GIDEON LEVYGermany’s Enslavement to Its Past Kept It Silent on Gaza for Far Too Long

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 29/5/2025

Germany has betrayed the memory of the Holocaust and its lessons. A country that saw its highest task as not to forget has forgotten. A country that told itself that it would never remain silent is silent. A country that once said "Never Again," and now: "again," with arms, with funding, with silence. There is no country that should be better than Germany at "discerning nauseating processes." Every German knows much more about them than Yair Golan. Here in Israel they are in full swing, yet Germany has not yet recognized them for what they are. It was only recently that it woke up too late and to too little effect.

When Germany sees the Flag March in Jerusalem, it must see Kristallnacht. If it does not see the similarities, it is betraying the memory of the Holocaust. When it looks at Gaza, it must see the concentration camps and ghettos that it built. When it sees hungry Gazans, it must see the wretched survivors of the camps. When it hears the fascist talk of Israeli ministers and other public figures about killing and population transfer, about there being "no innocents" and about killing babies, it must hear the chilling voices from its past, who said the same in German.

It has no right to be silent. It must carry the flag of European resistance to what is happening in the Strip. Yet it continues to lag behind the rest of Europe, however uncomfortably, not only because of its past but also because of its indirect responsibility for the Nakba, which probably would not have happened without the Holocaust. Germany also owes a partial moral debt to the Palestinian people.

The Israeli occupation would not have happened without support from the United States and Germany. Throughout this period, Germany was considered Israel’s second-best friend. It was inclusive and unconditional. Now Germany will pay for its long years of severe self-censorship, during which it was forbidden to criticize Israel, the sacred sacrifice.

Any and all criticism of Israel was labeled antisemitism. The just struggle for Palestinian rights was criminalized. A country where a major media empire still requires its journalists to vow never to cast doubt on Israel’s right to exist as a condition for employment cannot claim to honor freedom of expression. And if Israel’s current policies endanger its existence, shouldn’t they be entitled to criticize it?

In Germany it is difficult, if not impossible, to criticize Israel, whatever it does. This is not friendship, this is enslavement to a past and it must end in the face of what is happening in Gaza. The "special relationship" cannot include a seal of approval for war crimes. Germany has no right to ignore the International Criminal Court, which was established in response to its crimes, by debating when to extend an invitation to an Israeli prime minister who is wanted for war crimes. It has no right to repeat the cliches of the past and place flowers in Yad Vashem, a 90-minute drive from Khan Yunis.

Inas Abu Maamar, 36, leans over the body of her niece Saly, 5. She was killed along with nine family members when an Israeli rocket struck their home in Khan Yunis. This image by Mohammed Salem for Reuters was awarded first prize in the 2024 World Press Photo competition.

Germany now faces its toughest moral test since the Holocaust. A few weeks after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Germany was the one to lead the sanctions drive against Russia. Twenty months after the invasion of Gaza, Germany has still not taken any steps against Israel, apart from paying the same lip service as other European countries.

Germany must change, not despite its past but because of it. It is not enough that Chancellor Friedrich Merz says it is no longer possible to justify bombing Gaza. He must take measures to help stop it. It is not enough that Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul says that Germany will not allow itself to be "put in a position where we have to show forced solidarity."

It is time for Germany to express solidarity with the victim, to free itself from the shackles of the past that alienate it from the lessons of the Holocaust. Germany cannot continue to sit idly by and make do with tepid condemnations. Given how terrible the situation is in Gaza, this is silence; Germany’s disgraceful silence.

CHRISTOF WACKERNAGELMetamorphose/Metamorphosis

 In 30, 50 oder 100 Jahren, wenn die menschliche Spezies noch da ist, wird sich wohl herausstellen, ob der Autor Recht hatte, als er behauptete, dass die 2020er Jahre die Geburt des Biofaschismus erlebten. In der Zwischenzeit ist dies eine Brandschrift, die den Handpuppen des Kapitals die Maske vom Gesicht reißt. Dringend lesenswert!

In 30, 50 or 100 years' time, if the human species still exists, history will tell whether the author was right in asserting that the 2020s saw the birth of biofascism. In the meantime, here's a scathing pamphlet that rips the masks off capital's puppets. A must-read!

 

CARSTEN HANKEUprising for peace in Germany

Carsten Hanke, 26-2-2023

Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala

Rostock-Berlin - The increasing rejecting by the German population of the war course of the Federal Government and the reporting of the bourgeois media, is reflected in street actions in many cities. It became particularly clear on the 1st anniversary of Russia's military intervention in the killing  by the Kiev government of its own population in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions practiced since 2014. According to U.N. observers, at least 14,000 people have been killed in the attacks there since then, and schools, kindergartens, hospitals, and other essential facilities for maintaining supplies to the population have been destroyed.

I would like to give two examples to show that more and more citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany are publicly expressing their opposition to the war course of the Federal Government through various peace actions. These peace-loving people are no longer deterred by defamation in the media, as happened repeatedly in the run-up to the Manifesto for Peace by Alice Schwarzer and Sahra Wagenknecht. This Manifesto for Peace was not only supported by well-known public figures as initial signatories, but also by more than 600,000 people in a very short time.

The first such peace celebration took place on Friday, 24 February at 17 o'clock on the Pariser Platz, directly before the Brandenburger gate and the USA embassy in Berlin. The Berlin Peace Coordination (FRIKO), which has been working for peace worldwide for many years with various peace activities, has been calling for this peace action for weeks. In this alliance different organizations act together, so among others the members of the Society for peace and international solidarity (GeFiS) in the Berlin area are there actively supporting.

On February 24, 2023, about 1,000 demonstrators followed the call of the Berlin Peace Coordination under the motto “Stop the killing in Ukraine - for ceasefire and negotiations!”, which was jointly written by 18 peace groups. Besides well-known speakers, e.g. the initiators of the “Darmstädter Signa”", where active and former German army officers and soldiers always stand up for peaceful conflict resolution, there was a call for protests against war and for peace, with cultural inserts like singing by Diether Dehm, to become active.

At the edge of this meeting some passers-by had tried again and again to disturb loudly and provocatively this peace demonstration. During various de-escalating measures practiced by us, such as calm conversation, it was repeatedly found that these so-called supporters of further arms deliveries to Ukraine not only had historical deficits but were also only one-sidedly informed. Despite some vicious insults our de-escalating efforts led to success and prevented possible physical clashes.

"Whoever wants peace, should talk about war" (Walter Benjamin)
Cease-fire, disarmament, peace now!

On February 25 at 2:00 pm the large gathering announced by its initiators Alice Schwarzer and Sahra Wagenknecht as well as retired Brigadier General Erich Vad took place on the west side of the Brandenburg gate in Berlin.

In the announcement of the demonstration, it was expressly pointed out that no party symbols such as flags etc. would be displayed and that party members of the right-wing party AfD and other right-wing extremist groups were not welcome. The organizers themselves had expected a number of participants of about 10,000 people. Due to the fact that nationwide the participants had traveled specially (further members of the GeFiS arrived organized with buses from Rostock and and surrounding area) the beginning of the demonstration had to be shifted around approx. 10 - 15 minutes.

I myself tried to walk the whole demonstration area to take pictures and had to stop my project because the participants were standing so close that it was not possible to get through. According to testimonies of other participants, participants still came to the rally even with a 40-minute delay. The number of participants of 13,000, which was repeatedly reported by the police and the media, did not correspond to the facts by far and gives further evidence that those people do not report truthfully if it is not in their interest.

The numerous spontaneous conversations with the participants of the demonstration were characterized by the great concern that more and more arms deliveries will only bring armament profits, but no peace. Refusing to negotiate does not show the will for peace, but endangers life. The participants are aware that the sanctions and the economic war are damaging Germany and that every citizen is already feeling the effects. They denounce the German government as responsible for inflation and economic decline with their war rhetoric.

Many visitors of the demonstration are aware of NATO commander Stoltenberg's words “rather a nuclear war than a Russian victory in Ukraine”. They have become active in order to make clear that they are against the atomic madness, against [the Installation of US hypersonic missiles] Dark Eagle, against the clearly more extensive atomic equipment with US atomic weapons in Europe and particularly in Germany,. They want to set a public sign against this madness, to rouse at the same time those citizens, who are still passive, to become finally also active.

The divisive smear campaign by politicians in unison with the bourgeois media that the event was “open to the right wing” was made absurd not only in the run-up to the manifestation but also during the entire event.

It was a powerful demonstration for peace and against the federal government and its practiced war course with the constant delivery of weapons to Ukraine. This became clear among other things also by the repeatedly loud demand of the demonstration participants, who chanted “Barebock muss weg!” [“Baerbock* must go!”].

*Annalena Baerbock: Green warmongering Minister of Foreign Affairs 

 
Carsten Hanke: Self-portrait

I was born in 1960 in Rostock, GDR. I graduated from a 10-class secondary school and then learned to be a lathe operator, driller, and miller, i.e. a metal worker. Then I joined the Volkspolizei (People's Police) and went through all ranks from the beginning, studied there and became an officer. After the so-called turnaround in 1990, the West did not recognize our degrees and since I did not want to serve in the capitalist system with the security organs anyway, where I possibly would have to protect Nazi demos, I left the service in the police. I went to the city public order department and studied again for 2 years for the higher civil service. But since I was too left-wing, they found an “unofficial” way to get rid of me. Then I went to work in the corporate world and was sent into early retirement in 1997 because of my bone disease. For the recognition of my illness I had to fight 4 years with a lawyer in court for my rights and won. Since then, I have always been politically active and in 2020 I founded with friends the “Society for Peace and International Solidarity” (GeFiS), where we support the progressive forces of Latin America and started the solidarity action "”Drugs for Venezuela”. I was invited by the Electoral Council in 2019 as the only German as an election observer to the parliamentary elections in Venezuela and again in 2021 with 3 other representatives as an election observer in the municipal elections. I was selected as a representative of the NGOs.

FRANK SCHUMANN“I was never afraid of the big shots”: A conversation with German lawyer Friedrich Wolff

On the defense of old Nazis, the leadership of the FRG and the tribunal against Erich Honecker.

Frank Schumann, junge Welt, 23/7/2022
Translated by John Catalinotto

You will be 100 years old on July 30. Congratulations on this rare anniversary!

Please don’t congratulate me before it happens.

What has always fascinated me about you is your humor - detached, self-deprecating, ambiguous wit.

Conditions in the world are sad enough. You don’t change them by lamenting them or reacting depressively. Or, as Marx says, by putting one’s face into the prescribed creases. No, that was never my thing. One must try to stand above things, otherwise one sinks with one’s nose in every muck.

But this is not from Marx, seems to me to be from Luxemburg.

When she is right, she is right.

I see at present only noses in the muck.

There I will not contradict you.

 

Friedrich Wolff, born in Berlin-Neukölln in 1922, son of a Jewish doctor and a Protestant mother, joined the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1945. After studying law at the Humboldt University from 1946 to 1949, “judge by order of the court,” from April 1951 trainee in the Justice Department of the Berlin Magistrate’s Office, lawyer since 1953 and chairman of the Berlin Bar Association from 1954 to 1970 and from 1984 to 1988 and 1990. Defense attorney in various political trials, including against Nazi and war criminals, demonstrators on June 17, 1953, and against Erich Honecker and other members of the Politburo. Wolff authored several books published by Edition Ost in Berlin. The most recent was published in 2021, together with Egon Krenz: „Komm mir nicht mit Rechtsstaat. Gespräch zwischen einem fast hundertjährigen Juristen und einem langjährigen DDR-Politiker“ [“Don't talk to me about rule of law. Conversation Between an Almost Centennial Lawyer and a Longtime GDR Politician].”

Were you always so poised and serene? Or did such serenity only develop in old age?

I don’t know. Well, I can remember phases when I was very emotional.

When, for example?

In the spring of 1960, when I defended Theodor Oberländer, the Federal Minister for Displaced Persons. The Supreme Court of the German Democratic Republic had indicted him for his involvement in war crimes.

As a first lieutenant, Oberländer had been involved in negotiations with the Ukrainian nationalists under Stepan Bandera on behalf of the High Command of the Wehrmacht in 1941. He was in the “Nightingale Battalion” ...

…consisting of Ukrainian nationalists who had become prisoners of war, and which was under the control of the fascist secret service.

Oberländer was the liaison officer for the “Abwehr [military intelligence service] .”  The unit entered Lviv even before the Wehrmacht and, together with Ukrainian collaborators, massacred “Jewish Bolsheviks.” The exact number of victims could never be determined, but it was in the thousands. So the charge was generally: “for murder.” And I was assigned to the accused “as a public defender.”

So the socialist was supposed to defend a Nazi?!

Even for a suspected war criminal, the presumption of innocence applies first. Every defendant must be treated fairly in court, even if he himself did not act legally. I know that this is sometimes difficult to understand, especially when the facts are conclusive.

Did the Nazi federal minister appear at the court hearing in Berlin?

No, the trial was held in absentia. Together with my Erfurt colleague Gerhard Rinck, I had tried to contact our client beforehand. But our letter came back from Bonn after it had been opened and resealed there. The envelope bore the handwritten note: “Acceptance subsequently refused. Caretaker has no power of attorney for Federal Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War-Affected Persons.”

You said earlier that you had been emotional. Because of the prominence of the client? Because of the international attention?

Well, I was never afraid of big shots. It was the trial as such. Never before had a West German former Nazi, especially one with government responsibility, been indicted by a GDR court for his war crimes. The trial was not only aimed at the specific person, but at the political leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany as a whole. The trial had great symbolic significance.

In the West, people still speak of a “show trial” today.

Of course it was a show trial. The GDR thus proved the continuity of the Nazi dictatorship in the West German state, the ally of the USA and its anti-communist bulwark against the East. So the scope of defense was limited.

 Nevertheless, we defense lawyers declared that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction. First, the acts had not been committed on our territory; second, the criminal law of the GDR had not applied to Oberländer when he committed the acts. And thirdly, Oberländer was protected by the immunity of the German Bundestag. 

The application was rejected. On April 29, 1960, Oberländer was sentenced to life in prison for the shooting of several thousand Jews and Poles in Lemberg. This did not even take into account the murderous acts he later committed with the German-Caucasian “Sonderverband Bergmann” in the Soviet Union.

Oberländer probably did not spend a day in jail.

No, but he had to resign six days later,although he remained politically active. In 1981, for example, he was one of the co-signers of a “Heidelberg Manifesto” that spoke out against the “infiltration of the German people” and the “alienation” of the German language and culture.

Let me guess: Oberländer was rehabilitated after 1990?

SEVIM DAĞDELEN Germany enters war

Two articles by Sevim Dağdelen (Duisburg, 1975), a member of the German Bundestag (Federal lower house) since 2005. She is chairperson of the parliamentary group of Die Linke (The Left Party) in the Foreign Affairs Committee and its spokesperson for international politics and disarmament.

Negotiations for peace, not tanks for war!

 Germany follows Washington’s Ramstein war program

Sevim Dağdelen, junge Welt, 27.4.2022
Translated by John Catalinotto

It is no time to be duped by war propaganda. The new militarism challenges our resistance. 

The war in Ukraine is now all about weapons, weapons, weapons. More weapons and heavier weapons. Every taboo of the post-war period is falling. Diplomacy has been written off. 

A new German militarism in the wake of U.S. militarism is the benchmark of this German government. While UN Secretary General António Guterres is in Moscow promoting a quick ceasefire and an end to the war, NATO members are pushing for the military pact to wage war against Russia. 

The Ukrainian soldiers are only a means to an end. Meanwhile, the goal has become taking the war to Russia.

Ramstein is the big U.S. Air Force Base in southwestern Germany

Ramstein means war

NATO is concerned with victory and nothing else. To this end, Washington has convened a special meeting of weapons representatives at the U.S. airbase in Ramstein in Rhineland-Palatinate. 

Instead of supporting Guterres and regarding the U.S. war council on German soil as a calculated political affront to [Germany’s] democratic sovereignty, the SPD/Green government has sent Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht to participate and has announced that it is going full-steam ahead: The government of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP is now delivering German tanks to the East, as demanded. Until victory. There must be no negotiated peace. 

The Ukrainian ambassador and neo-Nazi activist Andrij Melnyk has finally asserted himself at Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s cabinet table. There is no doubt that German weapons end up going to right-wing extremist battalions integrated into the National Guard and Ukrainian army, and no one in the German government shows any concern.

“Cheetah,” “Marten,” “Puma,” “Fox,” “Boxer,” “Leopard” - what reads like the harmless listing in “Grzimek’s Animal Life” encyclopedia threatens to become the program for expanding the Ukraine conflict into a third world war against the nuclear power Russia. By supplying heavy weapons, Germany and NATO are making themselves a direct party to the war.

Militarism challenges our resistance

The situation is red-hot. And the U.S. administration is throwing gasoline on the fire, by which the German government then warms itself. Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin announced in Ramstein that Washington will move “heaven and earth” to arm Ukraine for further war. And British Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces James Heappey tells Kiev that it is legitimate to attack Russia with British weapons and carry out strikes on its territory. 

Lambrecht contributes the German tanks that will be used to win the war of attrition. Ramstein is the symbol of a NATO war program. The winners have already been determined: the arms manufacturers. It is carried out on the backs of the populations in Europe. It is no time to be duped by war propaganda. The new militarism challenges our resistance.

 Arms delivery to Ukraine means Germany’s de facto entry into the war

Sevim Dağdelen, junge Welt, 29.4.2022
Translated by John Catalinotto

On April 28, 2022, the Bundestag [German parliament] decided that Germany would de facto enter into war with Russia. With a motion, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Social Democrats (SDP), Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens constituted themselves as a war coalition. 

The objections that Chancellor Olaf Scholz had raised only 72 hours earlier in opposition to the delivery of heavy weapons, that they increased the danger of a third world war, were blown away. In the motion of the war coalition, the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine is virtually invoked as a cure-all. 

In addition to the commitment to the rearmament fund of 100 billion euros, the additional commitment to a further annual increase in the military budget to more than 70 billion euros was fixed.

In speeches, numerous members of this Alliance for the Ukraine War, led by the chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Friedrich Merz, promoted the goal of a military victory for Ukraine, which they said Germany must support unconditionally. 

This break with all the military taboos that grew out of the defeat of German fascism in 1945, and its dangerous consequences, were somewhat alarming to the deputies. In a kind of defensive magic spell, the proposal states right at the beginning that “neither Germany nor NATO will become a party to the war.” 

But the delivery of ever more and ever heavier weapons and the call for a victorious peace against Russia make these incantations seem extremely questionable. These people remind us of someone who draws a square, but writes in the accompanying text to the drawing that the viewer should see a circle here. Surreal and dangerous.

In addition to the de facto entry into the war via the delivery of heavy weapons and training of Ukrainian soldiers to use them, they have put in the foreground the unconditional will of a total economic war against Russia. In the process, the battle zone is being increasingly expanded. China is openly threatened with being caught in the West’s crosshairs if Beijing tries to undermine Western sanctions against Russia. 

Language can be treacherous in this regard. In neo-colonial fashion, the motion says the German government must “emphatically communicate to the People’s Republic of China the expectations of Germany and the European Union.”

Respect for the UN Charter - all gone. The war coalition is openly threatening. Its language is one of violence and threats. Russia is to be pushed to the wall, even if this means a world economic war even against China. 

The problem of this new German militarism remains the recalcitrance of the German population, the majority of which rejects the delivery of heavy weapons and, according to a survey in The Spiegel, the majority of which has no desire to starve and freeze for war. This attitude must be expanded to fight the war coalition’s entry into the war.

Heavy weapons for Ukraine, by Kostas Koufogiorgos
Ampel= Traffic light coalition (Social-democrats, liberals and Greens); 100% climate-neutral delivery

Et le Dôme de fer s’étendit sur l’Europe/And the Iron Dome spread over Europe/Y la Cúpula de Hierro se extendió sobre Europa

 FG, Basta Yekfi, 14/5/2021

 

PALESTINE: SATURDAY MARCH IN PARIS PROHIBITED 

-PEACE
-These messages of hate are intolerable

Palestina: Manifestación prohibida sábado en París
-PAZ
-Esos mensajes de odio son intolerables
Sié

 

15 mai 2021, jour du 73^ème anniversaire de la Nakba. À Gaza, on dénombre déjà plus de 103 morts, provoquées par les missiles israéliens, tandis que les missiles palestiniens ont fait sept morts en Israël. Washington, Bruxelles, Paris et Berlin « déplorent la violence » tout en affirmant le « droit à la légitime défense »…mais seulement pour Israël. En ce samedi, partout dans le monde, des gens descendent dans la rue pour affirmer le droit du peuple palestinien à la souveraineté et à la vie. Partout, de Londres à Córdoba, de Berlin à Marseille. Partout, sauf à Paris et à Francfort-sur-le-Main. Le Préfet de police de Paris, sur ordre du ministre Darmanin, a interdit la manif prévue de Barbès à Bastille. Idem à Francfort, où le maire social-démocrate a interdit le rassemblement prévu, tandis qu’un drapeau israélien a été hissé, « en signe de solidarité avec Israël » sur le bâtiment de la Chancellerie d’État du Land de Hesse, à Wiesbaden, dirigée par une coalition de chrétiens-démocrates et de Verts. « La Hesse est un Land ouvert. Nous ne tolèrerons pas l’antisémitisme », a déclaré le Ministerpräsident Volker Bouffier. Le maire social-démocrate de Charlottenburg à Berlin, Reinhard Naumann, a,lui aussi, fait hisser le drapeau israélien sur sa mairie, tandis qu’à Vienne, le chancelier Kurz, menacé de poursuites judiciaires pour corruption, a fait hisser le drapeau bleu et blanc sur le ministère des Affaires étrangères.

À Brême et Hanovre, ces derniers jours, la police allemande a empêché des manifestants de brûler des drapeaux israéliens et engagé des poursuites contre eux. En vertu d’une loi adoptée par le Bundestag il y a un an, ils risquent jusqu’à 3 ans de prison.