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Germany’s ‘Holocaust Guilt’ Is Shaken by Hamas Pogrom
A Jewish-owned business in Vienna in the wake of the Kristallnacht pogrom of Nov. 9 and 10, 1938. Image: Screenshot.
JNS.org – In the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel, Germany is finding it harder and harder to mask the extremist underbelly of its politics.
A neo-Nazi group plastered a Holocaust memorial last week with stickers urging Germans to “get rid” of their “Holocaust guilt,” as well as declaring—in a sly nod to the argument often articulated about the feeble international response to the Holocaust—that “Israel murders while the world watches.” In the city of Essen, an Islamist group staged a pro-Hamas march that required the segregation of male and female participants, but representatives of both genders brandished signs accusing Israel of perpetrating a “Holocaust” in Gaza. In Berlin, a synagogue has been the target of an arson attack, and Jewish-owned homes have been daubed with Stars of David in another ominous echo of the Nazi period.
Of course, it’s not just Germany. Neighboring France has registered more than 1,000 antisemitic outrages in the five weeks since the pogrom—a national record (and not the kind one boasts about). All over Europe and North America, Jewish communities increasingly feel like they are under siege. When it comes to antisemitism, this is truly a global moment, if only because no foreign-policy issue resonates as discordantly in domestic politics as does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But Germany—the land of the Holocaust—is different, or at least, it’s supposed to be. And there are visible differences between Germany and other democratic nations. On the German left, for example, anti-Zionism is comparatively muted, while large swathes are actually pro-Israel. For example, last week Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck released a video in which he slammed German Muslim organizations for their silence in the face of the Hamas atrocities on Oct. 7 and warned non-resident antisemitic offenders that they faced deportation. Habeck is not a conservative but a representative of the left-wing Green Party—and if you can’t imagine a Green Party politician in another country saying something similar, you are not alone.
Yet it’s painfully clear that Germany’s well-meaning politicians are dealing with a genuine resurgence of antisemitism that they cannot control. On Nov. 9-10, Germans marked the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the infamous Nazi pogrom of 1938 that saw hundreds of Jews murdered, thousands more deported to concentration camps, and the burning and looting of synagogues and Jewish-owned stores over a period of less than 48 hours. For Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the occasion was an opportunity to issue a reminder that antisemitism has no place in post-Holocaust Germany. But for others, like the thousands of mainly Muslim demonstrators who have taken to the streets in support of the Hamas rapists and murderers, it was an opportunity of a different sort—namely, to challenge the Germans to dispense with their guilt about the Holocaust in the name of a “free Palestine.”
As is normally the case with antisemitism, there’s a historical precedent for this. On the morning of Nov. 10, 1969—a year that marked the 31st anniversary of Kristallnacht—a cleaner was doing her chores at a Jewish community center in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg, one day after services commemorating Kristallnacht had been held there. While sweeping and polishing, she stumbled upon a package wrapped in a trench coat. Discovering an alarm clock inside, she called the police who, on arrival, determined that the package was a bomb. The explosion had been timed for 11:30 a.m. the previous day, during the commemoration service, but the bomb failed to go off because of a corroded wire.
Those responsible for planting it were not neo-Nazis but leftists. Attention quickly fell on a small group in Berlin that named itself after the Tupamaros, a left-wing guerilla army in Uruguay. The group’s leader, Dieter Kunzelmann, denied that they were responsible, and the culprits were never caught. Yet despite the lack of evidence tying him to the attempted bombing, those who knew Kunzelmann, including many of his comrades, deemed him perfectly capable of carrying out such an outrage. The question was why.
As Kunzelmann conceived it, Holocaust guilt was the main impediment to the German left embracing the anti-colonial struggle of the Palestinians. “Palestine is to the Federal Republic [of Germany] and Europe what Vietnam is to the Americans,” he wrote in an article for a Socialist journal in Berlin. “The left hasn’t understood that yet. Why? The Jew’s boy.”
This descent into crude antisemitism, using insulting language to depict the European left as a tool of Zionist interests, was particularly shocking in Germany. But Kunzelmann was not alone. Later that same year, he and a group of comrades traveled to the Middle East for military training with Palestinian terrorist organizations, a path that many German leftists would beat in subsequent years. When, in the summer of 1976, terrorists hijacked an Air France jet in Athens that had originated in Tel Aviv, the group was composed of members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the German Red Army Fraction (RAF), better known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. After diverting the plane to Entebbe Airport in Uganda, the terrorists turned into uncomplicated Nazis, separating Jewish passengers from non-Jewish ones. Only a spectacular rescue operation mounted by the Israelis prevented a massacre of the Jewish hostages.
“Kunzelmann went as far as to suggest that his group could best combat Israeli ‘imperialism’ by attacking Jews in Germany, which, of course, is the culmination of antisemitic thought,” the historian Philipp Lenhard explained in an interview last week with the German publication Geo. As outlandish as it might seem to a sensible mind, five years after Kunzelmann’s death, his belief that German Jews are a legitimate target in the Palestinian war against Israel’s existence is more widespread than at any previous time—and its main adherents are not the long-haired New Leftists of yesteryear, but German Muslims, both those born there and recent immigrants as well.
German politicians are anxious about instituting measures to protect Jews that would erode their country’s much-vaunted status as a post-World War II beacon of ethnic and religious tolerance. But that won’t do. Postwar Germany has, of its own volition, made the protection of Jewish life a raison d’état of the democratic republic, and it is that stance that is caricatured as “Holocaust guilt.”
Right now, it is failing in that task. And if Germany can’t muster the determination to defeat antisemitism in the streets that spawned the Holocaust during the last century, then what chance is there that the rest of Europe will, or can, do so?
The post Germany’s ‘Holocaust Guilt’ Is Shaken by Hamas Pogrom first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
The post Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
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Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
The post Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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