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Why Germany gets it wrong about antisemitism and Palestine
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It appears that this particular slogan upsets some people for two reasons. One is the supposed equation between Jews and Israel. So when you say “Israel”, the listener hears “Jews”, regardless of the context of what is said and by whom. But a listener who thinks of Jews as synonymous with Israel is the one with the antisemitism problem, not the slogan.

One way to avoid this problem, suggested a commenter on a recent German Facebook thread, would be to say “Netanyahu” instead of Israel. Netanyahu certainly has blood on his hands, but not only Netanyahu. Israel killed children in Gaza before Netanyahu and will likely kill after him too – with the blessing of Germany and the European Union.

It’s not a single person, it's an entire machinery. It is the Israeli education system that educates children from kindergarten onwards to become soldiers, it is the mandatory military service that creates a militarised society, it is the media that aligns with the army and always provides the ideological justification in advance for any war crime. It is a culture that perpetuates a permanent sense of victimhood, that denies the Nakba and the occupation, that dehumanises Palestinians, that sends its youth to occupy, shoot, and kill. Israel is doing the killing, state and society.

The second reason that such a slogan upsets people is the centuries-old antisemitic blood libel, the accusation that Jews kill Christian children to use their blood, found in the history of different regions but dominant primarily in Europe. It is indeed a terrible antisemitic trope. Yet Christian European history is not a universal reference point. It is a reference point of a particular ethnic and religious group in Germany, namely white Germans with Christian heritage. It is also, naturally, a reference point for Jews in Germany.

In Germany, different ethnic and religious communities have different historical trajectories and cultural associations, and the expectation for everyone to share what is primarily Christian European sensibilities and associations is problematic. For Palestinian refugees who came to Germany well after the Holocaust, for reasons not unrelated to it, “childkiller Israel” invokes associations to the Palestinian children killed by the Israeli military and policies, rather than the blood libel. Nor is this blood libel any central reference point for Israeli Jews, who grew up and were socialized in Israel. Yes, this is the primary association for those who grew up in or next to Christian European tradition - but the story here is not about them. Decentering oneself and one’s particular cultural associations and emotional landscape as the universal reference point is the task at hand facing the German society. It is, in other worlds, learning to say: it’s not about me.

Israeli flag burning

On 15 May, the day that the Nakba – the 1948 expulsion and displacement of Palestinians from the newly-declared state of Israel – is commemorated, Germany saw possibly the largest-ever demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinian people. It was impossible to ignore how intersectional those demonstrations were, from the Latin American bloc to intersectional feminists.

Yet the Guardian’s report on the protests chose instead to highlight German politicians’ condemnation of alleged antisemitism, ignoring speeches by Jewish activists and groups like Jewish Voice or the Jewish Bund, and focusing instead on such horrors as the burning of an Israeli flag. Much of the mainstream media coverage of Nakba Day demonstrations did not even mention nor explain to the readers what the Nakba is, and its continuation in the form of ethnic cleansing and denial of Palestinians’ right to return. Berlin, with the largest Palestinian population in Europe, is home to people whose family members have been murdered by Israel in the recent days. These protests are often framed as “anti” Israel, but the fact that they are primarily “for” Palestinian life is omitted.

This is exemplary of public discourse on the issue in Germany, the United Kingdom and elsewhere: Israeli flags matter, Palestinian lives do not. When people, politicians and the media, care more about the burning of national flags than the burning of homes and neighbourhoods and the killing of entire families, they should really have a hard look at themselves.

Here too, in the eyes of the beholder, Israeli flag stands for Jews (and the beholder assumes everyone shares their associations). You can be sentimental about the Star of David as much as you want, but painted on a house in Sheikh Jarrah, it is not more than a symbol of violence and ethnic cleansing. Painted on the Israeli flag, it is a symbol of colonization, occupation and an apartheid regime.

During Channukah 2017, the Jewish Antifa Berlin group staged a Chanukkia with the words: “on our Chanukia, instead of candles, there are now the symbols of human bondage – the national flags of repressive regimes from all over the world, which, in their own unique ways, are responsible for global misery. Their sacralisation is the modern form of idolatry.” Contrary to what some German politicians think, not all Jews are the same.

From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free

Another slogan that’s stressful to many German ears – and many Jewish ones – is “from the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free”. Like the hollow expression “Israel’s right to exist”, it evokes the fear that Jews will be annihilated, if they cannot maintain a state where Jews control the territory between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean. For many people, no Israel means no Jews. Feeding this fear is to perpetuate the logic that Jewish life depends on racial and ethno-national demographic and political domination of one group over another, rather than more egalitarian and democratic frameworks of civil rights, in all their imperfection.

Yet open antisemites who conflate Israel and Jews are not the only ones to do so. The Israeli state does its best efforts to position itself as the voice of the world’s Jewish communities. The German media often unthinkingly describes Israel as “the Jewish state”, even though democratic principles would suggest that a state should not be ethnically or religiously exclusive.

Tragically, mainstream Jewish institutions in many countries also align themselves with Israeli politics no matter what, and wave Israeli flags at every opportunity, including at the very moments that bombs fall and kill entire families in Gaza. This makes the task of distinguishing between Israel and Jews all the more difficult – yet an anti-racist position demands that we do.

There is also a deeper political and philosophical question here. What does it even mean, for Israel to exist? I was a child when my family immigrated to Israel, I have Israeli citizenship, and I grew up in the Israeli education system. I didn’t know where Palestine was and what exactly it was until I was an adult.

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/why-germany-gets-it-wrong-about-antisemitism-and-palestine/