BRUSSELS MORNING EDITORIAL TEAM
Germany has supported Israel during the conflict in Gaza and has cracked down on the Palestine solidarity movement more actively than many other countries. These days, it is difficult to have a pro-Palestine protest in Berlin or anywhere else in Germany without being attacked by the police, threatened by the government, and accused of being anti-Semitic by the media. In April, hundreds of police officers shocked the Palestine Assembly, a popular pro-Palestine event in Berlin. British Palestinian Glasgow University rector Ghassan Abu Sitta was deported back to the United Kingdom after being denied entry into Germany to attend the conference.
Subsequently, he was even banned from moving anywhere in the Schengen area. Abu Sitta, a surgeon who has been volunteering in various Gazan hospitals since last year, intended to give a lecture about the terrible state of the Strip’s healthcare system as a result of Israeli attacks. A German court later revoked the ban. Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, was also barred from entering Germany and was not allowed to attend the congress over a video link.
History of Germany with Israel
Germany began making reparations to the state of Israel in 1953, not to specific Holocaust survivors, but in the form of industrial items, notably weapons. At the time, the Western bloc, including Germany, was focused on countering the influence of the Soviet Union. As Germany joined NATO in 1955 and was incorporated into Western military alliances, de-Nazification was quietly forgotten. Instead of the original goal of eradicating the genocidal mentality that led to the Holocaust, an unqualified support of Israel was adopted. Germany views Israel as its “raison d’état.”
This rejection of de-Nazification turned the Nazi Holocaust from a result of the Weimar Republic’s social and economic crises in Germany into an unexplainable, ahistorical anomaly that had no origins in the national consciousness of the German people. It prioritized Hitler and the Nazis’ ascent over politics and class.
Germany has committed genocide before the Holocaust. General Lothar von Trotha’s German army massacred 80% of the Herero and 50% of the Nama peoples in Southwest Africa between 1904 and 1907. Most of the thousands who were herded into concentration camps perished there.
Hermann Goring, Hitler’s deputy, was the son of Heinrich Goring, the colony’s imperial administrator. After performing horrific experiments on the prisoners and sending their severed heads back to Germany, Eugen Fischer, a German professor of medicine, anthropology, and eugenics, trained the Nazi SS physicians, notably Josef Mengele, the leading SS physician at Auschwitz.
Why does Germany support Israel?
Germany is fighting anti-Semitism and defending Jewish rights by not stifling pro-Palestinian opinions. This is evident not only in the speech’s content but also in Germany’s treatment of anti-Zionist Jews who advocate for Palestinian rights. For instance, Iris Hefets, a German-Israeli psychologist in Berlin, was detained on anti-Semitic allegations in October. Walking by herself while holding a poster that said, “As an Israeli and as a Jew, stop the genocide in Gaza,” was her only “crime.”
In the same month, over a hundred German-Jewish writers, artists, academics, journalists, and cultural workers released an open letter denouncing Germany’s suppression of pro-Palestinian speech and charges of anti-Semitism against anyone who criticizes Israel’s actions, including Jews like them. The dominant climate of racism and xenophobia in Germany, coupled with a restrictive and paternalistic philo-Semitism, is what worries us. It specifically opposes the association of criticism of the state of Israel with anti-Semitism.
International and legal perspectives on Germany’s support
After World War II, a de-Nazification process was required before the German state could be reintegrated into the international community. But this procedure was quickly dropped. The Cold War took its place. By giving the newly established “Jewish state,” the Western military outpost in Palestine, unrestricted and unconditional support, Germany atoned for its sins against Jews, but not against the Roma. It would have been incompatible with the necessity to combat the Soviet Union to eradicate the political institutions that gave rise to the Nazis, namely imperialism and the German military-industrial complex.
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