Since Israel launched its latest war against Gaza, Germany has stood firmly by its ally. Even though warnings of genocide by Israeli forces are increasing, the German government has not budged. On October 12, Chancellor Olaf Scholz proclaimed that “there is only one place for Germany” which is “alongside Israel” and indeed, she has not budged from this position .
The German government not only provided extensive political and diplomatic support to Israel, but also accelerated arms exports to facilitate the Israeli massacre of Palestinian civilians.
The German political elite has vehemently rejected calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and has relentlessly repeated the false claim that under international law Israel has the “right to defend itself” against the Palestinian population. which he occupies. It continues to ignore decades of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
The German political elite justified its position by a so-called sense of guilt for the Holocaust and the need to atone by supporting Israel, seeing its security as “Germany’s reason of state.” But under the guise of “acting morally” and “atoning for their crimes,” German politicians and officials are actually seeking to further normalize anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism, justify more draconian anti-immigration policies and to minimize the persistence of anti-immigration. Semitism among white Germans.
Anti-Palestinism as state policy
The marginalization of Palestinians within German society and the repression of pro-Palestinian activism are not a new phenomenon in Germany. Well before October 7, the anti-Palestinian tactics of the German authorities were already intensifying. Demonstrations were banned, pro-Palestinian voices, including those of Jewish activists, were silenced, and cultural events and awards ceremonies were canceled.
It is therefore not surprising that the repression of protests and police violence have intensified in recent weeks. Many pro-Palestinian protests have been banned, sometimes just minutes before they began, or allowed to take place only with a heavy police presence. Bureaucrats cited threats to public safety and potential manifestations of anti-Semitism to justify the bans.
Hundreds of protesters were arrested in the first weeks after Israel launched its war on Gaza. Many have been victims of police violence and some have been investigated for inciting hatred. Even anti-Zionist voices within the small Jewish minority have come under attack.
Freedom of expression regarding pro-Palestinian activism has also been suppressed. Recently, the Federal Ministry of the Interior banned the slogan “from the river to the sea”, considering it a call to destroy Israel. The state of Bavaria has called this expression a “symbol of terrorism”.
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), one of Germany’s main parties, has also made clear that the words “Free Palestine” have no place in Germany and denounced the phrase as “the battle cry of a terrorist gang active internationally”, claiming that it signifies “the extinction of the Jewish State, the only democracy in the region, by Islamist terrorists”.
Freedom of expression has also been attacked in educational institutions. As German universities follow the government’s pro-Israel stance, students who protested on campus have faced police brutality and media smear campaigns.
Pro-Palestinian symbols, such as the keffiyeh, have been banned by certain institutions. In a Berlin school, a teacher physically attacked a student who was waving the Palestinian flag.
This systematic repression of pro-Palestinian activism reflects Germany’s dystopian reality, in which opposition to genocide is considered an act of disloyalty to the German state and could therefore justify its criminalization.
German authorities have clearly identified anti-Palestinism as a national interest and state policy. They wholeheartedly support the existence of Israel in its current form of apartheid which requires continued violence against the indigenous Palestinian population. Of course, this is not at odds with Germany’s genocidal history and continued racism.
Blaming immigrants for German racism
The genocide in Gaza further strengthened xenophobic and racist sentiments already pervasive in Germany. German authorities have actively sought to portray Muslims and Arabs in particular, as well as ethnic minorities in general, as dangerous to German society.
On November 8, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called on Germans of Palestinian and Arab origin to distance themselves from Hamas and anti-Semitism. Thus, it implicitly placed an entire population under general suspicion of terrorism, the Palestinian resistance movement having been designated a “terrorist organization” by the German state.
A little over a week later, a bill was submitted to the German parliament, linking German citizenship to a formal commitment to Israel’s “right to exist.” A month later, the state of Saxony-Anhalt issued its own decree, requiring applicants for citizenship to declare their support for “Israel’s right to exist.”
In November, Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said in an interview: “We do not want anti-Semites to become German citizens. »
Claims that immigrants pose a terrorist risk and carry and spread anti-Semitism have been used as justification for changing German migration and refugee policy.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz said Germany could not take in more refugees from Gaza, saying: “We have enough anti-Semitic young men in the country.”
Legal measures are already being taken to reduce immigration. In October, the federal government backed a bill authorizing a stricter deportation policy that would make it easier to deport rejected asylum seekers.
But the unbalanced racist and xenophobic sentiments that reign in the country are not only reflected in policies. They are now defining what appears to be a society-wide consensus, expressed in a manifesto published by the German right-wing tabloid BILD, telling immigrants how they should behave in Germany.
Referring to the arrival of Arab refugees over the past decade, the newspaper presented 50 points of instruction on what is and is not permitted in Germany.
The introduction to the manifesto states: “Our world is in chaos, and we are right in the middle of it. Since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, we are experiencing a new dimension of hatred in our country – against our values, against democracy and against Germany.”
Then he declares that Germany must say “NO!” » to anti-Semitism and that “we love life, not death”, “we say please and thank you”, “we do not wear masks or veils” and “we do not marry children”. And men cannot have more than one wife.
The manifesto’s rabid Islamophobia is more than apparent. But beyond that, it reflects the absurdity of white Germans considering themselves “threatened” and “victims” at a time when the Palestinian population is facing genocide in their own country.
It also reveals the deep-rooted white supremacy in German society. Indeed, the reaction of the German authorities to what is happening in Gaza demonstrates that they want to reinforce and solidify the racist hierarchies in German society: the white Germans at the top and the people of the “third world”, including the victims of Israeli violence, at the summit. at the bottom, silently doing dirty menial jobs and being expected to show gratitude and “fit in” into German society.
Covering up German anti-Semitism
But there is something even more pernicious about misrepresenting anti-Semitism in Germany as a foreign “import” brought into the country by non-white immigrants. This increasingly popular lie obscures Germany’s brutal and anti-Jewish history and somehow places the blame for the suffering of the Jewish people on Palestinians who are victims of a racist and European colonial.
This also conceals the anti-Semitic present of German society. Anti-Jewish sentiment still persists in Germany. According to official statistics, the vast majority of documented anti-Semitic incidents are committed by the political right.
It is no coincidence that the far-right AfD party has reached an unprecedented peak of popularity in recent weeks. According to mid-December polls, it now stands at 23 percent, just behind the right-wing CDU and far ahead of all parties in the current government coalition.
AfD representatives have glorified German ethno-nationalism and downplayed the crimes of the Nazi regime while constantly insisting that immigrants are anti-Semitic and demanding that the federal government prioritize the fight against ” imported anti-Semitism.
This combination of Zionism and toxic German nationalism could further fuel racist violence against minorities, including the Jewish community.
Germany’s anti-Palestinism should not be seen as a reaction, but rather as a continuation of Germany’s racist crimes. Palestinians and other victims of Israeli and German violence have never been considered human enough.
Much like Germany’s colonial genocides and its support for apartheid in South Africa and racist regimes elsewhere – which have never received sufficient attention in public discourse – its role in the genocide in Palestine supports the racist hierarchies and its own image of a “civilized” and “morally” state. superior nation.”
The German-backed massacre of Palestinians thus serves to reinforce fantasies of white and ethnic German supremacy.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
