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I am German. My government does not acknowledge the tragedy that has been unfolding in Gaza since the Hamas attack in October 2023. It’s absurd. Since then,

I am German. My government does not acknowledge the tragedy that has been unfolding in Gaza since the Hamas attack in October 2023. It’s absurd. Since then, Jewish people in Berlin who were demonstrating alongside Palestinians against the war in Gaza have been beaten down by the German police. In 2021, Esther Bejarano, the last survivor of the Auschwitz Girls’ Orchestra, passed away in Hamburg. Whenever she commented on the culture of remembrance, the media was eager to report on it. Whenever she commented on the situation of the Palestinians, it was not reported in the media. People sometimes ask how it was possible that the vast majority of so-called ordinary people in this country back then could simply tolerate these crimes against Jews and look the other way. Now that should be clear to everyone. The Max Planck Institute in Rostock estimates that well over 100,000 people have been killed in Gaza. But nobody here gives a damn (at least not publicly). We’re even supplying weapons there. Everyone acts as if they’ve forgotten what was written in German newspapers about the current Israeli government when it took office, and as if there were no connection to what’s happening in Gaza right now. I am deeply and profoundly disappointed in the elected officials and public servants of my country. They have learned nothing from the atrocities committed by their grandfathers.

ActorNightly 7mo ago
[flagged]
- ebbi 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ActorNightly 7mo ago
    Every single person is a product of their circumstances. If you personally were to grow up in either country, the neural network in your brain would be trained with a way different set of data compared to what you experienced, and you would be a different person. I don't have sympathy or hated for either side, this is just a byproduct of being human.
    - ebbi 7mo ago
      Are you trying to justify or minimize families being killed for no reason? I don't get your response in context of what I posted. There are truths, and pointing out someone that goes against that truth shouldn't have to worry about circumstances - especially if those circumstances have been widely documented to be violence since its inception.
      - hjkl0 7mo ago
        Part of the problem for Israel is that it is becoming harder and harder to convince the world of its version of the “truth”. And unrelated to that, Benjamin Netanyahu is about as truthful a man as Donald Trump is.
      - ActorNightly 7mo ago
        If 2 teenagers end up doing drive by shooting on each others houses, all because their fathers were in gangs that did the same back in the day and thats the life the kids grew up in, how are you going to assign who is at fault? To either kid, the other side started it.
jokoon 7mo ago
[flagged]
- tovej 7mo ago
  [flagged]
iwontberude 7mo ago
It's even more insidious, I know activists in your country and they not only abhor the current support for Israel's genocide but they are terrified of their activism being criminalized under anti-nazi laws. How ironic.
xyzelement 7mo ago
[flagged]
- olelele 7mo ago
  There is a difference between war and extermination.
olelele 7mo ago
I live in DE too, it's terrifying. I didn't realize the extent of the armaments shipped to Israel from Germany until recently. The Israeli navy ships were built in German shipyards and subsidized 30%...
- black_13 7mo ago
  [dead]
- shdudns 7mo ago
  I find this bewildering. Im not German. Im not Israeli. Yet I have known that Israel sails German subs (the best in the world) since.... the Greek financial crisis (the subs were part of the scandal) ? Certainly since the mid 2010s. Why is this?
  - thot_experiment 7mo ago
    https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
  - tim333 7mo ago
    I guess they feel guilty about previous generations gassing the jews.
- stefantalpalaru 7mo ago
  [dead]
- thot_experiment 7mo ago
  It's terrifying everywhere, really shines a light on the insane levels of propaganda we live under. I don't really know what can be done about it, it's really just hard to wrap my head around living in a country that so explicitly and directly supports an ethnostate and their active genocide.
  - olelele 7mo ago
    Germany has a lot of very strange political formations. The anti-german antifa is very curious and close to this topic.
metaPushkin 7mo ago
[dead]
noworriesnate 7mo ago
> Auschwitz Girls’ Orchestra Is this something from the post-war or did that really exist?
- layer8 7mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Orchestra_of_Auschwitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Orchestra_of_Auschwi... “The Germans wanted a propaganda tool for [SS] visitors and camp newsreels and a tool to boost camp morale.” There were also several men’s orchestras.
  - noworriesnate 7mo ago
    Interesting, I imagine the propaganda was also used for the German public, because they had no idea they were death camps. Israel would doubtless keep its genocide a secret if it could, but there's just so much evidence created by smartphones. This is actually an example of how technology is making the world a massively better place--it's so much harder to genocide without creating tons of evidence.
blell 7mo ago
[flagged]
busterarm 7mo ago
The last time I was in Berlin (2018), I was actually somewhat shocked by the amount of antisemitic graffiti that I saw just about everywhere (especially on lamp posts). Especially given the strictness of the laws against such speech.
- nxor2 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - otikik 7mo ago
    Wait until you hear Muslims in Europe can be openly gay.
    - fennecbutt 7mo ago
      Often not to their families or Muslim peers. And look at surveys taken by European Muslims on their opinions on what should be done to gay people like me, when they can answer anonymously or think the surveyor is a fellow Muslim.
  - DiogenesKynikos 7mo ago
    What does that have to do with the subject of this thread at all? Christians are also terrible to gay people, and European societies have only very recently (in the last two to three decades) become somewhat more tolerant. In the context of Israel-Palestine, this issue is only raised in order to somehow justify Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, a la "They deserve it because they're not as enlightened as we are."
    - vehemenz 7mo ago
      It’s relevant because most commenters here hold moral standards that are completely self-undermining because they choose to not apply them to the “oppressed” group. Consider that it doesn’t matter how genocidal Israel’s Islamicist neighbors are. The IDF occassionally targets civilians when they shouldn’t. Meanwhile Israel’s neighbors don’t even draw the distinction.
breppp 7mo ago
[flagged]
- Hikikomori 7mo ago
  >and unfortunately for us the palestinians political leadership has brought us all into this scenario Simply not true. The plan from the start was to take over the area for jews, see Ben Gurions private letters. Netanyahu has supported Hamas to make sure that Palestine couldn't be politically united to be able to continue taking over the west bank. The power balance has since long been tipped to one side that is engineering the situation.
  - breppp 7mo ago
    "We must seek agreement and understanding with the Arab people only through the Arab worker, and only an alliance of Jewish and Arab workers will establish and maintain an alliance of the Jewish and Arab peoples in Palestine" That's a Ben Gurion quote, who was a socialist and believed in shared class struggle of Jews and Arabs. The rest of your comment is influenced by other lack of nuance
    - fakedang 7mo ago
      Well newsflash, the Israeli socialists and left wing have lost all influence for the most part. The only way you can form a government in the Knesset today is by a coalition of parties, most of which lean right-wing to far-right or ultra-Orthodox.
      - hjkl0 7mo ago
        FYI, the Israeli socialists and left wing have always supported policies of militarist expansionism and the occupation. When there was still a left wing in Israel, the left wing governments built more settlements than the right wing ones.
    - oa335 7mo ago
      Ben-Gurion famously preached coexistence publicly (sometimes) but his private messages and memoirs betray his true beliefs: 5 October 1937, Ben-Gurion wrote in a letter to his 16 year old son Amos: “We must expel the Arabs and take their places…. And, if we have to use force-not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places- then we have force at our disposal.” “It is very possible that the Arabs of the neighboring countries will come to their aid against us. But our strength will exceed theirs. Not only because we will be better organized and equipped, but because behind us there stands a still larger force, superior in quantity and quality …the whole younger generation of Jews from Europe and America.” Ben-Gurion, Zichronot [Memoirs], Vol. 4, p.297-299, p. 330-331. See also Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs, p. 182-189 https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/ https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quot...
riedel 7mo ago
While I agree with you on the case of Esther Bejerano (a recent example from public broadcasting shows that her own communist beliefs and support for BDS are seemingly 'censored' [0]), I find the general situation complicated. Although it should be easy for any half intellectual being to contextualize the recent Israeli aggression by mentioning October 7, like you did, this is often not done. At the same time I think that the coverage of likely Israeli war crimes also happens in German media and I think nobody is looking away. Still Germany is the reason why the whole mess exists in the first place. I feel, that Germany, has quite some problems like many other countries to find it's role in a world where particularly the UN is failing and international law/human rights seem not enforcable. [0] https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/koepfe/Esther-Bejarano-Das-Erbe-der-Hamburger-Holocaust-Ueberlebenden,bejarano224.html https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/koepfe/Esther-Bejarano-Das-Erb...
- gorgolo 7mo ago
  > Germany is the reason why the whole mess exists in the first place. I think this is the most unfair thing about it; Germany might be the reason, but it’s not Germans paying the consequences. It’s not 70k dead Germans, but 70k dead Palestinians (a Semitic people). I can understand thefeeling of wanting to make amends for their crimes, but they are making amends by now allowing a whole new genocide to occur, against a completely unrelated people.
mfru 7mo ago
Same thing in Austria, everyone in mainstream politics basically ignores the topic and when pressured parrot something like "Israel has the right to defend itself" or "It is very complicated" Repression against students and demonstrators is happening regularly
manyaoman 7mo ago
[dead]
jiaosdjf 7mo ago
Germany is cucked, what Hitler did was outrageous and destroyed any rational ability for generations - and yes while I am heavily critical of Israel and the demonstrably true supremacy and nepotism they have created outside of Israel, I am strongly against the "rounding up of Anne Franks". Germany must now tread the difficult tightrope between standing up for themselves and going full-on loony right, and every time they fall they simply reset to loony left. This is why the establishment just puts their head in the sand.
ngcazz 7mo ago
The tragedy in Gaza, the tragedy in Srebrenica, the tragedy in Rwanda? Genocide is the word.
- asdfss674564 7mo ago
  [dead]
lucyjojo 7mo ago
i am honestly puzzled as to why germans, with all the educations they have received during decades, are letting this rock as is. or maybe disillusioned would be a better term...
deaux 7mo ago
> They have learned nothing from the atrocities committed by their grandfathers. No no, they have learned from them. That's why they are the biggest backers of these new atrocities on the whole continent - they learned exactly how it's done.

ActorNightly 7mo ago

[flagged]

ebbi 7mo ago
[flagged]
- ActorNightly 7mo ago
  Every single person is a product of their circumstances. If you personally were to grow up in either country, the neural network in your brain would be trained with a way different set of data compared to what you experienced, and you would be a different person. I don't have sympathy or hated for either side, this is just a byproduct of being human.
  - ebbi 7mo ago
    Are you trying to justify or minimize families being killed for no reason? I don't get your response in context of what I posted. There are truths, and pointing out someone that goes against that truth shouldn't have to worry about circumstances - especially if those circumstances have been widely documented to be violence since its inception.
    - hjkl0 7mo ago
      Part of the problem for Israel is that it is becoming harder and harder to convince the world of its version of the “truth”. And unrelated to that, Benjamin Netanyahu is about as truthful a man as Donald Trump is.
    - ActorNightly 7mo ago
      If 2 teenagers end up doing drive by shooting on each others houses, all because their fathers were in gangs that did the same back in the day and thats the life the kids grew up in, how are you going to assign who is at fault? To either kid, the other side started it.

jokoon 7mo ago

[flagged]

tovej 7mo ago
[flagged]

iwontberude 7mo ago

It's even more insidious, I know activists in your country and they not only abhor the current support for Israel's genocide but they are terrified of their activism being criminalized under anti-nazi laws. How ironic.

xyzelement 7mo ago

[flagged]

olelele 7mo ago
There is a difference between war and extermination.

olelele 7mo ago

I live in DE too, it's terrifying. I didn't realize the extent of the armaments shipped to Israel from Germany until recently. The Israeli navy ships were built in German shipyards and subsidized 30%...

black_13 7mo ago
[dead]
shdudns 7mo ago
I find this bewildering. Im not German. Im not Israeli. Yet I have known that Israel sails German subs (the best in the world) since.... the Greek financial crisis (the subs were part of the scandal) ? Certainly since the mid 2010s. Why is this?
- thot_experiment 7mo ago
  https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- tim333 7mo ago
  I guess they feel guilty about previous generations gassing the jews.
stefantalpalaru 7mo ago
[dead]
thot_experiment 7mo ago
It's terrifying everywhere, really shines a light on the insane levels of propaganda we live under. I don't really know what can be done about it, it's really just hard to wrap my head around living in a country that so explicitly and directly supports an ethnostate and their active genocide.
- olelele 7mo ago
  Germany has a lot of very strange political formations. The anti-german antifa is very curious and close to this topic.

metaPushkin 7mo ago

[dead]

noworriesnate 7mo ago

> Auschwitz Girls’ Orchestra Is this something from the post-war or did that really exist?

layer8 7mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Orchestra_of_Auschwitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Orchestra_of_Auschwi... “The Germans wanted a propaganda tool for [SS] visitors and camp newsreels and a tool to boost camp morale.” There were also several men’s orchestras.
- noworriesnate 7mo ago
  Interesting, I imagine the propaganda was also used for the German public, because they had no idea they were death camps. Israel would doubtless keep its genocide a secret if it could, but there's just so much evidence created by smartphones. This is actually an example of how technology is making the world a massively better place--it's so much harder to genocide without creating tons of evidence.

blell 7mo ago

[flagged]

busterarm 7mo ago

The last time I was in Berlin (2018), I was actually somewhat shocked by the amount of antisemitic graffiti that I saw just about everywhere (especially on lamp posts). Especially given the strictness of the laws against such speech.

nxor2 7mo ago
[flagged]
- otikik 7mo ago
  Wait until you hear Muslims in Europe can be openly gay.
  - fennecbutt 7mo ago
    Often not to their families or Muslim peers. And look at surveys taken by European Muslims on their opinions on what should be done to gay people like me, when they can answer anonymously or think the surveyor is a fellow Muslim.
- DiogenesKynikos 7mo ago
  What does that have to do with the subject of this thread at all? Christians are also terrible to gay people, and European societies have only very recently (in the last two to three decades) become somewhat more tolerant. In the context of Israel-Palestine, this issue is only raised in order to somehow justify Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, a la "They deserve it because they're not as enlightened as we are."
  - vehemenz 7mo ago
    It’s relevant because most commenters here hold moral standards that are completely self-undermining because they choose to not apply them to the “oppressed” group. Consider that it doesn’t matter how genocidal Israel’s Islamicist neighbors are. The IDF occassionally targets civilians when they shouldn’t. Meanwhile Israel’s neighbors don’t even draw the distinction.

breppp 7mo ago

[flagged]

Hikikomori 7mo ago
>and unfortunately for us the palestinians political leadership has brought us all into this scenario Simply not true. The plan from the start was to take over the area for jews, see Ben Gurions private letters. Netanyahu has supported Hamas to make sure that Palestine couldn't be politically united to be able to continue taking over the west bank. The power balance has since long been tipped to one side that is engineering the situation.
- breppp 7mo ago
  "We must seek agreement and understanding with the Arab people only through the Arab worker, and only an alliance of Jewish and Arab workers will establish and maintain an alliance of the Jewish and Arab peoples in Palestine" That's a Ben Gurion quote, who was a socialist and believed in shared class struggle of Jews and Arabs. The rest of your comment is influenced by other lack of nuance
  - fakedang 7mo ago
    Well newsflash, the Israeli socialists and left wing have lost all influence for the most part. The only way you can form a government in the Knesset today is by a coalition of parties, most of which lean right-wing to far-right or ultra-Orthodox.
    - hjkl0 7mo ago
      FYI, the Israeli socialists and left wing have always supported policies of militarist expansionism and the occupation. When there was still a left wing in Israel, the left wing governments built more settlements than the right wing ones.
  - oa335 7mo ago
    Ben-Gurion famously preached coexistence publicly (sometimes) but his private messages and memoirs betray his true beliefs: 5 October 1937, Ben-Gurion wrote in a letter to his 16 year old son Amos: “We must expel the Arabs and take their places…. And, if we have to use force-not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places- then we have force at our disposal.” “It is very possible that the Arabs of the neighboring countries will come to their aid against us. But our strength will exceed theirs. Not only because we will be better organized and equipped, but because behind us there stands a still larger force, superior in quantity and quality …the whole younger generation of Jews from Europe and America.” Ben-Gurion, Zichronot [Memoirs], Vol. 4, p.297-299, p. 330-331. See also Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs, p. 182-189 https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/ https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quot...

riedel 7mo ago

While I agree with you on the case of Esther Bejerano (a recent example from public broadcasting shows that her own communist beliefs and support for BDS are seemingly 'censored' [0]), I find the general situation complicated. Although it should be easy for any half intellectual being to contextualize the recent Israeli aggression by mentioning October 7, like you did, this is often not done. At the same time I think that the coverage of likely Israeli war crimes also happens in German media and I think nobody is looking away. Still Germany is the reason why the whole mess exists in the first place. I feel, that Germany, has quite some problems like many other countries to find it's role in a world where particularly the UN is failing and international law/human rights seem not enforcable. [0] https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/koepfe/Esther-Bejarano-Das-Erbe-der-Hamburger-Holocaust-Ueberlebenden,bejarano224.html https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/koepfe/Esther-Bejarano-Das-Erb...

gorgolo 7mo ago
> Germany is the reason why the whole mess exists in the first place. I think this is the most unfair thing about it; Germany might be the reason, but it’s not Germans paying the consequences. It’s not 70k dead Germans, but 70k dead Palestinians (a Semitic people). I can understand thefeeling of wanting to make amends for their crimes, but they are making amends by now allowing a whole new genocide to occur, against a completely unrelated people.

mfru 7mo ago

Same thing in Austria, everyone in mainstream politics basically ignores the topic and when pressured parrot something like "Israel has the right to defend itself" or "It is very complicated" Repression against students and demonstrators is happening regularly

manyaoman 7mo ago

[dead]

jiaosdjf 7mo ago

Germany is cucked, what Hitler did was outrageous and destroyed any rational ability for generations - and yes while I am heavily critical of Israel and the demonstrably true supremacy and nepotism they have created outside of Israel, I am strongly against the "rounding up of Anne Franks". Germany must now tread the difficult tightrope between standing up for themselves and going full-on loony right, and every time they fall they simply reset to loony left. This is why the establishment just puts their head in the sand.

ngcazz 7mo ago

The tragedy in Gaza, the tragedy in Srebrenica, the tragedy in Rwanda? Genocide is the word.

asdfss674564 7mo ago
[dead]

lucyjojo 7mo ago

i am honestly puzzled as to why germans, with all the educations they have received during decades, are letting this rock as is. or maybe disillusioned would be a better term...

deaux 7mo ago

> They have learned nothing from the atrocities committed by their grandfathers. No no, they have learned from them. That's why they are the biggest backers of these new atrocities on the whole continent - they learned exactly how it's done.