Since my article in Der Spiegel on Gaza, which can be read in the following languages, German, English, Arabic, and Italian, I’ve received countless messages from upset Germans. I want to show this angry email from a professor (or more technically, a Privatdozent) which is quintessential as it ticks almost all the boxes with the problematic German position. This started off as a thread on Twitter which garnered lots of insightful responses.
From the outset, I want to clarify that I understand there is a plurality of German views, but this one by far reflects the dominant worldview of the establishment that is impacting domestic and foreign policy.
I chose this email because it comes from a German academic and historian who has published books on German literature. He plays a role of consequence in society. And no, I won’t disclose his identity not just because privacy and ethics matter to me, but because he sent it privately as an email, not through a public medium like Twitter. Also, his views are not uncommon in Germany, it’s a socio-structural problem. Rather than the individual, we need to address the bigger picture that normalizes genocide.
Let’s dissect this.
Although titles don’t bother me, he addresses me as “Mr” while he signs off as doctor. Despite him knowing I’m a doctor. The hierarchy is established from the start. He also doesn’t know if I speak German, but has assumed I don’t in order to build up his following argument.
Putting aside that “We Germans” has a ring of the Volksgemeinschaft. The irony of saying “ignorance of people who judge our country without any knowledge of our language” when Germans who don’t know Arabic, Hebrew, Persian etc will write endlessly on the Middle East.
I’m a scholar of Middle Eastern studies, and if Germany is going to send hundreds of millions of euros in military equipment to Israel, then it should not be surprising that I will treat this as a political and moral problem in my domain.
Here is a classic form of offloading German historical guilt onto the Palestinians who are stripped of political, structural, and colonial factors while marginal individual phenomenons like the Mufti of Jerusalem are centered.
The Zionist narrative is pathologically obsessed with the Mufti. Netanyahu partly blames him rather than Hitler for causing the Holocaust. Here is an article that briefly unpacks the exaggerated role of the Mufti who “when all things considered, was a rather powerless politician in exile who couldn’t even muster his own people to fight at the outset of the 1948 war.”
Never mind the Balfour Decleration and British colonialism, or that Palestinian politics comprised of liberalism, socialism, Islamism, fascism etc. The Zionist narrative likes to go for the marginal one that can justify its legitimacy, with German officialdom cheering this on.
No one is claiming “permanent Palestinian innocence”, not even Palestinians themselves. They have made mistakes like all liberation movements. Yet his subtext is that there is a permanent Zionist innocence as the categories of occupier/occupied, aggressor/victim, etc are switched.
Lots of Tu quoque (you too) fallacies, but on the point of Jews leaving or being expelled is certainly one of the darkest stains committed in the Arab world, not to mention a tragic loss for Arab countries. But history shows it was never as simple, for example, in Iraq, “Zionists bombed sites to encourage migration to Israel”
Yep, he went there. Comparing Hamas with the Nazis. A tiny bit of detail he forgets, that since October 7, most of the murdered civilians in Gaza were born after 2006 or were too young to vote in 2006.
He uses genocide only for October 7th and belittles the Bosnian genocide. He brings up the rejected claims of beheaded babies. No mention of 25,000+ murdered Palestinians. His real point being: only an anti-Semite would deny Israel’s right to carry out a genocide.
No mention if Palestinians have a right to defend themselves or if they have a right to a state. He prefers to frame the entire Palestinian people through the lens of Al-Husseini and Hamas “enemies of the Jewish people…since more than 100 years”. So much German projection here!
Here are some of the many tweet replies that stood out and added value to the discussion:
“This German completely skips over Hitler and Nazi Germany !!” – @Busybee32433175
“Just a German scholar weaponising its historical guilt against anyone critical of ISR. This is peak selective and historical revisionism. These are easily debunked. It’s concerning that it’s coming from an academic.” – @Amarmustafa_
“Who on earth uses a quantifier like ‘small’ to describe the genocide in Srebrenica? Their constant need to offload their historical guilt is patently pathological. Please read this excellent thread.” – @theafroaussie
“Is nobody going to bring up the fact that he made up voting stats to help his point? Hamas NEVER won a majority of voters in Gaza. In 2006, they won a plurality with less than 50% of votes. I’m surprised an academic could get that wrong but then again he has a narrative to push.” – @DiasporaArab
“Worth reading it; as the author rightly suggests this angry email points to a structural / ideological problem rather than to an individual opinion.” – @VolkanCidam
“To such persons we (brown/blacks) will forever be spoken down to, no matter how many qualifications and eduction we successfully complete and receive from THEIR establishments. As the issue is not ignorance but arrogance. In this narrative we are the uncivilised ‘other’ no matter what.” – @imsarakay
“Telling that Palestinians are still responsible for the views of the grand Mufti who continues to be their ‘leader’ but Germans are not still responsible for Hitler. They have offloaded this responsibility by projecting their own demons onto the Palestinians.” – @akkhan81
“Good to detail also that history did not begin on October 7, and address the structural conditions of Palestinian subjugation by Israel for 75 years,(disposition, ethnic, cleansing, military occupation, apartheid), notwithstanding the extreme suffocation of Gaza for 17 years. This does not mean that anything goes against occupying non-combatants in response, but the complete elision of context by the German doctor is criminal and telling. If not outright racist.” – @4Bassam
Author: Amro Ali Click here to download the PDF file. A shortened version of this article was translated into German for Der Speigel on 1 January 2024.
December 21, 2023, Palestinians in Rafah mourn as they wait for the bodies of their relatives killed in Israeli air strikes to be removed from al-Najjar Hospital and buried. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/dpa
There has always been a strange unspoken pact between Germany and the Arab world. The Arabs were less outraged by German support for Israel than by that of the US and UK. This was in part due to the widespread view that Germany could not do otherwise because of its historical guilt. Arab governments and their publics not only reluctantly let Germany off the hook but also bought into a set of historical perks. Germany could claim that it had never colonized Arab countries. Germany’s dark past skirted around the Arab world apart from the Axis invasion of North Africa in the Second World War which was short-lived and saw fewer war crimes that paled in comparison to the horrors that unfolded in Europe. And if you were later unhappy with West Germany, there was always East Germany (GDR). You could like the Germany of your choice.
Admiration remained the case in a reunified Germany too. The fact that Berlin opposed participation in the Iraq war in 2003 was well received. The sight of Syrian refugees being welcomed at German train stations in 2015 warmed the Arab public to Germany even more, as they saw the contrast to the mistreatment of Syrians by their own governments. From Rabat to Baghdad, Germany was seen through its Mercedes cars clogging the streets of Kuwait, through the Goethe Institute sticking out among the trees of Alexandria, or through friendly backpackers hiking in the Lebanese mountains. Berlin’s soft power trickled down to the Arab airport officer giving less scrutiny to the inbound German passport holder. German-Arab problems existed of course, but they were addressed on a country-by-country basis and often resolved. The rise of the far right, which frightened the Arab diaspora in Germany, was barely noticed in Arab countries. The diaspora, immersed in the difficult-lived realities of Germany, were at odds with their country of origin and its glamorization of Germany.
Then the horrific Hamas massacres and kidnappings took place on October 7, and Israel responded by bombing the Gaza Strip, starving its inhabitants, killing thousands of civilians, and displacing almost two million people. It quickly became clear that this war went far beyond self-defense. Germany lost every nuance with its one-sided support for Israel, trivializing the gruesome reality in Gaza and unwilling to demonstrate basic human empathy for the Palestinians. When the German Foreign Ministry is not praising Israel’s “humanitarian” measures, it refers to a catastrophic event with thousands of Palestinian children killed as “the situation in the Middle East.” As if it were nothing more than a Deutsche Bahn delay.
The murders and kidnappings carried out by Hamas on October 7 are reprehensible and unjustifiable. Compassion for the Israeli victims should not be conditional or dismissed because of the history of Palestinian suffering. At the same time, we must make it clear that talking about context is not tantamount to justification. Hamas is first and foremost a product of the occupation; its ideology is fueled by the displacement, dispossession, and violence that Palestinians have experienced daily since 1948. If Hamas is destroyed, something else will take its place as long as there is no just peace.
Hamas recruits many of its members from among orphans who have seen their parents murdered by Israel. The Palestinian Marxist militants from the Black September Organization, who carried out the terrorist massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, were orphans of previous Israeli wars. Now Israel is creating a new generation of orphans. Palestinians are dying by the thousands and the scenario of the destruction of the entire Gaza Strip with a forced mass expulsion, a second “Nakba”, is very real. Renowned experts are alarmed and are speaking of a genocide taking place. Meanwhile, German politics is concerned with discursive trigger points, censoring “Free Palestine” and making the Palestinians pay the price for Europe’s bloody past to this day by letting Israel get away with everything concerning its own historical guilt.
German politicians fell over themselves in moral gymnastics to justify a death toll that has been the deranged phenomenon of our time. Berlin turned the lives of seasoned German diplomats and professional cultural workers abroad into a neurotic hell as they were forced to navigate between the German government of the day and the justified concerns of their host countries.
Last month, Germany cut funding for an anti-trafficking program at the Center for Legal Aid for Egyptian Women because its director, Azza Soliman, opposes Israel’s war in Gaza. Soliman was awarded the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law in 2020. Hossam Bahgat, head of the Egyptian human rights organization EIPR, severed cooperation on projects with the German government because “Berlin’s position on the war raises serious doubts about the space of shared values between Germany and human rights activists, feminists and independent media in Egypt.” Across the Arab world, Germany is losing allies who previously saw themselves as part of a community of values committed to human rights.
It has long been clear the liberal order and international law often apply double standards. In the early days of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine when meeting German officials in the Bundestag saw their usual stoicism replaced with a somewhat understandable anxious behavior, it was easy to draw an analogy with occupied Palestine. But the response was nothing but silent stares, a silence that spoke volumes. The double standards were unbearable then and are more unbearable now: Berlin is in favor of sending weapons to resist an illegal occupation while providing military, economic, and moral support to an occupying power that continues to seize land illegally and murder with impunity. At best, Israel is occasionally reminded to comply with international law, but without any consequence.
Now, in the face of Western support for Israeli war crimes in Gaza, the last semblance of universality has been shattered. The autocrats have taken notes and are ready to use current events as a pretext in the future. The Western reaction to the Israeli war in Gaza is an undeserved gift for Putin, and rarely will anyone soon in the Global South listen when Western politicians insist on international law.
When it comes to the Israeli occupation, there is often an alternate reality in Germany that boggles the mind. Many Syrian refugees would correctly say that Bashar al-Assad’s bloody regime is the cause of why they left. Nothing controversial there. Yet when it is pointed out that Germany is home to Europe’s largest Palestinian refugee population, 100,000, then it should be asked: What caused them to be there if not for the direct or indirect actions of successive Israeli governments? How does that historical reality escape the conversation?
I generally felt that the Arab Spring in 2011 was a welcome change and a breath of fresh air for the German policy establishment. Cities like Tunis and Cairo were beaming with hope and gave Berlin fewer complications compared to Ramallah and Gaza City. But here is the point that many officials missed. The conflict with Israel was feeding the rise of Arab authoritarianism and securitization in the region for decades. It contributed to the destruction of fragile democratic experiments in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq in the 1950s and 1960s, and gave rise to the ruling military classes that expanded their power partly under the pretext of defending Arabs against Israeli aggression. The modern Egyptian Officer’s Republic was born in 1952 as an indirect result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that was in part triggered by the establishment of Israel and the new state’s expulsion of the indigenous Palestinians.
However, the protest movements of the Arab Spring in 2011 were also inspired by Palestinian popular uprisings, particularly the 2000 Intifada. The current pro-Palestinian protests in the Arab countries are sometimes mixed with other demands, such as an end to the corruption of their governments – which is why the Arab regimes tend not to like to see such protests. In a sense, Palestinian freedom is an antidote to Arab unfreedom. The Palestinian issue is central to Arab public opinion, and it will always shatter illusions that it can be ignored.
Anyone who sits down with German officials can have mostly productive conversations about any Arab country, from human rights to higher education, as they sip on their sparkling water. Yet, when it comes to Israel and Palestine, the moral sensors get suddenly jammed and the script becomes nauseatingly predictable. This reflects a hardening of the boundaries of the culture of remembrance, which has become static in its fixation on Israel, not necessarily the safety of Jews.
It is commendable that Germany is coming to terms with its dark history. The horrors and madness perpetrated by Nazi Germany must be remembered. The world would benefit from more remembrance culture, not less of it. However, there are important criticisms of the development of remembrance culture in Germany. The confrontation with anti-Semitism has become a kind of canonization of Israel that is “immune to historical and evidence-based arguments and blind to the experiences of Palestinians under occupation,” as Israeli historian Alon Confino puts it. This development has allowed the fight against anti-Semitism to be partly instrumentalized by the right wing. It is highly disturbing when high-ranking German politicians share a video by Piers Morgan with the British right-wing activist and journalist Douglas Murray, in which he claims that Hamas is worse than the Nazis. The trend of relativizing the Nazis to Hamas requires us to pause and ask how the discourse got to this sad point.
The editors of the left-leaning Jewish-American magazine Jewish Currents wrote: “The Germans tightly control the shape of Jewishness and Palestinian-ness within their borders… Germany’s stifling embrace of the Jewish community within its borders, with or without the participation of Jews, secures the German self-image as moral arbiter, while shifting the country’s blame to Arabs and Muslims.” Despite genuine Arab-Jewish solidarity efforts, let alone everyday Arab-Jewish intermingling in German cities, the state would prefer to turn Jews and Arabs into heroes and villains, caricatures in the German “theater of memory” – a term coined by the German-Jewish sociologist Y. Michal Bodemann in his critique of the German culture of remembrance. The Federal President’s call for Arabs and Muslims to officially distance themselves from anti-Semitism presupposes that anti-Semitism is a kind of standard attitude among Arabs and Muslims. This problem echoes what Palestinian-German legal scholar Nahed Samour notes in the open-access edited book Arab Berlin (in which I have a chapter) “The Arab turned German citizen is not granted the chance to act as a self-confident citizen but needs to manage the expectations of ‘the Arab’ facing German society.” This is also not to mention that 84 percent of anti-Semitic attacks in 2022 were by the German right.
But the global narrative is changing – and Germany is falling behind. Recently, Belgian transport workers refused to ship weapons destined for Israel that would most likely kill Palestinian civilians. Fortunately, some parties are learning the right lessons from history. The blockade of ports is just one of many actions directed against the West’s complicity in this war of extermination. Activists, students, trade unions, and ordinary citizens – Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, atheists, and anyone who cares about the survival of our shared humanity – are mobilizing to slow down Israel’s war machine. They are all amalgamating into the world’s anti-genocidal infrastructure. Will they succeed? If I were to take a long-term view, then I would adopt the words of the 19th-century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker: “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Shar is the Arabic word for evil in the Islamic faith, but it actually means insufficient or incomplete. To not live up to the responsibilities of a human being is to be less than complete. Sympathy and mercy are just some of the qualities of that responsibility, the absence of which leads to the failure of humans to act as humans. The formula should be simple: Palestinian life is just as sacred as Jewish life; Jewish life is just as sacred as Palestinian life. Believing it, articulating it, and hopefully acting upon it should not be too difficult. Anything else is moral bankruptcy and will drive us all into the abyss.
Author: Amro Ali Translator: Monika Bolliger Publisher: Der Spiegel Date: 01.01.2024 Article link (Paywall) Download PDF. (Click here for the English version)
Für die arabische Welt war Deutschland ein Vorbild. Das hat sich geändert, seit die israelische Armee im Krieg gegen die Hamas Tausende Zivilisten getötet hat – und von deutschen Politikern kaum Protest zu hören ist.
Palästinenser warten auf die Austeilung von Essen in Rafah im südlichen Gazastreifen Foto: Mohammed Talatene / dpa
Zwischen Deutschland und der arabischen Welt gab es schon immer einen seltsamen, unausgesprochenen Pakt. Die Araber empörten sich weniger über die deutsche Unterstützung für Israel als über jene der USA und Großbritanniens. Das lag auch an der verbreiteten Ansicht, dass Deutschland wegen seiner historischen Schuld gar nicht anders könne.
Arabische Regierungen und ihre Öffentlichkeiten waren Deutschland eher freundlich gesinnt. Deutschland konnte sich darauf berufen, dass es nie arabische Länder kolonisiert hatte. Deutschlands dunkle Vergangenheit ging an der arabischen Welt vorbei, mit Ausnahme der Invasion in Nordafrika im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Und wenn man mit Westdeutschland unzufrieden war, gab es immer noch die DDR. Man konnte das Deutschland seiner Wahl mögen.
Auch im wiedervereinigten Deutschland blieb das so. Man nahm wohlwollend auf, dass Berlin sich 2003 einer Beteiligung am Irakkrieg widersetzte. Der Anblick syrischer Geflüchteter, die 2015 an deutschen Bahnhöfen willkommen geheißen wurden, erwärmte die arabische Öffentlichkeit noch mehr für Deutschland, die den Kontrast zur Misshandlung von Syrern durch ihre eigenen Regierungen sah.
Mercedes, Goethe-Institut und Rucksacktouristen
Mercedes, Goethe-Institut und Rucksacktouristen Man sah Deutschland durch seine Mercedes-Autos, die die Straßen von Kuwait verstopfen, durch das Goethe-Institut, das zwischen den Bäumen von Alexandria hervorragt, oder durch freundliche Rucksacktouristen, die im Libanongebirge wandern gehen. Der Aufstieg der extremen Rechten in Deutschland wurde im arabischen Ausland kaum wahrgenommen.
Dann geschahen die entsetzlichen Massaker und Entführungen der Hamas am . Oktober, und Israel begann als Reaktion darauf, den Gazastreifen mit Flächenbombardements zu überziehen, ließ die Bewohner hungern, tötete Tausende von Zivilisten und vertrieb fast zwei Millionen Menschen aus ihren Häusern. Es wurde schnell klar, dass dieser Krieg weit über Selbstverteidigung hinausgeht. Aber Deutschland verlor jede Nuance mit seiner einseitigen Unterstützung Israels, was im krassen Widerspruch zur Realität und zur grundlegenden menschlichen Empathie steht.
Wenn das deutsche Außenministerium nicht gerade die »humanitären« Maßnahmen Israels lobt, bezeichnet es diesen katastrophalen Krieg mit Tausenden getöteten Kindern als »die Lage im Nahen Osten«. Als ob es sich um nichts Weiteres als eine Verspätung der Deutschen Bahn handelt.
Die Morde und Entführungen, die die Hamas am . Oktober verübt hat, sind widerwärtig und nicht zu rechtfertigen. Das Mitgefühl mit den israelischen Opfern sollte nicht an Bedingungen geknüpft oder aufgrund der Geschichte des palästinensischen Leidens abgetan werden.
Gleichzeitig müssen wir klarstellen, dass ein Gespräch über den Kontext nicht gleichbedeutend mit einer Rechtfertigung ist. Die Hamas ist in erster Linie ein Produkt der Besatzung, ihre Ideologie wird durch Vertreibung, Enteignung und Gewalt genährt, die die Palästinenser seit 1948 täglich erleben. Wenn man die Hamas vernichtet, wird etwas anderes an ihre Stelle treten, solange es keinen gerechten Frieden gibt.
Die Hamas rekrutiert viele Mitglieder unter Waisenkindern, die mit ansehen mussten, wie ihre Eltern von Israel getötet wurden. Die palästinensischen Terroristen der Organisation »Schwarzer September«, die ! das Massaker an israelischen Sportlern bei den Olympischen Spielen in München verübten, waren Waisen früherer israelischer Kriege. Jetzt schafft Israel eine neue Generation von Waisenkindern.
Das Szenario einer zweiten »Nakba« ist real
Die Palästinenser sterben zu Tausenden, und das Szenario der Zerstörung des gesamten Gazastreifens mit einer erzwungenen Massenvertreibung, einer zweiten »Nakba «, ist sehr real. Namhafte Experten sind alarmiert, manche sprechen von einem Völkermord. Währenddessen kümmert sich die deutsche Politik um diskursive Triggerpunkte, zensiert »Free Palestine« und lässt die Palästinenser bis heute den Preis für Europas blutige Vergangenheit zahlen, indem sie Israel mit Verweis auf die eigene historische Schuld alles durchgehen lässt.
In diesem Monat hat Deutschland die Mittel für ein Programm zur Bekämpfung des Menschenhandels beim Zentrum für Rechtshilfe für ägyptische Frauen gestrichen, weil die Leiterin Azza Soliman Israels Krieg im Gazastreifen ablehnt. Soliman war mit dem Deutsch-Französischen Preis für Menschenrechte und Rechtsstaatlichkeit ausgezeichnet worden. Hossam Bahgat, Leiter der ägyptischen Menschenrechtsorganisation EIPR, will die Zusammenarbeit bei Projekten mit der deutschen Regierung beenden, weil »Berlins Position bezüglich des Krieges große Zweifel an dem Raum gemeinsamer Werte zwischen Deutschland und Menschenrechtsaktivisten, Feministinnen und unabhängigen Medien in Ägypten aufkommen lässt«. In der ganzen arabischen Welt verliert Deutschland gerade Verbündete, die sich bisher als Teil einer Wertegemeinschaft verstanden, die den Menschenrechten verpflichtet ist.
Es war schon lange klar, dass die liberale Ordnung und das Völkerrecht oft mit zweierlei Maß messen. In den ersten Tagen von Putins Einmarsch in die Ukraine war es ein Leichtes, eine Analogie zum besetzten Palästina herzustellen. Aber man erntete darauf nur schweigende Blicke, ein Schweigen, das Bände sprach.
Eine alternative Realität in Deutschland
Die Doppelmoral ist unerträglich: In einem Fall befürwortet man die Entsendung von Waffen für den Widerstand gegen eine illegale Besatzung, während man im anderen Fall eine Besatzungsmacht, die fortlaufend illegal palästinensisches Land an sich reißt, militärisch, wirtschaftlich und moralisch unterstützt. Bestenfalls erinnert man Israel ab und zu, aber ohne jede Konsequenz, an die Einhaltung des Völkerrechts. Wenn es um die israelische Besatzung geht, gilt in Deutschland oft eine alternative Realität, die einem den Verstand raubt.
Jetzt ist angesichts der westlichen Unterstützung für offenkundige israelische Kriegsverbrechen im Gazastreifen der letzte Anschein von Universalität zerbrochen. Die Autokraten haben sich Notizen gemacht und sind bereit, die aktuellen Ereignisse künftig als Vorwand zu nutzen. Die westliche Reaktion auf den israelischen Krieg im Gazastreifen ist ein unverdientes Geschenk für den russischen Machthaber Wladimir Putin, auch im Globalen Süden wird so bald niemand mehr hinhören, wenn westliche Politiker auf das Völkerrecht pochen.
Ich hatte den Eindruck, dass der Arabische Frühling 2011 eine willkommene Abwechslung für das deutsche politische Establishment war. Städte wie Tunis und Kairo strahlten Hoffnung aus und bereiteten Berlin weniger Komplikationen als Ramallah und Gaza-Stadt. Aber hier ist ein Punkt, den viele Regierungsvertreter übersehen: Der Konflikt mit Israel förderte den Aufstieg des arabischen Autoritarismus und die wachsenden Sicherheitsapparate der Region.
Er trug in den späten 1940er- und 1950er-Jahren zur Zerstörung der zerbrechlichen demokratischen Experimente in Ägypten, Syrien oder dem Irak bei, und brachte die herrschenden Militärklassen hervor, die ihre Macht unter dem Vorwand der Verteidigung der Araber gegen die israelische Aggression ausbauten. Die ägyptische Offiziersrepublik entstand ! als indirekte Folge des arabisch-israelischen Krieges von 1948.
Umgekehrt waren die Protestbewegungen des Arabischen Frühlings auch inspiriert von palästinensischen Volksaufständen. Die aktuellen propalästinensischen Proteste in den arabischen Ländern vermischen sich manchmal auch mit anderen Forderungen, wie einem Ende der Korruption der eigenen Regime – weshalb die arabischen Regimes solche Proteste nicht gern sehen. In gewissem Sinne ist die palästinensische Freiheit ein Gegenmittel gegen arabische Unfreiheit. Die palästinensische Frage ist für die arabische Öffentlichkeit zentral, und sie wird immer wieder die Illusionen zerstören, dass man sie ignorieren könnte.
Mehr Erinnerungskultur, nicht weniger
Wer sich mit deutschen Politikern zusammensetzt, kann produktive Gespräche über jedes beliebige arabische Land führen, von Menschenrechten bis zur Hochschulbildung. Wenn es jedoch um Israel und Palästina geht, sind die moralischen Sensoren plötzlich blockiert. Das spiegelt eine Verhärtung der Grenzen der Erinnerungskultur wider, die in ihrer Fixierung auf Israel, nicht unbedingt auf die Sicherheit der Juden, statisch geworden ist.
Es ist lobenswert, dass Deutschland sich mit seiner dunklen Vergangenheit auseinandersetzt. Die Schrecken und der Wahnsinn, die von Nazideutschland verübt wurden, müssen in Erinnerung bleiben. Der Welt würde mehr Erinnerungskultur guttun, nicht weniger davon.
Es gibt jedoch wichtige Kritik an der Entwicklung der Erinnerungskultur in Deutschland. Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Antisemitismus ist zu einer Art Heiligsprechung Israels geworden, die »immun gegen historische und evidenzbasierte Argumente und blind für die Erfahrungen der Palästinenser unter der Besatzung« ist, wie es der israelische Historiker Alon Confino formuliert. Diese Entwicklung hat es ermöglicht, dass der Kampf gegen Antisemitismus teilweise vom rechten Flügel instrumentalisiert wurde.
Es ist höchst beunruhigend, wenn deutsche Politiker ein Interview des britischen Journalisten Piers Morgan mit dem britischen Rechtsaktivisten und Journalisten Douglas Murray teilen, in dem dieser behauptet, die Hamas sei schlimmer als die Nazis. Der Trend zur Relativierung der Nazis gegenüber der Hamas erfordert ein Innehalten und die Frage, wie der Diskurs an diesen traurigen Punkt gelangt ist.
Deutschland als moralischer Schiedsrichter
Die Redaktion des linken jüdisch-amerikanischen Magazins »Jewish Currents« schrieb : »Die Deutschen kontrollieren streng die Form des Jüdischseins und des Palästinensischseins innerhalb ihrer Grenzen… Deutschlands erdrückende Umarmung der jüdischen Gemeinschaft innerhalb seiner Grenzen, mit oder ohne Beteiligung von Juden, sichert das deutsche Selbstbild als moralischer Schiedsrichter, während die Schuld des Landes auf Araber und Muslime abgewälzt wird.«
Es ist, als ob Juden und Araber zu Helden und Bösewichten gemacht werden, zu Karikaturen im deutschen »Gedächtnistheater« – ein Begriff, den der deutsch-jüdische Soziologe Y. Michal Bodemann in seiner Kritik der deutschen Erinnerungskultur geprägt hat. Das untergräbt die jüdischarabische Solidarität – etwa, wenn die Polizei in Berlin jüdische Demonstranten verhaftet, weil sie gegen den Krieg im Gazastreifen protestieren. Der Raum für solche jüdischen Stimmen ist sehr eng.
Die Aufforderung des Bundespräsidenten an Araber und Muslime, sich offiziell von Antisemitismus zu distanzieren, setzt voraus, dass Antisemitismus bei Arabern und Muslimen eine Art Standardeinstellung ist. Ungeachtet der Tatsache, dass 84 Prozent der antisemitischen Angriffe im vergangenen Jahr von der deutschen Rechten verübt wurden.
Doch das globale Narrativ verändert sich – und lässt Deutschland ins Hintertreffen geraten. Kürzlich weigerten sich belgische Transportarbeiter, für Israel bestimmte Waffen zu verfrachten, mit denen höchstwahrscheinlich palästinensische Zivilisten getötet würden. Glücklicherweise ziehen einige Parteien die richtigen Lehren aus der Geschichte. Die Blockade von Häfen ist nur eine von vielen Aktionen, die sich gegen die Komplizenschaft des Westens in diesem Krieg richten.
Protest gegen Israels Krieg
Aktivisten, Studenten, Gewerkschaften und ganz normale Bürger – Juden, Araber, Muslime, Christen, Atheisten und im Grunde jeder, dem das Überleben der Menschheit am Herzen liegt – mobilisieren für Protestaktivitäten, um Israels Kriegsmaschinerie zu bremsen. Werden sie Erfolg haben? Wenn ich eine langfristige Sichtweise einnehmen sollte, dann würde ich es mit den Worten des unitarischen Pfarrers Theodore Parker aus dem !. Jahrhundert tun: »Der moralische Bogen des Universums ist lang, aber er neigt sich zur Gerechtigkeit.«
»Shar« ist das arabische Wort für das Böse im islamischen Glauben, aber eigentlich bedeutet es »unzureichend, unvollständig«. Der vollen Verantwortung eines Menschen nicht gerecht zu werden, bedeutet, weniger als vollständig zu sein. Mitgefühl und Barmherzigkeit sind solche verantwortungsvollen Eigenschaften, deren Fehlen das Versagen der Menschen widerspiegeln, als Menschen zu handeln. Die Formel sollte einfach sein: Palästinensisches Leben ist genauso heilig wie jüdisches Leben, jüdisches Leben ist genauso heilig wie palästinensisches Leben. Daran zu glauben, es auszusprechen und danach zu handeln, sollte nicht allzu schwer sein.
The Palestinian question has become the storm at the World Cup in Doha, the most-watched event in the world, with the Palestinian flag emerging as the dominant icon. The repeated raising of the Palestinian flag following every win by the Moroccan team has become a sort of ritual. Supporters and critics have not failed to take notice.
Many will say but this is just a football tournament, how will it help Palestine? This would be true if symbols and signals had no value in our world. The morale boost it provides to the Palestinians is electrifying. That a country at the far corner of the Arab world can be the closest to the Palestinian people, sending out love and support.
But it also points to something bigger. Doha’s World Cup hosting has become a political laboratory in many respects. With the absence of the usual Arab regime choreography, Doha provided an unfiltered and unmediated space in which the Arab realities toward the Palestinian struggle were exhibited in full force. The repeated pro-Palestine chants by Arab fans, their refusal to do interviews with Israeli reporters on the ground, and the Moroccan team flying the Palestinian flag highlights the severe distortion of the normalization process and the stark contrast between Arab regimes and Arab publics.
In recent years, Arab regimes would state or give the impression that the Arab world was sick of the Palestinian cause and would not stand against peace with Israel on that basis (not that the public ever has a choice), despite poll after poll across the Arab world showing that most people were against mending relations with Israel if it were not conditional upon ending the brutal Israeli occupation of the Palestinians. But polls can only tell us so much, in contrast to the live coverage of the coming together of that large demographic from across the MENA region descending onto a small space within a fixed time frame that ignited a loud unanticipated noise and coherent narrative. Those voices said that Palestine would not be thrown under the bus.
What Doha did was provide an unfiltered and unmediated space in which the Arab support of the Palestinian struggle was visually and viscerally exhibited. This World Cup has become a referendum on the normalization facade. The planet’s largest televised event has thrust Palestine dramatically into the spotlight. It seems no regime or public was prepared for that.
Do you remember him? That boy? do you remember the video? That date of 30 September 2000 when if you didn’t cry for the Palestinians before, you learned to cry then.
Muhammad Al-Durrah? The 12-year-old Palestinian boy shot dead in his father’s arms and over his lap by Israeli gunfire in Gaza? The boy that became an icon for the Intifada, the boy who made the world slowly realise that maybe there were no “two sides”, that there was an occupier and an occupied.
I will not take up space repeating what happened nor the contested claims of who killed him. That has already been done, nor will I entertain Israel’s obfuscation of the issue.
At a time when the world still desperately grasped onto the mesmerising millennium hangover and its promise of a new dawn, this tragedy snapped us back to deal with a disturbing omen.
We praised the cameraman from the France 2 network at a time when cameras couldn’t stretch themselves wide enough to capture the ruining of Palestine. We hoped the camera would from now on hold the oppressor to account. But we were deceived.
We now got our wish of having crimes filmed, but it left out the desired response of accountability and accompanying moral questions. Every fortnight in this age, the camera captures a Palestinian killed by an Israeli soldier, but such videos will not get international condemnation, but it will get a retweet, subtweet if someone really cares. This is not including the invisible Palestinians who die daily and away from the camera’s lens.
Al-Durrah was killed at a time when the Israeli government could at least partake in a charade that it gave a damn for the innocent killed and would address the matter. A time when traces of a moral crisis could be seen in then Prime Minister’s Ehud Barak’s words. When the IDF could actually apologise, even if they would later retract it. We knew the Israeli state was lying, but they had to make an effort to lie, they had to make an effort to explain to the west why they were still part of the west, they had to explain why torture was legitimate. Now the world accepts this as normal, and therefore no need for further explanations from Israel. It’s raw unadulterated brutality.
In fact, Israel can even deny the reality when its officialdom came out in 2013 and proclaimed the whole tragedy was “staged.”
The Palestinian death toll since 2000 has reached 9511 as of 26 September 2017, out of that figure, 2167 have been children. That is, 2167 Al-Durrahs who will not be remembered because pie charts and bar graphs do not sing nor weep to the human heart.
The hyper-wired world has driven societies toward outrage fatigue, and Palestinians pay the price. Again.
But we continue to raise our voices and hope for the tone-deaf cries to cave into, and be subsumed by, a resurgent and dynamic voice of justice that reanimates the moral landscape. Because the current state of indifference can only mean the self-inflicted shattering of our souls.
