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No one told me that Jews have a crime pass in Germany. I need to start planning cooler vacations.
If you are an anti-zionist Jew in Germany you’ll face a brunt of repressions. German “anti antisemitism” comissioners even go as far as calling anti-zionist Jews “allegedly jewish”, thereby deciding who are “good” and “bad” Jews.
Ah yes Germans judging how Jewish people are for…reasons. Never change Dooshland
Do you have sources?
Ctrl+F didn’t turn up any results for your quote (“alleged”/“allegedly”) , and I’m not going to read the whole article searching for what you might have meant instead.
I am sorry. It was not mentioned in the article, but the podcast.
Here is another interview where it is mentioned
https://jacobin.com/2024/03/the-cost-of-germanys-guilt-politics
Here is the “Dienstaufsichtsbeschwerde” (complaint about the violation of duty by a public official) by the German Jewish Voice for Peace reacting to the attack by the anti antisemitism commissioner Michael Blume of the state Baden Wurtemmberg:
Here is the Tweet of Blume. His exact wording was “vorgeblich” which translates to “allegedly” but more in the sense of “pretending to be”.
Thanks!
I think “vorgeblich” has some more nuance, as it does not say the claim is necessarily wrong (https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/vorgeblich). But like I said in the other sub-thread: he is very wrong with this statement (addendum: and in his job). It’s still a different picture than one might imagine when hearing “German government officials are deciding whether you are jewish enough” (which you didn’t write, but apparently was understood like that by other commenters).
The key points in this and many other examples where Jewish anti-zionists are targeted, be it by such verbal attacks, deplatforming or police violence are imo.:
- Germany (as in gov. officials and politicians) feels entitled to make value judgements about jewish people
- Germany does not extend its support and protection to jewish people because of the German history. This support is conditional on them adhering to the idea of how the Jews should and shouldnt be.
- Germany conflates jewish identity with the state of Israel and setting a sort of equality to it. Ironically that is an example of antisemitism by some definitions including thr IHRA preffered by German politics.
- The guilt and responsibility is increasingly shifted onto Arab and other immigrants often highly critical of Israel. This serves to absolve Germany from the still rampant “Nazi-antisemitism” but is mainly used to justify racism against the groups “importing” antisemitism.
So once again German government officials judge as to who are “good” or “bad” or well “real” Jews. The fundamental being that those who fall into the categories acceptable are championed as examples in a sometimes absurd way (philosemitism) and those who are outside these categoroes get targeted with repressions.
But it is very simple. Jewish people are people like anyone else. Be it by religion or ethnicity, there is people of all sorts of personal, societal and political identities. Where they face discrimination because of their jewish identity it needs to be adressed and there should be a special emphasis on this, due to the German history. But it cannot and must not be conflated with the state of Israel and allegiance to it.
> Asks for source
> Unwilling to read source
It’s not a source for a quote if the quote does not show up in the link.
edit: the fact that this gets downvoted really says a lot about the quality of the discussion :D
Blume was embroiled in a small scandal after he referred to Jüdische Stimme as “ostensibly Jewish” on Twitter
Blume demurred, claiming that, while he was happy to accept anyone’s self-definition as Jewish as a matter of personal religious freedom, he was not sure whether the group’s members counted as members of the Jewish religious communities that are legal partners of the German state
In Germany, membership in religious communities is regulated by state-designated institutions, meaning that to be officially Jewish, one must join the Jüdische Gemeinde, the state-affiliated Jewish community
“I don’t know how to read”
Are they saying they’re choosing to continue that history?
Yes
As they have since the Namibia Genocide which gets conveniently swept under the rug
Swept under by officially recognized? Are you the 1/3?
As a German, this seems like a cruel joke to me - “Because of our Nazi history, we are committed to protecting against an ICC warrant the person currently performing a genocide, establishing camps to “concentrate” refugees and then even bombing said camps”.
Fuck our government. This is about a war criminal and in my opinion it’s absolutely furthering antisemitism to allow the Israeli government to continue these atrocities. The best way to reduce antisemitism is to have the Israeli government commit less atrocities.
Yeah they took the wrong lesson from ww2. Its not about jewish people and antisemitists, its about innocent people and people who commit genocides. Both jewish people and non-jews can be genociders and innocent people.
it is sad that this even needs to be said… Fully agreed…
Since when is a religion a defense against war crimes
Since religion was invented.
👩🚀 🔫 👩🚀
Zionists do not identify as religiously Jewish but as racially Jewish.
To Zionists, Jews are not the chosen people of god because of their religion, but because they are racially superior. You might notice that declaring ones own race the superior one was somewhat of a common trope in the time period.
This is why surprising to many, the founder of Zionism in 1896 Theodor Herzl, was an Atheist. It also explains the famous quote from Ilan Pappe;
“Most Zionists don’t believe that God exists, but they do believe that he promised them Palestine”
That’s some fucked up broken circular logic
BadEmpanda had an amazing example of Ethan Klein encompassing this. For more information I timestamped this video. Watching one minute is enough to understand Israel https://youtu.be/Q36r-fkk7l0&t=1090
Unfortunately international media is not capturing the gravity of the German government winding around and refusing to say they abide by the ICC decision.
Here is todays gov. press conference in German. Maybe Youtube provides auto-translation. I think the faces and the way they talk can be understood even without knowing German.
It’s incredible how they can say nothing while speaking for 30 minutes. Gotta appreciate the very critical press though, refreshing to see. Where I live the press will ask what they had for lunch and then leave it at that.
Oh they’ve elevated it to an art form. They did actually say quite a lot while saying so little though, always pay close attention to what they’re comfortable talking about (such as Germany’s stance towards the ICC and the rule of law) vs. what they’re not comfortable talking about (what that stance implies, concretely, in this situation). If you think that’s unsatisfactory then they will, I quote, take notice of that, but they won’t humour you and spell out what can be inferred so you (or rather press) have a soundbite that would cause the foreign service diplomatic headaches.
And, yes, the journalists have also elevated making them squirm to an art form, to make sure that the interviewed officials don’t waffle when it is merely convenient, not expedient (at least according to the officials). Also of note the conference is run by journalists, not officials.
Thanks for linking to the video. There is an auto translate option for it buried deep in the CC settings (at least there was for me).
My impression that I was left with is that the guy speaking is basically panicking because he doesn’t want to look bad.
My reaction is “Good. Let the bastards squirm!”
The German government has gone out of their way to silence any opposition to genocide. Fear of looking like a Nazi is the closest they will come to self awareness.
I think the faces and the way they talk can be understood even without knowing German
interesting statement. Especially from someone who speaks german like you do. I’ve seen some of your comments in german speaking lemmys and I am pretty sure that you are actually informed about how german politics work. So you know that Olaf Scholz along with his party SPD and by extension the coalition is weak, indecisive and bland. This exactly is the reason why they make a statement that boils down to “we’re not deciding anything right now but we can’t imagine arresting Netanyahu”. They are simply cowards and not the evil genocide loving villains you want to portrait here. You should really know better than spreading this polarising divisive crap. I know it’s easy and fun and you’ll get your upvotes, but that doesn’t make it true
We are not talking about indecision over lowering taxes or budget allocations. We are talking about Germany backing Israel and arming it, while very blatantly ignoring, relativising and sometimes denying Israeli crimes. We are talking about upholding international law for the prevention and punishment of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
I watch every of the press conferences. The statements are almost identical to a year ago. And almost every conference, so two to three times a week, the topic comes up as yet another crime was committed so outrageously that it made news, or another report showed how systematic the crimes are.
And in this particular instance they were asked repeatedly, how come they didnt prepare for the warrants to happen and now they claim, that they would first have to look i to whether they recognize the ICCs authority, despite that having been ruled by the ICC in 2021 already.
This is all very deliberate. And it is not like the speakers just got the topic served today. They are giving these talking points and evasions consistently since a year. They are in full support of what they are saying as any decent human would have resigned from such a position long ago. Sometimes in the conferences you saw some of them seriously struggling emotionally, because something in them must have told them that it is wrong to reply to the intentional starvation of millions or the murder of children with “right to self defense and this is all Hamas fault.” Othertimes you can see them smirking like when they denied knowing anything about the pager attacks. Or a bit more recent regarding how they misrepresented the clashes in Amsterdam where one question was regarding the video of Maccabi hools hunting Amsterdam locals in the street that was misrepresented as Maccabi Hools being the victims instead of perpetraitors in this specific video. Hebestreit started attackinf the question asker, how he dares denying what has happened in Amsterdam, which the question wasn about at all.
They seem a bit cowardly now, that they got yet another slap by reality that is hard to ignore, but they have been the talking heads for the heinous conduct of thos government in regards to Israel happily for more than a year now.
Thanks for your reply. I really appreciate it and I think you have some very valid points. To be perfectly honest, as a human being I am disappointed and angry about the official German state response to the ICC warrant, and the continued delivery of weapons to Israel too. And more personally, I went by a Palestinian protest camp in front of a local university yesterday and I must say I have the utmost respect and empathy towards these people freezing their asses off in tents in sub zero temperatures fighting for awareness of those war crimes.
Having said that, I think you are mixing up causes and effects. Let me try to explain and allow me to show you a different perspective on things, because the whole matter is way more complicated than it might seem, and while anger and hatred towards what is happening here might seem justified it only tells half of the story.
Ok, first some basic history facts (I’ll make this quick because you probably already know that)
- Nazi Germany killed about 6 Million Jews in the Holocaust, plus Germany caused WW2, which had an estimated death toll of 80 million people.
- After the war the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik) was founded, and in the process vowed to never let that happen again. This vow is a central part of the foundation of the federal republic and staying committed to that vow is absolutely necessary to ensure the legitimacy of the German state. The severity and crushing weight of this fact is something that non-Germans or even younger Germans might find difficult to understand.
(Bear with me here, I haven’t even started yet - What is probably on your mind right now is that the very same thing Germany vowed to prevent is happening in Gaza right now, and they do nothing. I’ll address that)
So, having established the background it should be perfectly clear that Germany has a very heavy weight of responsibility towards the victims of their past crimes, and those victims we are talking about here are the Jewish people. And now is the part where it gets complicated.
As a person I am well capable of making a distinction between hatred towards the Jews (aka antisemitism, denying their right to live, denying the right of existence of the state of Israel…) and criticism of the israeli government. I personally have absolutely no problem calling Netanyahu and his right wing cronies war criminals and at the same time I am strictly positioned against antisemitism. These are very obviously two different things.
On the state/country level however, it’s not that easy. As a state government you have to take the official views of another state at face value. Which means you don’t have the luxury to differentiate between the state’s government and the people of that state, unless you publicly denounce the legitimacy of the government of that state. That’s basically how relations between all states work. And this is the culprit. Germany as a state, due to its history and aforementioned vow is not in the position to openly criticize the government of a country they have vowed to protect. Netanyahu on the other side knows this very well and uses Germany’s inability to act in his advantage whenever he can. For historic reasons, Germany needs to avoid being accused of antisemitism at all costs and Netanyahu uses this fact to play Germany like a puppet.
This isn’t limited to Germany by the way. If you look at what happened in Amsterdam, where violent israeli hooligans incited a riot, and the initial response by the dutch government was to solely blame antisemitic actions for the violence, it was basically the same mechanism at work. The Netherlands as a progressive democratic country with a shared history of atrocities towards the Jews can’t afford to be seen as allowing antisemitic hunts in their cities. Netanyahu and the dutch far right used this reflex to their advantage and it nearly lead to the collapse of the dutch government. In hindsight it became clear what really happened that night and even Amsterdam’s mayor had to row back and say that her choice of the word “pogrom” was wrong and so on. She was making it pretty clear that she felt played. But the damage was already done and the net result was in favor of the israeli government and the european far right.
Anyway. I promised to address German state attitudes towards Gaza. While the aforementioned vow to protect Jewish life has absolute precedence over other matters (as explained) the atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are very visible in Germany and they are also constantly being reported in all news media, including the state-funded public broadcasting services. For everyone to see. Every day. Basically without much comment apart from when some UN or US person says something critical about Israel. There is absolutely no-one condoning or even justifying the war crimes against Palestinians (there is some bothsideism concerning Hamas violence though), and the way most of this is presented without much comment really stands for itself. The same goes for humanitarian initiatives towards Gaza including UN projects. They exist and a lot of people are actively trying to help, this includes officials across the political spectrum. But of course they keep a low profile, because they simply have no other choice.
To wrap this up. Germany is trapped inbetween its responsibility to Jews due to its history and a new reality of bad-faith actors in Israel. The fear of being wrongfully denounced as antisemites and the fear of actual antisemitism gaining traction in the population lead to some very questionable decision making in German politics, and to a seemingly one-sided news coverage. However I’d argue in most cases not evil intentions are the reason, but good intentions gone wrong. Like they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
New plan, convert to Judaism, move to Germany, rob a bank, and get away Scott free.
No, no. This only works if you commit a genocide.
Move to Germany and slaughter everyone in AfD
Game recognizes game.
Former genocidaire recognizes current genocidaire.
The Nazis killed more Russians than Jews. Does that mean you would also not arrest Putin?
If you want to pull out of the Rome Statute, just do that, motherfuckers, and spare us the lecture.
Otherwise, fuck you and the high horse you rode in on.
Because of nostalgia then?
Germany sure does love their genocides.
So sick of this comment. They don’t do this because they like genocide, the problem is unwavering loyalty to Israel
While it is probably true that he won’t get arrested, the headline is quite misleading: they’re currently avoiding to answer the question, because the German also has a historical responsibility to adhere to the ICJ.
They want to enable Israeli imperialism while not looking like they didn’t learn anything from being the reason the ICJ exists.
This I would say shows that they actually learned nothing from that experience. If there was anyone in the international community that should arrest yahu on the spot it’s Germany. I’m curious did Germany extend the same to the Hamas leader the ICC put a warrant out on? otherwise I’d say they’re guilty of playing favourites. Lets go one further, how about Putin? Is it only b/c he is Jewish? then that’s just discrimination.
That is pathetic and shame on the SPD. A murderer is a murderer and I do not give a shit about their religious background and history. I refuse to vote for the AfD and Linke, but sometimes the SPD pisses me off.
uh…
excuse me but…
WHAT THE GOD DAMN FUCK?
And its Nazi present, apparently Great move using the Holocaust to justify another genocide though. Really shows how much was learnt there.
My guess is that they are saying this because in September 2023 they made a deal with Israel to buy their missile defense system. Instead of buying a European version with the French mind you, but that’s a whole other stupid fucking can of worms.
Well, October 2023 passed by and then it got a bit trickier over time to support Israel. But besides demands to maintain humanitarian care for Gazans, my government has done nothing of substance to stop supporting Israel. It is beyond shameful, this decision will haunt us in the future when Israel inevitably loses its position and we have to answer why we are so stupid to buy from Israeli right wing extremists (and the US) to begin with instead of starting EU projects if we have to. Not to mention the biggest thing, supporting open genocide.
We always talk big about EU stronk, but I can’t help to sympathize with the French (and other EU govs) when they are pissed at my country. We have taken the call every time the US wants something instead of considering European interests plus have run austerity for 20 years now in every government in the time period. We have a real knack for getting ourselves into a dependency of big powers, even Russia with their gas. We lack any vision how to fix our problems and build a strong European union while being the biggest member. Meanwhile the right builds it’s own vision, fortress europe. Thanks Merkel, thanks Scholz, you’re really good at managing.
All this to say my government sucks because they won’t arrest Bibi. Fuck that guy and frankly fuck Israel for committing a genocide. Thank you for listening to my Ted talk.
How ridiculous is it to rely an army on a missile system from a colony which Germany needs to kiss the floor for? If they can’t even count on Israel to deliver the weapons unless they support their war crimes what is the point of relying on that.
