Gaza in Germany
Is Vergangenheitsbewältigung broken?
This week Public Seminar considers Germany’s response to the charge that Israeli actions against Palestinians constitute genocide—and why “never again” remains an unfulfilled promise.
Until recently, Germany’s Vergangenheitsbewältigung was widely considered a success story. Now this “culture of remembrance” has become cause for critique, observes Andrew I. Port. “Because of their past, Germans are finding themselves once again in a difficult position of being ‘damned if they do and damned if they don’t.’”
Meanwhile, Zukiswa Wanner surrenders her Goethe Medal, an official decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. Germany’s guilt for its unconscionable past, she writes, “makes its position on the current genocide in Palestine all the more shameful.”
Germany, Genocide, and Gaza
Andrew I. Port
What about German responses to the claim that Israeli policies toward the Palestinians constitute genocide? Many Germans are understandably wary to use that charged term when it comes to the Middle East because of their own history—the same reason why German officials have kept a tight rein on pro-Palestinian demonstrations at home, even those involving Jewish critics of Israel. The latter in particular have indignantly asked what right Germans have lecturing Jews about the appropriateness of such allegations and language.
Never Again Should Be for Anybody
Zukiswa Wanner
One did not need to be from a country with a history of apartheid to see the daily injustices and indignities visited on Palestinians. Palestinians have separate roads, and different number plates and are constantly under threat from strangers from the United States or white South Africans with apartheid nostalgia who come with guns and the protection of Israeli Defense Forces to settle into their homes.