Palestine is the Scapegoat of German Past

Angela Merkel addresses the Knesset


German Chancellor Angela Merkel's historic speech to the Israeli Knesset on 18 March 2008 has been almost universally applauded, and has been described by Charlotte Knobloch, President of the Central Council of German Jews, as having "opened a new chapter in the relationship between Israel and Germany."

Having expressed Germans' "shame" for the Holocaust, she goes on to point out that "while we are speaking here, thousands of people are living in fear and terror of Hamas's rocket-attacks and terrorism."

Her clumsy choice of words seems to emphasize the failure to mention the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are living in daily fear and terror of Israeli incursions, home demolitions, assassinations, air-strikes, arbitrary arrest, imprisonment and torture.

However, in fairness, she does in fact mention the Palestinians: "Terror attacks ... bring no solutions to the conflict that overshadows the region and the daily lives of people in Israel and the lives of people in the areas of Palestinian self-rule."

If the Holocaust has imposed a historical obligation upon Germany, then it is in large measure towards the Jewish people. Germany, however, has chosen to interpret this obligation as entailing unconditional support for the State of Israel, a state that did not exist at the time of the Holocaust, thus implicitly or explicitly affirming that state's disputed claim to represent Jewish people everywhere. Germany thereby cuts the ground from under all Jews throughout the world -- including within Israel -- who bravely dissociate themselves from the crimes of the Jewish state. Since ultimately it is such people who have the greatest chance of influencing Israeli political life for the better, Germany is in fact acting as an obstacle to positive change within Israel.

Germany will not have come to terms with its past until it sheds its need for scapegoats, and until it abandons its unconditional support for the Israeli rogue state. Such support entails unconditional participation in the dispossession and politicide of the Palestinian people, hardly a stance consistent with Germany's professed desire to shrive itself. In turn, because the Palestinians are a proud and stubborn people who will "not go gentle into that good night" of national and cultural oblivion, the violence and bloodshed will continue on all sides (I don't write "both sides", because the war against the Palestinian people has ramifications beyond Israel and Palestine). The Israeli politicians and German journalists who laud Angela Merkel to the skies are unwittingly celebrating an enemy of peace and justice, and are playing their part in delaying the advent of a just peace to the Middle East.

By Raymond Deane , a composer and activist. He is currently living for part of the year in southern Germany.

The Vatican’s Stance

Angela Merkel’s speech was full of statements we might expect from a religious leader. Why, then, has the German Pope Benedict refused to issue a similar apology? If you have been following the pope’s speeches and interviews, you will know that his best-known comments are those that have criticized other groups—especially religions.

The pope recently quoted a Byzantine emperor who said that anything new Mohammed had contributed was evil and inhumane. He said the Islamic movement had converted people to its faith by the sword.

Both comments triggered an outcry of protest from the world of Islam.

The pope has also been openly critical of Protestants, wondering how they could even have the title of “church” attributed to them.

He has removed restrictions on the use of the Latin Mass, which includes a call for the Jews to be converted to Catholicism. Recently, he revised the “Good Friday Prayer for the Jews” to read: “Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men.” These alterations have angered many Jews.