this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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Might as well ban Germany alongside too. Our government claimed that the case brought forth by South Africa was "without any basis" the moment the hearing at the ICJ ended. Now that the ICJ has demanded preliminary measures and explicitly stated that the Palestinians are at a plausible risk of genocide, the government tried to spin-doctor it, that "without any basis" would be a normal way of communicating different opinions on a legal case. Oh and on the day of the hearing the German genocide against the Herero and Nama people in todays Namibia had it's 120 years anniversary. The German government did not deem it necessary to adress the fact in any formal way to Namibia or anyone else.
Except for 2018 the last decade was a total embarassement anyways and the spot should be taken by a country whose artists actually make it by ability instead of the spot being paid for.
Germany is one of the biggest humanitarian donators and took many refugees from the region. The foreign ministry refused to call it a Holocaust - which is just on another level. The commitee of the Herero and Nama also critisized the critique on germany as populistic and without legal basis and double standard. The defense of Israel is a state doctrine, also based on history, so it might be a little more complicated than a simple good and bad.
Oh, right, charity.
I grew up with the stories about how in Fascist Portugal the "ladies" of the handful of priviledged families who exploited a crushingly poor country were big charitable givers.
Act with cold calous cruelty but all it takes is to give away some crumbs and socially you're lauded as a moral paragon.
Funny that you compare Germany to fascist dictators now, its one of the few countries which actually worked its past and acknowledged it. Support for a Israel is a double sided sword in that regard, just dropping them is definitely not an option. Germany currently houses 3.3 million refugees and paid over 24 billion in foreign aid. Honestly, what do you expect?
It's pretty obvious from its continued and unwavering support for a nation led by Fascists who openly describe as "human animals" the neigbouring people from a different etnicity which they have oppressed for over half a century and are now outright massacring, commiting all manner of war crimes in doing so, that the "never again" that the German elites claimed to have learned is not at all the Humanist "nothing like this should ever be allowed to happen again to any people because of their etnicity" (which would see Germany react towards Israel as they did towards Russia when it invaded Ukraine) but rather the very specific and Racist "We should not have done that to Jews".
I too used to believe as you do, but what we are seeing right now in their actions, especially the massive contrast in their reaction to the victimizing of the Ukranians by Russia and the already much larger victimizing of Palestinians by Israel, is that whatever the German leadership has "learned" was not the Humanitarian Principle but something else altogether and the most obvious explanation for their very overt support of the Genociders in this specific situation is that it depends on the etnicity of the victims and the perpetrators whether such a massacre is acceptable or not in the eyes of said German leadership, which is pure, unadulterated, racism.
At this point Germany is activelly siding with Fascists doing the same style of action as the Nazis (though not yet the scope, but the continuing blocade of Food, Water & Energy to Gaza might very well lead to that). That is not the actions of a land whose leadership has genuinelly learned the lesson that massacring people because of their etnicity is Evil.
When it really mattered Germany showed that not only it's doesn't at all care for the plight of the victims but even activelly supports the genociders if the etnicity of the victims is not a favored one whilst that of the genociders is. One can then only conclude that all that "charity" was not done for humanist reasons (no humanist would support Israel after all they've done in the last month) and must have been the other reason for overtly doing "charity" - the cold and calculated managing of the image one projects.
Hmm, I think I get your point. Have to rethink that, ty
Germany is also a major supplier of weapons and military tech to Israel. This includes donating submarines, where the specs are secret, but it is likely submarines capeable of launching nuclear missiles.
Most of the humanitarian infrastructure got destroyed by Israel multiple times and Germany also announced to stop UNRWA funding over the allegations against 10 former UNRWA employees. Nobody demanded them to speak of "Holocaust" in relationship to Gaza, but acknowledging that it is possible that Israel ist intending to commit genocide, is commiting genocide and most definetely has been commiting a great deal of war crimes, is repeatedly rejected by the German government.
The "state doctrine" shows exactly where the problem lies. Germany is using Israel as "proof" of having learned from its past and is happy to commit and help commiting atrocities in the name of Israel. Jews that are critical of Israel are excluded from public discourse, are excluded from arts and culture, have their rights to demonstrations taken away, are accused of antisemitism and in one case also jailed for demonstrating against Israels war on Gaza. So the German government is even commiting many acts of antisemitism while claiming to defend people from antisemitism. Also antisemitism that is rampant in Germanys mainstream society is defendend and pushed under the rug, while trying to paint antisemitism as an issue "imported" through migration from muslim countries.
Here is an articel that goes in depth about it, and provides numerous examples. For instance the former head of the interior intelligence, that is supposed to fight political extremism has been initially defended by the federal anti-antisemitism officer. Meanwhile he was and still is spurting antisemitic conspiracies on twitter.
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-strange-logic-of-germanys-antisemitism-bureaucrats
It is so typical of German governments to pretend that Germany is the worst in the world and to make up for it ends up helping facists. That was basically what happened with Russia with NordStream. It is also very much what seems to happen with Israel today. Obviously the creation of Israel was in a large part Germanys fault due to the Holocaust and Germany has a moral obligation to make up for it. However that should mean no more genocides and not do everything for Israel, including supporting a government, which openly calls for genocide in parts.
We should have made up for it by giving a part of Germany to European Jews who wanted a state of their own. The Allies should have made us doing so.
I didn't know about this, thanks for bringing attention to it.
Sadly the German elites seem to have learned the "Never again" lesson in a racist way (Jews are like "us", not like "them") rather that humanitarian (nothing like this should ever again be done to anybody anywhere because of their etnicity), hence this continued reaction of unwavering support of Israel against the Palestinians (as in the view of the racist German power elites it's "those like us" vs "them") and the contrasting reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine were the victims were "those like us".
In a humanitarian view both situations are unnacceptable and the one in Gaza is worse because of the intensity, numbers and sheer arbitratrity of civilian killings, but in a racist's eyes the etnicity of the perpetrators and the victims is what shapes the acceptability it not of murder, hence what's going on in Ukraine is unnacceptable for the German government whilst what's going on in Gaza is acceptable.
To my great dissapointment, it seems that whilst Nazism was forced to leave Germany, the rabid racist thinking of it has never left the hearts of the German elites.
It is a bit worse than that. Antisemitism is still strong in German mainstream society. The blind support for Israel is used as "proof" that that isnt the case and now antisemitism is framed as something "imported" through immigration. German anti-antisemitism officers repeatedly criticised jewish people who voiced criticism about Israel or called out antisemitism in German politics. They claimed these jewish people to be "inconsiderate" to the German way of dealing with its history.
Here is an in depth article about the whole ordeal if you are interested:
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-strange-logic-of-germanys-antisemitism-bureaucrats
Progressive and critical jewish voices are ignored, shunned and sometimes silenced in Germany.
and they wonder why people don't like our government.
The opposition (CDU) wouldn't be handling it any better.
yup, every single party is utterly incompetent. some very much more than others, but they all suck ass.