Opinion: Why Israel won't condemn the shocking success of Germany's far right extremists
***
haaretz.com
Everybody
in Germany got the message: the outcome of last Sunday's elections
meant more than just adding another new political faction to the
Bundestag.
That
a radical right-wing party, Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD), entered
the Bundestag is an alarm signal, an unprecedented challenge to
post-Nazi Germany. For 68 years the German political system warded off
all substantial attempts by right-wing extremists to get into
parliament.
That
era is over, definitively, and Germany has now joined many other
democratic nations in allowing anti-democratic movements to send
representatives into their national legislative assemblies.
The
rise of right-wing populist parties and the new authoritarian
tendencies in current politics threaten the democratic system all over
the globe and should have been considered a major challenge also for the
Jewish state.
In
the past, the fight of Jews against anti-Semitism went hand in hand
with the fight against ethnocentric nationalism, xenophobia and
anti-liberalism. Having this experience in mind, one might have expected
the Jewish state to continue to be consistent with this strategy today.
Now, when the AfD has entered the Bundestag, it is high time to ask
whether Israel is acting up to expectations.
Unfortunately, the answer so far is no.
The
experience of the last few months proves the absence of a clear-cut
Israeli condemnation of populist parties and tendencies: Netanyahu's cautious reaction to the Charlottesville Nazi demonstrations and to Trump's moral-equivalence response, on the one hand and Netanyahu's approach to the anti-Semitic anti-Soros campaign
of Hungary's Prime Minister Orban, on the other hand, are two good
examples of official Israel's improper, evasive handling of the problem.
Not
that Netanyahu or other fighters for the Jewish cause miss a chance to
smell what seems to them to be an anti-Semitic rat: When the German
foreign minister visited Israel and met representatives of the Breaking
the Silence NGO, he and his Social Democratic party were accused of being anti-Semitic.
When the Mayor of Berlin (also a Social Democrat) was not quick enough in condemning the BDS movement he was even threatened by the Wiesenthal Center to be put on the list of top ten anti-Semites worldwide.
In short, anti-Semitism is attributed primarily to those who do not support the Israeli government's policy.
The
old misfortune of being blind on the right side is repeated by Israel
and its mouthpieces, but not by them alone. The head of the Jewish
community in Germany used the opportunity of sharing his thoughts about
the situation on the eve of Rosh Hashana with his community only a few
days before the German elections, but, amazingly, without mentioning the
AfD by name. Only after the results of the elections were announced did
the German-Jewish leadership publish a strong declaration condemning
the anti-democratic AfD.
It is time to wake up.
In
a few weeks another right-wing populist party, the Austrian one, will
be on the verge of entering the government. Is Israel going to disregard
the racist character of this party too, and tolerate its entry into the
government only because its leader declared his sympathy for Israel's
policies?
In
Germany no party will even consider letting the AfD join the
government; protecting the democracy against the new racist faction in
the Bundestag is a matter of principle for all other parties and will
guide them in parliamentary life every day for the next four years.
Here
Israel cannot waver: The AfD politicians pulled the usual trick – they
were also eager to show their support for Israel or brag about Jews
joining the party, and on top of it referred to the "common adversary":
the mainly Muslim refugees/infiltrators 'flooding' into Germany. Will
this bear-hug do the trick?
No
objective observer can have any doubts: This alleged alliance against
Muslims or Arabs, suggested by the AfD and other populists, is a pitfall
which Israel must avoid at all costs. Not only is it an imagined
alliance; it is a betrayal of the fight against anti-Semitism and of the
basic human values of Zionism. Israelis should have shown more esteem
for Angela Merkel's welcome gesture towards the refugees.
A
blind eye to racism and intolerance in Germany, in Europe, for the sake
of getting support for the present Israeli policies in the occupied
territories is a disgrace. The AfD is more than just another populist,
racist European Party. It is a movement that intends to turn the clock
back on democratic Germany's effort to learn from its terrible past for
the sake of an enlightened and tolerant future.
Official Israel must to join the anti-AfD majority in Germany in its fight against the enemies of an open society.
Moshe Zimmermann is a historian and Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Shimon
Stein is a former Israeli ambassador to Germany and Senior Fellow at
the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University
Shimon Stein
Haaretz Contributo
Commenti
Posta un commento