Germany has stood out during the genocide of Palestinians as one of Israel’s main allies, both through its words and its actions. In its erratic supposed fight against antisemitism, in a flight forward from its genocidal Nazi past, the German state and part of German society have accepted the oppression and extermination of the Palestinian and now Lebanese people as collateral damage.
To justify Israel’s existence after World War II, Germany seems to not know or not want to know anything about the history and present of the region, especially Palestine. It does not even know how many people of Palestinian origin it has living within its borders, whether there are 10,000 or 80,000. For, true to the principles of a land without people for people without land, Palestinian migrants have, for decades, been considered legally stateless. And by not wanting to know, they do not seem to want to know about the genocide in Gaza, which politicians, journalists and too many people in the street are still denying that it is happening. Nor do they want to know about the occupation in the West Bank, which they constantly whitewashing, nor about the psychopathic escalation of violence against Lebanon, which they celebrate and legitimate comfortably from their sofas.
For all the wars and terrorist attacks carried out by the Zionist state since its founding are reframed in Germany as necessary acts of self-defence. Palestine, its occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, countless war crimes and crimes against humanity, and now textbook genocide is an inconvenient reality for Germany, which has made the colonialist state of Israel its raison d’état. In its staunch defence of Israel in the international arena, Germany has for decades been one of Israel’s main arms exporters and one of its main diplomatic allies in the European Union and the UN.
In theory, guided by a well-deserved sense of guilt, Germany has linked its existence to that of Israel. But to external eyes this looks more like a desperate attempt to turn the page, from being the state that exterminates Jews to the state that most defends them. Come what may. What before 7 October meant turning a blind eye to crimes against humanity, now means closing one’s eyes, covering one’s ears and shutting the mouth of anyone who speaks out, all in the name of fighting antisemitism.
Domestically, they misinformed and manipulated history, creating a distorted image of Arabs in general, and the Palestinian, Lebanese and Iranian peoples in particular, as the new super antisemites, who are striving to massacre the Jewish people and do away with what Hitler could not. To that end, Palestinian and anti-Zionist voices were often purged from Germany’s media and educational institutions if they step outside the pre-established discourse, which sees Israel as the eternal victim and never the perpetrator. At the institutional level, for example, the German parliament in 2019 passed a non-binding resolution against the BDS movement with the CDU, SPD FDP and a large part of the Greens voting in favour for alleged antisemitism. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations and events, including last year’s commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, were also often banned because of potential antisemitic incidents.
By repeating, in the most classic Nazi propaganda style, that Arabs, and more specifically Palestinians, and their cause are nothing more than ‘Jew haters’, the idea is being established in the population that the current antisemitism in Germany is brought by migrants, that it is imported antisemitism. This, on one hand, justifies the growing tsunami of xenophobia and Islamophobia, and, on the other hand, hides the dangerous, rising antisemitism and Holocaust denial of the German right wing.
The whole picture has been exacerbated since 7 October. Germany, which has been Israel’s second largest arms supplier since 2003, increased its arms exports tenfold in the following months. According to estimates by the Forensis and the Stockholm International Peace Studies Institute, after 7 October, 99% of the weapons Israel received came from the US and Germany, with 30% of these coming from Germany. Amongst the weapons sent by Germany are anti-tank bazookas, ammunition and tanks.
It has also multiplied its diplomatic support, being one of the few countries to have voted either against or abstained in all UN ceasefire votes. In the recent UN General Assembly vote to oblige Israel to comply with international law and end its occupation policy in Palestine within a year, Germany, of course, abstained. Not only that, but one of its representatives, when questioned at a press conference afterwards, lied, saying that the occupation and Israel’s withdrawal must be agreed. When corrected by the journalist, the spokesman said something we have been hearing for the past year: ‘it is complicated’.
Germany, moreover, is the only country to have joined Israel in its defence in the genocide trial brought by South Africa at the Court of Justice in The Hague. While South Africa has been backed by more than a dozen countries, mainly from the global South. It also tried to prevent the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant from being issued by sending its objections to the court. This has at least delayed the issuing of the warrants.
Germany was one of the first to cease its UNWRA funding in the Gaza Strip following Israel’s false accusations about its workers the day after the Hague Court of Justice ordered Israel to do everything possible to allow humanitarian aid into the area as part of genocide prevention. When these accusations were proven to be fabricated, and after weeks of the world’s NGOs and the UN itself warning of famine, it was one of the last countries to restore it, without a word of apology for having accused Palestinian workers of being terrorists without evidence. These accusations that continue to resurface every time Israel bombs a UNWRA school again.
Domestically, German politicians from all parties in the coalition government – the Greens, SPD and Liberals, as well as the main opposition CDU and the ultra-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) – express unwavering support for Israel, defending and justifying its actions. They call for and participate in demonstrations and events in support of Israel, while ignoring or banning pro-Palestinian ones.
There is also support for Israel on the German left. Several representatives of Die Linke have not only posed with the Zionist flag but have worn T-shirts of the genocidal Israeli army and waved its flag in their social networks, rallies and events. For example, during the campaign for the last European elections in the city of Halle, Die Linke, not only waved the flag of Israel, but also the flag of the criminal army on its information stand. One of its representatives together with a group of ‘leftists’ and with the help of the police blocked a legal demonstration in support of Palestine organised by students. This was only two weeks after an advisor of this party in the same city had to leave her post for participating in a demonstration calling for an end to the genocide. These incidents have not been condemned by her party leadership, which in 2011 was the first party in the German parliament to label the BDS movement as ‘antisemitic’ with stances “similar to those of National Socialism”.
It is shocking, to say the least, that at this stage of the genocide, after months of watching on our screens the burnt, dismembered, pulverised, rotten, eaten by animals, starved, tortured, flattened with steamrollers and decapitated bodies of men, women and children, that only 5 parties, and rather small ones, out of the 18 that were running in the European elections, called for a ceasefire and a halt to the sending of arms to Israel, and only 3 mentioned Gaza in their programmes and called for the recognition of the State of Palestine. This wilful blindness to international developments did not seem to detract votes from the pro-genocide parties, while pan-European parties such as Mera 25, which did have Gaza on its programme, did not get enough votes in Germany to send a representative to Brussels.
In recent weeks, Israel has intensified its attacks on the civilian population in Gaza, which is already on the edge of the abyss. It has also escalated its occupation and extermination in the West Bank, and now it pursues its expansive colonisation dream in Lebanon. German politicians and their subservient allied press are working hard to justify and even celebrate these attacks in the name of Israel’s alleged right to self-defence. German social media has been filled not only with articles admiring Israel’s prowess in its terrorist attack with beepers and walkie talkies, but with disgusting memes and jokes shared by politicians of almost all parties and journalists from the mainstream media.
With the ultra-right on a meteoric rise in recent state election campaigns, German politicians have decided to take the easy way out and instead of seeking real solutions to social problems, they are criminalising foreigners, especially Arabs, and becoming more openly racist by the day. Talk of remigration and border closures that used to come from Alternative for Germany has now been turned into reality by the supposedly moderate government coalition.
The dehumanisation and criminalisation of Arabs, both those living in Germany and those living in Middle Eastern countries, has been carried out with a level of propaganda of which Goebbels himself would be proud. In recent weeks ‘moderate’ politicians have made speeches calling Islam poison, blaming the state of health and education on an excess of migrants, and public institutions presented a Nazi propaganda-style video warning of the danger of Islamic radicalisation. They are clearly manufacturing consent, not only for the even more racist migration policies to come, but also for the expansion of the occupation and genocide that Israel obviously has in mind.
To this effect, German politicians and media serve as a mouthpiece for any and all of Israel’s lies. The Greens’ foreign minister Baerbock, at an event marking the 75th anniversary of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany, claimed that she had seen with her own eyes a video of the rape of a woman on 7 October. The video is not even in possession of Israeli government sources or the UN task force that investigated such claims. Baerbock also claimed that Germany was no longer sending weapons and that those it had sent were for training purposes. Weeks later, Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared that they have not yet reached a decision to stop sending weapons, but right after added that “we have and we will”. They seem to be weeks away from creating their very own Ministry of Truth.
These claims they make about sending arms and what kind of weaponry will have to be proven true or not in the numerous lawsuits filed by Palestinian/German citizens in the country against various politicians and in the case filed by Nicaragua against Germany in the International Court of Justice at the Hague for complicity in genocide. Let us hope that some German leader also sits in the International Criminal Court at the Hague alongside their great ally, Netanyahu. Inshallah.
The press, both public and private, has played a major role in whitewashing Israel’s war crimes, as well as Germany’s role in them. All massacres and other war crimes are covered by public television in a criminally partisan manner. One example, out of hundreds, is the way that Tagesschau, a public daily news program, reports about one of the many massacres at a UNWRA school back in June:
“According to the Israeli army, numerous Hamas terrorists have been killed in an attack on a school in the Gaza Strip. UNRWA reports at least 35 dead. According to hospital reports, most of the dead are women and children. The Israeli army attacked a school building in the Gaza Strip where, according to the army, 20 to 30 members of the militant Islamist terrorist group Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) had been sheltering and using the school for their activities. The members of the terrorist groups had been in three separate classrooms at the school, located in the refugee neighbourhood of Nuseirat. Initial findings indicated that many of them had been killed in the attack, said military spokesman Peter Lerner – including terrorists who had been involved in attacks against Israel on 7 October. UNRWA: At least 35 fatalities The school is run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The death toll varies. The Hamas-controlled health authority stated that at least 30 people were killed in the attack. Hamas spoke of 40 fatalities. The Al-Aksa Martyrs’ Hospital in the city of Deir el-Balah said at least 37 people were killed, and an UNRWA spokeswoman told Reuters that there had been between 35 and 45 fatalities, but that the exact figure had not been confirmed. Hospital circles in the Gaza Strip also said most of the victims were women, children and young people. Another 50 people were injured. According to Palestinian sources, displaced persons had also sought refuge in the bombed building. Israel: No reports of possible civilian casualties: The Israeli military announced that the school had been observed in recent days. ‘The attack was postponed twice to avoid civilian casualties’, military spokesman Lerner said. The IDPs [internally displaced persons] were not in the targeted area, and the army was not aware of any possible civilian casualties as a result of the attack at this stage, he said. The conflicting statements of the warring parties cannot be independently verified. According to the Israeli military, this is the fifth known case within a month in which Hamas and PIJ terrorists have misused UNRWA facilities for their own purposes. ‘They use these facilities because they feel relatively safe,’ Lerner said. ‘This is extremely worrying for us.’ However, this does not stop the military from taking action against Hamas and PIJ.’”
This example defines the press of the last year: it’s all the fault of Hamas or Hezbollah, we can’t trust the death toll because it’s given by terrorists. People die, bombs fall, beepers explode, ignoring who is shooting or throwing bombs. They talk about the ‘people of Gaza’ avoiding naming Palestine, using the most neutral language, very different from the emotional and personal language they use when talking about the 7th of October. What Israel and its army say is always repeated, even if it is clearly propaganda. And always every day they have to mention the 7 October massacre and how many people were killed and kidnapped on that day. While they try to mention as little as possible the dead and wounded on the Palestinian and now Lebanese side. When the victims killed by the Zionist army are mentioned, only those of that day are mentioned, avoiding the cumulative death toll, and the mantra of the Hamas / Hizbollah-controlled health ministry is repeated, always casting doubt on the figures. Some public representatives and media repeat that there is no famine in Gaza and the dehumanising ‘conspiracy theory’ that what we see is a fabrication, that it is more like a movie produced by ‘Paliwood’, and that Hamas is responsible for the dead, both by action and inaction.
The press also demonises the entire pro-Palestinian movement both inside and outside Germany as violent antisemites who hate Israel almost because it is fashionable to do so. And the most prominent and visible activists of the movement are often singled out by name. This, in turn, feeds back to the police and politicians who, citing these reports, ban and/or break up demonstrations and events in an increasingly violent manner, which again became the front page of newspapers in this xenophobic and dangerous vicious circle.
The cancellations of events, films, books, people, and lectures are so many that an archive of silence has been created in which there are now hundreds of entries of the people cancelled. Among them are Ghayath Almadhoun, Nancy Fraser, Masha Gessen, Dr. Gassan Abu Sitta, Yanis Varoufakis and Hebh Jamal, to name but a few. Of those not invited in the first place because of their position or directly because of their Palestinian origin, there will never be a record. Although we know, for example, that Naomi Klein has not yet come to present her new book, if you have read it you know why.
It is noteworthy that this repression and censorship in the name of fighting antisemitism is being bizarrely ruthless with Jewish voices. Those who do not fit into most Germans’ imaginary of what it means to be Jewish and Jewishness. Images of the arrests of anti-Zionist Jewish people in Germany are going around the world. It is estimated that one third of the total number of people cancelled in this country are anti-Zionist Jews, the Jewish population in Germany being only 3% of the total. A large proportion of these cancellations have been at universities or activities organised and/or subsidised with public money, which points to a serious problem of deep-seated antisemitism in the German state and institutions. In November 2023, offering a room to Jewish Voice for Peace in the Middle East cost the cultural association Ouyun its funding. Shortly afterwards, Berlin police interrupted and tried to break up an event organised by Jewish women entitled “We have to talk” for using the word genocide. All of this demolishes the absurd idea that antisemitism in the birthplace of Nazism is imported from abroad.
The repression had international repercussions when, after months of trying to prevent it from happening, even going as far as freezing Jüdische Stimme’s bank account, and branding it as a gathering of the world’s Jew-haters, the police forcibly cancelled the Palestine Congress in Berlin after the first and only speech, that of Hebh Jamal, in case anything antisemitic was said. The congress was, however, co-organised by German, Jewish and Palestinian activists.
But these German Zionists are up against a resistant Palestinian solidarity movement that, despite state violence, continues to demonstrate and take to the streets, while gaining more and more public and self-managed spaces. With activists bravely standing up to the political shows that are the trials currently taking place, rather than acting with the prosecution.
There is also a shift in German public opinion, which is beginning to see the situation in Israel a little more clearly, not as the poor state of their grandparents’ victims, but as a state in the hands of out-of-control terrorist fascists, who will drag anyone who supports them into an endless and dangerous war. Perhaps the threat of all-out war will bring this silent majority out onto the streets.
