For me and many activists, there is only one humanist agenda: we have to work for the dismantlement of Zionism. This is a Jewish and democratic obligation. So we can build up a free Palestine, without Jewish occupation.
Who can a Jewish Anti-Zionist vote for in the German election?
By Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, English translation by Milena Rampoldi
It shakes me to experience such hypocrisy when it is about Palestine in the election programs of the German parties. No party dares to publicly support the dispossessed and occupied people of Palestine. Yes, I totally agree with Judith Butler when she says that being Anti-Zionist is an obligation, as long as the objective of dismantling political Zionism will not be reached.
This obligation should be the new Jewish ethic. If I think about myself, I know only one and indivisible ethic: it is the ethic focussing on humanism and human rights, without considering if it is Jewish, Christian, Islamic or atheist/secularist. All the existing ethics are violated in the “Jewish State” and ignored by the occupying power. A peaceful cohabitation was never wanted by the Zionist intruders, and this refusal is manifested by their deeds. Thenakba, the dispossession of more than 700.000 original inhabitants of Palestine, was promoted and organised according to schedule by the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which is still going on today, without any hindrance by the hypocritical community of states.
The Jewish intruders, who deliberately followed their objective to found a “Jewish State” for the persecuted Jews from Europe, are guilty of acting in the exactly same racist way they had experienced before. They talk about a land free from “Arabs” and are not even able to pronounce the name “Palestinians” because in their loud Zionist propaganda there is no Palestinian people. So they colonised Palestine as absolute rulers and occupiers. Finally, they became the perpetrators, instead of being the victims. They started to feel better and better in this role. It is important to them to feel sublime, superior to others, on the path to the final objective of the Judaisation of Palestine within Eretz Israel!
This political Zionism, formally asking for the oppression, destruction, and dispossession of local inhabitants, makes an equal cohabitation impossible, because this was never neither wanted nor planned.
However, for me and many activists, there is only one humanist agenda: we have to work for the dismantlement of Zionism. This is a Jewish and democratic obligation. So we can build up a free Palestine, without Jewish occupation.
I also expressly agree with Judith Butler when she says that not only the West Bank and Gaza, but the whole of Israel and the foundation of the State of Israel are illegal. Only by dismantling political Zionism we can overcome this injustice. As long as the “Jewish State” is a Jewish national state treating Palestinians as second-class citizens and as long as there is no division between state and religion, and Judaism is instrumental in illegally occupy the Palestinian people, and manipulated for foreign politics, there will never be peace in Palestine, in the region, and in the world. (1)
Therefore it is essential that Jewish people deal with Anti-Zionism, and oppose the supporters (“Sayanim”) of Zionism like “saloon” Zionists and “Christian-Jewish” Zionists. The strength of anti-Zionism lies in the facts we represent, while Zionism employs untrue arguments based on unhistorical facts. All historians opposed to these arguments like Ilan Pappe, Shlomo Sand, Moshe Zuckermann, Norman Finkelstein, and their colleagues are called Parias, Anti-Semites.
It is a fact that the continuously repeated and false self-representation as the “only” democracy in the Middle East – which every politically informed person is so tired to listen to – which is so hypocritical like the whole Zionist State structure of the “Jewish State” is a scientific product of propaganda. And this structure tries to democratically legitimate its positions and does it with increasing sophistication while the legal resistance of the occupied people against their occupiers is defamed as terrorism and as illegal action. However, only the Jewish occupation of Palestine is illegal, and this is something the descendants of the Holocaust victims should remember.
The victims do not have the right to become perpetrators, because it is illegal. So the “Jewish State” and its ethnic cleansing policy has no justification at all!
This policy is based on the exclusion of critics of the “Jewish State” and its inhuman illegal violations of international law as Anti-Semites, and Jews hater, by inventing new terms to describe them. (Jewish) citizens who are active with organisations like Breaking the Silence, B`Tselem, Zochrot, or other human rights groups are defamed and persecuted. In particular, BDS supporters have become the new enemy worldwide. Instead, this so important and successful movement should be supported unconditionally! While the “Jewish State” in the meantime supports a worldwide “war campaign” of millions against BDS, and travel bans for BDS supporters, this movement is becoming stronger because it is a civil society overcoming the defamation by the Israel lobby through campaigns like “Do not buy from Jews” and does not stop its struggle for a free Palestine.
All this motivates me to pursue my objective without intimidation. We should not be discouraged from our brave struggle by demonization, double standards, and delegitimization. As long as the political Zionism of oppression and occupation exists, Anti-Zionism is an obligation.
There is no party in Germany pursuing this objective of a free Palestine. On the contrary, the “Jewish State” is equated with our values and awarded with the reason of state for its security. It is totally beyond me because this position is not consistent with our constitution. While the illegal Jewish occupation of Palestine is negated, and this is considered as consistent with “our” values by all parties, injustice is promoted even if this injustice has absolutely nothing to do with exactly these democratic values.
When I read a paper about the election campaign 2017, in which there are “Jewish positions” about the federal election campaign 2017 and I look at the people who signed it I ask myself how this is possible. Is this Germany 2017? Is this consistent with my and our values?
No, it is not. And they speak about a “liberal democratic defining culture”.
Paragraph 4
Here Israel is defined as “spiritual homeland” for the Jews and the German citizens; the document mentions the “special” relationship between Germany and the “democratic Jewish State” of Israel, based on history and linked by the community of values of “both” democracies, characterised by similar social, economic subjects and subjects related to security policy. This is something I cannot agree with.
Germany expects a solidary support towards Israel in the “peace process” (which peace process, the one avoided by the “Jewish occupiers‘ state”?) and the understanding that the Palestinian desire for self-determination must not cause “other” threats for Israel (however, who threats whom here?!). And there is more: “Radical Islamic” groups and Iran are defamed as the greatest threat for Israel and the free world, and nobody opposes to it. (However, in contrast to the “Jewish State”, Iran has not started any war, and also did not threat anyone with nuclear weapons!) In my opinion the time has come to oppose to the “Jewish Apartheid State” with harshness and sanctions to put an end to illegal occupation!
Paragraph 5 about how to deal with “political Islam”
This paragraph shakes me a lot, as it talks about “political Islam” and the increasing influence of Islamic unions and associations associating religion with “politics” and whose values are not compatible with our constitution. (However, for me personally, the Central Council of Jews and other international Jewish lobbyist organisations in Germany are more threating, because they call for an unconditional solidarity with the “Jewish occupiers‘ state” and misuse religion for this objective. Quotation: In this case, the state has to establish stricter criteria for collaboration and promotion. Organisations, unions, and mosques which do not unconditionally support democracy and human rights, should be prohibited, closed, and or prosecuted. International treaties can be concluded only according to strict requirements. Financial and directive influence of foreign governments on German organisations and groups of people are to be prohibited. End of quotation. (Let us turn these whole sentences and put Jewish and Israel instead; what about these requirements then?)
Paragraph 6 “avoiding collateral damages”
Here these “Jewish supporters” assume that a person can have only one citizenship, except from ONE exception, the Jews, because the Jews have historical relations to several countries. So it is advisable for them to be “German-Israeli” citizens. (There you go: a non-kosher exception for Jewish citizens when it is about Israel. If this does not promote a parallel society!)
Paragraph about “Anti-Semitism”
But the real big bang is exactly my critical point. Quotation: “Israel criticism characterised by double standard, “Anti-Zionism” and the BDS movement are the old wine of hate in the new bottles. There must not be room left to it.”
End of quotation. (Here the equation of the terms Anti-Semitism, BDS movement, and Anti-Zionism. This is un untrue statement pursuing the aim to stop all kind of criticism against Israel and promoting the end of all democratic opinion expression. The knockout argument.) (2)
No, we do not want any guiding culture calling for a “Jewish-Christian” solidarity with the occupiers‘ crimes of the “Jewish State” and promoting hatred against Islam by marginalizing Muslims! Jewish positions of this kind are not consistent with the German constitution and with “our/my values”!
As a consequence, as “Jewish Anti-Zionist”, and as German citizen with one passport, I cannot vote for any party supporting such (“Jewish”) positions of this “initiative of values”!
(1) http://werteinitiative.de/wahl2017/ (“Inititiative of values, Positions of Jewish Germans on the federal election”)
(2) http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/israel-juedische-kritik-am-zionismus.1310.de.html?dram:article_id=270869
Evelyn Hecht-Galinski (b. 1949, in Berlin) is a Jewish-German activist and publicist, an outspoken critic of Israel’s policies towards Palestinians and a member of the group European Jews for a Just Peace. She is a daughter of late Heinz Galinski, a former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
Originally posted AT
Desertpeace 