Today, as in the Past, Germany Claims the Authority to Define who is a Jew
Israelis for Peace Berlin in front of the Foreign Ministry.
Reawakening ghosts from a dark past, Germany once again claims to have the authority to define who is a Jew. Those who say this are Jews living in Germany who find themselves the target of processes of delegitimization from the moment they criticize Israel. Between Israel and Jews, Germany chooses the Zionist state.
For the philosopher and journalist Martin Gak, “when the German state puts itself in a position to tell me what the opinions of a Jew should be and which expression of antisemitism to condemn and which to protect, the famous phrase of Hermann Göring, one of the main architects of the police state in Nazi Germany, comes to mind: In Germany, I am the one who decides who is a Jew.”
“What is happening is that the German state is assuming the role of being more Jewish than the Jews,” says Michael Sappir, an Israeli Jew who co-founded the anti-Zionist movements Jewish-Israeli Dissidence in Leipzig and Israelis for Peace in Berlin. “The turnaround is astonishing, it is as if Germany is the victim of antisemitism,” he adds.
Since the German parliament passed a resolution in 2019 condemning as antisemitic the BDS movement, which calls for economic pressure on Israel, various cultural institutions in the country have been rescinding invitations and cancelling events, preemptively trying to avoid accusations of antisemitism.
This phenomenon became even more pronounced after October 7, 2023, when Germany imposed a near-total ban on pro-Palestinian protests. German authorities launched one of the most widespread crackdowns on civil society in decades and issued draconian bans on pro-Palestinian speech and symbols. A campaign of repression that targeted artists, publishers, activists and academics. Some of them Jewish.
When Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham and his Palestinian co-director Basel Adra criticized Germany’s complicity in the war in Gaza and Israel’s violent oppression of Palestinians in their Berlinale awards speeches in February, they were accused of antisemitism by Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner of the CDU.
“Germany is using a term that was designed to protect Jews as a weapon not only to silence Palestinians, but also to silence Jews and Israelis who criticize the occupation,” Yuval Abraham said at the time.
Diaspora Alliance, an international Jewish-led organization dedicated to challenging the instrumentalization of antisemitism and combating what it considers genuine signs of antisemitism, has documented 84 cases of delegitimization or event cancellations in 2023. The organization notes that in 25% of these incidents, the targets were Jewish individuals or groups. This, despite the fact that Jews make up less than 1% of Germany’s population.
“After the Holocaust, Germany needed a certificate of moral and political rehabilitation of the German soul,” Martin Gak points out. “The problem was solved with the emergence of the State of Israel in 1948. The Zionists decided that Israel was the only authorized voice to represent the Jews, and thus Germany obtained the long-awaited kosher certificate of rehabilitation and redemption of its moral and political soul.”
From there, the question of what German politicians call Germany’s special responsibility towards Israel began. But Gak notes that this is a false note. Ultimately, this position has nothing to do with Jews or even Israel. “It has to do with one thing, which is the only thing that concerns Germans: Germans. All of this is only about Germans,” he stresses.
The concept of Germany’s special responsibility towards Israel became entrenched in German politics after Angela Merkel’s speech in the Knesset in 2008, when the chancellor declared that Israel’s security was Germany’s Staatsräson [raison d’état].
On 12 October 2023, Olaf Scholz cited Merkel’s formulation in a statement to the German parliament, saying that “Israel’s security is part of Germany’s raison d’état. Our own history, our responsibility stemming from the Holocaust, makes it our permanent duty to defend the existence and security of the State of Israel.”
This was a day before Israeli genocide scholar Raz Segal claimed in an article published in the American magazine Jewish Currents that when Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced on October 9 a complete siege of Gaza because “we are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly,” the meaning was no less explicit than in the 1904 extermination order [Vernichtungsbefehl] of General Lothar von Trotha, the top military commander in German South West Africa, which led to the Herero and Nama genocide.
Martin Gak.
Gak is adamant. “Germany will not allow any Israeli or Jew to prevent it from defending Israel. Indeed, not only has Germany put on trial Israelis who have expressed support for the BDS movement in the last two years, but has been arresting a significant number of Jews for publicly expressing their opposition to Israel.” He adds that there are currently purges in Germany of people who are politically and ideologically out of line with the German idea of what a Jew should be and what Israel is. And he adds that in today’s Germany Albert Einstein would be persecuted for his criticism of Israel. “His opposition to the idea of a religious national state, because that would make Jews sort of basically degrade into everything that we have fought against, referring to the Nazis, would have put Einstein on the line of conflict with the German state, because these words would now be considered contrary to the interests of the nation.” “Germany is still not a country for Jews,” he concludes.
Australian genocide scholar Anthony Dirk Moses said in 2021 that in today’s Germany, anyone who questions certain “articles of faith,” such as the German state’s uncritical support for Israel, which is the basis of post-war German identity, runs the risk of being excluded from public discourse. The same goes for anyone who questions the uniqueness of the Holocaust or links it to Germany’s genocidal colonial past, the other article of faith in this “German Catechism”, Moses points out.
“What is particularly striking is that Netanyahu and the Likud have consequently strengthened ties with the far right, actively supporting their political campaigns, many of which are antisemitic,” denounces Martin Gak. He points to the example of Orban’s campaign against Soros, built by Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, George Birnbaum.
Michael Sappir grew up in West Jerusalem, in a family of descendants of Holocaust survivors who were always critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. It was the rejection of Zionism and the Zionist narrative that finally led him and his parents and siblings to decide to leave Israel.
Michael Sappir.
Today, he observes with apprehension the German drift, which he considers very dangerous for Jews. “It is especially dangerous because Jews are once again being cynically used, with many German politics claiming that they are protecting Jewish people by getting rid of Muslims and keeping Muslims and Arabs out,” he stresses.
Sappir signalises that in Germany, as in other countries, parties that claim to oppose the far right adopt the same policies when it comes to immigrants, particularly Muslims. When the pretext used is a supposed fight against antisemitism and the defence of so-called liberal values, “the manoeuvre passes itself off as anti-fascism,” Sappir points out. “But in reality the narrative of fighting against external influences that are corrupting our population is exactly fascist rhetoric, exactly the kind of talk we had about Jews in Europe a hundred years ago.”
German economic sociologist Wolfgang Streeck recently warned in an article published in the European Journal of Social Theory that Germany’s unconditional support for Israel has another pernicious consequence.
Streeck notes that by aligning the public memory of Nazi crimes with Israel’s interests, Germany has pushed into oblivion the victims of the Nazi regime who did not have the support of a state lobby, be they gypsies, disabled people, communists, homosexuals or anti-Zionists.
The sociologist adds that although the moral obligation of the German state after Nazism was originally understood as supporting international law and the State of Israel equally, the balance has now shifted in favour of the latter and at the expense of the former, moving from a universalistic to a particularistic interpretation of Germany’s historical debt
This reformulation has led the German state to one of the most important strategic decisions in its alliance with Israel, Streeck points out. Between 1997 and 2000, Germany supplied three nuclear-capable Dolphin-class submarines to the Israeli navy, and two more of an upgraded version (Dolphin II) in 2014 and 2015, followed by another in 2019. Three more upgraded submarines are scheduled for delivery between 2027 and 2029, also financed in part or in full by Germany.
Military analysts have claimed that Israel has made adjustments to its submarine fleet that have made it possible to launch cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. Along with its status as a nuclear power, which it has neither confirmed nor denied, Israel therefore has a fleet of unlocalizable submarines that can launch nuclear missiles from anywhere in the Mediterranean or the Indian Ocean. In Streeck’s opinion, this is a factor that cannot be ignored when trying to understand the basis of Israel’s status of impunity and the Zionist state’s nonchalant attitude towards international law and calls for diplomatic conflict solution.
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Gak, Sappir BIO
Martin Gak
Dr. Martin Gak is a journalist and philosopher with extensive experience in broadcasting, including roles as a producer, presenter, reporter, and director. He served as Religious Affairs Correspondent and as editor and producer of the international politics show Conflict Zone. His academic background includes a PhD from the New School for Social Research.
Michael Sappir
Michael Sappir grew up in West Jerusalem in a family of descendants of Holocaust survivors. He moved to Leipzig, Germany, when he was 19. He is currently based in Berlin, working as a researcher and writer. He co-founded two anti-Zionist movements in Germany, the Jewish-Israeli Dissidence in Leipzig and Israelites for Peace in Berlin. Sappir was editor-in-chief of the German-language student newspaper “critica” and a founding co-host of “Parallelwelt Palästina”, the first German-language political podcast about Palestine.
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