That headline is false. You do not have to affirm Israel’s right to exist.
You have to know that it’s illegal to call for the destruction of the state of Israel. That’s not the same.
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.
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?
Because of our history with Israel? I am all against the genocide against palestinians but defending israels right to exist is a good thing
our history with israel is the third reich and israel having friendly relations. We are continuing nazi tradition by supporting israel.
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.
Why add this to te immigration screeming process while they are actively committing war crimes, stealing land and murdering kids?
germany has managed to land on te wrong side of history twice in the same conversation.
Blindly standing with a group becuase germany feels they have given their own atrocious history.
What happens if they affirmed that both Israel and Palestine’s right to exist?
It’s a multiple choice question. Also the headline is false. The question is:
“What action relating to the state of Israel is prohibited in Germany?"
The correct answer is “publicly calling for the destruction of Israel".
Alright, lets wrap that up, shall we.
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.
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?
Yes. It’s a Double standard. It was born out of history. Namely the genocide on the Jews by the nationalsocialists.
Germany doesn’t have a special history with Palestine, so they don’t get mentioned.
And yes, I think Germany should recognise a Palestinian state.
This is Germany’s “special history” with the Palestinians being created right now. This. This supporting and enabling their genocide.
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.
Since many anti-semites use the current actions of Israel for, well for antisemitism, it’s the perfect time for it.
The right to exist has nothing to do with the actions of the current government.
Since what happened during the nazi regime, you surely can understand why Germany asks this question, don’t you?
This is like a serial-killer, becoming a lawyer and fighting against death-penalty of other serial-killers.
States are not people. The government after the war was not the same as during the third reich.
Sure, but the mindset of the people gets passed down from generation to generation.
I don’t know what you actually want to say about with that. Germans are nazis, that’s why they support now the people they wanted to kill?
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.
Is the antisemitism in the room with us right now?
Cause it seems an awful lot to me like y’all are just calling anyone protesting what Israel is doing to Palestine antisemitic.
The perfect time for German Nazis to use Jews as a shield for israel to commit Genocide?
The new Nazis and the old Nazis teaming up is a sight to behold.
Acknowledging a country’s right to exist is the opposite of Nazi policy…
If you have 11 people and a Nazi at a dinner party, you have 12 Nazis.
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?
Answering this question would have impact on my ability to acquire German citizenship.
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.
So what is your solution to all of the people living in Israel (not in the occupied West Bank)? Where do they go?
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.
Found the nazi
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.
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
Oh yeah, my misinformed bubble, the official government press conferences: https://youtu.be/lBmDdNZmToU?si=rsLM5CyTSjEFxBTI&t=353
Or DW https://www.dw.com/en/german-cabinet-backs-deportations-for-praise-of-terrorism/a-69480819
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.
So the blog post just states that the phrase isn’t illegal to use but the state still decides to “investigate” its use often by using force, arrests, and by searching peoples’ homes, confiscating their electronic devices and so on. It’s good to hear that the “Verfassungsblog” argues that its use isn’t generally illegal, but also states that the current police proceedings are going to great extent to intimidate people
You call them police proceedings, but it’s the public prosecutor’s office (Staatsanwaltschaft) that is calling the shots. Regardless, the article also states that two of the highest courts called the Verwaltungsgerichte have decided that the phrase isn’t illegal per se.
Of course it is illegal in the context of glorifying Hamas terrorism, as it should be. That also puts a responsibility on organisers of protests to make sure that they distance themselves from people who are ambiguous in their distancing from hamas, that’s a positive thing in my opinion.
