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TODAY, AS IN THE PAST, GERMANY CLAIMS THE AUTHORITY TO DEFINE WHO IS
A JEW  
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Nelson Pereira
January 3, 2025
CounterPunch
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_ "Germany is using a term that was designed to protect Jews as a
weapon not only to silence Palestinians, but also to silence Jews and
Israelis who criticize the occupation.” _

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Reawakening ghosts from a dark past, Germany once again claims to have
the authority to define who is a Jew. Those who say this are Jews
living in Germany who find themselves the target of processes of
delegitimization from the moment they criticize Israel. Between Israel
and Jews, Germany chooses the Zionist state.

For the philosopher and journalist Martin Gak, “when the German
state puts itself in a position to tell me what the opinions of a Jew
should be and which expression of antisemitism to condemn and which to
protect, the famous phrase of Hermann Göring, one of the main
architects of the police state in Nazi Germany, comes to mind: In
Germany, I am the one who decides who is a Jew.”

“What is happening is that the German state is assuming the role of
being more Jewish than the Jews,” says Michael Sappir, an Israeli
Jew who co-founded the anti-Zionist movements Jewish-Israeli
Dissidence in Leipzig and Israelis for Peace in Berlin. “The
turnaround is astonishing, it is as if Germany is the victim of
antisemitism,” he adds.

Since the German parliament passed a resolution in 2019 condemning as
antisemitic the BDS movement, which calls for economic pressure on
Israel, various cultural institutions in the country have been
rescinding invitations and cancelling events, preemptively trying to
avoid accusations of antisemitism.

This phenomenon became even more pronounced after October 7, 2023,
when Germany imposed a near-total ban on pro-Palestinian protests.
German authorities launched one of the most widespread crackdowns on
civil society in decades and issued draconian bans on pro-Palestinian
speech and symbols. A campaign of repression that targeted artists,
publishers, activists and academics. Some of them Jewish.

When Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham and his Palestinian co-director
Basel Adra criticized Germany’s complicity in the war in Gaza and
Israel’s violent oppression of Palestinians in their Berlinale
awards speeches in February, they were accused of antisemitism by
Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner of the CDU.

“Germany is using a term that was designed to protect Jews as a
weapon not only to silence Palestinians, but also to silence Jews and
Israelis who criticize the occupation,” Yuval Abraham said at the
time.

Diaspora Alliance, an international Jewish-led organization dedicated
to challenging the instrumentalization of antisemitism and combating
what it considers genuine signs of antisemitism, has documented 84
cases of delegitimization or event cancellations in 2023. The
organization notes that in 25% of these incidents, the targets were
Jewish individuals or groups. This, despite the fact that Jews make up
less than 1% of Germany’s population.

“After the Holocaust, Germany needed a certificate of moral and
political rehabilitation of the German soul,” Martin Gak points out.
“The problem was solved with the emergence of the State of Israel in
1948. The Zionists decided that Israel was the only authorized voice
to represent the Jews, and thus Germany obtained the long-awaited
kosher certificate of rehabilitation and redemption of its moral and
political soul.”

From there, the question of what German politicians call Germany’s
special responsibility towards Israel began. But Gak notes that this
is a false note. Ultimately, this position has nothing to do with Jews
or even Israel. “It has to do with one thing, which is the only
thing that concerns Germans: Germans. All of this is only about
Germans,” he stresses.

The concept of Germany’s special responsibility towards Israel
became entrenched in German politics after Angela Merkel’s speech in
the Knesset in 2008, when the chancellor declared that Israel’s
security was Germany’s Staatsräson [raison d’état].

On 12 October 2023, Olaf Scholz cited Merkel’s formulation in a
statement to the German parliament, saying that “Israel’s security
is part of Germany’s raison d’état. Our own history, our
responsibility stemming from the Holocaust, makes it our permanent
duty to defend the existence and security of the State of Israel.”

This was a day before Israeli genocide scholar Raz Segal claimed in an
article published in the American magazine Jewish Currents that when
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced on October 9 a
complete siege of Gaza because “we are fighting human animals, and
we will act accordingly,” the meaning was no less explicit than in
the 1904 extermination order [Vernichtungsbefehl] of General Lothar
von Trotha, the top military commander in German South West Africa,
which led to the Herero and Nama genocide.

Martin Gak.

Gak is adamant. “Germany will not allow any Israeli or Jew to
prevent it from defending Israel. Indeed, not only has Germany put on
trial Israelis who have expressed support for the BDS movement in the
last two years, but has been arresting a significant number of Jews
for publicly expressing their opposition to Israel.” He adds that
there are currently purges in Germany of people who are politically
and ideologically out of line with the German idea of ​​what a Jew
should be and what Israel is. And he adds that in today’s Germany
Albert Einstein would be persecuted for his criticism of Israel.
“His opposition to the idea of ​​a religious national state,
because that would make Jews sort of basically degrade into everything
that we have fought against, referring to the Nazis, would have put
Einstein on the line of conflict with the German state, because these
words would now be considered contrary to the interests of the
nation.” “Germany is still not a country for Jews,” he
concludes.

Australian genocide scholar Anthony Dirk Moses said in 2021 that in
today’s Germany, anyone who questions certain “articles of
faith,” such as the German state’s uncritical support for Israel,
which is the basis of post-war German identity, runs the risk of being
excluded from public discourse. The same goes for anyone who questions
the uniqueness of the Holocaust or links it to Germany’s genocidal
colonial past, the other article of faith in this “German
Catechism”, Moses points out.

“What is particularly striking is that Netanyahu and the Likud have
consequently strengthened ties with the far right, actively supporting
their political campaigns, many of which are antisemitic,” denounces
Martin Gak. He points to the example of Orban’s campaign against
Soros, built by Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, George Birnbaum.

Michael Sappir grew up in West Jerusalem, in a family of descendants
of Holocaust survivors who were always critical of Israel’s
treatment of Palestinians. It was the rejection of Zionism and the
Zionist narrative that finally led him and his parents and siblings to
decide to leave Israel.

Michael Sappir.

Today, he observes with apprehension the German drift, which he
considers very dangerous for Jews. “It is especially dangerous
because Jews are once again being cynically used, with many German
politics claiming that they are protecting Jewish people by getting
rid of Muslims and keeping Muslims and Arabs out,” he stresses.

Sappir signalises that in Germany, as in other countries, parties that
claim to oppose the far right adopt the same policies when it comes to
immigrants, particularly Muslims. When the pretext used is a supposed
fight against antisemitism and the defence of so-called liberal
values, “the manoeuvre passes itself off as anti-fascism,” Sappir
points out. “But in reality the narrative of fighting against
external influences that are corrupting our population is exactly
fascist rhetoric, exactly the kind of talk we had about Jews in Europe
a hundred years ago.”

German economic sociologist Wolfgang Streeck recently warned in an
article published in the European Journal of Social Theory that
Germany’s unconditional support for Israel has another pernicious
consequence.

Streeck notes that by aligning the public memory of Nazi crimes with
Israel’s interests, Germany has pushed into oblivion the victims of
the Nazi regime who did not have the support of a state lobby, be they
gypsies, disabled people, communists, homosexuals or anti-Zionists.

The sociologist adds that although the moral obligation of the German
state after Nazism was originally understood as supporting
international law and the State of Israel equally, the balance has now
shifted in favour of the latter and at the expense of the former,
moving from a universalistic to a particularistic interpretation of
Germany’s historical debt

This reformulation has led the German state to one of the most
important strategic decisions in its alliance with Israel, Streeck
points out. Between 1997 and 2000, Germany supplied three
nuclear-capable Dolphin-class submarines to the Israeli navy, and two
more of an upgraded version (Dolphin II) in 2014 and 2015, followed by
another in 2019. Three more upgraded submarines are scheduled for
delivery between 2027 and 2029, also financed in part or in full by
Germany.

Military analysts have claimed that Israel has made adjustments to its
submarine fleet that have made it possible to launch cruise missiles
with nuclear warheads. Along with its status as a nuclear power, which
it has neither confirmed nor denied, Israel therefore has a fleet of
unlocalizable submarines that can launch nuclear missiles from
anywhere in the Mediterranean or the Indian Ocean. In Streeck’s
opinion, this is a factor that cannot be ignored when trying to
understand the basis of Israel’s status of impunity and the Zionist
state’s nonchalant attitude towards international law and calls for
diplomatic conflict solution.

—

Martin Gak

Dr. Martin Gak is a journalist and philosopher with extensive
experience in broadcasting, including roles as a producer, presenter,
reporter, and director. He served as Religious Affairs Correspondent
and as editor and producer of the international politics show Conflict
Zone. His academic background includes a PhD from the New School for
Social Research.

Michael Sappir

Michael Sappir grew up in West Jerusalem in a family of descendants of
Holocaust survivors. He moved to Leipzig, Germany, when he was 19. He
is currently based in Berlin, working as a researcher and writer. He
co-founded two anti-Zionist movements in Germany, the Jewish-Israeli
Dissidence in Leipzig and Israelites for Peace in Berlin. Sappir was
editor-in-chief of the German-language student newspaper “critica”
and a founding co-host of “Parallelwelt Palästina”, the first
German-language political podcast about Palestine.

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* Germany
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* anti-Semitism
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* Palestinians
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* refugees
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* Anti-Zionism
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