Since last spring, I have been on an extended tour to promote my new book, Never Again: Germans and Genocide After the Holocaust<\/em><\/a>, which looks at German responses to the \u2018crime of crimes\u2019 in other<\/em> countries since 1945. Invariably, at least one audience member has asked me about German responses to Israel\u2019s alleged genocide against the Palestinians. That was true before<\/a> the Israeli military response to the Hamas attack of October 7, but the question now arises even more frequently, with greater urgency and emotion \u2013 more an accusation than a question. For all their talk of \u2018never again\u2019, my interlocutors wish to know, why are Germans not coming out more forcefully on this issue by condemning Israeli action in Gaza and the West Bank as genocide.<\/p>\n This jibes with increasing criticism of Germany\u2019s vaunted Vergangenheitsbew\u00e4ltigung<\/em>. If there was one thing historians and other observers of post-war Germany could all agree on \u2013 until recently \u2013 it was that the country\u2019s efforts at \u2018coming to terms with the past\u2019 was a success story worth emulating. Just five years ago, Susan Neiman, the American-born director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, informed us in a much-noticed book, Learning from the Germans<\/em><\/a>, that her native countrymen (and women) could and should take a page from the Germans when it came to \u2018memory work\u2019, especially when confronting their own country\u2019s fraught legacy of racism, slavery and Jim Crow. She has since backtracked, recently claiming in the pages of the New York Review of Books<\/em><\/a> that German Vergangenheitsbew\u00e4ltigung<\/em> has \u2018gone haywire\u2019. What happened?<\/p>\n In a nutshell, reports after October 7 of a German \u2018crackdown\u2019<\/a> on pro-Palestinian demonstrations at home is \u2018what happened\u2019. But that\u2019s not entirely accurate. Neiman, like a number of other academics and public intellectuals, had distanced herself<\/a> from her earlier arguments prior to recent events in the Middle East, largely in the wake of a controversy<\/a> initiated by A. Dirk Moses in 2021. In a polemical essay<\/a>, the Australian-born historian, who now teaches at CUNY, posited a dark side to German memory culture: a distinct \u2018reading\u2019 of the Holocaust that not only immures German \u2018elites\u2019 to the suffering of other groups (read: Palestinians), but even makes them antipathetic toward those groups.<\/p>\n There is a prehistory to all this, one brewing for roughly the past decade: a questioning of the old narrative of successful German memory work that \u2013 ironically \u2013 burst onto the public scene around the same time that Neiman\u2019s Learning from the Germans<\/em> appeared in 2019. In his now (in)famous piece, entitled \u2018The German Catechism\u2019, Moses identified three main catalysts for this revirement<\/em>: \u2018the heated German debate about Achille Mbembe\u2019s<\/a> alleged antisemitism, Michael Rothberg\u2019s book, Multidirectional Memory<\/em><\/a>, and J\u00fcrgen Zimmerer\u2019s Von Windhuk nach Auschwitz?<\/em><\/a>\u2019, which posits lines of continuity between German colonial practices and the Holocaust.<\/p>\n Window in Cologne, 2024. Image Elke Wetzig \/ Source: Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n What should we make of recent claims that we have been too quick to praise the Germans for their \u2018culture of remembrance\u2019? The naysayers\u2019 case \u2013 which one might dub the \u2018Postcolonial Catechism\u2019 (with\u00a0due\u00a0respect for the\u00a0important insights<\/a>\u00a0offered\u00a0by\u00a0the field of\u00a0postcolonial studies as a whole) \u2013 consists of six main arguments:<\/p>\n These arguments and criticisms cannot and should not be dismissed out of hand. But they are also distorted, exaggerated, and unduly polemical \u2013 and<\/em> they ignore important context! With respect to the last point, those who have posited a recent turn for the worse in Germany\u2019s \u2018culture of remembrance\u2019 have not made any real attempt to explain the roots of this sudden transformation, apart from vague allusions to growing concerns about immigration and asylum requests by the \u2018wrong sort\u2019 of foreigner from places like Syria, Israel\u2019s longtime foe.<\/p>\n What they leave out is the elephant in the room, namely, the statistically verifiable uptick in antisemitic incidents in Germany over the past few years, from the violent Yom Kippur attack<\/a> at a synagogue in Halle in 2019 to conspiracy claims that COVID-19 was a Jewish plot<\/a> (\u2018Jew flu,\u2019 \u2018Holocough\u2019). It is true that the vast majority of such incidents are committed by white Germans on the extreme right<\/a> of the political spectrum \u2013 though, to be clear, certain groups of \u2018non-ethnic\u2019 Germans are disproportionately represented<\/a>. This is important context for understanding the recent \u2018hysteria\u2019 \u2013 for understanding, say, the controversial resolution<\/a> adopted in 2019 by the Bundestag, which condemned (to my mind, mistakenly) the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel as antisemitic and called for cutting off funding to any organizations that \u2018actively support\u2019 the BDS movement.<\/p>\n But the \u2018Postcolonial Catechism\u2019 misleads in a different way as well. German responses to genocide in other lands, the subject of my recent book<\/a>, provide a clear example of how memories of the Nazi period were used by Germans in support of<\/em> other traditionally persecuted groups, including Muslims, not<\/em> to deny them succour or sympathy \u2013 a clear instance of Rothberg\u2019s \u2018multidirectional memory\u2019 in practice. German efforts at Vergangenheitsbew\u00e4ltigung<\/em> may not always have been perfect, but let\u2019s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. It remains one area where the Federal Republic can rightly claim to be a success story, especially as it begins to grapple in earnest with its colonial past<\/a>, in contradistinction to most of its allies in the rest of Europe \u2013 and across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n The point is not to deny that some Germans have made accusations of antisemitism in an instrumental way: to stoke xenophobia and advance an anti-immigrant agenda. Nor am I trying to justify or excuse official excesses in response to perceived<\/em> antisemitic agitation and calls for violence. But because of their past, Germans are finding themselves once again in a difficult position of being \u2018damned if they do and damned if they don\u2019t.\u2019 One can only imagine the reaction from abroad (and at home) if German authorities were to look on passively as critics of Israel pass out celebratory baked goods<\/a> in central Berlin in response to the murderous rampage of 7 October, or call (implicitly or explicitly) for the destruction of Israel. In the end, G\u00fcnther Jikeli has observed<\/a>, the \u2018accusation of antisemitism becomes the problem, not the statements that precipitated it\u2019.<\/p>\n Now, one should not automatically equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, but one should also not deny that there is often a link \u2013 a tension captured in the competing statements on the topic by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance<\/a> and by signers of the Jerusalem Declaration<\/a>. To state the (often overlooked) obvious: one has to judge each incident on a case-by-case basis, not make broad, misleading generalizations about, for instance, German authorities offering unconditional support to Israel or suppressing civil liberties by \u2018cancelling\u2019 all critics of Israel and cracking down on all<\/em> forms of pro-Palestinian protest.<\/p>\n What about German responses to the claim that Israeli policies toward the Palestinians constitute genocide? Many Germans are understandably wary to use that charged term when it comes to the Middle East because of their own history \u2013 the same reason why German officials have kept a tight rein on pro-Palestinian demonstrations at home, even those involving Jewish<\/em> critics of Israel. The latter in particular have indignantly asked what right Germans have lecturing Jews about the appropriateness of such allegations and language.<\/p>\n Besides, don\u2019t Germans have a duty to call a duck a duck, so to speak \u2013 even more so because<\/em> of their past? According to those who argued in favour of German participation in military efforts against the Serbs during the carnage in Bosnia in the early 1990s, their country had \u2013 in the words of then foreign minister Klaus Kinkel \u2013 \u2018a political and moral duty<\/a> to assist, precisely in light of <\/em>our history\u2019. Such considerations place Germans in a difficult position.<\/p>\n One can, in theory \u2013 and with an eye to international law and the provisions of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide<\/a> \u2013 have an open, sober, and rational discussion about whether Israeli actions against the Palestinians constitute genocide, which the Convention defines as a series of specific \u2018acts, committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.\u2019 But there is a difference between legal definitions, on the one hand, and popular, emotional<\/em> understandings of the term, on the other. There has long been a tendency \u2013 not just in Germany \u2013 to equate genocide with Auschwitz. As a result, those who invoke the term to describe crimes that fall below the threshold of industrialized mass murder are often suspected of \u2018whitewashing\u2019 past German crimes by \u2018relativizing\u2019 the Holocaust.<\/p>\n What this suggests is that much of the debate has to do with subtexts,\u00a0imputed (political) motives, and unspoken yet understandable fears about consequences that might follow from a broader, seemingly less indiscriminate use of the term genocide<\/em> \u2013 regardless of its legal applicability. For similar reasons, many Germans react aversely to other loaded terms like apartheid<\/em><\/a> and ghetto<\/em><\/a> when it comes to characterizing Israeli policies \u2013 or to words like boycott<\/em> in calls for international sanctions against Israel.<\/p>\n Again, one can have a rational discussion<\/a> about the appropriateness and fairness of such terms. But one can also understand why, in the context of centuries of anti-Semitic persecution culminating in the Holocaust, supporters of Israel and Zionism see loaded terms like these as \u2018microaggressions.\u2019 At the same time, they wonder why those who denounce the use of microaggressions against other traditionally persecuted groups seem to have less qualms about them when it comes to Jews, or less understanding for Jews who perceive and denounce them as such.<\/p>\n A popular if narrow understanding of what constitutes genocide \u2013 industrial mass murder \u2013 is nevertheless one reason why the injunction \u2018never again\u2019 remains an unfulfilled aspiration. This limited understanding means that other acts of mass persecution are overlooked. The purported deportation and \u2018russification\u2019<\/a> of Ukrainian children would, for instance, clearly count as a form of genocide, according to the terms of the 1948 UN Convention. Does the same hold true for the forced evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, which critics of Israel denounce as \u2018ethnic cleansing\u2019<\/a>, or a humanitarian crisis that some have described as \u2018a deliberately engineered famine\u2019<\/a>?<\/p>\n That is a question worth serious deliberation, and one upon which the International Criminal Court\u2019s verdict in the case<\/a> that South Africa recently brought against Israel will ultimately shed light. Until then, both critics and defenders of Israeli policies should avoid inflammatory language \u2013 or at least be more circumspect about using loaded terms that needlessly provoke and thus do more to hinder than abet debate and actions that might help innocent people in Gaza and elsewhere.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This article was first published in Public Seminar<\/a> on 6 March 2024<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Fenster_Koln-Ehrenfeld_-_8420-1024x787.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n
![Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\nWhat should we make of recent claims that we have been too quick to praise the Germans for their \u2018culture of remembrance\u2019? The naysayers\u2019 case \u2013 which one might dub the \u2018Postcolonial Catechism\u2019 (with\u00a0due\u00a0respect for the\u00a0important insights<\/a>\u00a0offered\u00a0by\u00a0the field of\u00a0postcolonial studies as a whole) \u2013 consists of six main arguments:<\/p>\n\nGerman authorities have imposed from on high an \u2018official state policy\u2019<\/a> that dictates \u2018proper\u2019 ways to remember Germany\u2019s past, resulting in the country\u2019s once admirable efforts at Vergangenheitsbew\u00e4ltigung<\/em> assuming a \u2018static\u2019<\/a> quality limited solely to the genocide of the Jews, while ignoring earlier German colonial atrocities \u2013 and current ones worldwide.<\/li>\nAt the same time, Germany\u2019s sense of responsibility for the Nazi past has produced a cloying philosemitism<\/a> that finds its clearest expression in \u2018unconditional solidarity\u2019<\/a> with Israel.<\/li>\nThis has led to serious violations of civil liberties and free speech: cancel culture run amok<\/a>, litmus tests for state funding and citizenship, the banning of symbols and slogans deemed antisemitic, all in an effort to silence critics of Israel, including Jewish ones.<\/li>\nBy preventing Germans from thinking clearly about the current political situation, memories of \u2018past shame\u2019<\/a> are also being instrumentalized to \u2018suppress debate\u2019<\/a> about disturbing developments abroad, especially in the Middle East.<\/li>\nBut that is not all: by automatically disqualifying reasonable and justified criticism of Israeli policies as antisemitic, German watchdogs are stoking xenophobic sentiment and using it as a weapon<\/a> against \u2018undesirable\u2019 immigrants who, they claim, harbour such distasteful views.<\/li>\nAs a result, Germany\u2019s vaunted efforts to deal with its ignoble past have \u2018backfired\u2019, gone \u2018haywire\u2019, produced a form of \u2018hysteria\u2019<\/a>, leading to the oppression and demonization of other<\/em> traditionally persecuted minorities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThese arguments and criticisms cannot and should not be dismissed out of hand. But they are also distorted, exaggerated, and unduly polemical \u2013 and<\/em> they ignore important context! With respect to the last point, those who have posited a recent turn for the worse in Germany\u2019s \u2018culture of remembrance\u2019 have not made any real attempt to explain the roots of this sudden transformation, apart from vague allusions to growing concerns about immigration and asylum requests by the \u2018wrong sort\u2019 of foreigner from places like Syria, Israel\u2019s longtime foe.<\/p>\nWhat they leave out is the elephant in the room, namely, the statistically verifiable uptick in antisemitic incidents in Germany over the past few years, from the violent Yom Kippur attack<\/a> at a synagogue in Halle in 2019 to conspiracy claims that COVID-19 was a Jewish plot<\/a> (\u2018Jew flu,\u2019 \u2018Holocough\u2019). It is true that the vast majority of such incidents are committed by white Germans on the extreme right<\/a> of the political spectrum \u2013 though, to be clear, certain groups of \u2018non-ethnic\u2019 Germans are disproportionately represented<\/a>. This is important context for understanding the recent \u2018hysteria\u2019 \u2013 for understanding, say, the controversial resolution<\/a> adopted in 2019 by the Bundestag, which condemned (to my mind, mistakenly) the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel as antisemitic and called for cutting off funding to any organizations that \u2018actively support\u2019 the BDS movement.<\/p>\nBut the \u2018Postcolonial Catechism\u2019 misleads in a different way as well. German responses to genocide in other lands, the subject of my recent book<\/a>, provide a clear example of how memories of the Nazi period were used by Germans in support of<\/em> other traditionally persecuted groups, including Muslims, not<\/em> to deny them succour or sympathy \u2013 a clear instance of Rothberg\u2019s \u2018multidirectional memory\u2019 in practice. German efforts at Vergangenheitsbew\u00e4ltigung<\/em> may not always have been perfect, but let\u2019s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. It remains one area where the Federal Republic can rightly claim to be a success story, especially as it begins to grapple in earnest with its colonial past<\/a>, in contradistinction to most of its allies in the rest of Europe \u2013 and across the Atlantic.<\/p>\nThe point is not to deny that some Germans have made accusations of antisemitism in an instrumental way: to stoke xenophobia and advance an anti-immigrant agenda. Nor am I trying to justify or excuse official excesses in response to perceived<\/em> antisemitic agitation and calls for violence. But because of their past, Germans are finding themselves once again in a difficult position of being \u2018damned if they do and damned if they don\u2019t.\u2019 One can only imagine the reaction from abroad (and at home) if German authorities were to look on passively as critics of Israel pass out celebratory baked goods<\/a> in central Berlin in response to the murderous rampage of 7 October, or call (implicitly or explicitly) for the destruction of Israel. In the end, G\u00fcnther Jikeli has observed<\/a>, the \u2018accusation of antisemitism becomes the problem, not the statements that precipitated it\u2019.<\/p>\nNow, one should not automatically equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, but one should also not deny that there is often a link \u2013 a tension captured in the competing statements on the topic by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance<\/a> and by signers of the Jerusalem Declaration<\/a>. To state the (often overlooked) obvious: one has to judge each incident on a case-by-case basis, not make broad, misleading generalizations about, for instance, German authorities offering unconditional support to Israel or suppressing civil liberties by \u2018cancelling\u2019 all critics of Israel and cracking down on all<\/em> forms of pro-Palestinian protest.<\/p>\nWhat about German responses to the claim that Israeli policies toward the Palestinians constitute genocide? Many Germans are understandably wary to use that charged term when it comes to the Middle East because of their own history \u2013 the same reason why German officials have kept a tight rein on pro-Palestinian demonstrations at home, even those involving Jewish<\/em> critics of Israel. The latter in particular have indignantly asked what right Germans have lecturing Jews about the appropriateness of such allegations and language.<\/p>\nBesides, don\u2019t Germans have a duty to call a duck a duck, so to speak \u2013 even more so because<\/em> of their past? According to those who argued in favour of German participation in military efforts against the Serbs during the carnage in Bosnia in the early 1990s, their country had \u2013 in the words of then foreign minister Klaus Kinkel \u2013 \u2018a political and moral duty<\/a> to assist, precisely in light of <\/em>our history\u2019. Such considerations place Germans in a difficult position.<\/p>\nOne can, in theory \u2013 and with an eye to international law and the provisions of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide<\/a> \u2013 have an open, sober, and rational discussion about whether Israeli actions against the Palestinians constitute genocide, which the Convention defines as a series of specific \u2018acts, committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.\u2019 But there is a difference between legal definitions, on the one hand, and popular, emotional<\/em> understandings of the term, on the other. There has long been a tendency \u2013 not just in Germany \u2013 to equate genocide with Auschwitz. As a result, those who invoke the term to describe crimes that fall below the threshold of industrialized mass murder are often suspected of \u2018whitewashing\u2019 past German crimes by \u2018relativizing\u2019 the Holocaust.<\/p>\nWhat this suggests is that much of the debate has to do with subtexts,\u00a0imputed (political) motives, and unspoken yet understandable fears about consequences that might follow from a broader, seemingly less indiscriminate use of the term genocide<\/em> \u2013 regardless of its legal applicability. For similar reasons, many Germans react aversely to other loaded terms like apartheid<\/em><\/a> and ghetto<\/em><\/a> when it comes to characterizing Israeli policies \u2013 or to words like boycott<\/em> in calls for international sanctions against Israel.<\/p>\nAgain, one can have a rational discussion<\/a> about the appropriateness and fairness of such terms. But one can also understand why, in the context of centuries of anti-Semitic persecution culminating in the Holocaust, supporters of Israel and Zionism see loaded terms like these as \u2018microaggressions.\u2019 At the same time, they wonder why those who denounce the use of microaggressions against other traditionally persecuted groups seem to have less qualms about them when it comes to Jews, or less understanding for Jews who perceive and denounce them as such.<\/p>\nA popular if narrow understanding of what constitutes genocide \u2013 industrial mass murder \u2013 is nevertheless one reason why the injunction \u2018never again\u2019 remains an unfulfilled aspiration. This limited understanding means that other acts of mass persecution are overlooked. The purported deportation and \u2018russification\u2019<\/a> of Ukrainian children would, for instance, clearly count as a form of genocide, according to the terms of the 1948 UN Convention. Does the same hold true for the forced evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, which critics of Israel denounce as \u2018ethnic cleansing\u2019<\/a>, or a humanitarian crisis that some have described as \u2018a deliberately engineered famine\u2019<\/a>?<\/p>\nThat is a question worth serious deliberation, and one upon which the International Criminal Court\u2019s verdict in the case<\/a> that South Africa recently brought against Israel will ultimately shed light. Until then, both critics and defenders of Israeli policies should avoid inflammatory language \u2013 or at least be more circumspect about using loaded terms that needlessly provoke and thus do more to hinder than abet debate and actions that might help innocent people in Gaza and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\nThis article was first published in Public Seminar<\/a> on 6 March 2024<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n[ad_2]\nSource link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[ad_1] Since last spring, I have been on an extended tour to promote my new book, Never Again: Germans and Genocide After the Holocaust, which<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":216001,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216000"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216000"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335034,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216000\/revisions\/335034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Fenster,_K%C3%B6ln-Ehrenfeld_-_8420.jpg\"){kind=link}