TODAY’S GERMANY = HELPS ISRAEL MAKE PALESTINIANS VICTIMS OF HOLOCAUST

Germany made Palestinians “indirect victims of Holocaust,” says author Max Blumenthal Interview by Emran Feroz The Electronic Intifada Nov 14, 2014

Click for Source Interview of Max Blumenthal by Emran Feros

ISRAEL ATTACH ON GAZA 2014 = Angela Merkel took “stand by the side of Israel” = German chancellor supports Israel’s crimes equipping Israel with submarines that reportedly carry nuclear weapons.

Some German politicians = Tried to muzzle debate on Israel’s Crimes denouncing critics as “anti-Semites” = American journalist Max Blumenthal  faced such a smear on a recent speaking tour in Germany, but both Blumenthal and his colleague Sheen are themselves Jewish.

EF: You use the hashtag #JSIL (Jewish State of Israel in the Levant) on Twitter. Making this kind of comparison between the group Islamic State and Israel is taboo in Germany. Why did you dare to do this?

MB:  It was not a direct one-to-one comparison, but I wanted to point out the hypocrisy behind supporting one religiously exclusive state that forces minorities out of its territory while attacking another.

EF: But by using this hashtag, you must be suggesting that Israel and IS are somehow similar.

MB: Sure, they are. The “Jewish state” has no internationally recognized borders. The same relates to the “Islamic State.”

Both emerged after the original indigenous population were partly expelled and ethnically cleansed. Israel cleansed out Palestinian indigenous population and ISIS(L) cleansed out Christians, Yazidis or Shiite Muslims. Both rely on a religious exclusivity in the Levant. Both inspire Islamophobic and anti-Semitic sentiments.

Israel = ISIS(L) = Both recruit confused young men from around the world as foreign fighters to engage in atrocities.

EF: ISIS(L) fighters behead their victims and then spread the videos of the beheadings through YouTube and social media. Do Israeli soldiers also make such videos?

MB: During the last attack on Gaza, the Israeli army killed civilians via drones and Jewish Israeli citizens celebrated the killings on Facebook. Some Israeli citizens gathered on a hill in the border town of Sderot and celebrated the bombing of the military with chips and beer. I find that this is not less macabre and disgusting.

EF: How present is religious extremism inside the Israeli military?

MB: It is very present. A major figure is commander Ofer Winter who said to his troops, that the Palestinians had sinned against God and declared a literal “holy war” against the Palestinian people = Religious extremism is rising in Israeli society. Winter refused to allow an Israeli singer in front of [Winter’s] soldiers and said that a woman is not allowed to do that.

EF: Many women are part of the Israeli army. How can there be misogyny in the Israeli military if it has many female members?

MB: Fact is more likely that these women are assaulted by their male counterparts in the army than by Palestinians. Only imperialist feminists argue that women can be emancipated in an army like the Israeli one — figures like Samantha Power or Angela Merkel or Tzipi Livni peculiar brand of feminism goes hand in hand with the imperialistic interests of the western powers who wholsale brand majority Muslim countries as culturally backwards and in need of “liberation.”

EF: German citizens of Palestinian descent killed in Gaza are ignored by the Germany Government. How can you explain this behavior?

MB: The behavior of the German government shows not only the lack of interest in the rights of the Palestinians, but also the very lives of them. The life of these people is practically non-existent in Germany. They are the new “un-people.”  The German foreign minister issued condolences for the families of those German citizens killed on an airliner over eastern Ukraine, possibly by Russian separatists. But they’ve said nothing to the Palestinian Kilani family. — Palestinian lives are ignored in Germany since the days of Konrad Adenauer [chancellor of West Germany from 1949 to 1963]. In those days Israel had no problem to negotiate on Holocaust reparations with the head of the chancellery, Hans Globke, who was a known Nazi in the Third Reich. This cash flow from Germany went directly to the Israeli occupation machine that has made the Palestinians indirect victims of the Holocaust.

The current bloodshed is a result of this policy and every German should ask himself: how does this policy honor the Holocaust?

EF: Your making such statements probably explains why some German politicians do not want to see you here in Germany. What happened to you exactly?

MB: Politicians, such as Volker Beck, launched a campaign to silence us — me and the journalist David Sheen. The reason for this is the fact that they do not want to know of another version of Judaism and they certainly do not want to hear about the facts on the ground.

Their attitude actually promotes anti-Semitism. It is simply anti-Semitic to equate Zionism with Judaism and to limit Jewish identity to the narrow confines of Israeli nationalism. For a gentile politician to do it is beyond disgusting.

EF: Gaza remains destroyed, and a third intifada may happen in the occupied West Bank.

MB: Last year the al-Aqsa mosque [in Jerusalem] was stormed “only” eight times by Israeli soldiers. This year this happened 76 times. Radical religious elements have announced that they want to demolish the mosque to build a Jewish temple. If this happens, the situation will take on global implications that will be approach the apocalyptic.

The whole conflict is taking on a religious dimension, which is devastating for all involved, and, as I said, will promote radicalization around the globe. I think the third intifada actually is at the door.

Now with so many Palestinian political leaders in prison or dead and such a complex matrix of control imposed on them, a nationwide revolt cannot take place. What we are seeing is creative resistance with limited means occurring on a national level but at sporadic moments.  That it will continue and intensify as long as the status quo is in place. It is that deadly status quo that German foreign policy protects and promotes.

Emran Feroz is a Germany-based freelance journalist, blogger and activist. His Twitter account is @Emran_Feroz