Germany and the Gaza conflict: a dark heritage of history

Germany and the Gaza conflict: a dark heritage of history

Germany in the crossfire: Support for Israel's brutal attack on Gaza!

No country has turned as vehemently against the solidarity movement for Palestine as Germany! In Berlin, it is now impossible to hold a pro-Palestinian demonstration without being attacked by the police or being intimidated by the state. The allegations? Anti -Semitism! In April, a top-class pro-Palestinian conference in Berlin was brutally dissolved by hundreds of police officers. The British-Palestinian Rector Ghassan Abu Sitta, who worked as a doctor in Gaza, was prevented from entering and deported back to the United Kingdom. A German Court of Justice later opened the ban on entry, but the damage was already caused.

The German government not only prevented Abu Sitta, but also prominent voices such as the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis to attend the conference. The reason? Her speeches were classified as "anti -Semitic". But this claim is nothing but an excuse! Germany does not suppress pro-Palestinian voices to protect the rights of the Jews, but to put their own history into perspective. Iris Hefets, a German-Israeli psychoanalyst, was arrested just because she ran through the streets with a poster: "As Israeli and Jew, the genocide in Gaza".

The dark history of Germany

The roots of this support for Israel are deep in German history, but not in the regrets for the Holocaust. Germany has never completely freed itself from the Nazi structures. After the Second World War, the return of Germany to the international community was linked to the condition of denazification, but this process was quickly abandoned. Instead, Israel was accepted as a "state of Germany", while the crimes against the Jews took a back seat. The reparation payments of Germany to Israel in the form of weapons and industrial goods are another example of this problematic relationship.

The German government is aware of the atrocities that Israel committed against the Palestinians. The pictures from Gaza are unmistakable: unsolicited bombing, hunger and ethnic cleansing. The statements of Israeli politicians who call Palestinians "human animals" are alarming and are reminiscent of the darkest chapters in German history. Germany tries to present these atrocities as necessary and justified in order to relativize their own offenses and to preserve their own history.