Mein-Parteibuch.org

IAW 2010

On Monday, basic groups in more than 40 cities on every continent launched the Israel Apartheid Week to inform the public about the apartheid regime in Israel, in the occupied territories and in Jerusalem, to inform about the siege of Gaza and and to advertize the international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS).

In recent years, the events against apartheid were just like the apartheid itself left out from most of the mass media. That is is different this year. This year’s Israeli Apartheid Week is an issue in many of the world mass media and many politicians, public figures and representatives of interest groups commented on it.

Of course, most of the mass media report derogatory about the fact that Israel is presented as an apartheid state. “Anti-Semitic”, “unfair” and “disgraceful” are some typical attributes used to describe the human rights activists, which aim for a more peaceful and equitable world. Who knows the power of Zionist lobbying organizations in the Western world will not be surprized by this. But the issue of apartheid in Israel and the occupied territories arrived in the public debate - with the exception of Germany. In Germany all mass media ignore the Israel Apartheid Week. Just Michael Borgstede referenced the Israel Apartheid Week in the Zionist-friendly paper “Die Welt” in one sentence as a sidestep shortly. But that Israeli apartheid is now internationally discussed is a great success for the activists.

And although the “Israel Apartheid Week” was for example condemned as “odious” by the Parliament of Ontario, there is significant contradiction against the representation of the “Israel Aprtheid Week” as something reprehensible. So Philip Conklin explained in an article in Canada’s largest newspaper, the Toronto Star, that the term “apartheid” in relation to Israel is provocative, but accurate. The most visible sign of apartheid, the “wall of separation“, was built through the occupied territories, is on average over 20 feet high, takes the Palestinians 12% of their country away, and to the international court in The Hague stated in 2004 that it could not be justified on arguments of national security and Israel is thus breaking international humanitarian law. This can be described as you will, as occupation, as expulsion, as concept of Lebensraum in the East, or as apartheid, but the policy of Israel is grave and several decades lasting injustice. And Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu just reiterated, that Israel does not intend to eventually give it up.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Israel Apartheid Week, and described that Vice Chairman of the Board of Deputies of British Jews David Katz, who grew up in South Africa, calls the participation of Israeli human rights activists in Israel Apartheid Week as “disgusting”, denies Israeli apartheid and accuses the activists to offend those who have suffered under the real apartheid in South Africa by using the term apartheid. To this article, there are already over 250 comments, debating vigorously, for example on whether the Israeli military regime in Area C can be described as apartheid, or whether the Israelization of Palestinian ground using “Absentee Property Law” is comparable for the with the Aryanization codified in Nazi laws.

The struggle against racism is an internatonal fight. Just as it is important to confront racism and all its varieties, such as xenophobia and anti-Semitism through peaceful protest at home, the struggle against institutionalized racism can hardly be won without international solidarity. The example of South Africa shows this. The international solidarity against racism is in everybody’s own interest, because racism is spreading across borders, too. Everyone can see how the associations of the extreme right are built up in Europe and the world is stirred up by Islamophobia created to an important part by Zionists. Apartheid is a particularly blatant form of racism, namely that of institutionalized racism.

As a major driving force for the international debate on the subject of apartheid in Israel and the occupied territories, one may consider Desmond Tutu. The South African archbishop has been granted the Nobel Peace Prize for his struggle against apartheid in South Africa in 1984, which he fought mainly with calls for international boycott. He said in 2002 that Israel practises apartheid and publicly condemned it as such. Since then, many veterans of the South African anti-apartheid struggle have visited the occupied territories and criticized the situation publicly as apartheid or “worse than apartheid“. Prominent South African human rights activists and trade unionists are now among the leaders of the boycott movement against apartheid in Israel and the occupied territories and this year universities in five South African cities host Israeli Apartheid Week activities: Johhannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Eastern Cape, and Pretoria.

In Europe, the Israel Apartheid Week is held in Amsterdam, in Bologna, in Dundee, in Edinburgh, in Glasgow, in Irland, in London, in Oxford, in Pisa, in Rom, in Tilburg, and in Utrecht this year. Most events take place in universities, allowing discusions on the basis of arguments in the area of social leaders.

In Germany there have been no events in the context of the Israel Apartheid Week and there is no BDS campaign. This is particularly unfortunate because the German people could learn a lot by an intense preoccupation with the issue of racism, could especially learn a lot about their own sad history, which is even today very much alive in many areas. But this is not accidently. The compulsive solidarity with Israel, no matter how many crimes the regime commits, is said to be in the national interest of Germany and is so dogmatic that it would be more accurately described by the term “state religion”. There are probably various reasons for this, but of course the Holocaust, which was committed by German fascists, and the Second World War, which was also committed by German fascists, and the resulting situation from this do play a central role there.

The crimes committed during the Nazi era were not really processed in the Federal Republic of Germany. Germany is still dominated by a conservative party and it’s supporting economic structures, which’s staff, bureaucracy and supporters for a long time after the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany was composed to a large part of old Nazis. The great wealth looted in the Nazi era is in many cases still in the hands of the heirs of the perpetrators. The German churches are still far from repenting for their central role in the crimes which they supported in the name of the fight against Bolshevism. And the Zionists, who lead today’s German central Jewish organizations, are embarrassed still today for the sympathy Zionist leaders in the Nazi era had with the racial policies of the Nazis, which reached levels almost up to complicity and are almost completely unknown to the German public.

After the end of World War II, it was particularly the United States, who supported that most of the old Nazis came back into power in the Federal Republic of Germany. This was, because the anti-Communist ideology of the rulers of the United States was quite close to the anti-Communism of the Nazi ideology and Nazis were considered as particularly reliable and ruthless fighters against Communism then. The rulers of the United States and Konrad Adenauer wanted the Federal Republic of Germany’s rearmament and Western integration. To sell the plan in the U.S. domestic policy, it was necessary that Germany made friends with Jewish organizations. The major Jewish organizations were already at that time - not at least because Germany committed the Holocaust - dominated by Zionists.

1952 Konrad Adenauer and the Jewish Claims Conference signed the Luxembourg Agreement, in which Germany was - due to the commitment of the Holocaust and the Second world war - bound to help the Israeli government for the integration of Jewish refugees in Israel - among other things - materially and financially. Many holocaust victims were kept poor and the perpetrators could keep most of their looted property. Overstating the example that meant: The State of the perpetrators paid from tax revenues of all the people that live there, including taxation taken from Communist concentration camp victims, restitution to sympathizers of the perpetrators. The main reward for this strange kind of “compensation” was that Israel, through silence and recognition ensured that the perpetrators of Nazi-dominated Federal Republic of Germany was not proscribed internationally as a pariah state and could come back into business.

Many sides took advantage from the deal Israeli support against Western German support. For the rulers of the U.S. the road to have Germany become the backbone of NATO and western economy in Europe was free. Zionist organizations and Israel came to money - Israel paid up to 87,5% of state expenses from this money - so they could attract new immigrants to Israel and ensure that the colonial settler state could increase the purity of Jewish blood as desired by their leaders. And the old German Nazis were able to continue their careers in the Federal Republic of Germany undisturbed by Zionists, doing what they already loved a lot to do under Hitler, namely the political persecution of lefties.

A real work up of the Nazi era crimes was, of course, in nobody’s interest after this deal. It was neither the interest of Zionist organizations that had received compensation instead of the victims, nor that of the USA which was happy to be able to bring the old Nazis dominating Western Germany into NATO and certainly not for the leading old German Nazis in Germany, the perpetrators that were not only unmolested, but often could keep even their booty. Ideologically particularly well fits in this system the hypothesis of collective guilt and the right of Israel to represent Judaism in total as a Jewish state. If everybody is guilty virtually none of the real perpetrators is personally guily anymore. And Israel got the support of the large industrial nation of Germany, no matter what crimes its government commits. To get out to the public at least some of the names of influential Nazis in the Federal Republic of Germany, it took the work of Albert Norden, who issued out of the communist Eastern German GDR the Braunbuch in the 60s, and for this, despite or perhaps because the information was very accurate, he has been called names a lot. This principle of cooperation of the very unsavory German rightists with Zionist rightists, what is already known from the Haavara agreement in the 30s, in broad terms works still today. The deal silence against money - which nowadays developed largely into a silence against silence agreement - has very large binding forces for both sides.

In addition, one has to see the support of the U.S. forces for this collaboration since the end of World War II. Thus to this day you won’t find any criticism of the German support for the Israeli occupation regime in the press and media system of the Federal Republic of Germany, which was was built up by the occupying U.S. which has still a major influence on German media therefore, though an important lesson from the Nazi era was supposed to be that there should never be segregation again. Particularly eyecatching this is in the the Axel Springer media company, where the obligation for unconditional support for U.S. and Israel even today is served as an annex to the employment contract. For other publishers, the conflict of interests is also evident in other ways. In the publishing empire of the heirs of Hitler’s best newspaper pusher warmongering Zionist buddies sit in leading positions and part of the headquarters of the media empire of the son of an old Nazi from Cologne, which was recently allowed buy a major stake in a major Israeli newspaper, was built on former jewish owned land “inexpensively” acquired in the Nazi era.

So do not expect in Germany that universities, which have a historical tradition to be closed to serious debates, or trade unions, which were corrumpted in the 60s by the CIA in the name of the fight against comminism, or the since ever totally corrupt Social Democratic party affiliated with them, will take any lead in the campaign against apartheid in Israel and the occupied territories.

Some academics, trade unionists and social democrat politicians conscious of human rights know about the apartheid and human rights abuses in Israel and the occupied territories, but many are afraid to raise their voice would be political suicide. In Germany not even about the official UN report on last year’s massacre in Gaza committed by the occupying forces can be talked openly though this report, because Israel is a non-member of the International Criminal Court, encouraged the world to use universal jurisdiction to bring criminals - including Israeli government criminals - to justice. A clear and partisan on the side of victims standing discussion of Israeli crimes is taboo in Germany.

Those who do not want to join the politics of complicit unconditional solidarity with Israel and who speak out against the unconditional solidarity with an apartheid state permanently violating basic human rights, must expect to receive unsolicited support from neo-Nazi parties, which are deeply infiltrated by Germanys domestic intelligence services, and must expect to be branded by media power complicit with Israel as a darling of right-wing extremists and as an anti-Semite. But even in Germany, there is now developing a grassroots human rights movement to end apartheid, which is not afraid anymore of anti-Semitism accusations used as a political weapon to hide continuing serious human rights violations in Israel and the occupied territories.

While it is true, that anti-Left pro-Likud forces inside the German Left Party, which were called by the left newspaper “Junge Welt” the “Mossad faction“, managed with a smear campaign to sabotage a lecture by Norman Finkelstein at the Rosa-Luxembourg-Stfitung, probably just this will now lead to an intense debate of the topic in the Left Party. And with the “Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East” there is already a Jewish organization, with the “Semit” there is already a Jewish magazine, and with the “Junge Welt“, which is rooted in the GDR, there is already an important left newspaper, for a structure similar to the BDS movement in other countries, that is able to initiate a discussion of apartheid and human rights abuses in Israel and the occupied territories and at a high level of credibility and willing to run campaigns for human rights in Palestine.

There are German human rights activists willing to be solidaric to help end the human rights violations in Israel and the occupied territories. Peace for Palestine means hope for Germany, too. It may help to get rid off old Nazi structures, which are influential in Germany still today and often covered by international silence for the sake of Israel. Maybe, perhaps with the help of international solidarity, like Hermann Dierkes has it enjoyed recently, German human rights activists will be able to break up the barrier of silence and participate already next year in the Israel Apartheid Week. Next action is scheduled to be this spring, with the aim of sending a Jewish ship to Gaza.