How Palestinian Politics are Repressed in Germany
By: Shir Hever
The German political discourse on Palestinian liberation and on Palestinian rights shifts wildly over time. It is a topic which is strongly tied to internal divisive issues. While the German right wing is currently in a fiercely pro-Israeli phase, the liberal and left parts of the political map are divided. This has not always been the case, but this article will focus on the period of 2019-2022.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement plays a central role in this debate, because the attempts to criminalize it and the Bundestag (the German parliament) resolution from May 2019 comparing BDS activists with Nazis have sparked an emotional debate, and ended up educating the general public in Germany about the existence of the BDS movement, more than any BDS action could have. As offensive as the German government’s statements against BDS may be, we should acknowledge that demonizing of the BDS movement has helped humanize Palestinians. The stereotypes which ruled the German discourse in the 1990s and 2000s generalized Palestinians as terrorists, and today there is, thanks to the campaign against BDS, a drift towards seeing Palestinians as human rights activists.
Some stereotypes remain strong, however. In Germany, the stereotype that Palestinians are inherently antisemitic, and that Jews are by their very nature inclined to hate Palestinians, is strongly entrenched, despite the fact that this is racist towards both Jews and Palestinians. Texts and public events which challenge this misconception, such as the Göttingen Peace Prize given to the progressive Jewish organization Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East in 2019, triggered conservative Germans into attempting to censor such events and to silence Palestinian and Jewish groups advocating for Palestine. Jews in such groups are similarly accused of not being “real Jews.”
Weaponization of Antisemitism
The repression of Palestinian rights and Palestinian speech in Germany is always couched in the framework of “combating antisemitism,” but the practice of combating antisemitism has shifted completely, from protection of Jews to the protection of the State of Israel. Reports about crimes committed by State of Israel, including the killing of defenseless civilians, collective punishments and the crime of apartheid, are themselves smeared as antisemitic and not to be believed.
It is actually when the reports become undeniable, such as in the case of the killing of Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh on 11 May 2022, or statements made by members of the Knesset elected in the November elections in Israel, that the censorship and oppression become even more aggressive. The accusations of antisemitism are unconvincing, and so they are repeated with more volume and more vehemence. This was seen with a media campaign, which affected all of Germany’s mainstream media channels, against the Dokumenta15 art exhibition which included voices from the Global South and political caricatures drawn by Palestinians. By repeating accusations of antisemitism against everyone involved in the exhibition ad-nauseum, newspapers have exhausted the space reserved to cover Israel/Palestine stories to the Dokumenta15, and left no room to report on the increasing settler violence as well as the brutal repression campaign by the Israeli military in the West Bank and in Gaza, and especially not shedding light on the involvement of German institutions in this repression.
The German government and parliament are strongly pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian, and so is the corporate media, but public opinion is changing. Civil society organizations are increasingly standing up for international law and an increasing number of organizations openly support BDS, or at least the right to BDS, as well as recognize the apartheid situation.
The legal arena
Because Germany is a constitutional democracy, the courts have become a central pillar for protecting the rights of Palestinians. While the government and media channels can employ double standards with impunity, defending the freedom of speech of certain groups but not of others, recognizing the rights of Ukrainians to resist Russian occupation but not the right of Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation, courts are not able to apply double standards.
Because of this, the Bundestag anti-BDS resolution has not even once been successfully used in court to justify the cancellation of an event or censorship of a text. Courts on the municipal, state, federal and even on the EU level have consistently recognized the right to BDS. Pro-Israeli organizations have pressured venues into canceling contracts with Palestinian speakers and with organizations who support Palestinian solidarity, because they were able to convince the venues that Palestinians are not equal individuals before German law, but no court has accepted this dehumanization. For further elaboration on the legal victories, please refer to the ELSC’s article also published in this issue.
The three categories
The efforts to suppress Palestinian speech, advocacy and rights, in Germany are orchestrated by groups who fall into three major categories. Even when certain political parties or newspapers take anti-Palestinian action, there are people behind that decision who are motivated by their affiliation with certain organizations. These pro-Israeli organizations express three different ideological justifications for their hatred of Palestinians.
In the first category are the “Anti-Germans”, who are the loudest and well-known in Germany, although they are also the smallest of the three. Defining themselves as part of the German left, the “Anti-Germans” are strongly opposed to nationalism, and especially German nationalism, in the name of universal leftist values, but they make an exception in their support for U.S. and Israeli nationalism. The Anti-Germans are a unique German phenomenon, without parallels in any other left-oriented movement in the world. They are associated with the anti-fascist movement (Antifa) and call for an uncompromising war against all remnants of Nazi Germany. As they see it, the U.S must be lauded for its role in fighting the Nazis in WWII, the State of Israel is a Jewish collective, and its military is nothing else than an incarnation of partisans and ghetto-fighters. Anti-Germans lend great weight to the historical figure of the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj-Amin el-Husseini, for his anti-Jewish statements and his meeting with Adolf Hitler in 1941. Many Anti-Germans have therefore developed a highly racist perspective, according to which all Jews are inherently victims of fascism—and the existence of right-wing Jews cannot be taken seriously—and all Palestinians are inherently antisemitic terrorists. Despite identifying as leftists, Anti-Germans consider the “anti-capitalist” movement (such as Occupy Wall Street, the anti-globalization movement, the “99 Percent” etc.) inherently antisemitic, because anti-Germans internalize the antisemitic trope of equating Jews with global capital. Anti-Germans therefore bring Israeli flags to demonstrations and organize protests against Palestine solidarity events.
In the second category are the Israeli lobby. By this group, I do not mean just agents of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs operating in Germany, but also German politicians, officials and businesspeople who consider a partnership with the State of Israel to be in their best interest, and that anti-Palestinian oppression is a quick way to gain points with the Israeli government. Bundestag members who voted for the anti-BDS resolution without reading it first, arms dealers who see the Israeli army (and especially the navy) as a lucrative market for German weapons, and even school teachers who are afraid of protest from strong pro-Israeli speakers, and who do not fear any consequences for insulting and dehumanizing Palestinian pupils in classrooms. This category is the most cynical and pragmatic in its reasons for oppressing Palestinians. Pro-Israeli civil society organizations in Germany also fall into this category, because they receive public funding and promote hate of Palestinians, because it is the job for which they are paid, not necessarily only because of their conviction.
The third and biggest category is the Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD), which is the country’s largest religious organization with strong ties to numerous civil society formations and state institutions. The church is itself divided on the issue of Israel/Palestine, but the racist anti-Palestinian sentiment holds sway and usually gets its way. Most of the officials appointed by the German states/landers and the federal government to “combat antisemitism” are devout Evangelical Christians, who make no distinction between the Biblical Holy Land, the Jewish people and the modern State of Israel.
Religious theological motivations for supporting the State of Israel are very difficult to stop. They are driven by emotions and not by facts, for instance by the guilt of churchgoers over the complicity of Evangelical Christians with the crimes of the Nazis during the Holocaust, as well as their desire to absolve themselves of their racism towards Jews, which is a powerful psychological force. Evangelical Christian politicians frequently argue that antisemitism in contemporary Germany is “imported” by Muslim refugees, and so they can weaponize antisemitism, not only in the service of the State of Israel, but also to justify their xenophobia and opposition to accepting refugees. Painting Muslims as the “new anti-semites” liberates these Christians from their guilt.
The German political discourse is enamored with regret over being on the wrong side of history, and blind German support for Israeli crimes have sown enough seeds for the next shift in Germany, from complicity to regret over that complicity. This shift may come sooner than we think.