From the Greens to the neo-Nazis (AfD), from the Social Democrats to the Christian Democrats there was unanimity – a Boycott of Israeli Apartheid is 'anti-Semitic'
Two
months ago I attended
a War on Want meeting where Ronnie Kassrills, the
Jewish founder of the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, described how
Vienna’s Council had unanimously decided to prevent him speaking on Council
property.
From
the Green Party to the neo-Nazi Freedom Party there was unanimity that a Jewish
anti-Zionist and a
veteran of the Anti-Apartheid Struggle in South Africa should not be
allowed to speak. Even neo-Nazis are signed up to the Zionist definition of ‘anti-Semitism’!
So we have the obscene spectacle, in the city where Hitler spent his most
formative period, that a party created by and which harbour open neo-Nazis, can
nonetheless ban a Jewish founder of the Anti-Apartheid struggle for
‘anti-Semitism’?
In
May 19th in the German Bundestag the same obscene spectacle was
repeated. Alternatives
for Germany, which contains many neo-Nazis, voted alongside the Green and
Social Democratic parties, to condemn BDS although it would appear that some
members of Die Grunen had a
conscience and abstained.
 |
| This is an acceptable price to pay for German political and commercial relations with Israel |
The
fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is not just a British Labour Party but a growing
European phenomenon. Everywhere from the
United States to France and Hungary, anti-Semites are trying to outlaw
solidarity with the Palestinians in the name of ‘anti-Semitism’. We have the
absurdity of the most racist and anti-Semitic
President of the United States in living memory condemning
Ilhan Omar and Rashid Tlaib for supporting BDS!
Truly
we live in the world of Lewis Carroll’s Alice :
People
may recall the exchange in Through the Looking Glass:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said “it
means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,”
said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
Yitzhak Laor, Israel’s greatest
poet wrote in his book The
Myths of Liberal Zionism:
‘Why
now. Why the contemporary concern with the Jewish genocide… compared to its
treatment in the period immediately after the Second World War?’
His
answer was that this was about
‘consolidating
a new ideology of exclusion. Now it is the Jews who are the insiders… the genocide
and the Jews served in the construction of a European identity…’
Not
only are Jews the insiders but the memory of the Holocaust has been twisted and
distorted as a justification for Western support for Israel and imperialism in
the Middle East. In short the most barbaric act of German imperialism is now
used to justify the barbarism of western imperialism.
Israel
is seen by the European far-Right as the last defence against Islam. In the words of
Dutch fascist Geert Wilders ‘If Jerusalem
falls into the hands of the Muslims, Athens and Rome will be next.’ For
Germany coming to terms with the Holocaust has been seen in terms of uncritical
support of Israel as a ‘Jewish’ state.
The
irony is that Israel from its formation modelled
its settler-colonial model on Prussian militarism and colonisation. Instead of
drawing the lesson from the Nazi era that racism and racial supremacy should be
opposed, the German state has given carte blanche to an Israeli state which is
the embodiment of Prussian militarism.
Indeed
the Israeli state, with its segregation between Jew and non-Jew, is the embodiment
of Nazi values. If one looks at the period from 1933-39 then the parallels
between Israel and Nazi Germany are uncanny not least in the Nuremburg Laws of
1935 which the Zionists alone in the Jewish community welcomed.
Eugenics
played a key role in Nazi Germany. The Holocaust began in 1939 with the
extermination of the disabled. Six killing centres were set up and gas trucks,
which were later used in the first concentration camp Chelmno, began their
operations. In Israel conscious attempts to ‘improve’ the Jewish ‘race’ were
undertaken by Arthur Ruppin through selective
Jewish immigration.
In
the 1950’s thousands of babies of Yemenite parents were simply stolen and
transferred to Ashkenazi parents in the belief that the latter would improve
the children. It is a scandal which has been smouldering for over half a century.
See for example The
Disappeared Children of Israel.
Far from the German Bundestag rejecting
the values of Hitlerism, by their actions they have endorsed the perpetuation
of those values in the hands of the Israeli state. If Israel, the Jewish state, can act like
Germans once did, then the logical conclusion is that perhaps the Nazi period
wasn’t so bad after all. That is a
message that the AfD and Austria’s Freedom Party understand too well.
When the Chief Rabbi of Safed, Shmuel
Eliyahu issues an edict banning the renting of apartments to Arabs and when
criticised his actions are endorsed
by dozens of other rabbis, or when Jewish mobs chant
‘death to the Arabs’ it is clear that the values of German ethno-nationalism
have been transformed into Jewish ethno-nationalism.
It is a sign of the abject cowardice of
the Greens and SPD that they have nothing to say about the virulent racism of the
Israeli state. What part of the house demolitions, the ethnic cleansing or the
shooting of unarmed demonstrators do they not understand?
It is Israelis themselves who recognise
that Israel’s ethno-nationalism are symbolic of the era of fascism.
Zeev Sternhell, a former Professor at
the Hebrew University and a world authority on fascism, as well as being a
child survivor of the Holocaust, In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism
spoke
of a
‘toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved
here, the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish
people.’
He
is not alone. Other Israelis
including Daniel
Blatman, a Holocaust researcher and chief historian at the new Warsaw
Ghetto museum and Ofer Casif, a Hebrew University lecturer and newly elected MK
for Hadash, argued
that Israel today is similar to early
Nazi Germany.
 |
| Even in Latvia, over 90% of whose Jewish population were murdered, the Boycott of Nazi Germany was effective |
Members
of the German Bundestag are probably unaware that when the Nazis took power in
1933, they were met with a worldwide Jewish
boycott of Nazi Germany. Just like now, the ruling classes railed at this
interference with free trade and the Nazi state initiated legal proceedings in
countries like Latvia. The Zionists did their best to undermine the boycott agreeing
reaching their own trade agreement Ha'avara, with the Nazis.
Boycott
is a peaceful tactic which has been used in countless struggles against
oppression – from the boycott of
slave grown sugar in the West Indies to the struggle
of tenant farmers in Ireland to the boycott
of Apartheid in South Africa – The decision of the German state today to
attack BDS is an attack on the oppressed.
The
German establishment, from the Greens to the AfD, may pretend that they are
opposing anti-Semitism but in reality they are supporting a Jewish supremacist
state which owes much to the Nazi period.
As
the organisation Palästina Spricht -
Palestine Speaks put it, We
call on the German government to fight racism and apartheid – not those who
oppose them and went on to ask
‘What message
does Germany send when it protects a violent military power that in the past
year alone had indiscriminately killed over 450 Palestinians, while at the same
time condemning a non-violent movement that merely demands that Israel abides
by its obligations under international law?’
The
decision of the Bundestag and its conflation of Zionism and Judaism disregards
the long history of Jewish opposition to Zionism, as well as ignoring the
numerous Jewish individuals and organizations who either support BDS or defend
its legitimacy.
The
implicit suggestion that Israel represents the values of the Jews of the pre-Holocaust
era is an insult to those who died. As
Yoav Rinon wrote Neither
Israel's nor Germany's Slide Into Fascism Was Accidental.
It
may be painful for German legislators to understand, but a state that
demolishes Palestinian homes in order erect Jewish homes in their place owes
more to the Nazis than those who suffered under them.
Rion
wrote
that
few
would deny that modern German identity has had a central role in the
formulation of Jewish-Israeli identity, especially in light of the Holocaust
and its key impact on the past of the two peoples.
Using
a psychological analogy he described how ‘A battered child often turns into a battering parent, and what applies
on the personal level is also valid on the national one.’
Professor Sara
Roy wrote an Open Letter, On
equating BDS and anti-Semitism: a letter to the German government:
If your
history has imposed a burden and an obligation upon you, it is to defend
justice not Israel. This is what Judaism, not Zionism, demands. Your obligation
does not lie in making Israel or the Jewish people special or selectively
excusing injustice because Jews happen to be committing it; it lies in holding
Israel and Jews to the same ethical and moral standards that you would demand
of any people, including yourselves.
Your
sense of guilt, if that is the correct word, should not derive from criticizing
Israel. It should reside in remaining silent in the face of injustice as so
many of your forebears did before, during and after the Holocaust.
I
lost a large extended family to fascism and racism. By endorsing the motion
that alleges that BDS is anti-Semitic—regardless of one’s position on BDS—you
are criminalizing the right to free speech and dissent and those who choose to
exercise it, which is exactly how fascism takes root. You also trivialize and
dishonor the real meaning of anti-Semitism. Sincerely,
 |
| Zionist campaign against Brian Klug in 2013 |
The Bundestag vote has been felt in a renewed Zionist attack on Berlin’s
Jewish Museum. This is an institution that the Zionists have long detested as
it isn’t under their control. Zionism has not only colonised Palestine but Jewish
communities and their institutions in the diaspora. The Jewish museum of Berlin is an exception.
In 2013, the non-Zionist British lecturer Brian Klug delivered
a thoughtful lecture What Do We Mean
When We Say ‘Antisemitsm’? Echoes of shattering glass on the 75th
anniversary of Kristallnacht.
There was an immediate Zionist response. A group calling themselves ‘International
scholars and authors under the auspices of The Berlin International Center for
the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA) compiled a Dossier
on Brian Klug. And what a collection of
scholars it was. It was headed by Gerald
Steinberg of the McCarthyite NGO
Monitor, which spends its time attacking Israeli human rights
organisations, junk historian Ephraim Karsh, [I
recommend Benny Morris’s review of Karsh’s book Fabricating Israeli Histor: The New ‘Historians’ in Journal of
Palestine Studies Vol. 27 No. 2 Winter 1998] Sam Westrup, ‘Senior Fellow’ of
the virulently Islamaphobic Gatestone Institute whose Wikipedia entry
describes it in these terms: Gatestone is
anti-Muslim. The organization has attracted attention for publishing false
articles and being a source of viral falsehoods.’ Another ‘scholar’ was Lt.
Col. (res.) Dr. Mordechai Kedar, whose main claim to fame is advocating
the rape of Palestinian women in war as a deterrent to ‘terrorists’. These ‘scholars’ even extended to our own hoodlums,
Jonathan Hoffman and Richard Millet!
Their leader Clemens Heni wrote in The
Times of Israel that ‘Brian Klug is
among the worst choices for a keynote speaker’ because ‘he denies that there is a new antisemitism.’
There is a good riposte to this in Mondoweiss
‘Klug
targeted by McCarthyite ‘dossier’– because he will speak on anti-Semitism in
Berlin on Kristallnacht anniversary.’
In other words Brian Klug should have been banned because he was not prepared
to say that anti-Zionism was anti-Semitism. Such is the value that Zionism accords
to freedom of speech
Now the cudgels have been taken up again because of a pro-BDS tweet that
apparently emanated from someone at the Jewish Museum. See 'Anti-Jewish'
Museum in Berlin under fire for supporting BDS
Other
sins
include that fact that in 2012 ‘the
Jewish Museum hosted a podium discussion with US academic Judith Butler, who
renewed her calls to boycott Israel.’ Clearly this is a call for the
neo-Nazis and Greens in the Bundestag to take the kind of action Hitler would
have approved and close down a cultural and academic institution which Gerald
Steinberg has described as the “anti-Jewish
Museum”.
Gideon
Levy in Ha’aretz wrote In
Germany, a Non-violent Struggle Against War Crimes Could Be Declared Illegal
that if the German government adopted the Bundestag resolution to outlaw the
BDS movement, then there would be nothing to equal it in any democracy.
‘Branding BDS
as anti-Semitic... Fighting anti-Semitism solves any problems associated with
explaining Israel’s actions. Just say “anti-Semitism” and the world is
paralyzed. One can kill children in Gaza, then say “anti-Semitism!” and squelch
any criticism. Europe is still vulnerable on this. Exploit it to the hilt.
It’s
hard to believe that the hundreds of Bundestag members who voted for this
resolution, which defines a completely legitimate struggle as anti-Semitic,
actually agreed with it. One may assume that deep inside, many harbor doubts if
not opposition to a move that was imposed on them. It’s not only in Germany. In
most European countries it’s difficult to criticize Israel without being
accused of anti-Semitism.
Rather than slaying the dragon of racism and fascism the Green, Social
Democratic and Die Linke (who put forward their own motion) have given a boost
to the forces of racism and fascism. One hopes that these hypocrites and
ignoramuses take on board the fact that Netanyahu has no greater friend
than Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orban for whom the pro-Nazi leader of
war-time Hungary, Admiral Horthy was an ‘exceptional
statesman’
One thing is for sure, German politicians today and the cowards who
inhabit the Bundestag are anything but exceptional statesmen. They are much the
same cowards who in 1933 voted for the Enabling Act thus
ushering in the personal dictatorship of Hitler.
Below is a
message from Prof. Amos Goldberg of the Dep of js History
at the Hebrew University and Yaara Benger Alaluf of Berlin’s Max Planck Institute.
If any of you would be willing to send a short message
of support to the Jewish Museum, this would be highly appreciated. Their
e-mail address is: info@jmberlin.de.
Please direct it to Peter Schäfer, the director
of the museum. The museum’s website is www.jmberlin.de.
You may also want to
support the museum by retweeting or posting on Facebook JMB’s tweet
referring to our call: https://twitter.com/jmberlin/status/1136633875411755010.
Furthermore, please
consider contributing to the several discussions on twitter, of which
you find links below.
These are simple steps but might be highly influential.
Thank you for your
continued support, which is highly appreciated!
Kind regards,
Prof. Amos Goldberg Yaara
Benger Alaluf
Department of
Jewish History Center for the
History of Emotions,
and Contemporary
Jewry Max Planck Institute
for Human
Hebrew
University, Jerusalem, Development,
Berlin
In an article Berlin
Jewish Museum Director Resigns After Tweet Supporting BDS Freedom of Speech
Haaretz reported that the Jewish
Museum’s Director, Peter Schafter, had resigned. ‘days after it was criticized for endorsing a petition against a
parliamentary motion defining anti-Israel boycotts as anti-Semitic and banning
the boycott movement from using public buildings.’ ‘ Schafter’s resignation
came ‘after Israeli Ambassador to Germany Jeremy
Issacharoff called the museum’s sharing of the petition “shameful.”
The petition, asserting that "boycotts
are a legitimate and nonviolent tool of resistance," was signed by 240
Jewish intellectuals including Avraham Burg and Eva Illouz, who called on the
German government not to adopt the motion, to protect freedom of speech.
Ha’aretz reported that ‘Last year,
it was reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded from Chancellor
Angela Merkel that Germany stop funding the museum because it had
held an exhibition about Jerusalem, “that presents a Muslim-Palestinian
perspective.” Merkel was asked to halt funding to other organizations as
well, on grounds that they were anti-Israel, among them the Berlin
International Film Festival, pro-Palestinian Christian organizations, and the
Israeli news website +972, which receives funding from the Heinrich
Böll Foundation.
Netanyahu did not deny the report and his bureau confirmed that he had
raised “with various leaders the issue of
funding Palestinian and Israeli groups and nonprofit organizations that depict
the Israel Defense Forces as war criminals, support Palestinian terrorism and
call for boycotting the State of Israel.”
The Bundestag’s motion last month marked the first time a
European parliament had officially defined the BDS movement as anti-Semitic.
The motion, which is a call to the government and isn’t legally binding, won
broad multiparty support from Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, the Social
Democrats and the Free Democratic Party. Some members of the Greens Party also
supported the motion, though others abstained at the last minute. The motion
stated that the BDS movement’s “Don’t Buy” stickers on Israeli products evoke
the Nazi slogan “Don’t buy from Jews.”
One wonders at the gutlessness of a German government that wasn’t capable
of telling Netanyahu to take a running jump, preferably into a stretch of deep
water.
The Bundestag motion, passed with broad
multiparty support last month, has drawn wide opposition, including from Jewish
intellectuals
Haaretz,
11 June 2019, Noa Landau
The
German government is examining whether to adopt a motion by its parliament that
defines the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement as anti-Semitic
and bans it from use of public buildings – and how such a decision would affect
German funding to groups that support the movement.
Haaretz
has learned that Israel and various public diplomacy groups are pressuring
Germany to adopt the motion, stirring strong disagreements among government
ministries. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s bureau has yet to decide on an official
position.
German
sources told Haaretz that the country’s Interior Ministry, led by the
commissioner for battling anti-Semitism Felix Klein, generally supports the
motion, while the Foreign Ministry opposes it. Foreign Ministry officials
recently told journalists that they oppose a boycott of Israel, but that the
BDS movement includes a broad spectrum of positions and each instance and
organization must be examined individually to determine if it’s anti-Semitic.
The
Bundestag’s motion last month marked the first time a European parliament had
officially defined the BDS movement as anti-Semitic. The motion, which is a
call to the government and isn’t legally binding, won broad multiparty support
from Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, the Social Democrats and the Free
Democratic Party. Some members of the Greens Party also supported the motion,
though others abstained at the last minute. The motion stated that the BDS
movement’s “Don’t Buy” stickers on Israeli products evoke the Nazi slogan
“Don’t buy from Jews.”
Last
week, 240 Jewish intellectuals published a petition against the Bundestag’s
motion, saying “boycotts are a legitimate and nonviolent tool of resistance.”
The signatories, among them Avraham Burg and Eva Illouz, called on the German
government not to adopt the motion, to protect freedom of speech and continue
funding of Israeli and Palestinian organizations “that peacefully challenge the
Israeli occupation, expose severe violations of international law and
strengthen civil society. These organizations defend the principles and values
at the heart of liberal democracy and rule of law, in Germany and elsewhere.
More than ever, they need financial support and political backing.”
The Jewish Museum in Berlin shared the petition
on Twitter, generating an online backlash. Israeli Ambassador to Germany Jeremy
Issacharoff called the museum’s sharing of the petition “shameful.”
Last
year, it was reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded
from Merkel that Germany stop funding the museum because it had held an
exhibition about Jerusalem, “that presents a Muslim-Palestinian perspective.”
Merkel was asked to halt funding to other organizations as well, on grounds
that they were anti-Israel, among them the Berlin International Film Festival,
pro-Palestinian Christian organizations, and the Israeli news website +972,
which receives funding from the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
Netanyahu
did not deny the report and his bureau confirmed that he had raised “with
various leaders the issue of funding Palestinian and Israeli groups and
nonprofit organizations that depict the Israel Defense Forces as war criminals,
support Palestinian terrorism and call for boycotting the State of Israel.”
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