I am German. My government does not acknowledge the tragedy that has been unfolding in Gaza since the Hamas attack in October 2023. It’s absurd. Since then, Jewish people in Berlin who were demonstrating alongside Palestinians against the war in Gaza have been beaten down by the German police. In 2021, Esther Bejarano, the last survivor of the Auschwitz Girls’ Orchestra, passed away in Hamburg. Whenever she commented on the culture of remembrance, the media was eager to report on it. Whenever she commented on the situation of the Palestinians, it was not reported in the media. People sometimes ask how it was possible that the vast majority of so-called ordinary people in this country back then could simply tolerate these crimes against Jews and look the other way. Now that should be clear to everyone. The Max Planck Institute in Rostock estimates that well over 100,000 people have been killed in Gaza. But nobody here gives a damn (at least not publicly). We’re even supplying weapons there. Everyone acts as if they’ve forgotten what was written in German newspapers about the current Israeli government when it took office, and as if there were no connection to what’s happening in Gaza right now. I am deeply and profoundly disappointed in the elected officials and public servants of my country. They have learned nothing from the atrocities committed by their grandfathers.
I live in DE too, it's terrifying. I didn't realize the extent of the armaments shipped to Israel from Germany until recently.
The Israeli navy ships were built in German shipyards and subsidized 30%...
I find this bewildering. Im not German. Im not Israeli.
Yet I have known that Israel sails German subs (the best in the world) since.... the Greek financial crisis (the subs were part of the scandal) ? Certainly since the mid 2010s.
Why is this?
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While I agree with you on the case of Esther Bejerano (a recent example from public broadcasting shows that her own communist beliefs and support for BDS are seemingly 'censored' [0]), I find the general situation complicated. Although it should be easy for any half intellectual being to contextualize the recent Israeli aggression by mentioning October 7, like you did, this is often not done. At the same time I think that the coverage of likely Israeli war crimes also happens in German media and I think nobody is looking away. Still Germany is the reason why the whole mess exists in the first place. I feel, that Germany, has quite some problems like many other countries to find it's role in a world where particularly the UN is failing and international law/human rights seem not enforcable.
[0] https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/koepfe/Esther-Bejarano-Das-Erb...
> Auschwitz Girls’ Orchestra
Is this something from the post-war or did that really exist?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Orchestra_of_Auschwi...
“The Germans wanted a propaganda tool for [SS] visitors and camp newsreels and a tool to boost camp morale.”
There were also several men’s orchestras.
The last time I was in Berlin (2018), I was actually somewhat shocked by the amount of antisemitic graffiti that I saw just about everywhere (especially on lamp posts). Especially given the strictness of the laws against such speech.
Wait until you hear how Muslims in Europe treat openly gay people.
What does that have to do with the subject of this thread at all? Christians are also terrible to gay people, and European societies have only very recently (in the last two to three decades) become somewhat more tolerant.
In the context of Israel-Palestine, this issue is only raised in order to somehow justify Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, a la "They deserve it because they're not as enlightened as we are."
Wait until you hear Muslims in Europe can be openly gay.
Often not to their families or Muslim peers.
And look at surveys taken by European Muslims on their opinions on what should be done to gay people like me, when they can answer anonymously or think the surveyor is a fellow Muslim.
It's even more insidious, I know activists in your country and they not only abhor the current support for Israel's genocide but they are terrified of their activism being criminalized under anti-nazi laws. How ironic.
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Every single person is a product of their circumstances. If you personally were to grow up in either country, the neural network in your brain would be trained with a way different set of data compared to what you experienced, and you would be a different person.
I don't have sympathy or hated for either side, this is just a byproduct of being human.
Are you trying to justify or minimize families being killed for no reason?
I don't get your response in context of what I posted. There are truths, and pointing out someone that goes against that truth shouldn't have to worry about circumstances - especially if those circumstances have been widely documented to be violence since its inception.
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There is a difference between war and extermination.
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>and unfortunately for us the palestinians political leadership has brought us all into this scenario
Simply not true. The plan from the start was to take over the area for jews, see Ben Gurions private letters. Netanyahu has supported Hamas to make sure that Palestine couldn't be politically united to be able to continue taking over the west bank. The power balance has since long been tipped to one side that is engineering the situation.
"We must seek agreement and understanding with the Arab people only through the Arab worker, and only an alliance of Jewish and Arab workers will establish and maintain an alliance of the Jewish and Arab peoples in Palestine"
That's a Ben Gurion quote, who was a socialist and believed in shared class struggle of Jews and Arabs. The rest of your comment is influenced by other lack of nuance
Ben-Gurion famously preached coexistence publicly (sometimes) but his private messages and memoirs betray his true beliefs:
5 October 1937, Ben-Gurion wrote in a letter to his 16 year old son Amos: “We must expel the Arabs and take their places…. And, if we have to use force-not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places- then we have force at our disposal.”
“It is very possible that the Arabs of the neighboring countries will come to their aid against us. But our strength will exceed theirs. Not only because we will be better organized and equipped, but because behind us there stands a still larger force, superior in quantity and quality …the whole younger generation of Jews from Europe and America.” Ben-Gurion, Zichronot [Memoirs], Vol. 4, p.297-299, p. 330-331. See also Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs, p. 182-189
https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quot...
And that's the difference between 1937 and the 1920s. In between the Palestinians had committed the 1929 and 1936 massacres which included ethnic cleansing of Jewish communities which predated Arab presence, such as the Jews of Gaza.
Interesting to know that your quote is disputed in the original text, as to say the exact opposite.
Well newsflash, the Israeli socialists and left wing have lost all influence for the most part. The only way you can form a government in the Knesset today is by a coalition of parties, most of which lean right-wing to far-right or ultra-Orthodox.