Abandon Berlin

Germany’s response to seven months of hell in Gaza has let the mask slip on the kind of country it is, the kind of people Germans can be. Never again, they said, after their own horrendous crimes for which they proclaimed contrition. Nie wieder. Now we can see how they were capable of such horrors. And how they are still.

Germany has completely shut down and outlawed any criticism of Israel and what Israel is doing. Berlin’s police have brutally broken up demonstrations that showed solidarity with Palestinians, at colleges, on the streets, at protest camps. School kids were warned not to wear kufiyas to school. The police famously pulled the plug on a Palestinian congress and prevented British-Palestinian doctor Ghassan Abu Sitta, who treated bombed children in Gaza, from entering the country lest he speak about his experiences. They broke the law to do so. Not only that, they banned him from entering Europe.

Racist German media, led by the Bild tabloid which has seized the mantle left by Nazi agitator Der Stürmer, label people protesting against Israel’s war as “Israelhasser” and “Judenhasser,” despite many of the protestors being Jewish themselves, horrified at what’s being done in their name and the undoubted rise in antisemitism it is causing. Berlin’s Jews have never felt so unsafe in the city at any time since the Shoah.

Cowardly politicians parrot the same inflammatory shit peddled by German journalists in a macabre dance between the two. Berlin mayor Kai Wegner praised the police’s brutal crackdown and condemned the speeches of Berlinale award-winning filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra because they called out Israel’s apartheid, demanded a ceasefire, and an end to German arms shipments to Israel. German minister Claudia Roth said her applause at the time was only for the Israeli filmmaker and not the Palestinian one.

Other politicians have accused college professors of antisemitism for backing students protesting against Israel’s murderous onslaught. A cultural center had its funding stripped for hosting a peace vigil by a Jewish group. Jewish protestors are being labeled antisemitic. Awards have been canceled and watered down, university jobs rescinded and ended.

Meanwhile, RIAS will next week announce figures showing antisemitism has gone through the roof. And Wegner and Co. will all denounce the figures as they dance.

It’s reached the point of farce. I get it. Germany tried to kill every Jew on the planet and wants to be seen making amends, even if that means helping a genocidal regime commit more atrocity. Germany is the second-largest arms supplier to Israel after the United States.

In seven months, Israel has already killed half as many people as Germany did in the Herero and Nama genocide between 1904-08. That’s only including the deaths it’s been possible to count. It hasn’t been possible for months now.

It’s Germany’s self-declared “Staatsräson” (reason of state) to stand with Israel, no matter what, and that’s supposed to show how much it learned from its heinous crimes.

Germany learned nothing. Just blanket guilt. There’s no compassion, no moral compass, no sense of reason. Suddenly we are face to face again with the monsters who were capable of the Holocaust, whose echoes we now hear loud and clear.

Make it stop. Stop the killing. Stop the hate. Stop the racism. Stop the thoughtless support of warmongers.

I should point out there are of course Germans who are horrified by what’s happening, people whose humanity isn’t colored by a victim’s ethnicity or beliefs, and for whom each fresh atrocity adds to a towering pile of anguish. Does it ever stop?

Berlin doesn’t care, life goes on. Hide your sorrow, hide your fears, stay quiet. Stick your head in the sand, your arse in the air, and don’t criticize Israel whatever you do.

I got stickers made up to protest Berlin’s response to this war, if you can call it a war. If you want any, get in touch through email or direct message though one of the social media channels below with your name and address and I’ll post them out free of charge wherever you are. You can also click the image below to send an email.

DO NOT post your address in the comments below! Comments are open for reasonable discussion or criticism because I think that's the only way we can learn. Shutting everything down has the opposite effect. Note that any racist, antisemitic or purposely hurtful comments will not be published, nor will any that attempt to justify murder or excuse the inexcusable.

Abandoned Berlin, May 18, 2024

(The photo in the header at the top of the page is from a trip to Hebron in 2018.)