- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
A Berlin court has convicted a pro-Palestinian activist of condoning a crime for leading a chant of the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” at a rally in the German capital four days after the Hamas attacks on Israel, in what her defence team called a defeat for free speech.
The presiding judge, Birgit Balzer, ordered 22-year-old German-Iranian national Ava Moayeri to pay a €600 (£515) fine on Tuesday, rejecting her argument that she meant only to express support for “peace and justice” in the Middle East by calling out the phrase on a busy street.
Balzer said she “could not comprehend” the logic of previous German court rulings that determined the saying was “ambiguous”, saying to her it was clear it “denied the right of the state of Israel to exist”.
When the politicians rant on and on about an ethnicity, any ethnicity, they’re racists: people’s ethnicity is wholly irrelevant for non-racists.
Such racism is further confirmed if they support special treatment for certain countries because of the dominant ethnicity of those living in those countries. Again, people’s ethnicity is wholly irrelevant for non-racists, double so when it comes to the treatment of others.
Yet constant reminders of the dominant ethnicity of Israel and of the duty to support that ethnicity is what you see in Germany, quite uniquely in Europe even though there is some level of racism going on everywhere in it.
If you don’t think treating people and countries differently depending on their ethnicity - literally discrimination based on ethnicity - is Racism, then you’re either a Racist yourself or an ultra-nationalist so deep into the rabbit hole of “defending” your Fatherland that words have no meaning anymore.
Beyond that, my opinion is not about Germany as a whole, it’s about it’s political elites, a large part of its Press and a segment of it’s population: to believe that “all Germans are this or that” whilst claiming to be against ethnic discrimination would be incredibly hypocrite of me so I try to avoid falling into such tribalist traps - I see the State acting in some ways, I see politicians and some of the Press shaping opinion in that direction and I see a lot of people who grew up being unwittingly indoctrinated by the normalization and even legal-encoding of such ways of thinking about other human beings and who hence got certain ideas on their minds, which doesn’t mean that they’re bad people or “all like that”, not even close.
I ask you again: Can you even produce the purported original German that sentence is supposed to be a translation of. Can you show recipes for “politicians ranting on and on about an ethnicity”.
Reducing Jews to Israel is literally anti-semitic, hope that’s not what you’re doing there. That said yes Germany is supportive of Israel – that doesn’t mean that we condone crimes committed by Israelis, or support or condone Israel backing up those crimes. Never have. Germany has always considered settlers and settlements a serious problem towards peace, which is what we’d actually want to see in that area.
But I guess that’s too much nuance for you. You want to rant on and on about an ethnicity.
Times of Israel - Sholz: Berlin will always stand beside the Jewish state
As you yourself wrote, “reducing Jews to Israel is literally anti-semitic” (which I fully agree with, by the way) making Sholz anti-semitic, which dovetails with the point I was making that the German political elites are Racist: even in their attempts at positive discrimination they can’t stop themselves from the anti-semitic ethno-Fascist trope of equating Israel with the Jewish People.
Where did he say anything like that? In fact, he implied the exact opposite:
German Jews, of course, not being Israeli Jews so Israel and Jews can’t be one and the same thing.
Does that sound like parroting the likes of Ben-Gvir to you? You know, an actual unabashed racist? Is he talking about the seed of Amalek or stuff, directly, indirectly, whatever?
I already told you about the nuance to Germany’s position. I’m not going to repeat myself. You, OTOH, seem to want to rant on and on.
Now you’re just selectively quoting and ignoring the repeated mentioning by Sholz of Israel as the Jewish State (not a Jewish State) and dissembling by claiming that talking about Jews that live in Germany means he can’t possibly be conflating Israel with Jews; putting up strawmen (please provide a quote of were I claimed german politiocians were unabashedly racist) and making the point that racism can only ever be of the kind as extreme as Ben-Gvir.
No wonder you think that the kind of politicians that opposed the bringing of an ICC case against Israel for Genocide (so against merely bringing the case, a case which Israel would win if they were not guilty) are being “nuanced”.
In your, very special, not in the dictionary, definition of the word, “racism” can only be the loud raging ethni-cleansing-demanding kind of the likes of Ben-Gvir (who not long ago was a member of the Israeli government, a government which still includes other people who say the very same kind of thing as he does) and never the soft-spoken kind which provides diplomatic cover for ethno-Fascists committing Genocide along ethnic lines.
By your very special definitions of “racism” and “nuanced”, the people who morally supported the KKK and even gave them weapons but did not openly participated in their lynchings are “nuanced” and “not racist”.
I really hope Germany does the right thing eventually (though one wonders how many more tens of thousands of children will have to be murderer by the Zionists before Germany explicitly states that “Germany does not support the current Israeli Government and its actions in Gaza”) and it’s good news that the weapons shipments have been suspended (something I was unaware of). That said, it will have to actually happen to be believed, and things like Germany legally linking words supporting a Free Palestine with anti-semitism and punishing people for saying them casts doubt on there being a true will inside the German Institutions to do so.
Even if Germany does end up doing the right thing, the shame of having continued to provide moral and diplomatic support to the Zionists even after they murdered tens of thousands of children, will still remain with Germany.
I suggest you learn English, then. Compare:
How many African states are there? Also, that’s not even a literal quote who knows what Scholz actually said. Also why do you keep misspelling his name, don’t you care about accuracy?