Zionism Über Alles
JVL Introduction
We look on in horror as Germany wields the memory of the Holocaust to silence criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza, persecuting protestors, Muslims and Jews, artists and intellectuals.
In this article in Dissent, Hans Kundnani traces how Germany’s “memory culture”, its reckoning with its Nazi past, has been transformed, and debased, into unconditional support for Israel.
A universalist understanding of the lessons of the Nazi past has given way to a particularist one, exemplified in a chilling phrase used by the CEO of the Axel Springer media empire: “Zionism über alles”.
RK
This article was originally published by Dissent on Fri 15 Mar 2024. Read the original here.
Zionism Über Alles
The German political establishment has abandoned the belief that the Holocaust gave it a responsibility to humanity and replaced it with a responsibility to Israel alone.
Loading article text…
The guilt feeling of the Nazi period in Germany has completely warped the German view of things as they are now. The same has happened in the Netherlands where I lived during WW2. When the persecutions of Jewish people started there was not much of a reaction amongst the population. I think about 80% of the Jewish residents were sent to concentration camp and died. Even after the war this was not much talked about. In the last two decades or so the feeling is that Isreal can do no wrong. The simple idea that killing people, starving them and persecuting them because they are in the way is an immmoral thing seems to be forgotten.
there is an irony in Zionism uber alles and that is the the Nazi state also prioritised its commitment to Zionism. When it banned anti/non Zionist groups it allowed Zionist groups to organise up till 1939.
It seems that there are some lessons from the past that the German state is determined to continue but in so doing they should be under no illusions that they aren’t breaking from their Nazi past. Rather they are continuing it via their support for a genocidal Zionism.
Zionism über alles…… in other words, fascism above all else. And THAT is exactly what the German people have got!
Thanks so much for this important history lesson, which I will share with my friends in Bremen Voice of Refugees.
The possibility that some of these political parties or protest movements are infiltrated by state actors does need to be seriously considered.
Hitchhiking through Germany in 1966 I was given a lift by 4 students who before dropping me off took us on a tour of the local churches
It was Sunday morning and as we stopped at each church as people were going in, they stood in a row giving Nazi salutes to shame those known Nazis who had slipped back in as if nothing had happened.
The whole political spectrum in Germany is full-on Zionist. The far-right AfD, though widely condemned as antisemitic, is welcomed in Israel and has driven the other parties before it, for example in bringing about the Bundestag vote that condemned BDS. At the same time, it has been shocking how leading figures on the left in Germany have been desperate to show that they too offer unconditional support for Israel, not only the Greens but also Die Linke.
Although this has been ramped up in the last months, it is not a new phenomenon. In 2018, Dietmar Bartsch, co-leader of Die Linke, led a delegation from his party to Israel and planted a tree. This innocent sounding action was in fact sponsored by the Jewish National Fund in a kibbutz near the Gaza fence, where the trees form part of the enclosure around Gaza. Furthermore, he did this during the Great March of Return as the Israeli military was shooting protestors and medical personnel.
Supposedly left-wing newspapers like taz and nd have also been eager to display their pro-Israel credentials, not only in news coverage, but even by tracking down and outing individuals in public life who have made pro-Palestinian statements.
Kundnani describes his dashed hope that immigration would reduce Germany’s Zionism. In practice, many immigrants came from Muslim or global-south countries; they felt no need for assumed guilt for the Holocaust, but did bring criticism of Israel. This had a two-fold negative effect: it allowed German anti-immigrant racism to be cloaked in a self-righteous mantle of opposition to antisemitism; at the same time, it gave rise to the concept of ‘imported antisemitism’, as though Germany of all countries had never previously known antisemitism, and in denial of the fact that antisemitic crimes are overwhelmingly committed by right-wing ethnic Germans.
Nicaragua’s ICJ case to stop Germany supplying arms to Israel is to be heard 9th – 10th April.
Many Germans will watch the ICJ hearing. The German media may report it. The case put by Nicaragua’s lawyers may be as game-changing in German public and institutional perceptions as the South Africa case has been globally.
Perhaps Germany’s government will be shamed into stopping its arms supplies to Israel before the ICJ decides its verdict. The protests of German creatives – including very well-known ones – have already spread the message that resisting Israel’s misdeeds is NOT antisemitic, it’s the only ethical choice the world can make.
Germany provides about 5% Israel’s arms supplies. Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands (?) have already stopped sending weapons to Israel, Spain may be about to follow suit. If Germany decides against sending weapons to Israel soon it’ll be more difficult for the UK and Biden to ignore what the UCJ has already told them to do.
It’s unbearable thinking how many thousands of Palestinians will starve to death before our supposedly civilised governments stop the suffering by ending the Israeli state’s ability to impose it.