This is idiotic. Gandhi hated that Pakistan split off and said that he recognized their existence but would never recognize their “right” to exist.
That’s not even an international policy. Does Castile have a right to exist? Does Kashmir? Does Kurdistan? Why doesn’t Germany demand the same for others?
If "their right to exist" weren't used to mean "their right to take land from Palestinians and create settlements in land they took through violence" it would be a bit simpler to agree with the statement, but the foundation of Israel itself has always been on pretty shakey ground. The only reason Israel has a right to exist is because it's impractical that they'd leave at this point. They should leave the land they've stolen though.
No. Germany can recognize Jewish lives and the worldwide Jewish community without needing to play into the hands of a rightwing apartheid state and getting involved smack in the middle of their political dispute. This isn’t hard; it’s like being able to say Black Lives Matter without having to support and endorse the controversial policies of Louis Farrakhan.
And thats why I will NEVER vote for any of these fucks again! My Party won't make it into the Bundestag? I DON'T CARE! Because the other Party's won't represent me anyway, so I can easily vote for my small Party which at least represents me!
I'm avoiding all votes in my country due to their (all parties) silence on the current situation. Call me anti-democratic, but, for me, democracy died a long time ago.
I'm not sure what country you are from, but as someone whose vote literally is counted before I even see a ballot, let me tell you, please vote or at least do something. If you don't like the way politics in your country work, go out and demonstrate. Take it to the streets. Talk to your neighbors, make leaflets. But please don't just go bitter and sit in your corner because everything is shit anyways. Because this is how we ended up with a lot of the messes we are having now. I "voted" for the first time this year in a rigged election and before that I also always thought the way you do. Democracy is dead, why bother, my vote doesn't count anyway. But once I stood in this fucking line and smuggled in a non erasable pen and voted and went out knowing no one will even look at this ballot something changed.
Germany equating its historic debt to Jewish people with support for a particular state is an absolutely disgusting distortion of the German obligation of remembrance.
Just like this, they throw under the bus any anti-Zionist Jew.
Honestly, when it comes to Israel/Palestine, the German state should just do what their other genocide victim, Namibia, told them to do and
Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Stay the fuck out of it. Say the honorable thing that you will abide by the rulings of international courts. Provide humanitarian aid, help refugees and displaced people. Be a ray of light and humanity, not a stickler for rules and definitions. Don't be so goddamn fucking German for a change.
(Seriously though, the situation here is intense. Our minister of education is currently under pressure to resign by the scientific community (which she refuses to do) because her ministry was looking for ways to defund / revoke grants to 400 university researchers who had criticized the way in which a pro-Palestinian protest was handled. That's all it takes.)
Leaving my home, friends, family and everything build up behind just because of my political views? What an absolutely genius idea, why haven't I thought of this earlier?!
I didn't say it's a random state, I said it was a particular one. It is one particular expression of Jewishness, when others also exist. Precisely because of the history of Germany, the German state has no business whatsoever to play arbiter about which version of Jewishness is the most authentic.
Not accepting israels right to exist is a call for genocide against israel. Israel exists and has the right to exist. You can recognize that and still be against Netanyahus government.
Israeli jews have the right to life, freedom, safety. They have the right to a home in the Holy Lands.
They don't have the right to set up a Jewish supremacist apartheid state to deny the same rights to everyone else.
The state that they have created and entrenched with genocide and "facts on the ground" no longer has legitimacy to exist in its present form. Because of its entrenchment I don't see how it can be reformed.
So instead, ending this political entity to establish a new democratic one seems to be the surest way out of this mess.
This is not a call for genocide by any stretch of imagination.
By that logic the creation of israel was a genocidal act in itself because it created a right for a people to eist where others were existing previously.
If removing the right to exist of the Palestinian people is perfectly acceptable why is it necessary to keep chanting support for the rights of the aggressor?
Yes, opposing the establishment of a new state with a new population where someone else already lived would have been appropriate in the late 1940s.
Unfortunately it's 2024 now, Israel does exist and time is linear.
So the only thing that can be done now is to recognize neither Israel nor Palestine should be erased.
(Though pointing out that the latter doesn't seem to get mentioned here would be appropriate.)
It was always a contentious issue, there was just a lot of sympathy for the jewish people given the circumstances. Right being right, a portion of Germany should have been given. Instead the issue was exported to be dealt with remotely to the detriment of a different people who were wholly uninvolved.
At the moment, any defense of Israel's right to exist is used to excuse a very clear land grab. Israel has the right to eist within is Israel only.
Unfortunately that's exactly how it works.
Look at any country's border and tell me which ones weren't established by violence.
The actual question is, what alternative to accepting Israel's existence would you propose. Because forcefully removing them would just be one more crime.
Forcefully drawing a border less encouraging of violence against native population. Also forcefully stopping all their meddling in the form of military occupation, blockade, block posts and so on. Arming their neighbors so that Israel doesn't have such a military advantage.
It isnt. No settler state has a right to exist, the settlers already there should integrate into the indigenous culture or leave. This includes the US, Canada, Australia and so on.
My point being, go far enough back, and you WILL have found a people or tribe that got wiped out so another group could claim their territory. Where do you (arbitrarily) draw the line?
Words like "colonialism" or "settler colonialism" serve the purpose of naming injustices committed by empires.
They arent just bound to a space but also to a time. So the ongoing oppression against native palestinians, native americans etc is settler colonialism since it is about a people taking land from them without compensation. The roman empire also did settler colonialism. The difference is that the settler romans and indigenous population at this point are indistinguishable from each other. Through intermarriages and cultural exchanges there is not a roman-german and a germanic-german culture. And where there are cultural differences stemming from the days of roman settlerism these now coexist. There is no oppressor-oppressed dynamic anymore that characterizes settler colonialism.
The difference is that the settler romans and indigenous population at this point are indistinguishable from each other
So what you're saying is, if one side fully wipes out and/or swallows up the other fully, colonialism is then ok. How is that different from what Israel is currently trying to accomplish? If they succeed, in a century or two somebody would be saying the same thing you are now.
Colonialism is not a rare event, it happens ALL THE TIME, EVERYWHERE. If you're only finding fault with the ongoing efforts, and giving the rest a pass because they are no longer visible in your day-to-day life, you are effectively saying success justifies it. Otherwise, you're just being arbitrary and inconsistent.
giving the rest a pass because they are no longer visible in your day-to-day life you are effectively saying success justifies it.
Huh? How does that follow? If there is no longer injustice from an oppressor-oppressed dynamic then what is there to do? And how does the fact that it's no longer possible to make right justify the crime?
Edit: I don't even know what point you are trying to argue, my original statement was that states which are engaging in settler colonialism should be dismantled and dont have a right to exist. There can be other reasons to dismantle states forcibly (capitalism being the predominant one), this is but one of them. A rather egregious one.
One would assume this debt would be repaid with German lands and monies, rather than land and money looted from Arabs a continent away.
Honestly, when it comes to Israel/Palestine, the German state should just do what their other genocide victim, Namibia, told them to do and Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
Yeah, crazy how the Germans are full throated supporters of Israel, but you never see them waving big Nambia flags and asserting the rights of African state sovereignty. I'm forced to wonder why, as I flip through my history book of "German Prime Ministers After 1949".
As of today they’re also expanding deportations. If you are caught using banned slogans on social media such as from the river to the sea and you’re a foreigner you will get deported for “praising terrorism”. Some politicians argue that even as much as a like will be enough for the authorities to throw you out of the country.
And if you have double citizenship and you got your German one as of this year, they will be able to cancel your citizenship if you’re ever convicted of questioning Israel’s right to exist.
Nope, not true. Stop spreading misinformation just because you want to get public praise.
You will not automatically get deported, but it will be made easier to deport foreigners who are praising terrorism. There’s a big difference. You always have legal recourse against this.
That’s important because the phrase “from the river to the sea” is not illegal praise of terrorism in Germany, even if you may have heard so from your equally misinformed bubble. While its use shows that the person saying has a big problem with accepting that a complex situation will certainly not be reflected in a catchy sentence, and that it may be time for that person to just excuse them from a discussion they are very likely not a part of, it is not illegal.
Why? Because courts will have to make the decision whether its use in a specific context was illegal, and more often than not it won’t be.
You are very naive if you think that the German authorities would not bend or abuse such laws. If you’re a white German and as such not a victim of the systemic racism prevalent in the institutions of pretty much all European countries, you can’t understand this. Good for you but you’re incredibly privileged to an extent that you don’t seem to grasp based on your reply.
Here’s something for you to read. Took me literally a few minutes to put all of this together. There’s so much more. Most of Europe is slowly sliding into fascism and you somehow believe I am in a „victim pit“ by pointing that out? It always begins with the most vulnerable people. And then as a leftist suddenly you’re a „terrorist“ for criticizing the government and off you go.
Yeah so you didn’t read a single article. You didn’t even bother to read the headlines that I copy & pasted for you. How are Germany, Italy, Greece in Eastern Europe? more than half of the articles are about them.
Apart from that I don’t see how your ad hominem attacks are relevant or productive for having this conversation.
Well no. Your premise was anecdotal experience. Your articles are not relevant. Funny how you're annoyed at someone else's ad hominem, yet yours is totally valid? Ze victim complex runz deep.
Premise: European authorities will bend or abuse existing laws.
Articles from credible sources: provide evidence for European authorities bending or abusing or simply ignoring existing laws.
This posters conclusion: I don’t actually know. Anyway I’m just leaving this here for anyone unfortunate enough to follow this conversation until this point. No idea what else to do with trolls like this 🤷♂️
Similarly in Scandinavia. Friends, who live in Sweden, told me about multiple people claiming how Sweden is turning more fascist, compared to previous years.
In Germany, you can't currently deport anyone just for expressing extremist views. However, recently there were demonstrations in Hamburg where about 1,000 people marched to advocate for a caliphate and Sharia law in Germany, which led to a public debate about exactly this. However, this isn't about Palestine but about anti-constitutional extremism. Some state interior ministers are now advocating to explicitly outlaw this kind of islamist extremism, potentially paving the way for easier deportations for those advocating for a caliphate in Germany. Here's a german article on the topic.
the phrase “from the river to the sea” is not illegal praise of terrorism in Germany, even if you may have heard so from your equally misinformed bubble
I've seen people (including jews) getting fined for hate speech for an instagram story containing just "from the river to the sea palestine will be free"
From now on, that will also come with a deportation.
The highly esteemed german courts will have the freedom to decide what fits into which context. A social media like will land you in court. Saying that hamas committed terrorist acts but also that it is a resistance movement spawned out of the oppression will also land you in a court because any nuanced discussion is too much for the german intellect and instantly means "pRaIsInG tErRoRiSm".
I can't wait to see all the neolibs that clapped when the greens and the social democrats passed these laws, when the AfD gets in power here (which will definitely happen sooner or later, following the EU wide far right movements) and when they decide to reinterpret those "contexts" their highly esteemed german courts like to discuss so much. I'm sure this draconian stuff won't backfire. But hell, who cares, it's only Ausländer getting the short end of the stick anyway.
Israel definitely has the right to exist. But so do a hundred odd other countries. Yet you do not acknowledge each of them one by one. All Germany has to do going forward is provide the necessary education on dangers of anti semitism, fascism and take this task very seriously. This is just meaningless over compensation or even worse maybe the result of meaningless lobbying.
After looking at OPs comments and discussing with him it’s clear to me that he posted this article with a clear agenda.
If Israel’s right to exist is a controversial topic, I‘m out.
I have the opinion that it’s not antisemitism to call out an evil government and protest against its actions.
Getting flustered about Germany saying Israel has a right to exist and not understanding historical reasons why that is the case is just naivety I hope.
They are saying that your answer is indicative of the attitudes prevalent of your home instance. It's a very common fediverse method of attempting to dismiss arguments that someone doesn't agree with but can't otherwise disprove.
Bit of a double standard though, right? They don't have to affirm Palestinian's right to statehood. If not saying Israel is a legitimate state is anti-semitism, wouldn't that make the same stance toward Palestine islamaphobia?
Recognizing israel is absolutely irrelevant to anti-semitism.
Many people in this thread don't seem to know this, but within German neo-Nazi movements that's absolutely wrong. Revoking Israel's right to exist is the number one talking point of the people doing hitler salutes again.
Following Hamas’ October 7th attacks, Alexander Gauland (speaking as the honorary AfD chairman) said “The attack was not only aimed at the Jewish state, it was also aimed at us. Israel is the West in an environment that rejects and fights the West. When we stand with Israel, we are also defending our way of life”. This idea of ‘defending a way of life’ is common anti-immigrant rhetoric, and one the AfD frequently utilises to criticise immigration policy in Germany.
Where does criticism of the Israeli government end and where does anti-Semitism begin?
Criticism of Israeli government policy is not anti-Semitic per se and we Germans can also criticize it - just as Israelis themselves do. The settlement policy in the West Bank, for example, violates international law. It is absolutely possible to criticize this without being accused of anti-Semitism. Criticism becomes anti-Semitic when Israel's right to exist is called into question. Or when Israeli actions are compared to the atrocities committed by the Nazis.
Do you have an example?
Criticism of Israeli government action is absolutely legitimate. Anyone who criticizes the settlement policy that violates international law or the course of the protective wall between the West Bank and Israel is not anti-Semitic. But anyone who denies the state of Israel the right to exist and lets loose a slogan like "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is making an anti-Semitic statement. When Israeli government actions are equated with Nazi crimes and, for example, the Gaza Strip is described as a large concentration camp, then this is also anti-Semitic because it relativizes Nazi crimes and reverses perpetrators and victims.
Criticism of Israeli government policy is not anti-Semitic per se and we Germans can also criticize it
But anyone who denies the state of Israel the right to exist and lets loose a slogan like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is making an anti-Semitic statement.
Explain what is anti-semitic about saying Nazi white nationalist Apartheid terrorist state israel has no right to exist.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, by the way.
Because it's usually not said about other nations committing crimes against international law. Iran is allowed to exist. Russia is allowed to exist. North Korea is allowed to exist. Heck, Nazi Germany was allowed to exist.
The right to exist as a nation is such a fundamental idea to international law that I have to wonder how you would argue otherwise without stepping into genocidal territory.
And it is a bad look, to be completely honest, that of all nations is just so happens to be Israel to be the one country where people have continuously called for their destruction.
Israels current actions must be condemned, no debate there. And the German government should be louder in their criticism (although I can see why they of all governments have the hardest time doing so). But Israels right to exist has nothing, zero, to do with that.
Note how after Hitler got defeated we did not say "well Germany stole that land fair and square".
Israel is like Apartheid South Africa. A colonial Apartheid state on other people's land.
It should be no surprise that israel does not have a right to exist as it suppresses the native Palestinian population to create a white ethnostate. Just like the Apartheid in South Africa, israel should be abolished.
I'm not saying Israel should keep occupied land. At all. You're saying we should abolish the state entirely. Sorry, that's borderline genocidal. And not what happened to Nazi Germany either - it was occupied and then basically newly founded. What you imagine for Israel would be closer to a solution where the occupying forces in Germany after 1945, or maybe the surrounding countries, took their share of German territory for good. We wouldn't have a Germany today if that would have been the decision made back then.
And we wouldn't have Iran, Russia, North Korea, and a whole bunch of other nations with humanitarian violations either, even though you conveniently skipped that point.
However what I found out discussing with actual nazis: they don’t really like lying about something which is a core identity of them. They like to weasel around it, but hate saying something like: „all human life is equal.“
yeah sure.. antisemites come from other countries to Germany. It's not like Germany had any history with antisemitism. Just imagine a universe, where Germany killed people, just because they were jewish. Unimaginable! Right?
Forget specifics just test for psychological patterns supporting pauschalisierende Ablehnungskonstruktionen. Which run counter to human dignity anyway so in principle, no change in law is needed.
...it also has fuckall to do with states, though. States don't have human rights.
The anti-semites are probably ecstatic at the whole linking of a nation that commits Genocide and kills little children with snipers, bombs and starvation to the entire Jewish ethnicity.
It makes it incredibly easy for them to grab some particularly nasty action of the state of Israel as an example and say "See, that's how Jews are like".
Non-Jews going around telling other people, including Jews, that people who mass murder civilians, including very purposefully children, journalists and medical personnel, represent the Jewsih Religion and hence implying those actions are Jewishness, is the most antisemitic thing around.
Germany, there's a time and place for everything. This is like supporting a "sovereign citizen's " right to freedom during a murderous rampage. It's giving "blue lives matter" during George Floyd's murder.
They are supporting the exact same scheme they did back in then.
Back then, it was normal to humiliate Jews mentally and physically, while people were looking away.
Today, the IDF (Israel) is about to make the same thing happen to Palestinians. Most of that can be seen on all the video evidence captured by civilians and press.
I live in Austria, so no need to translate.
Well, A. Baerbock knows her position is fragile atm. She had a different tone, or better yet, no tone at all the whole time. Politicians are realizing now, how bad Israels position is, and that any further support might cost them votes (and their career)
I follow tarek bae on IG for "independent" news coverage regarding palestine, Israel and germany.
Und genau das tun sie eben nicht. Sie leben nicht in Frieden. Sie schikanieren die Palästinenser seit sie begonnen haben sich widerrechtlich auszubreiten. Das Problem in der DACH region ist, dass davon nichts berichtet wird in den Medien, und es werden nur Halbwahrheiten bzw. Lügen verbreitet.
Clearly the profound racism never disappeared, otherwise the German power elites wouldn't "unwaveringly support" a nation because of the ethnicity of the majority of its people and its leaders: the more visible artifacts of ancient germanic symbols, goose stepping and the brown shirts might be gone but the thinking that some people are more worthy than others purelly because of their ethnicity is still just as strong.
Additionally, that the German authorities are now going so far as shown in this and other news in support of the ethno-Fascists of a specific ethnicity, also indicates that the authoritarian tendencies too are alive and well in the mindset of the German power elites.
It looks a lot like the foundations of Nazism are alive, well and returning to prominence, with a different symbology and façade, but still the same view of humans as ethnics and the same authoritarian forceful imposition of a race-based view of the worth of human beings on others.
It's actually quite scary to watch from the outside as Germany goes back to overtly using force to suppress dissent on its power elite's racial supremacist views for the benefit of an extreme form of ethno-Fascism, even if this time around it's not the Arian Race that's being "supported".
Im german. I’ve seen it. I’ve heard it. I’ve seen it in the news. It’s more subdued than racism, at least were I live. But it’s there.
And by the way, I’m against the current government in Israel and its actions and i think those responsible should be held accountable before an international court.
All I see in the news is German police beating up pro-Palestine protestors and politicians trying to silence everyone who is pro-Palestine. Even worse trying to cut funding for researchers who speak out against police brutality against peaceful protestors inside universities. Never again for Germans equals never again Jewish people and apparently nothing more.
The antisemitism is the linking of a specific nation state and its disgusting actions to an entire ethnicity even when members of that ethnicity very overtly and explicitly disavow that link.
Germany's actions have all the hallmarks of German "tradition": assuming that Jews are all the same, telling Jews what Jewishness is, implying there are good Jews (who follow Germany's definition of Jewishness) and bad Jews (who don't).
Clearly Nazi thinking was never eliminated amongst the German elites, it just got its lists of "good races" and "bad races" updated.
This is not agreeing that Israel is allowed to continue committing genocide. This is just saying that country is allowed to exist as a country. Or do you think that once a country commits a horrific act that they should no longer be allowed to exist?
I'm more interested in the inverse: when does colonizing an already-inhabited area turn into a recognized country? Because Israel was created by a stroke of the pen out of Palestinian land. Or is it purely "might makes right"?
I want to read the schachnovelle at a later point! Looking forward to it.
If you’re interested in the Mediterranean, I recommend Constantinople by Theophile Gautier. It’s about his visit to Istanbul in the 19. century. I think the print version is hard to come by in English, but the ebook is just a few cents.
No worries. Lemmy is unfortunately sometimes
Like Reddit. Comments get downvoted just because of opinions.
I wish you the best and really hope that people learn to live in peace and that there are consequences for evil goverments. It doesn’t look that at the moment, but you can hope.
the thing is...WTF do people care about Israel, Brazil, Uganda, Madagascar, etc. when applying for German citizenship? That's the whole point of this absurdity.
Honestly, time. Time eventually changes things and Russia's occupation of Crimea was only a decade ago and the founding of Israel was like 80 years ago. Israel's continued expansion and settlement is wrong and comparable to Russia occupying Crimea.
Then why isn't Germany recognizing Palestine? Those people have been there quite a while.
Only the 75 year old Israel appears to enjoy existence for Germany. Of course supporting Israel's now open and blatant annexation of the West Bank and planned annexation of Gaza.
But the fact that they don't doesn't mean they shouldn't be actively opposing antisemitism in Germany. Opposing Israel's actions is different than "Israel shouldn't exist" because in the context of Germany and the neo mazid, not existing is literal and includes the people of Israel.
Countries, as a rule, don't have a right to exist. People have a right to self-determination. These are different things. That said, Israel is fundamentally an Apartheid state. If Israel stopped being an Apartheid state it'd stop being Israel. And if a state needs to treat half the people in it as second class citizens to exist then it can go die in a ditch.
White South Africa did not have the right to exist.
Rhodesia did not have a right to exist.
That's what we are talking about.
Israel has become a Jewish supremacist apartheid state. Its crimes have become so egregious and so entrenched ("facts on the ground") that it is not unreasonable to argue that it cannot be reformed in its present form. In this case it is reasonable to argue for its replacement by a democratic successor state in which Jews and others will all have the same rights to freedom and safety.
Wake me up when Israel institutes universal suffrage and legal equality for everyone from the river to the sea, elects Marwan Barghouthi as president and changes it flag and anthem to incorporate Palestinian national symbolism. If such a country would like to still call itself Israel, I will be happy to be proven wrong.
Because this is what ending apartheid means, buddy. Not just getting rid of Netanyahu, but deep structural change, and a commitment to justice, truth and reconciliation.
Yes, it is the Fatah line as well. If it were feasible, I would also support it. However, Israeli created "facts on the ground" say it isn't. It is impossible to extract the entrenched colonists from the West Bank and it is impossible for Israel to accept a sovereign Palestine that is anything more than a Bantustan. Worse, it might just mean that Israel will have not one but two Gazas on its doorstep. It's a recipe for more death and destruction.
The 2SS was reasonable 30 years ago. That time has very sadly passed. Just like the Palestinians lost their chance in '48, so did the Israelis lose their chance at Camp David in 2000. The current mess is a knot that can only be solved by a single state solution. And if that is the case, and we agree that either side "cleansing" the other is completely unacceptable, then universal equality from the river to the sea, a democratic country, is the only game left.
The current mess is a knot that can only be solved by a single state solution. And if that is the case, and we agree that either side “cleansing” the other is completely unacceptable, then universal equality from the river to the sea, a democratic country, is the only game left.
We disagree on whether a two state solution is possible but do agree that either side committing genocide on the other is unacceptable.
I disagree that a single state solution is possible, even if we named it Peaceland because the same conflict you say prevents the two state solution will still exist and the conflict will continue within the single state. Forcing two opposing cultures into a single state against their will is how we get ethnic cleansing, aka genocide.
We obviously also disagree on what causes the conflict. I don't see it as a clash between opposing cultures, which by definition is irreconcilable. It is a clash over land, over sovereignty, over rights, over resources. These can of course be resolved and have been resolved even at least tentatively in many countries in the region. With justice can come peace.
If Serbs and Muslims can coexist in Bosnia, if Macedonians and Albanians can coexist in North Macedonia, if Protestants and Catholics can coexist in Northern Ireland, if Flemings and Waloons can coexist in Belgium, if the various denominations can coexist in Lebanon, if English and French can coexist in Quebec, then Israelis and Palestinians can work it out as well. Note that the above examples are at a varying degree of peace and harmony, from not very much to quite a lot. But none of them are genocidal cases. In fact, a couple are societies that coexist after a genocide took place (Bosnia, Ireland).
Forcing them to live together would be creating the same conditions that led to the genocide! Do you think they will just skip past the genocide this time?
You bringing up the Bosnian Genocide reinforces my point rather than undercut it.
The Bosnian genocide happened, just like the Nakba did (or arguably still is) and still after it happened, the Bosnia and Herzegovina of today exists. In Bosnia today Serbs and Muslims coexist, even if Serbs massacred the Muslims in the past. Same for Israelis and Palestinians: the Bosnia of today is a case study of what an Israel/Palestine of tomorrow might look like.
That's exactly why I mentioned Bosnia and Ireland in the first place.
We could also learn something from that and the other genocides and not force the conflict to escalate in the hope that the future survivors work things out.
I really don't understand how ending apartheid is an escalation from where we are now. It's precisely the opposite: de-escalation and peace.
We are living the genocide moment, right now, and we have been living it for several decades. This is about ending this genocidal status quo. What the fuck are you talking about?
The historical Nazi Germany was actually quite supportive of zionist efforts and interestingly the reverse was also true for some time before the holocaust got into full swing.
The Nazi party supported zionist plans because they wanted more options for expelling Jews. That was antisemetic.
Modern Germany is supporting the state of Israel's existence because of modern antisemitic rhetoric about how Israel shouldn't exist. This requirement is in opposition to antisemitism.
When any other country commits genocide, nobody says that country shouldn't exist. They say that they should stop doing those things.
There were a bunch of countries that were consolidated, created, or had lines redrawn after WWII along with Israel. Other than some choosing to split themselves once they gained autonomy, such as Yugoslavia, nobody is saying that those countries shouldn't exist.
The only country that regularly has people say it shouldn't exist is Israel. The only reason people say that is because it is a Jewish ethno state. It is surrounded by ethno states that nobody says shouldn't exist. The primary people pushing the "Israel shouldn't exist" are antisemitic groups like neo nazis.
Now, that isn't to say that creating Israel was a good idea or done for good reasons, but enough decades have passed that it is established. There is plenty of criticism to be had about the genocide, apartheid, borders, and what Israel does wrong without leaping to the antisemitic idea that Israel shouldn't exist.
Israel gains the right to exist when Palestinians grant it the right to exist.
As it stands Palestinians do not recognize israel. There is an opportunity for israel right now to have a two state solution and have Palestinians recognize them. Yet israel is not accepting it. Because in their infinite Nazi wisdom they want to keep expanding the Lebensraum.
Found the hasbara bot. Just for the record states have no eight to exist. This concept doesn’t exist.
Let’s assume for a second though that states would have such a right. When Nazi Germany committed genocide, hell yeah people said that state shouldn’t exist and they were right to say so. Apartheid South Africa, that state also shouldn’t have existed in the first place.
To spin this further, the settler colonial states that got established through genocide on the indigenous population, e.g. the USA, Canada and Australia should have never existed in the first place. It’s not so difficult.
Hence, why should I agree to an anyway non existing right for a settler colonial state to exist that can only keep existing through genociding the indigenous population and otherwise keeping it under an apartheid regime.
I think you have confused the structure and implementation of a state as a culture with a collective identity of people located within a rough geographic area.
A state's right to exist is not the right to act a certain way, but the right to not be wiped off the map. A colonial state colonizing is only wrong because they are conquering other states that had their own right to exist. Otherwise there would be no reason to say that Palestine should exist, and Palestine should absolutely exist.
So do I understand correctly that colonizing most of Africa, and e.g. the USA, Canada or Australia was not wrong? I’m not aware of indigenous people being organized in states. Hence, the colonization must have been okay by your logic?
The populations of Africa and the Americas had all kinds of states! The Mayan culture was a state or a collection of city states. Although most media about Native Americans focus on the tribes that were more nomadic, there were tons of tribes that had established cities and locations that were their territory all throughout the two continents Hell, even nomadic cultures tend to occupy a space even though they move a lot within it.
Africa and Australia had a lot too, I just don't know them off the top of my head. Colonizers destroyed as much of their cultures as possible to erase their identity as a culture and state.
You have fallen for the colonizer's myths of unorganized native populations, which they used to justify conquering so that they could "civilize" those populations. The colonizers were absolutely wrong.
Alright got it. So for example were the Mayan states part of the UN? What kind of state were they organized in? What about people colonized by the Mayans?
So are established cities and locations and being nomadic without having a state designated by the UN enough for being protected against colonization?
I have no idea what you are trying to get at, but I have repeatedly said colonizing is wrong and countries can stop doing wrong things without needing to stop existing so if that isn't clear enough I don't know what to tell you.
Yeah I’m just really confused by how you’re at the same time able to oppose colonialism as a concept but also not willing to acknowledge that whatever happened to other people is happening in the exact same way to Palestinians. Explicitly Palestinians being colonized by the Zionists. If it was wrong in Africa, in the Americas, in Australia, it’s wrong in Palestine too.
Colonies can never exist without oppression, dispossession and dehumanization of the colonized, and consequently a feeling of superiority, otherwise the whole thing won’t work.
It doesn’t matter at all that Israel is a Jewish state. It is a settler colonial state and settler colonial states should not exist per se.
Yeah I’m just really confused by how you’re at the same time able to oppose colonialism as a concept but also not willing to acknowledge that whatever happened to other people is happening in the exact same way to Palestinians.
You are confused because you keep ignoring my statements that the same thing is happening to Palestinians, apparently because I don't agree that the solution is wiping a country off a map.
Instead, they should stop being a colonial state which was the solution to all of the other colonial states.
Look I don’t think it’s a productive way to come to some kind of agreement to ignore your statements, I just felt like you started out kinda strongly saying that it would be something specific to Israel that they should stop existing because they committed genocide.
I recently listened to a talk by Ilan Pappé and what he said was both scary and very logical. Israel can only exist as a Jewish supremacist state. They want all of Palestine without Palestinians. They tried everything they could with Gaza, expelling people, „giving“ it to Egypt, establishing settlements, making it an open air prison. Nothing has worked to get rid of Palestinians, so this genocide is happening because they’re out of ideas.
And I think any state that acts like that or can only exist like that should not exist, period. What about the Israelis? They have a right to exist because they’re humans, but they would have to live in a democratic state (as opposed to the apartheid state they’re currently living in) and there would have to be equal rights for everyone.
Not that Palestinians are a cultural monolith but that would make them the majority of the population and that would also mean that Jewish Israelis would lose both power and privilege, something they would never accept. So the solution exists and it can exist without anyone being genocided but such a state would not be Israel anymore, for me that’s okay but for Zionists that’s impossible.
So let me get your stance correct: you think that because Israel is currently committing genocide that they don't have the right to exist as a country?
Then that's your own issue. Germany is a sovereign country who can choose who it wants as citizens. They have chosen to not allow in their country the kind of people who actively work against the right of a certain type of person to exist. Maybe you aren't that kind of person and are just opposed to the creation of Israel in the middle of someone else's country without their consent (which I agree was very wrong to do, but at some point we as civilized people need to move forward and figure out how to live in peace instead of constant fighting), but the vast majority of people who say Israel doesn't have a right to exist are the kind of people who deny the holocaust and think Jewish people don't have the right to exist. Germany doesn't want any MORE of that kind of person in their country.
Now, the inverse SHOULD also be true where they require people to say that Palestine has the right to exist as a country, but that excludes most of the world right now.
But people are conflating recognizing Israel as a sovereign state with approving and condoning their actions. If all countries were held to that standard, there wouldn't be any countries around. The shit my own country does would exclude us from being recognized as a country under that standard.
Denying the right of the Jewish state to exist is not denying the right of the Jewish people to exist IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as denying the right of white Afrikaner South Africa to exist is not a call for the genocide of white Afrikaners.
Afrikaners have a right to life and a right to safety. They don't have the right to set up an Afrikaner ethnostate on top of the rest of the people who inhabit the land.
Germany is right 100% to combat antisemitism. They are wrong, entirely wrong, to use recognition of Israel as a metric to detect it. It is in fact extremely dangerous and ultimately a generator of antisemitism. Attitudes towards Israel should never be used as proxy for attitudes towards Jews. Anti-semitism is irrational and atavistic at its core. Opposition to the existence of Israel as such is a spectrum of nuanced, but rational positions about land, rights, justice and so on. By lumping in rational arguments with atavistic feelings, they are giving the legitimacy of reason to Anti-semitism.
In fact the majority of European antisémites have zero problem with the existence of Israel "out there". They are more than happy to see the Jews leave Europe for the middle east. American antisémites are fantasizing that Israel will be the site of the Second Coming of Christ who will then turn all the Jews into Christians. This observation alone should tell you everything about why it is stupid and wrong to use attitudes towards Israel as proxy measures for attitudes towards Jews. When the antisémites pass your metric with flying colours whereas Jewish anti-Zionists fail it, your metric is just shit, simple as that.
Germany is making an extremely dangerous choice here, when they really don't need to. They don't have to take a maximalist pro-revisionist-zionism position. They are in fact taking sides in an internal debate between Jews and picking and choosing certain Jews as good and others as bad. Under these statutes Jewish people who speak out against Zionism are automatically labelled as ... antisémites.
This is wrong wrong wrong in every way and it makes the world worse for Jews first and foremost.
They stay right where they are. They may need to pay reparations to Palestinians they displaced however, and any laws restricting land ownership or buying and selling to Jews should be abolished.
Who is the government? Is it an elected body? Who elects them?
Because either you appoint a government that is made from basically Hamas (that'll be peaceful!), or you open elections for a new country where Jewish people are 73% of the population... so basically Israel again but now with officially more territory.
Universal suffrage and equal rights for everyone from the river to the sea. That, as a basic universal principle that any reasonable person wherever in the world can assert as the basic requirement for democracy. If you don't like that, you're against democracy, and I don't know if anything else can be discussed.
I never said I was against that. I'm just trying to figure out the much harder act of implementing that very simple view of the world. If you just say, "here's a new country that's fully democratic with equal rights for all... but it now includes both Gaza and West Bank and is 73% Jewish," you have effectively given Israel an even larger country. Hell, in the US we have universal suffrage and equal rights for everyone from the ocean to the ocean... but only theoretically. Ask a black man how equal he feels in the US, even though he has all the rights and suffrage of a white man. That's how Palestinians would be treated except probably way worse.
The details beyond that are what is actually difficult and why peace hasn't been achieved. It's all fine and good to say, "we should all be happy brothers" but it ignores how hard that is to do when the two brothers want each other dead. I'm in favor of a two state solution along with reparations, but that will also be very difficult to achieve, as evidenced by the many times it has been attempted over the decades.
Your math doesn't really check out. Israel has 9 million people 2 million of which are Arabs, and Palestine is 5 million. A binational state would be about 50-50 Arab and Jewish.
Also, you're misrepresenting the difference between the current apartheid state present in Israel/Palestine and the American problem of racism. One has different rules, different courts, different rights, and different protections there is no universal standard. The other often fails to live up to its universal standard. The latter can be improved, the former cannot.
Ultimately, getting lost in the weeds and the details has been an israeli tactic for maintaining the status quo for 50 years. The way you're nickel and diming the details of what would happen after freedom is like asking Lincoln to produce a full account of systemic racism as a precondition to the Emancipation Proclamation. No! I don't care what the details are and I don't need to care, and I refuse to be bogged down with shitty minutiae while injustice reigns. The current system is unacceptable and must be dismantled in favour of universal democratic human rights. Let the people be free and let them decide. Prolonging an insufferable situation just because you don't know every little detail about what freedom might look like is despicable, slavish and cowardly.
You're right, I misread the number of people in the West Bank.
Israel has 10 million people, 7.3 million of which are Jewish. West Bank has 2.7 million, 670,000 of which are Jewish. Gaza has 2.3 million, roughly zero of which are Jewish. So 8 million vs 7 million.
But calling me cowardly because I'm trying to figure out a much more difficult situation than "just do it" is terrible. You have to realize it is much more difficult than just saying, "create a new government." You are trying to do what George W Bush did in Iraq. Just get rid of the old government and start a new one. It's that easy! Just do it! If you half-ass the implementation of the solution, you're going to get a horrible outcome. These details need to be discussed if you want to get to your desired solution.
the thing is, why the fuck do I have to answer questions about Israel, China, Uganda, or Madagascar or any country, other than Germany, when applying for a German citizenship? That's absurd!
Because Germany has a history that they want to put behind them. The already have way too many citizens who are white power, neo-nazi assholes who still call for death to Jews, so it's somewhat logical that they decided they don't want any more of that mindset as citizens who can vote.
To be fair, they've been speed running the country checklist of "really shouldn't have a right to exist" they've done more to convince me that Zionism is a plague on our species than anyone else. The whole genocide is happening because of the idea of Israel so yes, if it goes away then that's a first step.
The German state doesn't recognise Palestine as a state currently, so probably not.
Only a few countries west of the former Iron Curtain recognise Palestine (Iceland and Sweden, and as of this year Norway, Ireland, and Spain)
