Crisis in Germany's Unconditional Support of Israel
The brutal occupation of Palestine and the bloody actions of the Israeli army are increasingly meeting with international outcry and condemnation. Even in Germany, the country which, due to the Nazi genocide against European Jews, upholds since decades a very special relationship with Israel, accompanied with an outright complicity with Zionist governments against the legitimate demands of the Palestinians for self-determination – even in Germany, the time of undisputed “unconditional support for Israel” is running out.
On the 1st of July, for the first time in history, the German federal parliament (Bundestag) in Berlin adopted unanimously a resolution on the Middle East. This resolution contains essentially two central demands: the first is the establishment of an international commission to investigate the attack against the Free Gaza Flotilla by the Israeli Navy on the 31th of May, which took the lives of 9 peace activists and left almost 30 injured; the second is a demand that the siege against the Gaza strip be lifted.
The draft resolution was brought in jointly by the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats, the Liberals and the Greens. The Left Party (Die Linke) faaction had its own draft, a much shorter and much more precise one, but decided eventually to withdraw it and support the majority draft in order to have a “unanimous vote” and send an international message. This move was not without problem because the resolution brought in by the government and mainstream parties does not mention or condemn anywhere the 43-year long illegal occupation of Palestinian land as the main source of the dispute. It contains many bad or wrong formulations unacceptable for a genuine peace movement. Time and again the resolution is eager to create the impression of a “differentiated approach”, softening the justified accusations against Israel. It tries to prevent one-sidedness in citing the hollow Israeli propagandistic arguments for the blockade of Gaza and the attack on the Freedom Flotilla. Therefore it quotes the “self-defense” propaganda of the Israeli government, takes its distances once more from the “radical Islamist Hamas” and its alleged “supporters” on board of the ships. It accuses Hamas of exploiting the blockade of construction material for political reasons and of having no interest in lifting the blockade while profiting from the tunnel economy. The resolution repeats the allegation of Israel’s offer to the Flotilla to accept goods to be brought in to the Gaza strip after an inspection by different transport channels. It blames Hamas for having denied the transport of goods by lorries (the truth is that Hamas was not ready to act against the will of the organizers of the Flotilla; and everybody knew that Israel would only accept selected goods). Moreover the resolution proclaims once and again Israel’s “right to exist” and its “security interests”. Lifting the siege on Gaza – according to the majority draft – was necessary because it has failed to weaken Hamas and is “counterproductive to the political and security interests of Israel”.
Despite all that, the adopted resolution may well signal the beginning of a new phase in the political relationship between Germany and Israel. Like many more international moves in the wake of the attack on the Free Gaza Flotilla, it is putting pressure on the Israeli government to change its policy in favour of a lasting compromise with the Palestinians. But will this compromise be just and democratic?
New Middle East-document
Since the beginning of July 2010 a group of peace activists and leftists from different political currents and various parts of Germany is collecting signatures for a comprehensive political paper on the Middle East question. Most recently the paper was published by the left-wing daily Junge Welt and is available on various homepages of the German-Palestine Solidarity movement. The elaboration of the paper was encouraged by on Open Letter of more than 100 Israeli leftists in the beginning of 2010 to the German Left Party, demanding a clearer and more courageous stand on the Middle East conflict, encompassing the Israeli and Palestinian Left.
The paper describes the reasons of the decades-long conflict, the geostrategic interests of the imperial powers, the origins of Zionism and the reasons for its success. It analyzes the specific relationship between Germany and Israel due to the Nazi genocide of the Jews. The historical fact of the genocide, the paper argues, should no longer be used to veil the complicity between Germany and Israel in oppressing the Palestinians. The paper describes the suffering of the Palestinians and clearly sides with their just struggle for self-determination. Moreover, it demands concrete measures by the German government – like stopping the arms-trade, stopping the process of upgrading Israel relations with the European Union – in order to stop Germany’s traditional policy of support for Israel as long as it is not respecting human rights and international law.
The document argues for a just political solution in the Middle East, which would bring peace, security and welfare for the Palestinians and the Israelis as well, outlining the different options (two-state solution, bi-national state, federation, confederation etc.). It speaks out against social, racist and national oppression everywhere, calls to an urgent fight against imperial/colonial wars, racism and scorn for democracy in order to prevent the repetition of the preconditions that led to the genocide against the European Jews by Nazi Germany. The international BDS campaign is presented and supported as an effective means to put pressure on Israel and on all those who profit from the oppression of the Palestinians, a campaign that is still difficult to wage in Germany because it is malevolently equated by adversaries with the Nazi boycott against Jewish shopkeepers. The complete German version including the signatures is available in the internet: www.steinbergrecherche.com. On the same address the document will soon be available in Arabic, English, French and Hebrew.
* Hermann Dierkes is the spokesperson of the municipality faction of DIE LINKE in the city of Duisburg/Germany and a co-author of the Middle East paper of the German radical left.The author of the above article,Dierkes is a long-time activist of the political left and trade unionist in Germany. He was elected to the city council ofDuisburg, the biggest steel-producing center of the Ruhr area in the west of Germany, on the list of the Left Party (Die Linke) in 1999, and re-elected in 2004. In the beginning of 2009, Dierkes was heavily attacked by German mainstream media and politicians, accusing him of “anti-Semitic” propaganda because he spoke out against the onslaught on Gaza of the Israeli army and in favour of the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) campaign to force Israel to stop its oppression of the Palestinians. Dierkes was publicly defended by many thousands of peace activists and leftists, among them more than 700 Jewish peace activists. The smear campaign against him could not prevent his re-election in August 2009. He has also been re-elected as spokesperson of the local municipality faction of the Left Party.
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