How long can the “special” relationship to the “Jewish State” be allowed to lead to the discrimination and marginalisation of Israel’s critics and pro-Palestinian activists in Germany?

Or must we go to the moon to be safe from the Israel lobby?

You can be safe from the Israel Lobby, but only on the moon!

by Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, Translated by Dr. Milena Rampoldi

The Holocaust, the clash of civilisations, can no longer be exploited to make us blindly accept today’s crimes by a people who were victims in the past. In replacing anti-Semitism, Philo-Semitism has assumed alarming dimensions and must not become a new, forward-pressing power.

In fact, the community of hypocritical states, and particularly Germany, will be again guilty of the dehumanization of another people.

With its Zionist state ideology, consequently practised since 1948 including dispossession, land grabbing, and ethnic cleansing of Palestine — all protected and financially supported by the U.S., Europe, and Germany in particular — the “Jewish State” has definitively abandoned all moral values so that for a long time now the term “values” has become a phrase for the values of hypocrites.

If the “Jewish State” calls itself the “only democracy in the Middle East,” then we have to strongly oppose it. How can the Israeli state, which is neither Judaic nor democratic, call itself “democratic”? Readers will certainly ask themselves why I always write “Jewish State” instead of “Israel”: Since this Zionist land grabbing state would like to be recognised as “Jewish State” instead of a state for all citizens, including Palestinians. And this is a completely anti-democratic intention!

In addition, all criticism of its crimes against international law and human rights are denigrated as anti-Semitism and hatred towards Jews, and the activists of the BDS campaign for a Free Palestine must be silenced. And exactly for this reason, the BDS movement is a thorn in the side of the “Jewish Occupiers‘state“ and the Israel lobby. However, Federica Mogherini, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, defends the BDS movement. In October 2016 she condemned attacks against human rights advocates and affirmed the right of European citizens to freedom of speech and assembly. Unfortunately, many EU states do not comply with this principle. (1)

In the meantime, in the “Jewish State” not only NGOs and government-critical media are restricted with undemocratic laws. Also the Palestinian citizens and Jewish activists engaging for the BDS are pursued.

Travel bans do not stop in front of prominent Jewish intellectuals like Chomsky and Finkelstein. And we are waiting for criticism in vain! People would surely scream if it was about Turkey or Russia. However, in this case it is just about the “Jewish State” . . .

How is it possible that Germany and other EU states prohibit this right and drag it into the dirt under pressure of the “Jewish State” and Israel lobby?

In the end, the BDS movement has only one goal; Israel has to comply with its obligation to recognise the inalienable right of Palestinians to self-determination; has to stop the illegal occupation and colonisation of Palestine; has to remove the Apartheid wall running through the land stolen from the Palestinians; has to recognize the basic right of Palestinian-Israeli citizens for complete equality and to guarantee, respect, protect and request the legal rights of return of the dispossessed Palestinian refugees to their homeland Palestine and to their property, as agreed in the UN Resolution 194. When will the “Jewish State” recognize and apply Resolution 194? Finally, this was the condition for the acceptance of Israel in the United Nations! (2)

All these requests and objectives were confirmed in an endless number of UN resolutions. However, the ruling of the International Court of Justice, declaring that the construction of the Apartheid Wall in the occupied Palestinian territory was illegal, was ignored by the “Jewish State” like numerous other UN resolutions against the illegal settlements, and the violations against international law and human rights. Only one resolution was recognised by the “Jewish State”: the UN resolution 181, known as UN Partition Plan of 29 November 1947.

How can it be that every Jewish citizen has to right to go back to his/her alleged “homeland,” with all civil rights, while the dispossessed Palestinians are deprived of those rights? Is that democratic? No, it is not. It is deeply ethnocratic and racist!

All talk is just about “Muslim terrorism,” forgetting Jewish terrorists and political state terrorists who promote this kind of terrorism. Where in the world is there a state calling for the “murder of Arabs,” where children throwing stones are given more severe sentences than Jewish “Defence Soldiers” murdering Palestinians and subsequently being hailed as heroes and given “Man of the year” awards? Where is there a state where the majority of the Jewish population defends these murderers?

And why does this “Jewish State” recognised by the international community which up to now refuses to determine its borders continue to insist on the recognition of its own “right to exist”? And what is worse, how is it possible that a German federal government makes of this ominous “existence right” a reason of state and in addition forces refugees to accept this “existence right” as condition for an integration which “needs values”, decreeing it an “identity-forming lead culture”?

Is it not a travesty when the Central Council of Jews in Germany asks from the Muslim refugees to recognize the existence right of a state which has been refusing for decades to recognize the existence right of an independent Palestinian state and does not distance itself from the crimes against international law and human rights and the illegal Jewish occupation? Being afraid of the refugees bringing their denial of Israel and anti-Semitism to Germany, they exactly achieve the opposite, promoting a collective prejudice against refugees. Is this part of the tasks of the Central Council of Jews in Germany?

While at the moment there is such a hot debate about Turkish ministers talking at election meetings in Germany, there has never been such a discussion for Israeli politicians calling German and French citizens of Jewish faith to “come home to their homeland Israel.” Just a second: these “returnees” are preferably housed in illegal settlements. Why does nobody among politicians or intellectuals opposed to this in Germany? Why is there a double standard when it is about Jews or Israel?

Why today are we again witnessing Israeli lobby pressure that closes BDS bank accounts, restricts activists, and denies Jewish peace activists, scientists, and teachers agreed spaces controversial events and discussions being cancelled and universities withdrawing teaching assignments and the freedom to teach. Nip things in the bud!

Again in Germany “good” and “bad” Jews are selected. However, this time this results from the cooperation of the world of politics and the Israel lobby, some media and Christian Zionists. The “Christian-Jewish community of values” is giving up all moral values, and has found its mission in the war against “Islamic terrorism” as the new bogeyman.

The insidious “Israelization” of Germany is in full swing. How can you take an occupier state as a model and forget the 50 years long illegal occupation of Palestine?

Instead of celebrating government consultations with a Jewish regime of occupiers, Germany should put pressure on the “Jewish State” and threaten it with sanctions. When it was about Russia, Merkel was in the frontline!

Does all this correspond to “our” values and to the values of our constitution? How can Mum Merkel prescribe the German reason of state for the security of the “Jewish State,” a state committing genocide during the last attack against Gaza about which there will not be any Parliamentary Session. Merkel even called the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and expressed her solidarity with him and the “security” of his country. A questionable security the Western nations, led by the USA and Germany, will finance

with massive military expenditures and tax gifts permitting the illegal occupation and the attacks.

Israel is a highly-armed nuclear power and is a danger for world peace. It is only waiting to attack Lebanon or Iran. Günter Grass, one of the few serious intellectuals, said this, and was damned and defamed. I can personally confirm how deeply the Nobel laureate for literature and the sincere SPD politicians were struck by this defamation campaign.

Up to now I have been missing the partisanship of the elite, the intellectuals, the officeholders, and the “sincere ones of the socialist party,” when it is about the freedom for Palestine. They all remain cowardly silent when it is about the decades-long and well-documented crimes against the international law and human rights committed in the “Jewish State.” They simply fear to be labelled as anti-Semites.

This hypocrisy affects me a lot. If we look at the numerous wars and interventions we have been involved in up to now, including the Nobel prize for peace winner, the EU, and former US president Obama, we see how our “democratic values” have become a ridiculous parody. And the newly-elected US president Trump supports do the “Jewish State” in its rapacious settlement policies.

Because of its alleged “special” relationship, Germany and its government is obliged to convince its friends of the Jewish state to recognize international law and UN resolutions, and to guarantee to the Palestinians their inalienable right for self-determination, which should be a democratic self-evident fact for a German State, which in Article 1 of its constitution says that human dignity applies to all (Palestinians included) and is indivisible. This should apply also to a “Jewish State” being the alleged only democracy in the Middle East. However, until now, this has not occurred for decades.

The freedom of speech and teaching must apply also to the critics of the Israeli policies and must be defenced. This is what I expect from the German elite, who cowardly retreat in silence when it is about Israel. Where is the solidarity with the universities where the Israel lobby deeply interferes with the freedom of teaching?

Do we also want that here in Germany teachers engaging for a free Palestine have to emigrate, as many Israeli intellectuals do? Let us think about Ilan Pappe, teaching in exile in Exeter today. Also he should not have a ban on speaking in Germany as a descendant of Holocaust survivors only because of the pressure by the Israel lobby.

We should oppose together to the title of my book “Das elfte Gebot:Israel darf alles” (English translation of the title: The 11th Commandment: Israel is allowed to do all).

And to the question of FAZ on the occasion of a controversy at the court with the Jewish Spiegel-Welt journalist and islamophobe porno writer H.M. Broder “What is a Jewish woman in Germany allowed to say against Israel?” I would like to answer: “All, of course, and in particular the truth!” More or less polemically, but straight from the heart! And I do not want to avoid doing that!

Or must we go to the moon to be safe from the Israel lobby?

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