside stock exchanges to eliminate speed-of-light delays. The New York Stock Exchange charges tens of thousands of dollars per month for a single server rack in its Mahwah, New Jersey, facility—more than most Americans earn annually, paid just to be a few feet closer to the matching engine.

Exchanges themselves have become willing accomplices. They sell privileged data feeds granting HFT firms market information microseconds ahead of regular investors. It is like, as an analyst put it, selling binoculars at a horse race, then secretly auctioning telescopes to the highest bidders. The arms race has spawned an entire ecosystem of technological excess. Firms now employ microwave and laser transmissions for faster-than-fibre communication. McKay Brothers operates microwave towers between Chicago and New Jersey that beat fibre by 4.5 microseconds, charging $14,000 monthly for access, effectively monetising time itself.

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Historian returning from Gaza: ‘The most shocking thing is the gap with the outside world’s perception’

LE MONDE

Tents are set up as temporary shelters for displaced Palestinians in Gaza City on May 25, 2025. IMAGE/OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP

Jean-Pierre Filiu, a French historian who has traveled to the Gaza Strip many times over the years, spent a month in the Palestinian territory from December to January. He answered questions from Le Monde’s readers about what he saw there.

Between December 19, 2024, and January 21, 2025, French historian Jean-Pierre Filiu, who writes a weekly column on the Middle East in Le Monde, was able to go to the Gaza Strip. The professor at Sciences Po university is publishing his eyewitness account in a book, Un historien à Gaza (“A Historian in Gaza”), set to be released this week in French.

On Monday, May 26, Filiu answered questions from Le Monde‘s readers. Here is a translation of the Q&A originally published in a liveblog in French.

Menton: What event shocked you the most during your time in Gaza?

I was in Gaza from December 19, 2024, to February 21, 2025 – a full month of open hostilities, plus two days of truce. The paradox is that the most violent days were those preceding the truce coming into effect, on January 19. The Israelis intensified the bombings, sometimes very close to where I was staying, while the outside world had been celebrating the announcement of a ceasefire since January 15. The most shocking thing I experienced is the gap between the ordeals experienced in Gaza and the outside world’s perception.

Empathie: How are orphans being cared for in Gaza at the moment? Is there any estimate of their numbers?

The tragedy of Gaza’s orphans is one of the worst disasters unfolding within the broader tragedy of the besieged enclave. The number of orphans is the subject of much debate due to the collapse of the health system and the disappearance of entire families, sometimes with only one surviving child. The society, which I once knew to be so protective within its family structures, has itself collapsed under the weight of widespread slaughter and repeated displacements. Wounded orphans are left abandoned in hospitals with no relatives, not even distant ones, coming to claim them. Bands of street children haunt public dumps, scavenging nylon and wood to resell as fuel.

Vajra: How did you enter the Gaza Strip and how did you leave?

I have been traveling to Gaza for many years, always with the approval of the Israeli authorities as part of what is called a “coordination,” generally granted the evening before for the next morning.

This time, I was integrated into the local team of Doctors Without Borders, which is doing extraordinary work in Gaza and which I assisted thanks to my intimate knowledge of the enclave. I boarded a bus “coordinated” by the United Nations, departing from Amman, the capital of Jordan, along with about 20 other aid workers. Once admitted into Israel in another bus, we were “escorted” by the Israeli military police to Kerem Shalom, the Israeli entry point into the Gaza Strip, where we were then transferred to a UN convoy. We were only allowed to bring personal medication and 3 kilos of food (with no more than 1 kilo per product). I left Gaza following a similar “coordination” and by the reverse route.

H.DO: When there are bombings, we hear about wounded people being taken to the hospital, even though most hospitals are out of service. Can you describe the conditions in which the wounded are treated?

 Le Monde for more

Shanti Maheshwari – brutally silenced forever

Caution: Extreme violence described

by B. R. GOWANI

Shanti Maheshwari in a bridal dress; her husband Ashok Kumar is behind the bars IMAGE/voicepk.net
VIDEO/voicepk.net/Youtube
From beautiful bride, to victim of marital rape, this is the story of Shanti, a 19-year-old whose husband has been charged under the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act of 2013. IMAGE/Inter Press Service (IPS)

Shanti Maheshwari was a 19-year-old girl living in Karachi’s working class neighborhood of Lyari and who got married to Ashok Kumar Mohan on June 16, 2025, after a two-year engagement. But for two days after her wedding, she was brutally, repeatedly, and unnaturally raped by her husband. Shanti was gruesomely wounded, and started to bleed internally.

Her in-laws took Shanti to a health clinic but the doctor released her, and so they brought her home.

On June 30, witnessing Shanti’s seriously deteriorating health, her family brought her back from her in-laws house. Her parents came to know from Shanti that on June 17 and 18, she was a victim of “unnatural sexual acts,” i.e., sodomy.

The assault complaint filed by Shanti’s brother Sayon with police stated that her husband “inserted a metal pipe” and then his “hand and arm” in her anus, and bit her breasts and neck. Her husband threatened Shanti with death if she revealed to anyone what he did to her.

Najma Maheshwari, a social activist from Shanti’s locality, described the violence she was subjected to, to Zofeen Ebrahim of IPS (Inter Press Service):

“Her insides were torn, she was bleeding profusely from her anus and writhing in pain. Hospital visitors urged us to move the gurney outside, complaining the stench was unbearable.

“While cleaning her, medics removed worms from her gut—her injuries were that severe. I’ve seen much in my work, but never such horror or pain,”

Najma (center), Sonya (head covered), and their brother (Najma’s right) were sitting on the pavement outside the trauma center where Shanti was fighting for her life. IMAGE/Seema Maheshwari

(The violence done to Shanti brings to mind similar case in 2012, a gruesome gang rape of a 23-year-old paramedical student in Delhi, often known as the “rape capital” of India. Amidst huge protests, she was flown to Singapore for treatment, but could not be saved. As is customary for these type of victims, she was not identified by her own name but by courageous and noble names as: “Nirbhaya,” “Amanat,” “Damini,” and so on.)

Shanti’s relative Sonia, who had arranged Shanti’s marriage, was surprised that despite her bleeding, the doctors released her from Anklesaria hospital where she had been taken.

In South Asia, doctors are usually treated like God by most people. Why didn’t Dr. Rauf, Shanti’s doctor, care for the patient’s failing health? It’s not difficult to guess. The answer lies in three obvious reasons; Shanti was poor, Shanti was a woman, Shanti belonged to a minority — her Hindu name gave away her religion. These three factors must have made the doctor to ignore Shanti’s critical condition. Of course, not wanting to get entangled in a medico-legal case could have been a factor, too, as there was clear evidence of anal trauma caused by sexual violence.

Sayon and Najma took Shanti to the government-run Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Trauma Centre.

Shanti was brought to the trauma center in “comatose” state, and placed on a ventilator. Her continual passing of stool worsened her wounds. The extreme violence inflicted on Shanti was verified by Karachi’s chief police surgeon Dr Summaiya Sayed who concurred that there was clear evidence of anal trauma caused by sexual violence.

Mournfully, Najma remembers, “the last thing she asked for was a sip of water. Then she closed her eyes and never opened them again.” That was on 23 July.

A Pakistani group Aurat March (Women’s March) issued a statement in the wake of Shanti’s painful and tragic death:

“Shanti, a 20-year-old woman, has passed away today after 20 days of being in coma, and after 36 days of being brutally raped by her husband, Ashok Kumar.” “We had earlier posted about this case — about the horrible ordeal that Shanti went through, and the complicity of Ashok’s family, Anklesaria Hospital and Dr. Rauf, that has now resulted in her death.”

In the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan tops the list with 85% of married women undergoing sexual or physical violence by their husbands, compared to India’s 29% and Bangladesh’s 53%.

Globally renowned social activist and classical dancer Sheema Kermani of
Tehrik-e-Niswan (Women’s Movement) Cultural Action Group joined with other women’s groups and civil society in protest. She said possibly Shanti would have survived if the doctor had treated her properly.

In these kinds of horrible cases, celebrities come forward to express shock and show sympathy to the victims and her family or to condole the death. Some are genuine and others do it to enhance their fame. This time, actress singer Ayesha Omar was the only celebrity who mourned Shanti:

“I’m sorry we failed you, Shanti. May justice be served.”

“Praying that this misogynistic society can heal and transform for the better one day.”

The Section 376-B of the Pakistan Penal Code considers rape a crime but it is not very clear on marital rape. Advocate of the High Court Mehwish Muhib Kakakhel points out:

“A dedicated clause was proposed for inclusion in the Anti-Rape Act but was ultimately dropped due to complications around the issue.”

She further noted:

“Marital rape is usually not even considered rape because most people believe it is a woman’s obligation not to say ‘no’ to her husband,” she explained. “This mindset results in most cases going unreported.”

To stop cases of marital rape, Muhib suggested:

“Legal recognition would be a vital step in changing social norms and ensuring accountability.”

However, laws are often made in social vacuum, and remain ineffective and even with strong laws on file protecting women, do not really protect women, because enforcement of these laws remains weak.

Sexual and Reproductive Health education, along with mental health and emotional wellness programs are critical to change the fate of the Shantis of Pakistan.

“Too many young people carry the trauma of childhood sexual abuse,” she said. “As they grow, that buried pain can manifest in troubling ways—some develop sadistic or masochistic behaviors, especially when exposed to unchecked pornography. It doesn’t heal them; it deepens the harm.”

To fill this gap, she and a group of like-minded doctors at the Association for Mothers and Newborns (AMAN)*—the implementation arm of Pakistan’s National Committee for Maternal and Neonatal Health—developed Bakhabar Noujawan (Informed Youth), an online SRH program endorsed by the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination, launched in 2023.


“We’re trying to introduce it in colleges, but convincing faculty is an uphill battle—they first need to grasp the course’s importance,” she said.
Covering over two dozen culturally sensitive topics—from premarital counselling, child and cousin marriage, domestic violence, STIs, to teenage pregnancy—the programme doesn’t shy away from tough conversations. “We’re now developing a module on marital rape,” says Ahsan, head of AMAN. “The first draft is nearly complete.”


Alongside SRH education, Sayed emphasized the need for mental health and emotional wellness programs.


“Too many young people carry the trauma of childhood sexual abuse,” she said. “As they grow, that buried pain can manifest in troubling ways—some develop sadistic or masochistic behaviors, especially when exposed to unchecked pornography. It doesn’t heal them; it deepens the harm.”

IPSNews

Why did Ashok Kumar committed such heinous acts? Only a thorough psychological evaluation could throw some light on this terrible act. Delving into his motivations and intentions, could present a case history, when communicated to a wider audience, may prevent this somewhat in the future. Everyone knows, no such thing is going to happen, sadly.

Shanti

shanti, a word of Sanskrit origin, means silence, peace, …
Shanti wasn’t at peace; her anatomy was torn due to sexual violence
Shanti didn’t remain silent; she told her personal trauma to her parents

Shanti’s milieu was poor; so the doctor’s conscience remained silent

Shanti’s gender was female; so the patriarchy remained at peace

Shanti, a teenager, was forced to lethal silence and finally … achieved shanti… deadly peace…

B. R. Gowani an be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

Iran’s plan to abandon GPS is about much more than technology

by JASIM AL-AZZAWI

A helicopter takes part in military exercises involving Iran, China and Russia in the Gulf of Oman on March 12, 2025 IMAGE/Handout/Iranian army via Reuters

It is yet another sign of a looming ‘tech cold war’.

For the past few years, governments across the world have paid close attention to conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. There, it is said, we see the first glimpses of what warfare of the future will look like, not just in terms of weaponry, but also in terms of new technologies and tactics.

Most recently, the United States-Israeli attacks on Iran demonstrated not just new strategies of drone deployment and infiltration but also new vulnerabilities. During the 12-day conflict, Iran and vessels in the waters of the Gulf experienced repeated disruptions of GPS signal.

This clearly worried the Iranian authorities who, after the end of the war, began to look for alternatives.

“At times, disruptions are created on this [GPS] system by internal systems, and this very issue has pushed us toward alternative options like BeiDou,” Ehsan Chitsaz, deputy communications minister, told Iranian media in mid-July. He added that the government was developing a plan to switch transportation, agriculture and the internet from GPS to BeiDou.

Iran’s decision to explore adopting China’s navigation satellite system may appear at first glance to be merely a tactical manoeuvre. Yet, its implications are far more profound. This move is yet another indication of a major global realignment.

For decades, the West, and the US in particular, have dominated the world’s technological infrastructure from computer operating systems and the internet to telecommunications and satellite networks.

This has left much of the world dependent on an infrastructure it cannot match or challenge. This dependency can easily become vulnerability. Since 2013, whistleblowers and media investigations have revealed how various Western technologies and schemes have enabled illicit surveillance and data gathering on a global scale – something that has worried governments around the world.

Al Jazeera for more

Taliban bride

by ZALA

IMAGE/ Karolin Schnoor

Women in Afghanistan are prisoners in their own homes. This is the story of Marjan, married at 12 to a Taliban fighter

When women describe Afghanistan as hell, you need to understand that they are not exaggerating. For centuries, women in this country have been harassed, tormented and punished in various ways; deprived of their right to education, removed from all social spheres, punished in extrajudicial tribunals, forced marriages and honour killings, and threatened with physical and psychological violence. Afghan society is defiantly patriarchal, blending together bizarre traditions and widespread sexism to create a true hell. In the hellscapes that populate religions, people are condemned for their sins, but in ours women are punished for their innocence.

The participation of women in Afghanistan has always depended on the decisions of men. If a woman wants to enter and secure her place in society, the first obstacle she faces is the closed door of her home, sealed against her by a male member of her family. If some women manage to open this door, the government has made sure to block any avenue of social growth to them. The only thing left for Afghan women to do is to cry behind the closed doors that bar their access to schools, universities, offices or even entertainment venues.

But the occasional permissiveness and overwhelming constraints actioned by these opening and closing doors does not apply to all Afghan women, only to women in the big cities and to women in those provinces experiencing instability in their social status amid the waves of political change in the country. In rural areas, however, centuries of shifts in the country’s political make-up have had no impact whatsoever on many women’s lives. These rural women are neither exposed to nor benefit from any intermittent loosening of social rules, and their lives often remain stagnant. In the remote areas where those women live, women’s issues are resolved by men who rely on tradition. For them, social growth is a strange concept. I am a Pashtun woman from the southeast of Afghanistan, and I want to write about the women of this region, also from the Pashtun tribe, who are facing immense difficulties.

There is a saying in Pashto (language): A woman’s place is either inside the house or in the grave. But this is not merely a simple proverb, it is rather a law that dictates the social role of women among the Pashtun people. It means that a woman has no place outside the walls of her house. She has no right to study and no right to work. Deprived of these fundamental rights, women remain far removed from any kind of participation in society. The confines of their home become their whole world and, in that small space, they continue to suffer all kinds of violence.

In our highly conservative society, especially in Pashtun culture, the birth of a girl is not something joyful, while a baby boy brings great happiness to a family and is celebrated with aerial gunshots so that everyone all around will be informed of the male birth in their house.

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History: The revolutionary and the courtier

by SIBTAIN NAQVI

Josh Malihabadi

Poets today are happy to remain part of a convivial fraternity. With little patronage to compete for and minimal ideological divide, the desire for rhyming ripostes and public put-downs hardly exists. It wasn’t always so. Previously poets were often rivals and lost no opportunity in exchanging barbs couched in deadly but exquisite eloquence.

Muhammed Ibrahim Zauq and Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan, better known as Ghalib, were bitter rivals, for example, and unleashed several lyrical fusillades against each other to win Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar’s favours. From the days of Ghalib, mushairas (poetry recitals) were not just a platform for dissent against the state, but also opportunities to protest against other members of the poetic community to highlight ideological differences.

Among the more recent examples of such poetic friction was the Bayaad-i-Josh mushaira held on April 13, 1982. Organised by the Anjuman-i-Saadat-i-Amroha at a time of great censorship because of Gen Zia’s dictatorial regime, it was a memorial for Josh Malihabadi, whose death on February 22, 1982 had been ignored by the state. Members of the Amrohvi community in Karachi had the intellectual gravitas to brave the political backlash. The event featured some of the greatest Urdu poets of the time, who were witness to an episode that highlighted the ideological differences of Josh Malihabadi and Hafeez Jalandhari, one a fierce critic of dictators and the other a close supporter.

Mahinder Singh Bedi reciting a eulogy for Josh at the Bayaad-i-Josh mushaira. Josh’s portrait is in the background

Josh Malihabadi had immigrated to Pakistan several years after Partition and was never at ease in his new country. He had been a part of India’s intellectual elite, and a darling of the Congress leadership. So iconic was Josh in India that Vijay, the protagonist from Guru Dutt’s cult classic Pyaasa, wants to be a revolutionary poet just like Josh. Vijay snubs the more populist genre of romantic poetry, for which he suffers great hardship.

Despite his position in India, Josh gave in to the entreaties of A.T. Naqvi, commissioner of Karachi, who had told him, “Josh Sahib, you can’t cross a river with your feet anchored in two boats.” Against the advice of Indian PM Jawaharlal Nehru, who gave him the option to move back and forth between the two countries, Josh left India thinking that Urdu would be ignored there because of the “narrow-minded nationalism of Hindus.” In 1955, he crossed the border and, soon after, became a fierce critic of the military dictatorship of Ayub Khan. For this he faced endless problems, becoming the target of right-wingers while his property was confiscated by the regime. His poetry too did not get the requisite recognition from the state.

On the other side of the political divide were pro-establishment writers and poets, chief among them Hafeez Jalandhari, the poet laureate, who had also penned Pakistan’s national anthem. Their ideological divide was stark. Josh hated the British and sported the Führer’s moustache to remind them of their bête noire. In his poem East India Company Ke Farzandon Se Khitab [Address to the Heirs of the East India Company], Josh had lambasted British hypocrisy and recounted their crimes, from the battle of Plassey in 1757 to hanging the revolutionary Bhagat Singh in 1931. Invoking the powerful imagery of Karbala, he had addressed their apologists:

Mujrimon ke waastay zeba nahin ye shor-o-shain
Kal Yazeed-o-Shimr thhey aur aaj bantay ho Hussain!

[This hue and cry does not suit the defence of criminals/ You who were Yazeed and Shimr yesterday pretend today to be Hussain!]

Like anti-British revolutionary Subhas Chandra Bose, who was even willing to ally himself with fascists to gain independence for India, Josh considered the British to be the ultimate enemy and published this poem in 1939 as the British were exploiting India in preparation for World War II.

Meanwhile, Hafeez Jalandhari was using his pen to support the British war effort. During World War II, as the head of the Bureau of Public Information and Song Publicity Organisation at All India Radio, Jalandhari played an important role for British propaganda. According to several accounts, he wrote poems such as Boot to recruit Indian cannon fodder that would eventually die in North Africa and East Asia for their colonial masters:

Idhar pehno ho tooti jooti, udhar pehno ge boot
Bharti ho jao!

[Here you wear a broken slipper, there you will get a fancy boot/ Go join the army!]

Hafeez Jalandhari

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Socialism is the path to liberty

by ROB URIE

The purpose of this essay is to create a broader political dialogue in order to get the US, and with it the world, out of the policy messes that the US is creating. When I speak with my Republican friends, there is widespread agreement regarding what the problems that the US faces are. Differences enter when it comes to solutions. And while there is no claim to Truth here, the left has spent more time considering solutions than the right has.

American political discourse has proceeded in recent decades from the pretense that a political ‘center’ both 1) exists, and 2) represents the policy outcomes that most Americans want. But both political philosophy and basic common sense argue against this interpretation. On the common-sense front, voters have been fleeing both of the uniparty parties to become political Independents for twenty-five years now. There appears to be no way to rid the US of the uniparty. 

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On the political philosophy front, the US is, and has long claimed itself to be, the ‘most capitalist nation on the planet.’ Recall that outside of the US and for most of modern history, the ‘left’ has been defined by opposition to capitalism and the ‘right’ has been defined by support for highly concentrated incomes and wealth. Around 1992, US politician Bill Clinton coined the phrase ‘social liberal, fiscal conservative,’ to define the new right-wing in the US that he represented.

The social backdrop in Clinton’s formulation is that fiscal conservatism has characteristics, such as the unquestioned funding of every war that the Western MIC can conjure up while cutting social spending and programs that benefit the rest of us. In other words, fiscal conservatism represents the political precepts of capitalism. Note that this is where Bill Clinton placed himself, through his policies, on the ideological spectrum. On the monarchist right, but with oligarchs instead. 

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Germany’s enslavement to its past kept it silent on Gaza for far too long

by GIDEON LEVY

A protester holds a placard during a demonstration in support of Palestinians in Gaza in Berlin on 6 October, 2024 IMAGE/Reuters/Middle East Eye

Germany has betrayed the memory of the Holocaust and its lessons. A country that saw its highest task as not to forget has forgotten. A country that told itself that it would never remain silent is silent. A country that once said “Never Again,” and now: “again,” with arms, with funding, with silence. There is no country that should be better than Germany at “discerning nauseating processes.” Every German knows much more about them than Yair Golan. Here in Israel they are in full swing, yet Germany has not yet recognized them for what they are. It was only recently that it woke up too late and to too little effect.

When Germany sees the Flag March in Jerusalem, it must see Kristallnacht. If it does not see the similarities, it is betraying the memory of the Holocaust. When it looks at Gaza, it must see the concentration camps and ghettos that it built. When it sees hungry Gazans, it must see the wretched survivors of the camps. When it hears the fascist talk of Israeli ministers and other public figures about killing and population transfer, about there being “no innocents” and about killing babies, it must hear the chilling voices from its past, who said the same in German.

It has no right to be silent. It must carry the flag of European resistance to what is happening in the Strip. Yet it continues to lag behind the rest of Europe, however uncomfortably, not only because of its past but also because of its indirect responsibility for the Nakba, which probably would not have happened without the Holocaust. Germany also owes a partial moral debt to the Palestinian people.

The Israeli occupation would not have happened without support from the United States and Germany. Throughout this period, Germany was considered Israel’s second-best friend. It was inclusive and unconditional. Now Germany will pay for its long years of severe self-censorship, during which it was forbidden to criticize Israel, the sacred sacrifice.

Any and all criticism of Israel was labeled antisemitism. The just struggle for Palestinian rights was criminalized. A country where a major media empire still requires its journalists to vow never to cast doubt on Israel’s right to exist as a condition for employment cannot claim to honor freedom of expression. And if Israel’s current policies endanger its existence, shouldn’t they be entitled to criticize it?

In Germany it is difficult, if not impossible, to criticize Israel, whatever it does. This is not friendship, this is enslavement to a past and it must end in the face of what is happening in Gaza. The “special relationship” cannot include a seal of approval for war crimes. Germany has no right to ignore the International Criminal Court, which was established in response to its crimes, by debating when to extend an invitation to an Israeli prime minister who is wanted for war crimes. It has no right to repeat the cliches of the past and place flowers in Yad Vashem, a 90-minute drive from Khan Yunis.

Internatonal Viewpoint for more