In the
aftermath of the Holocaust, successive German governments have meticulously
upheld their obligations to the Jewish people. Study of the Holocaust is a
mandatory component of the German state education curriculum, Holocaust denial
is classified as a crime and restitution commitments were honored and even
exceeded.
Chancellor Angela Merkel is a genuine friend of the Jews and
despite intense political pressures and occasional minor vacillations has
consistently supported Israel, describing its security as “part of my country’s
raison d’être.” However, in recent years, as in other European countries, German
public opinion has turned against Israel, perceiving it as the principal threat
to global stability and peace. This hostility has increasingly assumed overt
anti-Semitic tones.
There is growing resentment against Jews, who are
blamed for imposing excessive emphasis on collective German national guilt for
the Holocaust. Anti-Jewish hostility is often expressed in the more “politically
respectable” demonization of the Jewish nation state, allegedly not related to
anti-Semitism although the “Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe”
(OSCE) explicitly defines such behavior as anti-Semitic.The German Left has
accused Israel of war crimes, occupation and racism and also engages in inverse
Holocaust imagery, enthusiastically condemning Israel for allegedly behaving
toward the Palestinians as its Nazi forebears did to the Jews.
When
reproached for engaging in anti-Semitism, the Left condemns the “global Zionist
propaganda machine” for seeking to deny Germans the right to criticize Israeli
government policies. These trends are fortified by the sizable Islamic migrant
community – now numbering over four million – which aggressively agitates
against Israel, utilizing obscene placards at demonstrations, chanting “gas the
Jews” or “death to the Jews.” Muslims are at the forefront of violence directed
at identifiable Jews in urban areas, especially in Berlin, where some Jewish
communal leaders are now recommending Jews avoid wearing kipot in
public.
Yet, the government has welcomed the immigration of almost
200,000 former Soviet Jews and invested major funds to resurrect a vigorous
Jewish communal life and foster Jewish education. Despite receiving state
subsidies, the Jewish leadership displays its independence and frequently speaks
out if it thinks the government is not fulfilling its obligations to the Jewish
community, or failing to act evenhandedly toward Israel.
However, the
intensification of extreme anti-Israeli hostility combined with a recent spate
of disconcerting incidents has created angst within the Jewish
community.
Last year, there was a traumatic national debate which assumed
ugly anti-Semitic overtones after a judgment in Cologne ruled that male
circumcision causes “bodily harm” and declared the practice illegal.
The
matter was only resolved following the direct intervention of Chancellor Merkel,
who initiated the passage of legislation legalizing circumcision. In April 2012,
in a provocative outburst, 84-year-old Nobel laureate Gunter Grass bitterly
accused the Israeli government of seeking to obliterate the Iranian
population.
He warned that the Jewish state, which he considers “insane
and unscrupulous,” represents the principal obstacle to peace in the region and
called on his government to cancel delivery to Israel of the last Dolphin
submarine.
Despite being discredited for having initially concealed that
he had served as a member of the Nazi Waffen SS, Grass’s vicious attack on
Israel, while condemned by numerous politicians and journalists, was
enthusiastically endorsed by many Germans.
Shortly after that incident,
the state-sponsored Berlin Jewish Museum invited Judith Butler, a notorious
Jewish promoter of BDS against Israel, as a guest lecturer. Butler received
enthusiastic applause from the 700-strong audience when, purporting to act in
accordance with the highest Jewish moral values, she renewed calls to boycott
Israel and “abolish political Zionism” in order to create a bi-national
Palestinian state. To provide a platform for such an outspoken anti-Israeli
activist at a state-sponsored Jewish museum in Berlin is surely obscene, but not
unprecedented.
Former Israeli communist Felicia Langer lives in Germany,
where she condemns the German government for supporting Israel, constantly
equates Israelis with Nazis, calls for Israeli leaders to be tried as war
criminals, describes Israel as an apartheid regime and even praises Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In August 2009, German president Horst Kohler,
who four years earlier had addressed the Knesset, shocked the Jewish community
by honoring Langer with the Federal Cross of Merit, Germany’s most prestigious
award.
In 2010, despite protests from the Israeli Embassy, Frankfurt’s
mayor, Petra Roth, invited Alfred Grosser, a German-born Jew known to be
frenziedly hostile to Israel, to give the annual Kristallnacht oration in the
Paul’s Church. He used the occasion to draw parallels between the behavior of
Israelis and Nazis and was lauded by the media.
Another ongoing scandal
prevails at the German Center on anti-Semitism in Berlin, considered the most
important German institute engaged with the subject. Until last year it was
headed by Professor Wolfgang Benz, who received his PhD from Professor Karl
Bosl, a former Nazi stormtrooper who maintains an ongoing association with
right-wing extremist groups.
To this day, Benz continues defending his
mentor.
Benz equates Islamophobia with anti-Semitism, alleging that
critics of Islamic practice are reminiscent of Nazi anti-Semites attacking the
Talmud. He recently challenged the fact that the Muslim terrorist murders in
Toulouse had an “anti-Semitic dimension.” He dismisses concerns about the Muslim
Brotherhood as being reminiscent of anti-Semitic phobias like The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion and bizarrely complains that drawing attention to the fact
that Muslims comprise 70 percent of Berlin prison inmates is comparable to
Hitler’s ravings over “the fact that 89% of Berlin pediatricians in the 1930s
were Jews.”
The Center focuses on right-wing extremism and largely
ignores or understates left-wing and Islamic anti-Semitism. Yet, despite
protests, no effort has been made to redirect the activities of this government
funded institute. The most recent upheaval erupted in response to a list
compiled by the US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, purporting to identify the 10
worst anti-Semitic statements of 2012. It included President Ahmadinejad, the
Muslim Brotherhood, Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan, and European
antiSemites. Ninth on the list was Jakob Augstein, publisher of the magazine Der
Freitag, who also provides columns to Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading weekly,
founded by his father.
I have an aversion to simplistic lists
prioritizing bigots and having reviewed some of Augstein’s outbursts, I consider
that bracketing him with Ahmadinejad or Farrakhan absurdly magnifies his
standing and impact. But nevertheless, his outbursts, by any benchmark, warrant
describing him as an anti-Semite.
Augstein alleges that when “Jerusalem
calls, Berlin bows [to] its will”; that US presidents were obliged to “secure
the support of Jewish lobby groups”; that American Republicans and the Israeli
government profit from violence in Libya, Sudan and Yemen; that “the Netanyahu
government keeps the world on a leash with an ever swelling war chant”; that
“Israel incubates its opponents in Gaza”; that the recent Prophet Mohammed video
provoking riots was initiated by Israel; that ultra-Orthodox Jews are like
Islamic fundamentalist terrorists and “follow the law of revenge.”
Even
the broadest interpretation of the OSCE definition would qualify such
demonization of Israel and allusions to Jewish global power as
anti-Semitic.
In response, Augstein shamelessly claimed that being
opposed to Jew hatred and “deeply respecting” the Simon Wiesenthal Center, he
was distressed to be defamed as an anti-Semite.
Prominent German Jewish
writer and commentator Henryk Broder was sufficiently outraged to describe
Augstein as “a pure anti-Semite... who only missed the opportunity to make his
career with the Gestapo because he was born after the war.” The president of the
Jewish Central Council of Jews, Dieter Graumann, while condemning his “horrible,
hideous” articles on Israel, criticized his placement on such a list. His vice
president, Salomon Korn, went further and foolishly defended Augstein against
charges of anti-Semitism.
Juliane Wetzel from the German Center on
antiSemitism was among those who rejected suggestions that Augstein was
disseminating hatred of Jews. Overall, the bulk of the German media, as well as
both leftist and CDU politicians defended him, insisting that he was merely
expressing legitimate criticism of Israel.
It was significant that in
2010, two Bundestag leftist representatives were aboard the Turkish Marvi
Marmara and that for the first time, the Left and the Right united in parliament
to carry a unanimous resolution censuring Israel for the Gaza flotilla episode.
This in itself may not represent anti-Semitism, but reflects the atmosphere of
increasing hostility against Israel which would have been inconceivable in
Germany only a few years ago.
For Jews, the positive side of Germany is
the evident abundance of pro-Israeli and even philo-Semitic rank-and-file Germans
in all walks of life. Yet simultaneously, the intensifying efforts by left-wing
activists uniting with Muslim extremists, and occasionally even Nazis, to
demonize Israel and promote anti-Semitism, provide valid grounds for concern
about a future for Jews in Germany.
The situation is likely to further
deteriorate drastically after the culmination of Angela Merkel’s term as
chancellor.
The writer’s website can be viewed at
www.wordfromjerusalem.com. He may be contacted at ileibler@leibler.com
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