"Spreading fear and silencing […] "As it silences and threatens to sanction any dissent against Israel, its apartheid system, and its crimes against humanity as antisemitic, it is obvious that the government and parliament intend to spread fear of being branded antisemitic, being criminalised and persecuted for expressing your opinion as a basic individual citizenship right. […] "From the very beginning of Zionism in the late 19th century, #Germany has joyfully and wholeheartedly embraced what Theodor Herzl offered to the “West”.
"By demanding support for the Zionist movement from European powers, he submitted the offer that in Palestine the Zionists would “form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of #civilisation as opposed to barbarism”.
The German state has bound its own re-birth into the “realm of civilized nations” through a particular protective relationship with the figure of the Jew, where (always Jewish) Israelis are a prime embodiment of Jewish life.
"As long as the figure of the Jew remains a medium through which German post-unification identity is articulated and experienced, the performance of Jewish collective difference and political agency will be exclusively relegated to the State of Israel. The figure of the Palestinian, as well as Palestinians’ political subjecthood and demands for equality will, in turn, be addressed as either an annoyance to be ignored or a threat to be criminalized—rather than as a crucial prism through which the multiple layers of legitimatized moral violence in Germany have to be recognized."
@germany: "The only substantive difference in the opposition pitting the political parties who are seen as capable of contributing to governance and those who are deemed inadmissible (i.e. the AfD) is that the former believe that it is acceptable to ethnically cleanse and settler colonise in Palestine, whereas the latter is of the opinion that ethnic cleansing should be performed at home too. A defense of the right to colonise across the seas is seen by mainstream opinion as crucial to maintaining political coherence, whereas the AfD is unwilling to abide by the classic colonial distinction separating colony and metropole. It is an uncanny predicament: both sides are thinking about colonialism, one implicitly proclaiming its admissibility somewhere, the other its desirability everywhere. And yet neither is referring to it."