Germany’s leading Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the opposition Christian Democratic Party (CDU) have ordered high schools in Berlin’s borough of Neukolln to distribute brochures titled The Myth of Israel #1948.
The brochure states there are five “myths” around the creation of the state of Israel, which are subsequently refuted in short essays by various authors.
In the first section, debunking myth #1, that Jews and Arabs lived together in peace before Israel was founded, Israel’s pre-state militia, the Haganah, responsible for the destruction of 531 Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians between December 1947 and the summer of 1948, is promoted as a merely “defensive” Jewish resistance movement.
“Myth #5: Israel is to blame for the Nakba”, includes a text by researcher Shany Mor titled “the UN is distorting the meaning of the Nakba: its view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is extremely one-sided”.
In the text, Mor states that “displacement during war - then and now - was nothing unusual”.
He also labels the UN’s attention to the Palestinian cause “obsessive” and the Arab defeat of 1948 a myth.
Truly, it’s as if Germany has learnt absolutely nothing from it’s past.
Germany: You see? We’re not antisemitic, we’re just pro-genocide! That’s better, right?
They never really hated the Jews, just had to pick SOMEONE to genocide after all.
Now its the moose-lambs turn
They genocided lots of other groups including queers and catholics, so you are basically correct.
The general idea is that these parties do not want to be seen as anti-semetic, especially considering the German past. Which leads to no criticism towards Israel whatsoever. It’s a shame actually, because this opens the door to the AfD party, who dont have qualms about these kind of things.
That’s why it’s doubly shameful of Germany to have this stance, and also a great pity. Germany calling out Israel for it’s genocide would be as strong a rebuke as South Africa calling out Israel for Apartheid.
Well Germany didn’t acknowledge the Namibia genocide until 2021. They’re fine with acknowledging the Holocaust since they can pin that on a rouge actor, the Nazi’s. Since they can’t pin their support for Israel on anyone else, they have trouble acknowledging Israel’s conduct.
Yes, i actaully didn’t know about this.
I suppose that’s one of the reasons why the Namibian president rebuked Germany for it’s stance on Israel in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.
This is a take I don’t agree with. There’s absolutely elements of that, but they seem to also be very hostile to anyone that doesn’t accept it as a “national guilt” that everyone’s responsible for (including their Muslim immigrant population).
The right can then use this as a sort of concrete national character to persecute immigrants (thus the CDU support) while the left can use it as a rallying cry that they’re fighting fascism (SDP support). It really is a perfect storm for awfulness.
“Never again” clearly was not taught and learned as being about genocide or violence along etnic lines, but rather as being about the very specific case of Germans vs Jews.
It’s like the thief who regrets hitting a specific place after caught and punished, but has no regrets about thiefing in general.