RESPONSIBILITIES AND SCAPEGOATS

Raymond Deane

Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. In the elections on 5 March, the Nazis and their allies the DNVP (Deutschnationale Volkspartei) won a majority (a fact that should deter us from simplistically equating democracy with the holding of elections). The projected ‘Thousand-year Reich’ was in full swing, leading to world war, the near-destruction of Europe, and the attempted extermination of the Jews.

In an era obsessed with such dates, the 70^th anniversary of Hitler’s Machtergreifung seems to have passed rather quietly. Modern Germany, it is generally agreed, has passed the test of democratisation with flying colours, and is in most respects at ease with itself and with the rest of the world.

In most respects, but not all. For Germany is still ill-at-ease with its record of murderous anti-Semitism. This, surely, is as it should be: relaxation on this score might well be the first step towards a repetition of one of history’s blackest events. Nevertheless, I believe that in their Vergangenheitsbewältigung (‘coming-to-terms-with-the-past’) Germans have merely shifted the burden of history from their own shoulders on to those of another Semitic people: the Palestinian Arabs.

In an interview with Jim Lehrer (Newshour, 30 April, 2002), German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said: ‘We have a very tragic history… our responsibility as a country for what Hitler did…, the genocide against the Europeans Jews, we never will forget that…[T]his is part of our identity as a democracy. And therefore we have a special responsibility and relationship with Israel.’

This responsibility, apparently, includes misinforming the Israeli prime minister about European demonstrations against Israel’s crimes: ‘Prime Minister Sharon asked me why there are demonstrations in Europe. And so I said, Prime Minister, look to the press photos. You will see that these are mostly members of our Muslim minority…’ The truth, of course, is that these demonstrations feature people from all ethnic groups and all walks of life.

Furthermore, Fischer’s ‘responsibilities’ clearly require him also to misinform his own people: ‘we have to explain that it was not Israel who has broken down the peace process in Camp David. It was not Israel who has started the second Intifada… There is no political reason [for Palestinian terrorism or resistance], so we tried to explain it to our people.’ This level of mendacity is mind-boggling even for an EU foreign minister, but is apparently acceptable if it gives Germans the illusion that their healthy relationship with Israel goes some way to compensating for past atrocities.

Just two weeks before Mr Fischer’s interview in Washington, Germany was among five nations that voted against a resolution before the UN Commission on Human Rights, calling on Israel to respect human rights in the Occupied Territories. The other dissidents were Canada, the Czech Republic, the UK, and Guatemala – the latter, no doubt, grateful for Israel’s assistance in training its death squads. The German delegate Walter Lewalter explained that ‘Germany was…unable to support the resolution since it… was unbalanced and contained no section on the human rights record of the Palestinian Authority.’ The concept of ‘balance’ embodied in this statement is a familiar one, ignoring as it does Israel’s status as illegal occupier (since 1967) and thus ‘balancing’ victimiser with victim. It should be remembered that this vote came in the wake of Israel’s massive re-occupation of the West Bank, with its systematic destruction of Palestinian life and property culminating in the horrific massacre at the Jenin refugee camp.

A year later, the charade repeated itself. A resolution condemning violations by the Israeli occupation authorities of human rights in the Occupied Territories was passed by 33 votes to 5. This time the entire EU abstained (a shameful fact in itself) except for Germany which, together with the USA, Canada, Australia and Peru, voted against. The US delegate Michael Southwick said ‘the resolution failed to reflect the reality of Palestinian suicide bombers and terrorism against innocent Israeli men, women and children.’ The suggestion that a UN resolution should equate of the crimes of a purportedly democratic government with those of terrorists who are as opposed to the Palestinian Authority as they are to the state of Israel is surely inconsistent with any known norms of international legality.

The death last June, possibly by suicide, of neo-liberal politician Jürgen Möllemann raises the question of free speech in Germany. During an election campaign in April 2002, Möllemann outraged many of his compatriots and inspired accusations of anti-Semitism when he accused Ariel Sharon of ‘trampling on international law’ through Israel’s brutal military tactics in the West Bank. In a response, Michel Friedman – at the time, deputy head of the German umbrella organisation for Jewish communities, and president of the World Jewish Congress in Europe – stated that Möllemann’s criticism ‘would have been legitimate in any democratic society had he also protested against Palestinian terror.’ Once again, condemnation of the illegal occupation must be ‘balanced’ by condemnation of the response that it provokes. But Friedman (subsequently disgraced on drugs charges) went further: ‘…the debate had become a milestone in German politics… We, as heads of the Jewish community, were firm about fighting Möllemann and all he represents… We were aware of the undisputed fact that one-fourth of all Germans are tainted to this day with anti-Semitism…’ [my emphasis]. Here the equation between critique of Israeli crimes and anti-Semitism is explicit, as is the sleight-of-hand which conjures it up (See The rise, fall and rise of Jurgen Molleman by Judith Winkler, Ha’aretz, June 21 2003).

The fact that, perhaps for the first time in an undoubtedly rather inglorious political career, Möllemann had been telling the truth was irrelevant: what mattered was that Germans were not allowed to criticise Israeli politicians, even when the latter were guilty of the most heinous crimes. That there are apparently no taboos against demonising Palestinians worries nobody: the important thing is to appease the collective German conscience, which is exclusively exercised by the Holocaust.

This is, I repeat, perfectly understandable, and would be a purely internal matter were it not for the fact that Germany acts consistently as an stumbling-block to the formulation of a principled EU policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict that would balance the USA’s shameless backing for Israel. Germany was foremost in ensuring that the European Parliament vote to suspend the Euro-Mediterranean Association Agreement with Israel remained a dead letter, and indeed is never even raised as a threat to induce Israel to comply with international law. Insiders tell us that even such anodyne formulae as ‘calling for restraint’ from Israel are used by the EU only after overcoming extreme German reluctance.

In the 1930s, Germany suspended freedom of speech and embarked upon the ethnic cleansing of a Semitic people, the Jews, regarded as the scapegoats for every ill affecting the world. Seventy years later, Germany ‘comes to terms with its past’, to its own considerable satisfaction, by restricting freedom of speech and indirectly facilitating the ethnic cleansing of a Semitic people, the Palestinian Arabs, making them the scapegoats for Germany’s past crimes.

This is not a question of ‘equating’ Germany’s present policies with the Holocaust, which would indeed be aberrant. It is, however, to suggest that the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung will remain profoundly flawed and ominously self-deceiving and self-serving as long as it continues to entail sacrificing the Palestinians’ rights to self-determination, to justice, and to their very existence. Germany will indeed have come to terms with its past when it can point to an unblemished record of defence of free speech, and of the rights of all peoples to live in freedom from oppression.

"Because We Are Jews"
http://www.marchforjustice.com/Becausewearejews.php
By Rabbi Mordechi Weberman

There are those who ask us why we march with the Palestinians. Why do we raise the Palestinian flag? Why do we support the Palestinian cause?

“You are Jews!” they tell us. "What are you doing?"

And our response, which I'd like to share with you this afternoon, is very simple.

IT IS PRECISELY BECAUSE WE ARE JEWS THAT WE MARCH WITH THE PALESTINIANS AND RAISE THEIR FLAG!

IT IS PRECISELY BECAUSE WE ARE JEWS THAT WE DEMAND THAT THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLES BE RETURNED TO THEIR HOMES AND PROPERTIES!

Yes, in our Torah we are commanded to be fair. We are called upon to pursue justice. And, what could be more unjust then the century old attempt of the Zionist movement to invade an other people's land, to drive them out and steal their property?

The early Zionists proclaimed that they were a people without a land going to a land without a people.

Innocent sounding words.

But utterly and totally untrue.

Palestine was a land with a people. A people that were developing a national consciousness.

We have no doubt that would Jewish refugees, have come to Palestine not with the intention of dominating, not with the intention of making a Jewish state, not with the intention of dispossessing, not with the intention of depriving the Palestinians of their basic rights, that they would have been welcomed by the Palestinians, with the same hospitality that Islamic peoples have shown Jews throughout history. And we would have lived together as Jews and Muslims lived before in Palestine in peace and harmony.

To our Islamic and Palestinian friends around the world, please hear our message --

There are Jews around the world who support your cause. And when we support your cause we do not mean some partition scheme proposed in 1947 by a UN that had no right to offer it.

When we say support your cause we do not mean the cut off and cut up pieces of the West Bank offered by Barak at Camp David together with justice for less than 10 % of the refugees.

We do not mean anything other than returning the entire land, including to Jerusalem to Palestinian sovereignty!

At that point justice demands that the Palestinian people should decide if and how many Jews should remain in the Land.

This is the only path to true reconciliation.

But we demand yet more. WE demand that in returning the land back to its rightful owners we have not yet done enough. There should be an apology to the Palestinian people which is clear and precise. Zionism did you wrong. Zionism stole your homes. Zionism stole your land.

By so proclaiming we proclaim before the world that we are the people of the Torah, that our faith demands that we be honest and fair and good and kind.

We have attended hundreds of pro Palestinian rallies over the years and everywhere we go the leaders and audience greet us with the warmth of Middle Eastern hospitality. What a lie it is to say that Palestinians in particular or Muslims in general hate Jews. You hate injustice. Not Jews.

Fear not my fiends. Evil cannot long triumph. The Zionist nightmare is at its end. It is exhausted. Its latest brutalities are the death rattle of the terminally ill.

We will yet both live to see the day when Jew and Palestinian will embrace in peace under the Palestinian flag in Jerusalem.

And ultimately when mankind's Redeemer will come the sufferings of the present will long be forgotten in the blessings of the future.