Less than 10 years ago, Germany, and especially Berlin, was held up as a beacon of openness and inclusivity in a western world rocked by Brexit and Donald Trump. Angela Merkel’s decision to take in thousands of refugees displaced by the war in Syria boosted her country’s reputation in progressive circles, with many international artists and academics choosing to make the German capital their new home.
Yet the conflict in the Middle East is showing Germany in a new light, highlighting fissures in society and the arts world that until now had been easier to ignore.
Crime against jewish people is on the rise in Germany, as are neonazis. Hate crimes against jews were also rising before the Gaza war, by the way.
If Germany didn’t try to protect jewish people it would mean they learnt nothing from the past.
The chancellor has said the safety and security of Israel is Germany’s raison d’êtat.
Before I get downvoted to hell by Gaza sympathisers, let me add that Israel is currently committing massive war crimes against the Palestinian people and those responsible must be tried and punished in an international court of law.
All of these things can be true at the same time:
a) Israel is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity
b) Hamas has committed crimes against humanity
c) Israel has a right to existence and to security
d) Palestine has a right to existence and to security
I don’t get how some people feel they have to pick only two out of these four.
Israel has no right to exist though. The existence of Israel is dependent on settler colonialism, apartheid, and genocide.
Before you say “if Israel has no right to exist then neither does the United States, Canada, Australia, etc.” then I have to agree.
c) Israel has a right to existence and to security
This has no right to be true. First, a state does not have an intrinsic right to exist. A state is a social tool, crafted to help humans survive and thrive, in coexistence as how it came to be. If tools turn out to be primarily used for war and suffering, they are no longer tools for the betterment of humanity. You can argue Israel stealing more land is a betterment for their people, but the animosity caused during the process is eventually reflecting on the people benefiting from the betterment, both as outside perception and as shifting the thinking of the Israeli people about what is better for humanity, and it is not a good way to go forward.
The State of Israel is a malfunctioning machine that is spewing out more poison than it is manufacturing goodness. Malfunctioning machines need to be repaired, and if they can’t be, disabled and discarded/recycled, not kept active and doing harm saying they have a right to exist.
If we reject the UN and international law, as you appear to be doing by denying Israel’s right to exist as defined in the two state solution, we basically go back to the right of the strongest. Putin would agree with you.
A couple presumptions you make are the very causation for today’s problems:
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UN, which deep-seated inequality and over-representation ingrained to it right from its very beginning as giving substantial privileges to 5 WWII winner imperialist powers as permanent members with unconditional veto power, even on resolutions that question their validity, which they have been abusing for as long as the UN existed , as infallible authority.
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The international law, which is used by the aforementioned powers to keep the status quo after they drew the borders and partitioned the world according to their greed, and still circumvent to further their agendas without facing repercussions, as infallible, just and fair compromise and authority.
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Two-State solution with current borders implied. The original and rejected two-state solution that was forced upon Palestinian territories as peaceful division, that also meant to leave the Arabs with bleak desert and give all the shores and fertile lands to Jewish people, which also gave way to acceptance of way fairer division of land with populations and prosperity in consideration, ended in Zionist terrorists causing a contemporary (mainly cultural) genocide. Later attempt at two-state solution was prefaced with Zionist terrorists giving back the occupied land and agreeing to the fairer share of the land, which didn’t happen. The idea behind recognizing both Palestine and Israel as states never came to fruition, mainly due to Israel wanting unfair share that would result in a de facto infeasible Palestinian statehood. Israel statehood’s only fair foundation is bloodied by their own hands by forcing their statehood with stolen land, off-driven Arabic people, and cultural genocide. Hard to accept such poisonous machines as a useful tool.
One more thing: The strongest already ousted the previous strongest, demonized them and made them the only focus, all the while making the current rules to ensure their own prosperity. They are also making sure these rules continue to be obeyed by the less powerful by enforcing them with waepons of war and purpose-built indirect weapons like exploitative economic implementations.
Lastly, Putin has a lot of people like you that think harmful tools be kept harming people for the sake of keeping the tool/machine on. Putin also has his own circumventions of a just and fair, reason and rules based world order, and subsequently suck dick together with all the democratically-elected de facto western hegemons and the ancestral eastern tyrants.
Please don’t put words into my mouth. I have never made any qualitative claims about the UN and international law.
Also, to put the word infallible and any political organisation into the same sentence is absurd, hardly warranting a response.
Original claim is “all of the below can be true: […] c) Israel has a right to exist.”
My counterpoint is a Israel is a state, states are tools, tools don’t have a right to exist, and harmful tools shouldn’t be kept working so they continue harming people.
Your counterpoint to mine is “If we reject the UN and international law by rejecting Israel’s right to statehood, we go back to the rule of the strongest.” by which the underlying implication is going backwards in human rights development and betterment of humanity.
Were you championing that we reject UN and international law, and go back to the rule of the strongest? Or were you just stating that UN and international law attached Israel an undeniable right to statehood? How do you make a connection with this to what I’m saying being possibly liked by Putin, without making any implications, then?
Please explain yourself.
Oh man, you’re confused. Let’s take it step by step.
The existence of a state is recognised theough the UN. UN rrcognises your state? It exists. Like France. It’s not recognised? It doesn’t exist, like Northern Cyprus, or South Ossetia. This is how international law works. We don’t have to argue whether it is a good system - but we can certwinly agree that it is better than the previous one, where militarily strong states imposed their will upon their neighbours. Like Putin is trying and failing now, or like the British and Spanish empires did centuries ago. If it is “right of the strongest”, we shall have wars.
If you reject the UN, you are arguing for war, because that is the only other option we have.
Get it now?
UN is a political entity as you have hinted before in your previous comment. A state existing can best be measured by its acceptance through the UN usually, but even then one of the 5 imperialist powers can veto a state’s recognizance proposal on their whims, and this completely nullifies it as a dependable metric. It comes to the example “All animals are equal, but some are more equal.” from Animal Farm without any complexity governing it at all. It just doesn’t cause many wars currently, although it does not help ease the stressful atmosphere. And where it causes war and suffering due to some imperial power on the other side of the planet exerting undue and unfair power over the peaceful talks between the sides, it becomes hell on Earth.
It is not better than the previous system if the already powerful can exert influence and claim interest in a local conflict it is not anywhere nearly part of. The strong still strongarm land-grab and killing, without the borders on the map not changing to their own name, but their pawns’. Adding a subterfuge element to it does not make the lives of the victims of the exploited region any more better, just suffocates through removal of oxygen rather than outright stabbing. In the case of Palestine, openly turns it into a concentration camp.
If only the US didn’t veto any remotely fair resolution, or failing that proposals for heavy military sanctions against Israel for its genocide, the world could easily have ended this conflict decades ago. US could keep aiding Israel with technology and supplies related to prosperity rather than for one-sided war. Israel could still be a major powerhouse if their sugar mommy wanted, without having to actively expand land and kill innocent babies all around.
How is simply asking for Israel’s statehood to be questioned and scrutinized, in the light of its continued genocide and invasion throughout generations and leaders, is asking for war? No such nation has a right to exist!
but even then one of the 5 imperialist powers can veto a state’s recognizance proposal on their whims
The full assembly votes on such a matter, not the security council
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