Professor Arnd Krüger and his pet conspiracy

We have this present-day pet conspiracy by a Belgian Professor (here) which has not made his conceptor all that famous (though it charmed Counterpunch):

Jean Bricmont and The De-Zionization of the American Mind - The anti-US ravings of an arrogant man

And now by a German Professor this conspiracy recycled from the past which has been widely reported. Simply Jews has an explanation: they want their share of fame.

"Choose an event in the past. The event should be famous enough for any news related to it to reverberate far and wide. The event should be remote enough to make checking the "news" difficult to impossible. Now start manufacturing the news. And voilà:

Professor Arnd Krüger claims Israeli athletes murdered in 1972 knew their lives were in danger because of 'Olympic village's poor security,' but decided to stay, sacrifice themselves for Israel's interests.

This method of getting famous is becoming a routine act for some historians, it seems. Especially when their prospects of getting famous are quite low, like in case of Professor Arnd Krüger, whose area of expertise is "sport history; sport management; sport media; training theory; coaching science; track & field". Hard to become a TV star upon issuing a monograph on a revolutionary jockstrap for a baseball player.

So what does one do? Revises a bit of history, not necessarily related to his field of expertise, but one that allows him to claim some personal knowledge. Hitherto undisclosed for some reason.

In a recent lecture, Prof. Arnd Krüger of the University of Göttingen, who covered the Munich Olympics as a journalist and claimed to have known some of the murdered Israeli athletes, compared the decision made by the sportsmen to stay in the Olympic village despite the known threat to their safety to the decision made by the Jews to stay in Hebron during the 1929 Palestine riots.

Yes. Letting themselves get killed in order to promote their far-reaching interests is a well known Jooish trick, from times immemorial. Like luring all these Babylonians, Greeks, Romans and Germans to kill the Jooz to promote... whatever. Good theory.

Of course, the learned professor is now backpedaling.

Speaking to Yedioth Ahronoth on Saturday, Krüger denied ever saying he believed the Israeli mission to the Munich Olympics knew that it would be targeted, but added that "one has to assume that the sportsmen who stayed in the village knew it had poor security.

But the bird has already escaped, and professor is feverishly covering his arse:

I'm not a racist or an anti-Semite, I'm just trying to understand what really happened.

Yep. Thirty six years of trying to understand and this is what we have: a wannabe celebrity crawling to fame over people's graves. With the "what really happened" battle cry of freaks and morons all over the world.

And you know what? I really believe he is neither a racist nor an anti-Semite."

Related:

Israel wants action against academic who defamed Munich athletes

Berlin forum calls for Israel's destruction, by Benjamin Weinthal

How many such conferences are being held in Europe with the cynical support of State authorities, political parties, churches, foundations, NGOs, journalists etc of which one never hears? See here and here.

Benjamin Weinthal reports in TJP:

"Representatives of Germany's foreign and economics ministries are fumbling the hot potato of who, exactly, backed a conference in Berlin last week that became a mouthpiece for anti-Semitic Iranian propaganda and a call for Israel's destruction.

Iran's former deputy minister of foreign Affairs, Dr. Muhammad Javad Ardashir Larijani, told the Third Transatlantic Conference - whose stated purpose was to address "common solutions" in the Middle East - that "the Zionist project" should be "cancelled" and "has failed miserably and has only caused terrible damage to the region."

Representatives from Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia also attended the conference and voiced brazen anti-Israeli statements. (...)

"That neither the Foreign Office, nor Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier personally, forcefully contradicted Larijani's crude comparisons shows the double standards and complacency in dealing with the mullah regime," said Stephan J. Kramer, the General Secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

In an e-mail to The Jerusalem Post, a spokeswoman for the German Foreign Ministry wrote that "the Foreign Ministry did not financially support the event." However, she did not respond to a query by the Post last Thursday as to why the ministry had supported the conference.
Kramer said "the fact that Larijani, an accomplice in the mullah regime, was invited at the suggestion of the Foreign office is bad enough." (...)

Additional German sponsors of the event were Peace Research Institute Frankfurt; the Berlin representative of the State of Hessen; the German Protestant Church (EKD); and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) - a think tank with close ties to the Social Democratic Party (SPD). "It is nothing new that the FES is dealing with very weird anti-Israeli organizations and people," Middle East expert Thomas Von der Osten-Sacken told the Post. Von der Osten-Sacken, who heads the non-profit relief organization Wadi in northern Iraq, blew the whistle on the FES's joint Beirut International Conference on the The Islamic World and Europe with the Hizbullah in 2004.

In addition to Hizbullah, Hamas was heavily represented at the FES-sponsored conference in 2004. The conduct of the Social Democratic aligned foundation FES prompted the Simon Wiesenthal Center to urge the Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to publicly condemn the conference. Steinmeier was then-chancellor Gerhard Schröder's chief of staff during the FES-Hizbullah conference in Beirut. "It is scandalous," said Von der Osten-Sacken about the government providing a platform in Berlin for Iranian officials to demand "the extinction of Israel."

The conference's location - close to both the Holocaust memorial and the former Nazi center of power - carries great weight in Germany because of its history. While visiting Israel in March, Chancellor Angela Merkel declared the security of Israel to be part of Germany's overall national interests.

Kramer said that "anti-Israel statements and the renewed denial of the Holocaust at a conference supported by German tax money, by the FES, the Foreign Office, the SPD and EKD, and held in Berlin on the 70th anniversary of the Reich Pogrom Night call into question the official government expression of solidarity with Israel."

Larijani, whose brother Ali was Iran's former chief nuclear negotiator and its current parliament speaker, said "denial of the Holocaust in the Muslim world has nothing to do with anti-Semitism." Although Holocaust denial is unlawful in Germany, German officials have not commenced a criminal prosecution against Larijani. Meanwhile, the Peace Research Institute in Frankfurt has written that the organization "endorses the criticism" of Germans and Israelis who objected to the "anti-Israeli remarks made by Mr. Larijani.""

Israel wants action against academic who defamed Munich athletes
Berlin exhibition singles out Israel's security barrier

The dangerous naivety of the well-intentioned, by Melanie Phillips

Melanie Phillips finds at last encouraging signs among Europeans, but also a worrying disposition to minimise the existential threats facing Israel:

"The conference in Berlin which I’ve been attending, organised by the Weidenfeld Foundation and the Axel Springer corporation, was about relations between the EU and Israel. It was simultaneously encouraging — touching, even - and dismaying. Encouraging because here was a Europe which – in the form of the German and Czech foreign and interior ministers at least, along with sundry diplomats and business people - had stopped hectoring Israel for its crimes and instead was pledging never to abandon it to its enemies; and it was touching to see the painful awareness of the Germans of their duty to ensure that their own history should never again be repeated elsewhere in the world. (Indeed, on the very day of this meeting the EU-Israel Association Council – the body headed by foreign ministers which conducts the bilateral relations between Israel and European Union member states – announced an upgrade in relations between Israel and the EU.) What a difference from poisonous Britannia. The reason for the change in the European attitude is said to be twofold. First, and most important, the perspective of Europe’s elite has changed under the pressure of its own crisis of Islamist colonisation. As a result, it looks upon Israel, the front line of defence against this attack, in a new and more sympathetic light. Second, it approves of Israel’s apparent determination to hammer out a ‘two-state solution’ with the Palestinians.

But here was the rub. Speaker after speaker extolled Israel’s negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas and spoke of the 'sparks of hope' from such talks that must not be extinguished. But this hope was based on a high level of wishful thinking, not to say historical amnesia. For the two-state solution can hardly be a solution, given that two-states was the original compromise proposition put forward in the 1930s to appease Arab rejectionism of the proposed restored Jewish state – which is still rejected to this day, not just by Hamas but by the ‘moderate’ Holocaust-denier Mahmoud Abbas. Only recently he declared that the Palestinians would never accept Israel as a Jewish state; and yet he is being feted by Israel, America and Europe as a genuine interlocutor for peace. Moreover, as I have noted before, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would mean that Iran was at the doorstep of Jordan and Egypt – a fact that causes the ‘two-state solution’ to fill them with undiluted horror. Far from providing ‘sparks of hope’ therefore, the ‘two-state solution’ would more likely spark a conflagration with an Iran whose quest for regional domination poses such a threat to the wider world."

Read the full article.

Germans and Israel: 60 Years of a Neurotic Obsession, by Jost Kaiser

Full article in Pajamas Media :

"In 2003 the European Commission sponsored an opinion poll whose results imply that Israel must be some sort of superpower — at any rate, in the eyes of German television viewers. (...)

There has long existed in Germany a sort of parallel world of uplifting speeches about Israel, on the one hand — and then, on the other hand, there is this: the poll in question showed that some 65% of Germans feel themselves threatened by Israel. (Another 45% feel threatened by the USA.)

How can that be? Threatened by such a small country with only six million inhabitants: about the size of the German state of Hesse?

The German satirist Wiglaf Droste once rightly said that by “freedom of speech” many Germans understand finally being allowed to say something negative about Jews and Israel again. And thus in the German context the real subject of many stories relating to Israel is just how one can go about doing this.

Germans are obsessed with the issue. Even a master thinker like the political commentator Heribert Prantl of Germany’s bestselling broadsheet, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung, cannot let go of the subject. In 2006, during the Israel-Hezbollah war, Prantl showed how it can be done: namely, by asserting that one cannot say anything against Israel — in order then to do so at great length.

“Bombs falling on Beirut, war in the Gaza Strip, a hundred thousand refugees. What criticism of Israel and how much criticism is permitted in Germany these days?”

Of course, all criticism is permitted. It is only that people like Prantl are always holding themselves back (happily), in order then at some point to out themselves as heroic rebels fighting against their authentic selves and to declare their own inner struggle as universal. (...)

Already in the sixties, the “alternative scene” leftist, Dieter Kunzelmann, suggested that Germans had to get over their “tick about the Jews.” He and his comrades thought they could do this, for instance, by putting a bomb in the Jewish community center in West Berlin.

Of course, the majority of Germans are not so radical. But they are, nonetheless, preoccupied by this “tick about the Jews” — of which they themselves show symptoms and whose treatment they obviously consider to be urgent.

A German neurosis. A neurosis that consists, for instance, in the fact that in Germany no country is criticized so harshly as Israel — and then at the same time Germans complain that “one is not allowed to say anything negative about Israel.”

A neurosis that consists in the fact that Heribert Prantl of Die Süddeutsche Zeitung can set off some of the classic pyrotechnics from the anti-Semitic arsenal — so long as they are just slightly repackaged as anti-Israeli rather than anti-Semitic. For example, the standard charge that Jews are responsible for creating their own enemies. One does not need to draw on any negative anti-Semitic “associations,” Prantl claims, “in order to criticize Israel’s aggression against Lebanon, which will prove to be a help to Hezbollah’s recruitment efforts. One may, indeed one must deplore the fact that Israel is rearing its own enemies and helping to make a murderous conflict eternal.”

Israel’s aggression? In fact it was the other way around: Israel was attacked. But no: Israel has, of course, to be held responsible.

Prantl continues: “In combating Islamist fanaticism, Israel’s self-fanaticization is no help. The right to self-defense cannot lead to international norms, like that of the protection of the civilian population, being suspended.”

“Israel’s self-fanaticization”? One needs to savor this defamatory coinage by Die Süddeutsche Zeitung’s amateur psychologist.

Needless to say, Prantl’s remarks were met with applause at the time. In fact, not just applause — rapturous applause.

This is probably of no concern to Israelis. They are used to it. Unlike Germans, who spend the whole day thinking about Israel, Israelis do not spend the whole day thinking about Germany.

It is similar with Americans, who could not care less about Germany and are more likely to show interest in Asia than in messed-up Europe.

Israelis would rather spend their time developing software and conducting research on biotechnologies, an area in which the country is among the world leaders.

And here in Germany, we will spend another 60 years obsessing over the question: “What may — no — what must we be permitted to say against Israel?”

Well, have fun with your ruminations — but I want nothing to do with them.

Happy Birthday Israel!"

German Neo-Nazis for Israel

Eldad Beck reporting on a German neo-Nazi group purported support for Israel in YNet News

"Shall wolves dwell with lambs? Israel received an unexpected surprise for its 60th birthday in the form of a new group rooting for its prosperity. The twist? They are neo-Nazis.

On May 15, the Gregorian date in which the State of Israel was established, a group called National Socialists for Israel launched its online manifest.

"A strong nation is worthy of life; an ailing nation deserves death," it said, before detailing an ideology sporting the traditional Nazi concept of purity of the race on the one hand, and calling on National Socialists to let go of their hatred for Jews and support the Jewish people's right to their own homeland on the other.

"Deportations, pogroms and inquisitions were all understandable acts which were carried out by nations merely trying to defend themselves," said the website of past persecution of Jews.

"That is also the context in which the event called the 'Holocaust' must be viewed… This does not justify it. Instead of destroying the Jews we should have taken every measure possible to support the Zionist movement."

The group goes on to harshly criticize the Nazi regime as the cause of the "unnecessary rivalry" between Germany and its "brethren neighbors," and slams the current leaders of Germany's extreme right as "cowardly reactionaries."

"The Jewish people still exist. Their national movement, supported by brave warriors has been able to form a state and expel foreign elements… For 60 year now, an army of young men and women has defended Israel against all foes," said the site.

Further supportive messages called for the Nazi party to "stop spreading anti Semitic lies about a worldwide Jewish plot" and demanded of anti Semites to "show us proof of Jewish domination over Germany and the world."

The website also tells of a gathering which took place on May 25 and included panels on solidarity with Israel, anti Semitism, and how to counter "the growing Islamic presence in Germany and around the world."

The group's public relations department has begun distributing stickers in Berlin depicting Israeli soldiers carrying the Israeli flag with the slogan - "A 2000-year struggle for survival. Respect those who have earned it."

Social experts following Germany's extreme right are skeptical of the new group, with some saying it is the product of a radical Left-wing-led provocation. Others, however, believe it may be a genuine new movement."

The Poisoned Congratulations of German Know-It-Alls, by Henrik M. Broder

Israel bashing and lecturing started in ... 1948.

From Spiegel on line

"Israel's right to exist is questioned on a daily basis -- not just by radical Palestinians, but also by prominent intellectuals. As the country celebrates its 60th anniversary, they are sending their case against Israel in messages disguised as birthday greetings. But their supposed concern about the Middle East is really just a cloak for their own guilt complexes."

"Israel's existence is called into question day after day -- not just by militant Palestinian organizations such as Fatah and Hezbollah and the president of Iran, but also by congenial European intellectuals who devote themselves to the "Middle East question" with the dedication of someone who has long since completed all his other homework.

Recently a group of German thinkers including the political scientist Johano Strasser, Green Party parliamentarian Claudia Roth and writer Gert Heidenreich published a paper to mark Israel's 60th birthday entitled "Congratulations and Concerns."

In it they praise Israel's "development, the cultural diversity, the scientific and technological successes, the intellectual productivity and the democratically organized pluralism." But they also voice doubt about whether the Israelis are really doing enough to settle the conflict with their neighbors.

Israel, the writers warn, is endangering "its own existence", "making a fool of the whole world," and "deceiving itself." The paper calls on German politicians "not to lose sight of the connection between the extremely difficult economic and political situation of the Palestinians on the one hand and the uncertainty and menace facing Israel on the other."

The entire paper is a collection of cheap platitudes concocted by hobby astronauts zooming through virtual space on their games consoles, convinced that everything hinges on their navigation skills.

The paper "Congratulations and Concerns" was preceded by another position statement: "Friendship and Criticism," written by 25 political scientists who accuse Israel of instrumentalizing the Holocaust for its own political ends and who call for a rethink of the "special relationship" between Germany and Israel in order to render the "internal German discourse" between "non-Jewish, Jewish and Muslim Germans" broader and more impartial.

An open letter signed by 120 academics caused a Europe-wide stir in 2002. The letter called for academic relations to be frozen between Israel and European countries in protest against Israel's policies. In other words, the cultural and scientific cooperation between the countries should be stopped. The letter went largely unnoticed in Germany, for a very simple reason -- only two of the 120 signatories were German.

Meanwhile, there is hardly any well-known writer who has not made some kind of statement about Israel. Jostein Gaarder, the Norwegian author of the bestseller "Sophie's World," wrote Israel out of the pages of history with the words: "We no longer recognize the State of Israel." Gore Vidal, the American author who lives in self-imposed exile in Italy, South Africa's Breyten Breytenbach and the Portuguese author José Saramago have all also expressed their opinions, with latter comparing the situation in Ramallah to Auschwitz. When asked where the gas chambers were, he reportedly replied: "There are no gas chambers, yet." (...)

The most striking thing about such statements is not just the total self-assurance with which they are made, but also the total lack of historical substance: The same people who feel responsible for the fate of the Palestinians and feel driven to give Israel advice, want to be released from the historical responsibility for the fate of the Jews, which has weighed on them for over 60 years as a heavy burden. As early as the late 1960s, the Berlin revolutionary Dieter Kunzelmann called on the Germans to get over their "Jewish problem."

And little changed has until now, except that the language has become a little more subtle. Significant parts of the German intelligentsia see it as their task to watch day and night to make sure that the Jews (in other words, Israelis) do not backslide and do not gamble away the moral credit that they gained by being the victim of the Nazis. But Israel's original sin isn't its poor treatment of the Palestinians but rather the fact that it makes it so hard for those nice Germans to like the Jews.

Many years ago, an article appeared in German weekly Die Zeit, with an appeal to the "responsible men of the government of Israel." The author said they should pause and recognize "how far they have already come along that path which recently led another people to doom."

That was on Sept. 23, 1948, just four months after the founding of Israel. The author? The German journalist and intellectual Marion Dönhoff."

Berlin exhibition singles out Israel's security barrier

Berlin could have chosen to mount an exhibition on all or several of the fences/barriers/walls listed below. Berlin's decision to single out Israel, and only Israel, betrays the true intentions of the organisers. On a note of optimism: the decision drew strong criticism from some quarters. Berlin exhibit equates security fence with Berlin Wall, by Benjamin Weinthal, TJP "A highly controversial publicly funded photo exhibit equating Israel's security fence with the Berlin Wall has sparked political controversy in the German capital. In late April, a majority of District representatives from the Green and the Left parties approved German photographer Kai Wiedenhöfer's "Wall on Wall" display, showing photos of the West Bank security fence at the East Side Gallery, a historical landmark containing sections of the Berlin Wall that commemorates a divided Berlin during the Cold War period. (…) Still, the Social Democratic Party faction within the District council voted against the exhibit and wrote on its home page that the display "relativizes the SED dictatorship and at the same time condemns, among other things, the policies of the State of Israel." Critics charged that the images in Wiedenhöfer's book fanned the flames of anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiments. For example: A photo of graffiti on the separation barrier shows the message, "Warsaw 1943," accompanied by a swastika and Jewish star and the statement "America Money Israeli Apartheid." Dr. Clemens Heni, a German political scientist whose area of expertise is anti-Semitism, said the photo was a "typical expression of the new anti-Semitism" because of the description of the Palestinian situation as the modern embodiment of persecuted Jews in the Nazi-controlled Warsaw ghetto in 1943, as well as the parallel between the swastika and the star of David. According to the "Working Definition of Anti-Semitism" issued by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, "comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" are an expression of anti-Semitism. Heni has organized an on-line petition campaign demanding that the Berlin government cancel the exhibit, and he called for the "creation of a partnership with the Israeli town of Sderot." "In the motifs he chooses for his photos, Wiedenhöfer's political views become clear. In his work, he presents a completely distorted, one-sided image of the Israeli security installation. The lifesaving function of the wall is not taken into account," said Levi Salomon, the newly appointed representative of the Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against anti-Semitism, an initiative of the 12,000-member Berlin Jewish community which launched on Wednesday. (…) "Freedom of art" is an important right, said Regine Sommer-Wetter, the Left party representative who voted for the exhibit. Asked about her party co-chairman Gregor Gysi, who delivered a blistering attack on anti-Israeli attitudes within his party in mid-April, Sommer-Wetter said she read the speech but it did not play a role in the "political valuation of the photos." Gysi said, "Anti-Zionism cannot be, or at least can no longer be, a tenable position for the Left in general, for the party." (…) Günther Schaefer, a prominent artist whose works address the Berlin Wall, remarked to the Post that it was "tragic that the political parties are taking part" in "using the East Side Gallery as a form of propaganda." Schaefer, a member of the Board of Directors of the East Side Gallery, sees the Berlin Wall location to depict the Israeli separation barrier as an "equalization with the East German terror regime," and called this comparison unacceptable for Israel." The City of Berlin's decision to single out Israel, and only Israel, looks highly suspcious to me. Security fences or barriers to peace? from A Liberal Defence of Israel blog US/Mexico Proposed. 3,360km. Several barriers already exist with Mexico (California, Texas, Arizona). This would cover the entire border. Anti-immigration. Belfast, N. Ireland. Built early 1970s. Average 500m. Number around 40. Anti-terror. Padua, Italy 2006. 85m. 3m-high, round mainly African Anelli estate. Internal. Ceuta, Morocco 2001. 8km. €30m. EU-funded. Anti-immigration. Mellila, Morocco 1998. 11km. Anti-immigration Morocco/Western Sahara 1987. 2,700km. To keep out W. Saharan (Polisario) insurgents Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt 2005. 20km. Anti-terror Botswana/Zimbabwe 2003. 500km. Anti-immigration. South Africa/Mozambique 1975. 120km. Anti-immigration. Carries 3,300 volts. Has killed more people than Berlin Wall Israel/West Bank Under construction. 703km. Anti-terror. Adhamiyya, Iraq 2007. 5km. Anti-terror. Cyprus 1974. 300km. Conflict zone barrier. Kuwait/Iraq 1991. 193km. Conflict zone barrier. Saudi Arabia/Yemen 2004. 75km. Anti-terror. United Arab Emirates/Oman 2007. 410km. Anti-immigration. Russia/Chechnya Proposed. 700 km. Anti-terror Kashmir 2004. 550km. Anti-terror (India). Pakistan/Afghanistan Proposed. 2,400km. Anti-terror (Pakistan). Uzbekistan/Kyrgyzstan 1999. 870km. Conflict zone. China/North Korea 2006. 1,416km. Conflict zone. Korea Demilitarized Zone 1953. 248km. Av. 4 km wide. Patrolled by 2 million soldiers. Most heavily border in world. Conflict zone. China/Hong Kong 1999. 32km. Internal barrier. China/Macau 1999. 340km. Internal barrier. Brunei/Limbang 2005. 20km. Anti-immigration. Thailand/Malaysia Proposed. 650km. Anti-immigration. India/Bangladesh Under construction. 3,268km. Conflict zone.

German Leftists Declare Solidarity with Israel, by Elif Kayi

From: Z word blog: Elif Kayi, Z Word’s European press reviewer, reports on Gregor Gysi’s declaration of solidarity with Israel. There is a common perception that the European left is uniformly hostile to Israel. In that respect, Germany appears to have bucked the trend. Last week, Gregor Gysi, who jointly heads the party Linkspartei with Oskar Lafontaine, delivered a speech about Israel that was, by the prevailing standards of the European left, quite startling. Speaking at a conference organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Gysi warmly congratulated Israel on its 60th anniversary and called on his party to “show solidarity” with the Jewish state. Critically, Gysi defined such solidarity as an integral part of Germany’s “raison d’etat.” In so doing, Gysi harshly criticized the historic position of the PDS - the direct descendant of the communist party which ran the totalitarian East German state and now one of the constituent elements of Linkspartei - for its faithful reflection of Moscow’s line of implacable hostility towards Israel. “The leadership of the DDR (German Democratic Republic) did not only lack understanding of Israel’s security interests,” said Gysi. “It also did not understand the specific responsibility towards Jews that emerged from the eternal warning of the Shoah.” Gysi also counselled against classic left-wing anti-Zionism. “The concept of imperialism does not apply to Israel,” he said. Israeli democracy, he added, “is a really great achievement, that deserves admiration.” In an op-ed published in the daily Tageszeitung, journalist Stefan Reinecke described the importance of Gysi’’s speech: “Maybe more important than the criticism of the traditional leftist opposition to Israel is the commitment to the raison d’etat itself. This is a concept Linkspartei…have always avoided. Gysi interprets this concept not as authoritarian, but as rational - and the course is clear. If the party recognizes Israel as part of the German raison d’etat, it shows that it has finally accepted the western value system.” An editorial published in the daily Tagesspiegel also underscored the significance of the speech: “The speech…brings to an end a chapter in the party’s history: its often unclear position on the terror of extremist Palestinians. Not so long ago, during a visit in Teheran, Oskar Lafontaine tried to curry favour with the rulers of Iran, who are hostile to Israel. Hopefully, Gysi has set standards within his party that Lafontaine cannot pretend to ignore.” The head of the German Young Socialists (JuSo), Franziska Drohsel, also warned against antisemitism from the left and denounced the identification of some leftist groups with the Islamists: “The goals of the Islamist organizations are not compatible with the leftist concept of emancipation…Antisemitism is evil and has to be fought against, no matter who expresses and defends it”.

Most Germans reject notion of 'special responsibility' toward Israel

This leaves 48% of Germans believing that they have a significant obligation toward Israel, although 91% wish to remain neutral in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ...

From The Jerusalem Post:

"A little more than 60 years after the Holocaust, a public opinion poll shows that a majority of Germans believe their country has no special responsibility toward Israel.

A recent opinion poll conducted by the German television station Sat1/N24 and the Emnid polling organization revealed that 52 percent of 1,000 respondents see no significant obligation toward the Jewish state.

Sat1 spokeswoman Kristina Fassler told The Jerusalem Post that the finding is "extremely alarming" and displays "an ignorance of history" in Germany. (...)

The result of the survey prompted Chancellor Angela Merkel, who just completed a three-day visit to Israel, to say before her visit: "This is exactly the reason why we must place Israeli-German relations on a sustainable footing, and in addition we must remember our history." (…)

Josef Joffe, a leading German commentator and co-publisher of the widely read German weekly Die Zeit, told the Post that "What the government does is more weighty than what the pollsters find out."

Joffe sees Germany's "friendship with Israel not as a popular project but as a government project," and stressed that under Merkel's tenure German foreign policy had shifted in a more defined and clearer commitment toward Israel.

The gap between Merkel's defense of Israel's right to counterattack in response to rocket fire from Hamas terrorists in Gaza and German mainstream opinion remains dramatic. Joffe cited a Der Spiegel opinion poll in his Die Zeit commentary showing that 91% of the German public wish to remain "neutral" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and only 3% back the Israeli side, while 1% embrace the Palestinian view."

What Angela Merkel couldn't say out loud

Manfred Gerstenfeld's column on Angela Merkel's visit to Israel in The Jerusalem Post (excerpts):

"German Chancellor Angela Merkel's successful visit to Israel came in conjunction with worrisome developments back in her own country. Few in Israel realize that a majority of Germans probably disagree with several key statements she made here about her country's past - including the mention of shame and guilt - in the Knesset.

In contemporary Germany there are significant expressions of anti-Semitism and racism. This includes attacks on Jews, their cemeteries and Holocaust monuments, together with ongoing anti-Semitic prejudice toward Jews among significant parts of the population. In eastern Germany particularly, there are no-go areas for non-white people in several cities, major racist incidents and sometimes even murders.

At the same time, there are efforts in Germany to rewrite the past. Books by historian Jörg Friedrich, who compares the Allied actions to his nation's atrocities during the war, are best-sellers. They promote "Holocaust equivalence" by using Nazi semantics to describe the Allied bombings of Germany during WWII. Another aspect of the same attitude is expressed by the many Germans who think that Israel is showing Nazi-like behavior toward the Palestinians. What they mean to say is, "If everybody is guilty, then nobody is." (…)

Given the character of her visit, and in view of today's German reality, Merkel sent, besides her explicitly stated messages to Israelis, a number of implicit ones to her own nation. I'd summarize them as follows:

You may think what you want about Israel and the Jews. Many media and others in Germany defame Israel. Yet I wish, publicly, to show on behalf of the German people our responsibility for the acts of our Nazi forebears, whom we elected. I want to do that in many ways, and my visit to Yad Vashem and my speech in the Knesset - which you may strongly dislike - best symbolize this.

Simultaneously, there was Merkel's implicit message to the world:

Since the war, Germany has been welcomed back into the family of nations and has again become a major political force. However, many abroad wonder how much of the criminal past is still latent within us, and when and to what extent it will reemerge. My frequent visits to Israel - and the nature of our relations with it - also show that I am well aware of that.

Merkel’s attitude probably also expresses a world view different from that of most other Western European leaders. It can, in part, be explained by her personal experience, having grown up and lived in communist East Germany. She knows what totalitarianism means, and not only from teachers of the history of Nazi Germany. Being trained as a physicist rather than in the humanities may also be helpful in confronting threats realistically.

Without saying it explicitly, Merkel seems to understand that various threats from the world of Islam, besides the Iranian one she mentioned, share the totalitarian characteristics of Nazism and communism. That is probably included when she says that threats to Israel are also threats to Germany."

Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany

Seventy-five years ago, on January 30, 1933, Hitler was offered the post of Chancellor of Germany:

"The Nazi Party, while not holding an absolute majority in the Reichstag, became overnight the power in the land. Throughout Germany, as the news of Hitler’s Chancellorship spread, the Brownshirts, who for so many months had been the terror of the streets, marched in triumph. They knew that their triumph was complete, and that no arrangement of Cabinet offices could reduce or restrain it. That night the watchers from the British Embassy witnessed the Nazi triumph: "From 8 p.m. till past midnight", the ambassador’s wife, Lady Rumbold, wrote to her mother two days later, "a continuous procession went past the Embassy, of Nazis in uniform and their admirers, bands, flags, torches, over four hours of it! The old President watched from his window, and a little further down the street the new Chancellor, Hitler, and his supporters stood on a balcony, and had a stupendous ovation. On our steps, and perched up on the ledge with the columns, stood wild enthusiasts, singing all the old German hymns! Every now and then there were shouts of "Germany awake", "Down with the Jews", "Heil Hitler"! It seemed as tho’ the whole of Berlin was processing along the Wilhelmstrasse.""

A History of the Twentieth Century, Vol. One: 1900-1933, Martin Gilbert, HarperCollins, 1997

Synagogue, by Max Beckmann (1919)

Max Beckmann (1884-1950)

Europe is not impressed by Walt and Mearsheimer: the Continental divide

A review of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by Eric Frey focuses on the issue of anti-semitism which was raised much more frequently in Europe than in the U.S. Frey believes that around third of Europeans are still "susceptible to covert antisemitic propaganda, and some of them will see their views confirmed by two respected American political scientists. But the rest will not be impressed". "Mearsheimer and Walt’s book is not about Israel. It is about American politics, specifically about the allegedly nefarious role played by a mostly Jewish circle of people and organizations in the politics of a predominantly Christian nation. The charge that Jews manipulate non-Jews to further their own interests is so much part of antisemitic lore here in Europe that discussing such a thesis almost immediately requires addressing the issue of antisemitism. That is what happened to Mearsheimer and Walt. In what seemed to be every interview and panel discussion, they were forced to address the charge that they were themselves antisemites, or at least giving ammunition to antisemites. In the interview I conducted with them in Vienna for my newspaper, Der Standard, the two authors themselves constantly returned to the theme of antisemitism, sounding defensive and at times snivelling. They repeated their argument that their book was not about Jews, but about the workings of political lobbies in American politics. But that argument will ring false in New York, let alone in places like Austria and Germany where the obsession with Jewish power has a long and terrible history. While there are plenty of people who will use the book to reaffirm their belief that, to quote Mel Gibson, “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” mainstream readers of political non-fiction will at least be concerned that they might be seen as antisemites if they identify too closely with Mearsheimer and Walt’s thesis. Even when it came to the issue of the Iraq war, the academics’ Jewish spin has tended to dampen the impact of their message in Europe. There is a near consensus here on the view that the Bush administration’s decision to go to war was at a minimum foolish and perhaps even criminal, and that the neoconservatives are largely to blame for that decision. But once you equate that group with the Israel Lobby, as Mearsheimer and Walt have done, the Iraq war gets tied up with the darkest sides of Europe’s own history. … Perhaps a third of the European public is susceptible to covert antisemitic propaganda, and some of them will see their views confirmed by two respected American political scientists. But the rest will not be impressed."

Walt and Mearsheimer's "The Israel Lobby" - footnote No. 1,399

Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s extensive use of footnotes in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy has been the subject of as much comment as has the carelessness of their research. I had a look at the footnote section of the book and was intrigued by the last one, to be precise the 1,399th according to Leonard Fein who took the trouble of counting them. Indeed, footnote No. 1,399 refers to a manifesto concocted by 25 German peace activists (in fact 17, the other 8 only expressed support, but did not sign) and was sent for publication by the authors themselves to the Spanish website Tlaxcala.
The manifesto Why the "special relationship" between Germany and Israel has to be reconsidered recycles the usual anti-Jewish tropes and is illustrated by an Iranian cartoonist Jaber Asadi. The cartoon depicts a brutish and heavily armed Israeli soldier who does not look at his victims (not enemies of course) and who cowardly hides behind a tombstone marked "Holocaust". Got it? To be associated with such a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon did not seem to trouble in the least either the "peace activists" or Walt and Mearsheimer. A proper look at the other 1,389 footnotes might reveal a few more surprises of the kind.
For those who are unfamiliar with Tlaxcala here is a small sample of the scholarly stuff to be found on the site:
By Khalid Amayreh: Israel: perpetual criminal, perpetual liar; Israel’s silent holocaust against the Palestinians; Grand-Children of the Holocaust turning Gaza into another Ghetto Warsaw.
By Fausto Giudice and Ben Heine An oblivion repaired, A motto for Israel, discussed here and here.

Nazism: Saul Friedländer describes the ostracisation of Max Liebermann

“Max Liebermann, at eighty-six possibly the best-known German painter of the time, was too old to emigrate when Hitler came to power. Formerly president of the Prussian Academy of Arts, and in 1933 its honorary president, he held the highest German decoration, the Pour le Mérite. On May 7 Liebermann resigned from the academy. As the painter Oskar Kokoschka wrote from Paris in a published letter to the editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, none of Liebermann’s colleagues deemed it necessary to express a word of recognition or sympathy. Isolated and ostracised, Liebermann died in 1935; only three “Aryan” artits attended his funeral. His widow survived him. When, in March 1943, the police arrived, with a stretcher, for the bedridden eighty-five-year-old woman to begin her depotation to the East, she committed suicide by swallowing an overdose of the barbiturate Veronal.”

In Nazi Germany & the Jews, the Years of Persecution 1933-39, by Saul Friedländer, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1997)

Self-portrait and portrait of his wife Martha Liebermann

Saul Friedländer, professor of history at the University of California, was awarded the Peace Prize at the annual Frankfurt Book Fair. The German Book Trade association said:
"Saul Friedländer gave a voice to the grievances and cries of those human beings who were turned to dust. He gave them memory and a name. The acknowledgment of human dignity forms the basis for peace among mankind, and Saul Friedlander returned to the murdered millions the dignity of which they had been robbed."
"Friedländer is one of the last historiographers to have witnessed and experienced the Holocaust — a genocide that was announced early on, planned openly and carried out with machinelike precision. Friedlander rejects the distanced approach often associated with the writing of history: He creates a space for incomprehensibility — the only possible reaction to such an unfathomable crime."

Papageienallee (1902)