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Month: June 2024

News from Berlin and Germany, 12th June 2024

Weekly news round-up from Berlin and Germany


12/06/2024

NEWS FROM BERLIN

How Berlin voted in the European elections?

Across Europe, people took to the polls for the European elections on last Sunday, and results in Berlin saw some changes in the political landscape of the city. In comparison to 2019, the winners were the AfD, the BSW and the CDU, while there were losses from the Greens, the SPD and Die Linke. Although the Greens remain as the largest party in Berlin, they suffered considerable losses, with a drop of 8.3%. The CDU gained slightly in that same time (+2.4%) while the 13.2% shared by the SPD represented their worst result to date in a European election in the German capital. Source: the Berliner

TU President: ‘I am not resigning’

The President of Technische Universität Berlin (TU), Geraldine Rauch, will not resign. At its meeting last Wednesday, the Academic Senate of TU Berlin left the decision as to whether she would remain at the university in her own hands. However, it also drew up an opinion poll by secret ballot. A narrow majority voted in favour of her resignation. Rauch was also specifically criticised for likes for X posts in which ‘genocide in Gaza’ was written or in which the questions ‘We are valued partners with war criminals?’ and ‘With which Israel are we valued partners?’ were posed. Students and staff expressed their solidarity with the President. Source: taz

Berlin increases cinema funding

Berlin is increasing its cinema funding by six million euros for the next few years. This was announced by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB) on the occasion of the cinema programme awards ceremony. This means that there will be significantly more funding for cinema investments and cultural programmes in the future. ‘Anyone who is committed to cinema as a cultural asset must also support the industry appropriately so that it can continue to compete with the major television broadcasters and streaming providers,’ said Florian Graf, Head of the Berlin Senate Chancellery and Chairman of the MBB Supervisory Board. Source: welt

NEWS FROM GERMANY

The AfD and how it won over young voters

The far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) made gains in almost all age groups in the recent European elections, but its biggest success was among young people. In the last EU election, in 2019, it garnered just 5% of the young vote. This year, 16% of youths voted for the AfD, tripling the party’s share in this demographic and putting it almost on par with the center-right alliance of the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU). The AfD managed to target the young voters like no other German party — mainly via TikTok and Instagram, striking a chord with emotional messages, punchlines and humor. Source: dw

Dead fish discovered again in the river Oder

Around two years after the environmental disaster in the river forming part of the German-Polish border, dead fish have again been discovered in the Oder. The toxic golden algae, which was partly responsible for the large `fish kill’ in the summer of 2022, was able to happen again. The Brandenburg State Environmental Agency plans to discuss further steps. Poland also wants to curb the spread of golden algae. Last May, the Polish Ministry of the Environment announced that the authorities wanted to increase the water flow to make it more difficult for the golden algae to spread. It had been washed into the river from the Gliwice Canal. Source: rbb

Floods destroy harvest on many farms

In the submerged areas of southern Germany, enormous crop failures are imminent. The recent floods have ruined the harvest for many farmers. ‘Masses of water have often destroyed large parts of this year’s harvest,’ said Markus Drexler, spokesman for the Bavarian Farmers’ Association (BBV). The situation is particularly bad in Swabia and parts of Upper and Lower Bavaria. The state government wants to make at least 100 million euros available for those affected by the disaster. In a letter to Agriculture Minister Michaela Kaniber (CSU), BBV Secretary General Carl von Butler emphasised that in individual cases, farms may be significantly affected. Source: tagesschau

S21: New railway station delayed again

The new underground main railway station in Stuttgart is behind schedule – even more so than previously thought. Deutsche Bahn (DB) last planned to complete Stuttgart 21 (S21) in December 2025. Now the opening of the new building has been postponed by another year, to the end of 2026. According to Baden-Württemberg’s Transport Minister Winfried Hermann (Greens), one of the main reasons for the delay is that the digitalisation of the Stuttgart hub in the rail network is more complex than originally assumed. Test operations are due to begin there in stages in mid-2026. Source: taz

Forty years without Enrico Berlinguer

Remembering a great Communist and anti-fascist


11/06/2024

Forty years ago, on 11 June 1984, Enrico Berlinguer passed away, leaving a void in Italian politics that would never be filled again.

Berlinguer’s life was just extraordinary. A Sardinian anti-fascist, in 1943 he joined the Italian Communist Party (here mentioned as PCI), whose youth section he helped found. The following year he was arrested for participating in the “bread revolt” (rivolta del pane)  in which Sassari’s working class demanded basic essentials such as bread and sugar. Two years later, in 1946, he joined the Central Committee, together with legendary names from the party such as Palmiro Togliatti, Luigi Longo and Gian Carlo Pajetta. Here he begins his ascent to the leadership, which he would hold from ‘72 until his death.

It is 7 June 1984 and, like now, the European elections are approaching. Berlinguer is in Padua, where he’s giving what would be his last election speech. “Once again it has been shown that it is not possible, in Italy, to safeguard democratic institutions if you exclude the communists”. Thus he opens his address, which would go down in history. He speaks of freedom, of democracy, of the fight for rights “even for those who are opponents of the communists”. Of peace, culture, equal rights for women. That is what communism meant to him. His views are more relevant than ever.

Towards the end of the speech, what many suspect becomes clear: Berlinguer is not well. From the crowd you can hear shouts of “Enough Enrico!”, but he does not stop. He shall finish that speech, at any cost. The broken voice, the pain in the eyes of a man fighting a stroke. He slumps slightly, then continues in front of an audience who fears the worst. Berlinguer pauses a short while, then resumes with the words for which everyone would remember him: “Comrades, you all work. House by house, company by company, street by street, talking to the citizens”. He takes off his glasses and smiles with the satisfaction of one who has done his duty. In his eyes you can see the ethics of a man who puts his work above everything else. At the same time, he can no longer hide a sense of concern. “For the proposals we present, for what we have been and are, it is possible to win new and broader support for our lists and our cause, which is the cause of peace, freedom, work and the progress of our society.” He is immediately taken to his hotel, where he falls into a coma. He’s then transferred to the hospital, where he dies of a cerebral hemorrhage after four days.

He is remembered as a mild man, by some as “the mute Sardinian”. Nothing to do with the vulgarity of today’s Italian politics. He is the most loved Italian politician of all time, who led his party to 34.4%, its all-time high, making it the most important Communist Party in the West. He began the process of breaking away from the Soviet Union, cutting off Russian funding to the PCI. In ‘73, in Bulgaria, he survived a car accident that many considered an attempt on his life. In ‘76 he declared in an interview with Italy’s main newspaper Corriere della Sera that he would feel safer under the umbrella of NATO than the Warsaw Pact. The following year he flew to Moscow for the anniversary of the October Revolution and in his speech to the Kremlin said that “democracy is the historically universal value on which to base an original socialist society”. After General Jaruzelski’s seizure of power in Poland, Berlinguer uttered another of his historic phrases at a press conference in 1981: “The driving force of the October Revolution has exhausted itself”.

His popularity grew and he became a central figure in international politics. Loved by the people, he was criticized and feared from right to left, by the USA and the USSR: for the West, he was still a communist in the context of the Cold War and a world divided into blocks of influence. For Russia, his insubordination to the Soviet model was unacceptable. Together with Aldo Moro, president of the Christian Democrats, Berlinguer theorized the “Historical Compromise”, which would have led to a coalition government between Communists and Christian Democrats. The project never materialized as Moro was kidnapped and killed by the communist armed group “Brigate Rosse”, who wanted to prevent its realization. The coup d’état in Chile in 1973 engineered by the CIA that led to the ousting of Salvador Allende’s leftist government was a turning point for Berlinguer: there he realized the danger of external reactionary interference in the event of communists entering government. A thesis confirmed by a particularly harsh exchange between American President Henry Kissinger and Aldo Moro, where the former told the latter “[…] you must stop pursuing your political plan to bring all the forces in your country to collaborate directly. Here, either you stop doing this, or you will pay dearly for it”.  As a result, Berlinguer focused on the development of “Eurocommunism”, a democratic alternative to the Soviet model based on the collaboration between European communists, particularly the French and Spanish. Berlinguer was also the father of the “moral question”, by which he urged the commitment of political parties to the principles of honesty and fairness in the management of public money. He was a bold supporter of the campaign for the divorce referendum.

Berlinguer’s funeral was attended by 1.5 million people. It was the largest state funeral in Italy after that of Pope John Paul II, and by far the largest for a politician. His legacy is immense, such that anyone who has tried to follow it has struggled. And no one has really succeeded – if anyone has really tried. With him the Italian left died. We remember him because the need for personalities like him is more relevant than ever, as are his ideas. But as long as the memory of what he was and what he represented remains alive, there will always be hope that someone will come along and carry on what he was unable to continue. In his song “Somebody was a communist” the great Italian composer and singer Giorgio Gaber wrote that “some were communist because Berlinguer was a good person”. I would argue that was the main reason for almost everyone. Thank you, Berlinguer, for showing us the way. You will never be forgotten.

An excerpt from “Somebody was a communist” by Giorgio Gaber (1992)

Someone was a communist because they dreamed of a different kind of freedom.
Someone was a communist because they thought they could only be alive and happy if others were.
Someone was a communist because they needed a push towards something new, because they were willing to change every day, because they felt the need for a different morality, because maybe it was just a force, a flight, a dream, it was just a drive, a desire to change things, to change life.
Someone was a communist because with this impetus everyone was like more than themselves, they were like two people in one. On the one hand the personal daily grind and on the other the sense of belonging to a race that wanted to take flight to really change life.
No, no regrets. Perhaps even then many had spread their wings without being able to fly, like hypothetical seagulls.

Unity is required to beat the Fascists

The rise of Le Pen is not inevitable. We can stop them with radical action by the whole of the Left


Socialists in France should call for strikes and occupations after the fascist victory in the 9th June European election. But we should also welcome the decision by the four main left-wing parties – including the Labour-type Socialist Party – not to split the left vote in the 30th June general election. 

On the far right, discussions are taking place between Marine Le Pen’s fascist National Rally (RN) and the smaller Reconquest party of her niece Marion Maréchal. Now a leading MP of the traditional right-wing Les Républicains has called for an electoral alliance with the RN. 

We need the biggest possible block of MPs to give a voice to left voters and anti-racists. 

Many workers and people in hard-hit small towns in rural areas voted for Le Pen’s National Rally. But in some working-class and multiracial suburbs Mélenchon’s France Insoumise (LFI) movement did extremely well. Their MPs have a high profile in opposing Israeli genocide and a young Palestinian woman has been elected as an LFI Euro MP. 

Trade union leaders and progressive movements such as Attac and the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme played a crucial rôle in forcing parliamentary leaders to agree in time for Macron’s snap election, as did pressure from voters and party activists. 

Other groups have been invited to join the “New Popular Front”, in a reference to the 1930s electoral pact between Socialists and Communists. After introducing some reforms, the Popular Front government ultimately failed. But it showed the potential of mass action from below and unity between the Socialist and Communist rank-and-file, especially in the struggle against fascism. 

Right-wing Socialists have condemned the agreement, preferring to support Macron’s party against the fascist Rassemblement National, while some sectarian groups counter the call for a left vote with the abstract slogan of a general strike (they are a small minority). 

We need local meetings to organise the campaign, mass canvassing and leafletting, and rallies against the fascists in every town and city. Pro-Palestine and antiracist activists should get involved to make sure their voice is heard. 

500 Thousand Crimes Against Humanity

It’s difficult to argue with a living writer, but much easier with a dead one.


At the beginning of the war between Russia and Ukraine, I told my mother that if she died because of the shelling, I would take revenge. I was leaving Kyiv, and persuaded her to go with me. My mom said that if she dies, rather than devote my life to revenge I should continue living in memory of her. Through these words I felt her love for me. The words of the government – “go and die for me” – make me feel nothing but in danger.

The famous writer Leo Tolstoy considered war a manifestation of human stupidity and selfishness. But if this is so, then how can war produce heroes? Laziness does not breed productivity. Then why does war, being stupid and selfish, become proof of heroism?

Tolstoy also wrote that war prevents a person from achieving true progress and prosperity. But he died more than a century ago. Both the First and Second World Wars happened after his death. After his death, too,  the European Union came to be. After his death, the Soviet Union was formed and collapsed. In a post-Soviet space, Leo Tolstoy’s portrait  is required furnishing in school literature classrooms. Once an idol of intellectuals, he turned into thousands of identical old-fashioned portraits hanging in identical classrooms in identical post-Soviet schools.

The lesson sounds easy: if you want to kill something, make it holy. Today Leo Tolstoy is more synonymous of boredom than he is an idol. Anyway, he wrote a lot of wonderful things. And that’s it, this life hack works flawlessly: if you want to kill it, make it holy. For some reason it didn’t work with the war. Not with this one. 

No matter how war is portrayed in the news or art, even now there are those who go to war voluntarily and talk about it as an act of heroism. But in Ukraine, the volunteers ran out after the first few months, everyone else has been forced to go to war for 2 years now, although the media say we have democracy and free will.

Classics do not become obsolete; the creators certainly do. Therefore, it is easy to reassess values when the one who inspired them has been reduced to a stupid portrait. Therefore, it was easy for my generation to forget that war is a manifestation of stupidity and selfishness, and it was also easy to say out loud the following before 2022: “We are unhappy because not a single great historical event has befallen our lives.”

Why did the rise of cinema lead us to films without ideas? Why is great literature a thing of the past? Why do poets’ performances take place in cramped cafes, and not in stadiums, as it used to be in 60s? We knew the answer. The absence of a great historical event is what made our reality contemptuously flat. But we needed this event, merciless in its grandeur. We missed the Great Depression. Missed a war. A new dictator. Protracted political conflict. We dreamed of doing something heroic, knowing it also required a big evil.

The scale of a person is determined by the scale of his problems, and the same is true for a generation. Well, we got our war. But we quickly had to realize that war does not need culture. War nullifies everything, makes it meaningless. Culture is created not because of war, but in spite of it. We realized this too late. And yet, it is more pleasant to read about even the naivest love than about a young man’s eyelids burned out as a result of a bomb explosion on the battlefield.

Yes, we’ve been dreaming about a big historical villain for a long time. As big as the biggest rainy cloud or KFC’s advertising budget. After all, only a cloud or an infinitely huge number could embody our valor. 

We dreamed of becoming heroes for so long without becoming them that we were simply tired of dreaming about it. We got fed up and locked ourselves in offices. Allowed our posture to become distorted. We began to communicate with doctors more often than with relatives. And then the villain appeared. It burst into our homes through crime scene reports, when the first bombs exploded loudly in Kyiv and Kharkiv. Then, it turned out, our problem was with ourselves, and not in the absence of an enemy.

The problem was that we believed that economic freedom was the basis of other freedoms. It’s as if human rights will automatically grow on us like an additional layer of warm clothing the moment we have money. But this did not happen. Oil prices have increased. Money appeared in Russia, but not rights. In Ukraine there were neither rights nor money. Although I damn well want to believe that life was good before the war. And this is what propaganda claims today, but this is just one of its levers.

We are used to talking about Russian propaganda, but we don’t like to talk about Ukrainian one. If Russian propaganda is aimed at making Ukrainians a target, then Ukrainian propaganda is aimed at forcing this target to voluntarily or forced-voluntarily enter the battlefield. But what should I do if I don’t want to be a target? Or a sniper. I don’t want to kill anyone at all. Why am I denied this right? Facing this choice is tantamount to exposing your chest to a bullet.

I can’t imagine how Jean-Paul Sartre wrote philosophical works while being a prisoner of war during WWII, because I see that war tends to simplify reality, and suppresses any analysis of it other than the official one. During a war, the ruling political party becomes the maximum personification of the country. To some extent, a political party becomes a country, and one of the goals of propaganda is to make you realize that a person who disagrees with a political party does not agree with the entire country, which means that such person is a traitor.

From the first day of the war, men were forbidden to leave Ukraine. Soon new restrictions were enacted. For example, a man in Ukraine cannot sell an apartment or obtain a driver’s license without notifying the military registration office. If a man voluntarily goes there, he will not return. If a man visits a hospital, the doctor is obliged to inform the military registration office about this. If you disagree, you are a traitor, so it is better to remain silent.

Employers must declare their male workers to the military registration office. Police and representatives of the military registration office catch men near the metro and at public transport stops. I have to run away. Hide. Ask girls to bring me some food. Girls are threatened only by missiles, but guys are threatened by missiles and Ukrainian police, as well as patriots and old people whose boys have already died, but you dared not to. Nah, you can’t trust anyone. Is this the great historical event that we so lacked before culture could become great again?

While democratic countries are collecting money and weapons for Ukraine, Ukraine is destroying its own democracy. Human rights are on hold. Paused! Damn. What are these rights worth if they can be paused so easily? Everyone suddenly owes their life to their homeland. But what did I do that caused me to have such a large debt? Be born there? Just this? But I didn’t choose where to be born. Does this have anything to do with racism? Gender discrimination? My state had to protect me with a private army, but in the end I myself need to defend myself from my own state. And no one can do anything. Everybody just watching. So funny. 

One human rights is to seek asylum in another country if a person is in danger in his own. But the borders are closed. To leave Ukraine, a man needs to pay about 10 thousand dollars. And as usual, we all pretend that we don’t know anything about this “exit tax”.

In order for peace to come, it is necessary to fight not only the aggressor, but also the image of war. Our cinema, our poetry and literature are completely stuffed with the idealization of military operations. War does not create heroes; it maims and kills. It is necessary to show how senseless and cruel the war is, so that a person does not even think about joining the army. 

To hell with the medals. To hell with heroism. All this is not worth human life. The current war is not about people, but about borders. The cities will be rebuilt, but the people will never be brought back to life. So, it turns out that a great historical event does not create, it kills. Those who could have become great writers or directors – turned into silent corpses with burnt eyelids.

In 2024, 500 thousand men will be mobilized in Ukraine. 500 thousand crimes against humanity will merge into the word “war” and will be justified by it. At best, they will turn into a monument, at worst, they will be forgotten. Recently I saw a video of a guy with amputated legs asking for money for prosthetics. He has given more for the state than he could afford to give.

Have you ever kissed a burn? Have you seen eyelids that, when closed, cannot completely cover the eye? Leo Tolstoy considered war a manifestation of human stupidity and selfishness. Ask a guy with burnt eyelids what he thinks about that.

Remember, if you want to kill something, make it holy. 

Put it to a frame. 

Hang it on the walls of classrooms.

Keep it this way and you’ll see how the idol turns into the personification of boredom.

What did he write about war? Don’t you remember, ha? 

One year ago, on May 18, 2023, the Leo Tolstoy station in the Kyiv metro was renamed the Square of Ukrainian Heroes.

 

This piece is a part of  a series, The Mining Boy Notes, published on Mondays and authored by Ilya Kharkow, a writer from Ukraine. For more information about Ilya, see his website. You can support his work by buying him a coffee.

Recognition of Palestine: Germany supports the right wing Israeli government’s prevention tactics

Interview with Nimrod Flaschenberg from Israelis für Frieden


10/06/2024

Recently Norway, Spain, Ireland and Slovenia recognized Palestine as a state. What do you think of the decision?

The recognition of the State of Palestine by 4 EU member states was a courageous and important decision that should lead to a wave of recognition by other Western countries. Considering Israel’s endless war of destruction in Gaza following the October 7th attack, the Palestinian issue has returned to the center of international politics. While there is a global consensus regarding the need for the establishment of a Palestinian state, in practice the Western powers are backing Israel’s rejectionist position. They are, in effect, aiding Israel in preventing a process that will lead to true Palestinian independence and statehood.

Recognition by European countries, alongside the cases promoted against Israel and Israeli officials in the ICJ and ICC, might indicate a fracture in the impunity Israel has enjoyed by rich countries. It is yet to be determined if this is indeed a watershed moment, but there is a chance for a diplomatic avalanche that will isolate Israel’s far-right government.

Recognition is not a new practice. Most countries in the world and a vast majority of the Global South already recognized a Palestinian state. The current resistance to Palestine’s full membership in the UN comes from Western powers who have an ideological as well as a geostrategic interest in upholding a firm alliance with Israel. From this global perspective, it is not surprising that countries from Europe’s “political periphery” are the ones who promoted this significant act of recognition.

⁠Israel reacted indignantly and angrily to the decision and even refused to allow Spain to open its embassy to people in Palestine. Why is the Israeli government so angry?

In recent years, and even more so since October 7th, Israeli public diplomacy, or Hasbara, has been radicalizing its messages constantly. According to Israel’s official line, every act that refers to Palestinians as equal human beings, let alone as deserving political rights, is deemed either terroristic or antisemitic, or both – even when it is based on non-violent practices such as diplomacy. The treatment of recognition is no different. Israel’s leading line states that recognition is a prize for terrorism after the October 7th attack. This reaction highlights the Israeli tunnel-vision focus on the events of October 7th as a frozen moment in time. Israeli politicians and the Israeli media constantly repeat and retell the goriest details of that awful day while generally ignoring the carnage Israel has since committed in Gaza. Therefore, Hasbara falsely positions recognition in the context of Hamas’s attack and not in that of the Palestinian catastrophe experienced since, nor as an obvious answer to 57 years of brutal military occupation and 76 years of dispossession and displacement.

But the Israeli rage does indicate a substantive risk. If recognition gains momentum, it will endanger Israel’s foreign policy strategy. If only small or medium level international actors recognize Palestine, this recognition does have political significance but not an overwhelming one. But if one of the permanent members of the security council – U.K., U.S., or France (Russia and China have already recognized) – or if Germany, the strongest country in the EU, recognizes – this will bring about significant isolation and possibly further legal action against Israel. Israel’s aggressive response to the recognition should be seen as an attempt to deter these powerful countries – all of them major Israel backers, from following the example of Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, and Norway.

⁠Germany and the USA refuse to recognize until Israel and Palestine reach a settlement. Given the Israeli government’s position, this means that it will be pushed back forever. Are both states not interested in an independent Palestine? Or how can their position be explained?

Both Germany and the U.S. are supposedly backers of the Two State Solution. But in practice, they are the two strongest backers of an Israeli government that is led by fascists and whose paramount aim is to prevent a Palestinian state. The cold facts are that Germany and the U.S. are supporting an Israeli government that commits ethnic cleansing, starvation, and war crimes with the stated objective of preventing Palestinian self-determination.

The argument promoted by Germany and the U.S. against recognition is that a peaceful resolution could only be reached through negotiations. This is true – negotiation must take place at a certain point. What is also true is that Israel has been refusing any negotiations for a decade. In the light of this, and to eventually reach Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for a peaceful settlement, powers that are genuinely in favor of Palestinian independence must set up an uncompromising political line that the Palestinian right to self-determination in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 is unnegotiable. Recognition before negotiations will not harm the chance for negotiations. It will only set minimal terms for those negotiations into which Israel will eventually be pressured.

But we also need to look at the American and German positions in a structural frame. The hypocrisy of refusing to recognize Palestine and the unconditional support for Israel is rooted in imperialist and capitalist interests. There is a solid ideological foundation for the support for Israel in both the US and Germany – the “common values” rhetoric in the U.S. and the Staasträson formulation of the German political elites. This is the center of heated conversation in both countries. But just as important are profit-seeking and geostrategic interests – be it in arms sales to Israel, in reliance on the Israeli cyber industry, in Israel’s position as a Western “aircraft carrier” for the Atlantic powers in the center of the volatile and energy-rich Middle East, or in Israel’s role in policing the region as a counterweight to Iran. For all these less-discussed reasons also – German and American leaders are tolerating Israel’s crimes.

These interests could be challenged through political action. The movement in solidarity with Palestine and against the war is making significant gains despite wide repression. Suppose this movement adds to its mainly negative demands a positive call for Palestinian statehood and recognition. In that case, there is a real possibility that one of the major powers will make the truly transformative act of recognizing.

It should be stated that out of the four powers I mentioned before—the U.S., U.K., Germany, and France—the best chances for recognition are in France and perhaps in the U.K. after Labour’s expected election victory in July. But pushing for recognition should also be incorporated into the movement in the U.S. and Germany since “a domino effect” of recognition that will transform the Security Council or the European Union, is definitely possible.

Many in the global solidarity movement with Palestine think that the demand for recognition is part of a two-state illusion. They support the solution of one democratic state. Do these demands stand in contradiction?

It is essential to distinguish between the recognition of a Palestinian state and the “two state solution,” which has almost become an empty mantra repeated by global leaders who are not promoting it. I am personally in favor of the two state solution, while other members of “Israelis for Peace” support different solutions. Yet we agree that the demand for recognition of a Palestinian state is relevant to the promotion of all peaceful solutions – two states, confederation, or one democratic state. It is, first and foremost, a question of political tactics and reachable goals in the struggle between the forces of peace and those of forever war.

The most broadly shared assertion about Israel/Palestine globally is that the Palestinians have a right to self-determination and that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is disenfranchising them of this right. It follows that this Israeli occupation is illegitimate. These shared assertions mean that the demand for Palestinian statehood is the diplomatic low-hanging fruit and the tactically unifying demand in a drive for peace.

Human rights groups describe the Israeli structures as apartheid. This system will not give Palestinians rights without a collective political struggle by the Palestinians themselves, with the diplomatic and political support of the international community. This struggle might end in different ways, but the consolidation of diplomatic power must be centered around an overwhelming agreement that Palestinians deserve a state.

The primary way to challenge and isolate the extreme-right powers in Israel is to deem unacceptable their ideological belief that only Jews have national rights in the land. We must hit them where it matters the most, in what they fear the most – and that is a Palestinian state. It is time to shift the focus from the two state solution to the imminent demand of Palestinian statehood. We’ll see what happens next.

How do the recognitions of Palestine change the balance of power?

While it is a significant step forward, we need to remember that power still resides on the side of Israel. The most obvious example is Netanyahu’s invitation to speak in front of both houses of Congress in Washington, DC. This man, a war criminal who might soon be unable to travel to Europe for fear of being arrested, is honored in the center of global power. This invitation not only reminds us where power lies but is an act of active discrediting and destruction of the entire edifice of international law – by the U.S. and Israel. 

The confrontation between Israel and international law can and should be where Germany differentiates itself from the US and says clearly – we stand with international law. The Federal Republic needs to say that the heritage of Nuremberg, as prosecutor Karim Khan described the ethical weight of the ICC, is at least as important for it as the Staatsräson, a pre-democratic concept. This discussion – on the fundamental values that Germany holds dear, on the centrality of universal rights to German post-war political ethos – is what the question of recognition can bring to the German discourse.

An extended version of this interview first appeared in German in the website Die Freiheitsliebe