German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck on Israel and Antisemitism
German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck on Israel and Antisemitism
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So Germany is willing to look the other way as Israel is butchering thousands of innocents. The fact that I even voted for this guy's party..
You should volunteer yourself as a human shield for Hamas then, so a Palestinian doesn’t have to be a human shield for Hamas.
Human shield or not, Israel is killing innocent people using this disgusting excuse. If a terrorist would take your family hostage I'm sure you'd be more than happy to have Israel airstrike all of them.
Israel is killing innocent people
Basically describing every war ever. Why also war should be avoided, which is very possible if involved people in power are interested in it, which does not seems to be the case on either side.
Sadly that seems to be the truth. I don't see an end in sight for these hostilities. Neither Israel nor Hamas care about ending the war. Some of the current Israeli politicians leading the current cabinet have even went as far as to claim that Hamas is an asset for them. There's a great piece on this I read recently. Hamas on the other hand doesn't care about ending their hostilities due to their antisemitic islamist ideology.
Don’t tell us what you DON’T want, tell us what you DO want: How would you personally handle this situation while securing the Israeli AND the Palestinian people. And by securing I mean not only temporary, but permanently.
But please don’t pretend that you actually could negotiate a peace with Hamas.
Hamas is a symptom. They will always be there in one form or another as long as palestinians live under systemic oppression. Sure, you can take out hamas, kill as many civillians as you want in doing so, and you'll only create more extremists. The west bank is illegally occupied by israeli forces imposing apartheid like laws. You don't have to take that from me, take it from the UN. Palestinians live in a segregated society, having to drive on segregated roads, go through checkpoints, and so on. The western world just looks the other way but loves to virtue signal and wave fingers at other countries doing what Israel is doing (look at Russia invading Ukraine). Many palestinians feel that they've been let down by the world and the democratic world order we love to boast so much about, and thus they turn to extremist ideologies. So, as long as Israel's stance towards the palestinian question doesn't change, and as long as they keep ilegally occupying their territories (west bank and until 15 years ago Gaza which they then threw under a blockade that crippled the lives of millions), extremists will keep on breeding. These are very fertile grounds for extremist ideologies.
Sure, they could genocide all palestinians and that would probably solve the problem, but is that who you want to support?
Quit trying to contextualize the murder done by Hamas and quit trying to evade the question.
That „symptom“ is NOW killing innocent civilians, Palestinians and Israeli alike. And yes, Hamas is responsible for every civilian death in Palestine - because they started this war.
I want to hear from you, since you claim to know better than anyone else, what can get done NOW, not years from now. What would you personally do different NOW in regards to Hamas.
Quit trying to contextualize the murder done by Hamas and quit trying to evade the question.
Contextualizing complex situations is very important if you are honestly, actually looking for solutions. This wasn't the first terrorist attack and won't be the last no matter how much wishful thinking you do on your side. Simplifying this and looking at one event in vacuum is a bastardization of history and the current problem, and does absolutely nothing to help the current situation.
Hamas is responsible for every civilian death in Palestine
That is a bastardization of the reality and reads like straight out propaganda to fuel even more innocent deaths. When a military force is butchering innocent civillians from the sky you can't just deflect the reality with a straight face while also claiming to have the moral high ground.
Every normal person can agree that the terrorist attack on October 7th was completely unjustified and an atrocity. At the same time, every normal person should also be able to agree that killing innocent civillians under collective punishment and painting them as collateral damage is an atrocity as well.
because they started this war.
This war hasn't started yesterday. Gaza has been under a military blockade for almost two decades now. The west bank has been under an apartheid military occupation for decades now. These hostilities might not amount to a formal declaration of war under your bureaucratic understanding of the world, but they are ineded hostile acts based on ethnicity.
I want to hear from you, since you claim to know better than anyone else, what can get done NOW, not years from now.
Well, besides the fact that I have never claimed such a thing, you should remember here that I am not going against "everyone else" on this one. You seem to be under the false impression that your opinion here is the mainstream one. The UN voted in an overwhelming majority for the cessation of the current hostilities in Gaza. They might not be all from the G7 nations that live under the impression that they have the moral high ground, but I'm sure they don't represent just a loud minority as you seem to believe. Anyway.
I am no diplomat. I can't say for sure what needs to be done right now, but I can recognize what is extremely wrong right now: and that is the butchering of innocent civillians under the pretext of collective punishment (which is illegal according to international humanitarian law). What I personally wish for is a two state solution where Israel stops illegally occupying lands and imposing an apartheid regime onto innocent civillians that have a right to live in the lands their ancestors lived in for centuries. That means removing all illegal settlements from said lands, pulling their military occupation out of said territory, and imposing normal borders (and protecting their borders) like every other nation does.
Hamas is a virus. They won't stop existing just because you kill the current hamas. They will keep popping up as long as the occupation and oppression continues to exist. If you want to heal a society from this extremism, you need to give them space, time, and the right to self determination. An oppressed people will never have inner peace.
My great great grandparents were sent to a jewish ghetto in the part of Romania where I'm from. The biggest jewish ghetto out of what is now considered Romania. They were romanian jews. They lived through some horrible times because of genocidal maniacs. They were pushed out of their homes, killed in the streets, treated as foreigners in their own land. My great great grandmother died in the holocaust. My great great grandfather disappeared. My great grandfather grew up as an orphan and never met his parents.
Gazans have gone through a very similar situation. They've been pushed out of their homes, oppressed, treated as lesser, cast aside. 70% of Gazans are refugees that fled their ancestral homes. They live in a ghetto with no rights to self determination. The walls around this enclosure are controlled by a regime that despises them and are the ones that take the decisions of what they get and when they get it. You can't tell me with a straight face that after decades of living in such dire conditions you are somehow surprised that extremism has found fertile grounds there.
So again, I ask you to have some sympathy here with the innocents being butchered daily by aistrikes of a regime that has always treated them as lesser individuals. And I do that as a part jew that sympathises with jewish history quite a lot.
Butchering civillians won't get you less hamas. It will just breed more extremism.
A lot of words that are obviously meant to disguise the fact, that you still say NOTHING about what you would do differently. This is not how this works.
So again, I ask you to have some sympathy here with the innocents being butchered daily by aistrikes of a regime that has always treated them as lesser individuals. And I do that as a part jew that sympathises with jewish history quite a lot.
Butchering civillians won’t get you less hamas. It will just breed more extremism.
Why are you insinuating that I have no sympathy with the Palestinian civilians? Of course I do. But you have proven by now yourself, that there isn’t an alternative to the way Israel is reacting. Hamas in its current form has to get destroyed.
But as you like to talk about the Second World War so much: Was it wrong by the allied Forces to bombard German cities in WW2 and thereby also killing German civilians? Quite lots of them actually?
that you still say NOTHING about what you would do differently.
I just told you what I would do, you just fail to listen.
If you're looking for a straight up recipe chewed for you by a guy on the internet, here you go:
- recognize Palestinian statehood as have done 138 of the 193 United Nations [1]
- remove all illegal settlements that are recognized as a flagrant violation of international law [2]
- dismantling of the Israeli apartheid system as recognized by UN [3] [4]
- create an international tribunal led by the UN for all crimes against humanity commited by people on both sides [5]
- enforce the borders of the two countries, including with UN peacekeepers if strictly necessary
- ensure that both countries make amendments to their constitutions that won't allow any further hostilities
- introduce a marshall plan equivalent for palestine to take it out of the dire and crippling financial situation it is in [6]
- create programs that facilitate conversation on both sides, cultural exchange programs, etc. (wishful thinking here; I think the resentment is too big but it would be a good long-term solution)
- create programs to financially help the victims of attacks on both sides (dead relatives, injuries, etc.) after taking the perpetrators to trial and sentencing them of course
- create a financial program to repay all the palestinians that have been forcefully displaced from their homes [7]
After all of that is settled and both countries are on equal footing, if any further hostilities arise from either side, these should be handled by the UN without any kind of bias.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Palestine#International_recognition
[2] https://press.un.org/en/2016/sc12657.doc.htm
You are completely ignoring the fact that a fucking WAR is going on at the moment.
Are you really not able to understand that NOTHING you have posted, is going to happen for the foreseeable future? That the terror attack even made them next to impossible in a foreseeable future?
Chill, dude. Stop chosing and posting hate. There's enough of that in the world. Are you really going to blame a random person on the internet for not magically creating peace in a bloody century-old conflict?
A war has been going on for decades now. I know it's convenient to assume that the "WAR" has only started now because Israel said so and you seem to live only by your bureaucratic process, but the hostilities have started much earlier than four weeks ago.
You wanted me to give you a list of things I'd do, yet you simply ignore them, yet again.
De facto, a war has been going on for decades. The military blockade of Gaza can be considered an open act of war. The illegal occupation of palestinian territories can be considered an act of war. The military incursion in palestinian territories can be considered an act of war, and would be by any other country on this planet that has had foreign militaries suddenly spawn in their territories.
It's extremely rich of you to claim that a war has now suddenly popped out of nowhere in vacuum without taking a look at the long history of conflict and acts of war and hostility in the area just because it suits your narrative. This sudden, out-of-nowhere "WAR" is a farce. It's been going on for much longer than you'd like to admit.
And all of this time, I have never claimed that palestinian militants were right to kill civillians even though they have been submitted to acts of war many times before. Yet you seem to argue that it is okay for Israel to kill civillians in Gaza because a war is now suddenly going on since the terrorist attacks of October 7th are considered an open act of war.
That's an extremely cherry picked narrative. I think we should all agree that killing civillians is never right. Sadly I believe that disagreeing with that just shows your true colours, in that you consider one life more valuable than the other. Picking when the killing of innocents is right and when it isn't means that it has never been about protecting life and innocents, but about weighing whose life is worth more and whose less.
At the same time I think we should agree that the acts of war have been going on for much longer than four weeks now.
Israel has been comitting open acts of war for a long time now. They were never right in doing so. Palestinian militants were never justified in killing civillians, and still aren't.
Palestinian militants have likewise committed acts of war for a long time now. They, likewise, were never right in doing so. Israeli forces weren't justified in killing civillians either, and still aren't.
It's extremely convenient to be the one who picks when a war officially starts and who starts it by what act of war. But as is the case with international politics, that too is corrupted by biases and political alliances. If you ask 193 countries of the UN when the war has started, you'll probably get 193 different answers. But again, the acts of war have been going on for much longer than just the last month.
Now all of a sudden solutions are no longer convenient. Now the killing of civillians is justifiable. This just sickens me. We should all condemn the atrocities committed by hamas islamists on october 7th and many times before by many terrorist organizations. We should all condemn the atrocities commited by Israel over the same timespan.
Yes. Killing civillians is always wrong. Especially children. Be it the firebombing of Dresden or using weapons of mass destruction against japanese civillian populations.
But for the sake of the argument, let's say it's fine to kill a ton of innocent people. Maybe it is for you and we just have different moral perspectives on this issue. What do you do after destroying Hamas? You have a ton of dead civillians, mourning families, and a completely destroyed country with no future in sight. Would you support the formation of a sovereign democratic internationally recognized palestinian state? Would you support a marshall plan for Palestine?
Would you support the formation of a sovereign democratic internationally recognized palestinian state?
Me personally? Yes, of course. If the Palestinians are actually going to agree to the borders that were set in 1948 as an example … but until now the Palestinians have rejected every attempt that was made for a two state solution. What makes you think, that they will accept borders now, that they have rejected before?
Would you support a marshall plan for Palestine?
Yes, I would.
My personal opinion is probably best represented by Harari Yuval Noah - English - with German Subtitles
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Harari Yuval Noah - English - with German Subtitles
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I am sorry to tell you this, but you definitely ought look deeper into the peace accords as they were discussed at the time. Especially the ones at Camp David which were supposed to be the most fruitious and the ones Palestinians "threw out the door". The Oslo accords were more of a guideline than a clear set of instructions.
Palestinians were supposed to:
- be completely demilitarized
- give Israel the right to send troops to Palestine in case of any emergency (what constitutes as an emergency was never defined)
- ask Israel for approval for every diplomatic alliance Palestine would ever make
- have military bases installed in Palestinian territory
- give the Israeli military complete control of their airspace
- have israeli military outposts be installed on the border between Palestine and Jordan
- give Israel temporary control over Palestinian border crossings
- give up 10% of the West Bank, the most fertile land in the West Bank, for 1% territorial gains of desert land near the Gaza strip (the land that would be conceded included symbolic and cultural territories such as the Al-Aqsa Mosque, whereas the Israeli land conceded was unspecified)
- Israel would keep parts of the West Bank under temporary occupation, without a timespan being given
- What constitutes the West Bank was to be defined by Israel and not by international law. Israel defined West Bank as being the internationally recognized West Bank minus all the settlements.
As you can see, all of these concessions would never amount to a completely sovereign Palestinian state, and as a result of that these talks failed in the end. Nonetheless, they did spawn new discussions and as a result of said discussion the Taba negotiations were born. With that being said, these concessions were in no way, shape, or form popular in Israel (only 25% of the Israeli public thought his positions on Camp David were just right as opposed to 58% of the public that thought Barak compromised too much). The Israeli prime minister at the time, Barak, facing elections, suspended the talks since it greatly affected his popularity in Israel. As a result of trying to broker a peace deal with Palestine, even a very bad one that was meant to fail as it was, he failed to get re-elected. The highly unbalanced concessions were already considered to be too much by Israelis.
Trying to paint Israel here as the ones willing to make concessions and the Palestinians as the ones throwing everything out the door is a highly cherry picked narrative that doesn't represent the reality at all.
I fully support a two-state solution, if and only if both states are treated as equals. The conditions listed above clearly do not create two equal states that both have full rights to self determination.
The discussions were doomed to fail from the get-go. You can read more on that on Wikipedia if you're interested in all the details. If wikipedia isn't a good enough source, there is a great book on this subject by a german professor specializing on the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
Didn't Israel start this war by creating an apartheid state and genocide by deporting non jews to a Ghetto and making their live so miserable that people decide to fight against their oppressors?
Didn't Israel create Hamas? And propped them up? Israel wanted what happened, now they can go in full force and most idiots even applaud them for manipulating a people into war.
They learned from the US, maniacs that start wars by lying about the enemy planning to use WMD. No nation can should trust a word coming out of their mouths.
Not a SINGLE word, what you would do differently.
ALL words excuses for Hamas murdering civilians.
Hamas doesn’t commit their terror attacks „for“ the Palestinians, they commit them, because they hate Israel and the Jews. If they would fight for the Palestinian civilians, they wouldn’t operate in or near civilian infrastructure, they wouldn’t wear civilian clothing and they would share their vast stockpiles with the Palestinian civilians.
We all know you didn't.
How is that? I'm a gay, partly jewish guy, that is strongly left leaning and cares a lot about the climate and social issues. I have voted for the green party. I agree with their stance on Ukraine and Russia, which is why I am so confused by their stance on Israel. I never expected them to act in such a way. I agree with their climate policy. I agree with their urbanism policies. But the complete disregard they have shown towards palestinian lives is simply disgusting. But whatever, you tell me who I voted for.
Yes, this bullshit definitely makes your story and disinformation even more believable. You understand that people can actually check his words for themselves, right?
Look. I went and listened to the speech again, because I don't want people to claim that I'm spreading misinformation here.
What I gathered from his speech, the main points:
- antisemitism is bad. Yes, every single moral human being should agree with that. Hating people based on their ethnicity and other traits they cannot change is absolutely never acceptable.
- people should condemn acts of terrorism. Again, yes. I fully agree with that. Killing innocents is absolutely never acceptable, be it terrorism or not. It's horrible.
- the right is holding back from attacking jews. I agree with that, but I don't think it's the time and place for these comments. He's talking about horrific acts of terrorism, he's talking about the fear some people live with right now and at the same time he finds the time to talk about his opposition. It feels like he's hijacking the situation for political points and feels insensitive. It makes it look like he doesn’t realistically care about this situation.
- iran is somehow behind this. I don't think anyone has produced any evidence regarding that yet which just makes it sound like a weird conspiracy theory, and again, it feels out of place for a speech about antisemitism and acts of violence against innocents
- he's doing everything he can along his American partners to protect the lives of civillians in Gaza. This is where it's getting nasty in my opinion. The US has vetoed a call for a ceasefire in the UN security council. That is definitely not what I'd consider to count as "protecting the lives of civillians". And the fact taht he associates with the US here is even worse, since they were the only ones to veto any form of intervention on the side of the UN. This is why I left my original comment. I guess it was fairly inflamatory of me to comment that, but it felt extremely insensitive to see him say that while looking at the reality of the situation on the ground in Gaza right now, with so many innocents dying. Just "making sure water and medicine gets to Gaza" won't save those kids from being blown to pieces. Mind you, the water, food, electricity, and medicine that was cut off from these civillians by Israel in the first place. Not only that, but he goes as far as to say that he is reminding Israel of their commitment to international law, BUT no one expects that from Hamas... I'm sorry? He is literally relativising the deaths of civillians here just because Hamas are a bunch of fucking genocidal maniacs. He is litearlly adding a BUT after saying how Israel should respect human rights. You can't make this shit up. There should be absolutely no buts after talking about respecting human rights.
- all muslims in Germany are expected to publicly denounce Hamas. This one is straight up weird. It's like asking all jews to publicly denounce Israel for bombing kids. It’s like asking all Germans to publicly denounce every terroristic act every time a neonazi in the US shoots up a school. It simply isn’t related and shows a great disconnect from the reality of the situation. Hamas, a terrorist organization, doesn't represent all muslims and it's straight up racist to expect every muslim to talk about whatever Hamas is doing right now. No one expects Germans to talk about neonazis across the world. Which brings me to the next point I gathered from his speech
- Germany has to support to Israel. Here he starts equating all jews with Israel somehow. Which is again, straight up weird, and partly antisemitic. Jews aren't all the property of Israel. Just as not all muslims are the property of Hamas. Treating an entire ethnic group as a monolithic collective is extremely problematic to me. I am partly jewish and german-romanian and do not agree with that. I feel more German and Romanian than I feel Israeli. I've never been to Israel and wouldn't call Israel my home country. Even though I could get an israeli citizenship any day by proof of my ancestors and gain access to live in a land that my ancestors probably didn't even know how to point on a map. With that being said, I fully support helping civillians affected by violence everywhere, anywhere, on all sides of this horrible conflict. I fully support the fight against antisemitism and stand by it, and stood by it for ages now. But offering critique of Israel is somehow deemed as problematic. It’s trying to be painted as “relativism”. One can easily condemn acts of terrorism while also putting them in a historical context. That doesn't mean you are relativising anything. One can condemn the state of Israel for the shit they're doing to civillians in Gaza and the West Bank. I know he also says that everyone is allowed to criticize Israel, but for some reason his government falls short of doing so. Sure, individual civillians can, but I'd expect government officials with a spine to actually do it too when they see all the completely unjust suffering in Gaza right now.
- the two state solution. He then briefly mentions the two state solution, but falls short of going deeper into that highly complex subject. Why even mention it in the first place? He throws all the blame on Hamas here while conveniently ignoring that Israel is also straight up refusing the two state solution, just as Hamas does. Not only that, but Israel even has hopes in expanding their illegal settlements (which he of course briefly criticizes, but again, not much substance in his criticism there). This can be easily found in their government's policy guidelines where they clearly state that "The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan and Judea and Samaria.". Those are the current Israeli government’s policy guidelines. Germany is hereby supporting a full on far-right theocratic regime of ultraorthodox lunatics that are openly calling for the expansion of their lands in the detriment of the innocent civillians living there that happen to be non-jewish.
I'd rather have a Germany that works towards a humanitarian solution, not a Germany that is straight up supporting some very horrible people and supports the US in blocking any kind of UN intervention. I don't mind calling out antisemitism, I've been doing that my entire life. And I have read more than enough books on jewish history, dug through archives to learn about my great great grandparents that died in the holocaust, and much more. I don't mind calling out terrorism either, every sane human should. But I very much mind this kind of rhetoric towards unconditional support for a far-right expansionist regime. Especially one represented by a far-right religious zionist coalition, that claims that some biblical lands that currently happen to be under palestinian control should be owned by them because their book says so. Here you can read more about them. Is this really who we want to throw our unconditional support at? A cabinet filled with people like Itamar Ben-Gvir that literally has a poster of a terrorist that killed a bunch of people in his office? The guy that put a billboard of arab opposition politicians in a town and called for their expulsion? Man I'm so over this. Believe what you want. I voted green for a reason. Now I don't know who to vote for anymore. I sure as hell don't want to vote for the putinists further to the left, and the more to the right you go than the green party the worse it gets.
@febra @DarkThoughts First of, kudos for taking the time to watch the entire thing and writing a comprehensive answer. It's stuff like this that makes me appreciate this platform. So a sincere thanks.
Two, actual substance: For all its faults and sometimes procecutable actions I dont think Israël is pursuing the eradication of the Palestine people, this as opposed to the attempted eradication of the Israelie AND Jewish (Kindly note the two of them) populace by Hamas/Hezbollah/ISIS/etc. Survival
I used to have a very similar opinion up until the far-right has hijacked the Israeli government, and thereby officially making it state policy that the Land of Israel is first and foremost jewish. That the government should first and foremost work by jewish laws and traditions. That the state policy will be that of settling all the jewish lands, and keep in mind, we're talking about the ultraorthodox religious zionist coalition here, so those lands are the ones described in the holy texts. This means settling even in territories that currently count as palestinian. This government has made expansionism state policy. This same government talks a lot about the jewish identity, promoting that. All of these policies do not scream diversity to me in any way shape or form, and they surely don't seem intended to make the lives of non jews easier. "The government will preserve the Jewish character of the state". Settlements are mentioned everywhere throughout their official policy.
Please, I beg you to go read that link. It's not even from a weird anti-Israel website. It's on the Times of Israel website. We are looking at a far-right theocratic state in the making here. Israel already had too many disturbing laws, and this will only make it worse.
With that being said, you're right, they might not try to eradicate the palestinian people, but they sure will try to make their lives hell under the current government. And by state policy, since they don't represent "the jewish character" of the state, they surely won't have a nice life there either.