Germany Wants to Rewrite its Holocaust History
This will be a quick one.
If you stop thinking that Germany's response to anything Israel is about Holocaust guilt and instead about rewriting German history, you'd understand German politics better.
The overwhelming majority of antisemitic attacks on German soil are from the Far Right, but these are rendered illegible because it does not fit with the White supremacy that continues to define a lot of German politics.
Germany is invested in the notion that because they are responsible for the Holocaust, they are also best suited to understand what antisemitism is. The idea that antisemitism is 'our' problem is inconceivable to German politics today. It is much easier to scapegoat foreigners instead.
Add to that the redefining of antisemitism as opposing Israel's actions and you get a German state that is fine with prosecuting Jews and non-Jews alike in the name of 'fighting antisemitism.' The most mundane of pro-Palestine events are thus turned into an existential crisis for the state.
Germany has been cracking down on civil liberties to make sure that no nuance is allowed in public discourse. They have cheapened the Holocaust itself by proving that it can be used to silence opposition to an ongoing genocide.
Germany's complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians has nothing to do with its Holocaust guilt. It has everything to do with maintaining a sense of the past that allows them a way out of their role in the Holocaust. They want it to no longer be a German problem.
By acting as if all one needs to do to atone for the Holocaust is to be pro-Israel one is essentially saying that the Holocaust is no longer a German problem, that they can atone for their crimes in Europe by backing a state in the Middle East committing genocide.
Incidentally, this is itself antisemitic. If they can erase the Holocaust by backing Israel, then were the European Jews they murdered in the Holocaust ever really European? Or were they always foreigners, waiting for a Jewish state in the Middle East to be created for them?
They can't have it both ways. If the Holocaust was wrong because genocide is always wrong then backing Israel's genocide is unjustifiable. If the Holocaust was wrong but also it allows Germany to displace their antisemitism problem unto 'foreigners', well that's quite convenient isn't it.
That way the Holocaust is no longer entirely rooted in European antisemitism and colonialism. It's a win-win for the German state: they get to displace their role in historical and modern antisemitism unto a population of 'foreigners' that have very little political capital in German politics.
By doing so they get to both demonise the Other - an old German tradition - while also downplaying and erasing the very real rise of the neo-Nazi and fascist Far Right, some of whom include pro-Israel actors who are envious of Israel's ethno-supremacist state and wish to replicate it at home.
Urgh. It makes sense especially point 8 because Jews were treated as foreigners. Shifting the blame of anti semitism allows the far right to continue to attack migrants with impunity. Christendom persecuted Jewish people for years. I used to think the state of Israel was created to ameliorate holocaust guilt but thanks to your writing & further reading, I now feel that the state was created to continue to "solve the problem of the jews", a centuries old story embedded in the history of Europe.
Thanks for these points.
#8 makes so much sense and is something I’ve never even thought about.