Once Again in Germany, Nothing New Under the Sun

...Reading about incidents like the violent attack in Hamburg it is difficult not to wonder whether many Germans still have an unhealthy relationship with Jewish matters. Europeans in general, and Germans in particular, have been all too quick to rush to condemn the Jewish state. Perhaps there really is no better way for distracting from past guilt than framing your victims for a similar crime.

Former left-wing conscience of
Germany, with Nazi past.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
24 June '14..

Amidst the stream of hate directed against Israel it is easy to become desensitized to the daily incidents of bigotry, particularly the many that emanate from Europe. But when an elderly Jewish man and his daughter are attacked and hospitalized while attending a pro-Israel vigil in Hamburg one can’t help but feel a shiver. The rally in question was being held in solidarity with the three Israeli teenagers that have been kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists. But apparently even that was too much for some to tolerate and before long an aggressive counter-demonstration had gathered. What was it that they were seeking to counter exactly–the rescue of the boys?

One of the organizers of the vigil—who I will avoid naming here as he has previously had to receive police protection—recounted how the demonstrators knocked the 83-year-old man to the ground before then beginning to kick his daughter who was attempting to protect her father. A press release from the Hamburg for Israel network tells how the victim of the assault had to receive surgery for a head wound and is still recovering in Hospital. Reportedly the attackers came from the somewhat appropriately named anti-globalization group ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of financial Transactions and Aid to Citizens), but what does any of that have to do with three Jewish boys kidnapped by Hamas?

Perhaps some of those on the demonstration would say that they oppose the IDF’s “heavy handed” efforts to rescue the boys, for some days now such agenda-driven complaints have been coming from the international NGO scene (the German ones among them included). Yet when Syria and Iraq are engulfed in one of the most brutal civil wars imaginable, when Egypt is locking away journalists and executing opponents of the military government en masse, it is simply grotesque that Europeans would point an accusatory finger at Israel, the one place where a stable liberal democracy is being held together, no thanks to the NGOs that seek to undermine it relentlessly.

In the case of Germany it seems memories must fade fast—or perhaps not. Given the prevalence of anti-Israel feeling in Germany one can’t help but wonder if this is part of some perverse attempt to turn the tables back on the Jews. After all in a survey from 2011 47 percent of Germans said that Israel is carrying out a war of extermination against the Palestinians. Can they actually believe this, or is it just convenient for some Germans to believe such things?

In recent years there have been a no shortage of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incidents in Germany. It was only back in April that an Israeli man was set upon by a group of youths in Berlin, and in January the German newspaper Neue Osnabrucker Zeitung published an editorial claiming that Israel’s definition as a specifically Jewish state rendered it akin to “apartheid” and a “theocracy.” Then in February the president of the European Parliament, Martin Shulz, chose to not only address the Knesset in German but to harangue MKs on the preposterous charge that Israel restricts how much water it allows Palestinians; this at the same time that Assad was starving out Palestinians rebelling in Syria’s refugee camps. And it hardly seems worth dwelling on the ravings of Gunter Grass, formerly the left-wing conscience of Germany, now widely discredited by the revelations of his own Nazi past.

But what can hardly be ignored is that when traveling through the West Bank, so many projects have German sponsorship, and many of these have an activist or political agenda. Nor can one miss the German NGOs and staff members who are all too ready to pass judgment on Israel. With so few Jews left in Germany, it can almost seem as if some Germans have felt the need to follow the Jews all the way to the Middle East.

Reading about incidents like the violent attack in Hamburg it is difficult not to wonder whether many Germans still have an unhealthy relationship with Jewish matters. Europeans in general, and Germans in particular, have been all too quick to rush to condemn the Jewish state. Perhaps there really is no better way for distracting from past guilt than framing your victims for a similar crime.

Link: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/06/24/violent-anti-semitism-is-back-in-germany/

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