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German Anti-Semitism Is Getting Boring

Nov. 12 2014

Why is the German journalist Maxim Biller unafraid to call out German anti-Semitism, often masquerading as criticism of Israel, for what it is? Because, he says, he “can board a plane any time, pick up an Israeli passport at Ben-Gurion airport, and begin the crazily stressful rat-race of everyday life in Israel.” He elaborates:

What was stated 30 years ago only on the [German] left—that Israel was an aggressive, over-powerful, quasi-fascist state equipped with yesterday’s German ideology of blood and the soil—is today pseudo-liberal mainstream thinking, and the further the [ruling Christian Democratic party] slips to the left under Angela Merkel, the sooner members of that party will also be able to enjoy the delights of Israel-bashing that liberate their instincts so well. We can see what the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the central organ (with its huge circulation) of the narcissist German reactionary left, has been saying on this subject for years, publishing anti-Semitic caricatures of Israel as a knife-wielding monster and Mark Zuckerberg as an all-powerful [monster], the unrhymed graffiti of Günter Grass in which that double-tongued veteran of the Waffen-SS accuses Israel of being a threat to world peace, guest columns by writers overtly or covertly sympathetic to Hamas, and above all dozens of comments in its own editorial opinion pieces, holding Israel to blame for everything.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Angela Merkel, Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, Germany

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic