Edit- and the BBC seems to have edited the headline . It described him as " Far-right Israeli minister", when I saw it first.
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That’s far too tame. “Internationally sanctioned, convicted domestic terrorist” would be more accurate but still insufficient. But there’s only so much room for headlines, I guess.
Edit to add: the BBC headline still says “Far-Right Israeli Minister” when I click the link for the actual article. I think the one-box summary was just shortened.
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Britain invaded China and raped and pillaged to a quite extraordinary extent even for the time. On top of the mass slaughter they also caused a famine which killed millions. As part of their reparations for being forced to invade and slaughter and steal to force China to allow British drug runners free access they took control of the richest port for themselves.
As their influence waned they couldn’t hold onto it so they instituted democratic governance before they had to hand it back.
Nobody in China was remotely fooled.
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Ok, so I guess what I don’t understand is what that has to do with Germany criticizing Israel for seizing occupied land from the Palestinians. The only obvious commonality I see with the history that you just explained was that yes, Germany also did very, very bad stuff in the past. Is that what you’re referring to? And are you suggesting that because of that history that Germany should just keep silent about injustices and violations of international law that are happening today?
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Because, grimly hilariously, like English politicians deciding what “democracy” is being undermined in Hong Kong, Germany has unilaterally decided it is the expert on what is genocide ( Jews: yes, Namibians: no!).
Germany has exerted all its dominance in the EU to enforce its conception of what genocide is (just some weird abberation to do with nutty Germans long ago and nothing to do with racist imperialist mass murder), and, literally nobody actually buys that shit. Nobody.
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Ok, so I may have been misinterpreting some of what you were trying to get at earlier but if I understand this part of the comment you’re mad at Germany’s position of “we Germans know what genocide is, and Israel’s actions in Gaza aren’t genocide.” Do I have that right?
From your first comment I honestly wasn’t sure if you were angry about Germany criticizing Israel too much or too little or the fact that they voiced criticisms at all.
Anyway, the news articles you were replying to were just saying that Germany was reminding Israel that building these new settlements is against UN resolutions and international law. And they’re certainly not the only country pointing that out.
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One could make the case that having been guilty of something can make it better for a country to speak out against it. When South Africa condemned Israel for being an apartheid state, on the grounds that they know what apartheid is like, it came off as powerful rather than hypocritical.
In any case the simple truth is that every country should be condemning this settlement regardless of their history, because it’s a violation of international law and human rights.
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That’s the idea. Germany’s disagreement with Namibia about whether a policy of starvation is genocide on the other hand shows that this is not particularly relevant here.
ETA
My frustration is that the fetishisation of one genocide has allowed wealthy white countries to act as if this was a unique event. It wasn’t. It wasn’t remotely. It was just done in Western Europe rather than North or South America. India or China. Australia or New Zealand.
Or so so so so so so many places where the population was slaughtered en masse for fun and profit.
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On the one hand that’s fair, but on the other, I would still much rather Germany hypocritically stand up against this genocide than be morally consistent by letting Israel have a little genocide as a treat.
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Fucking cruel, awful monsters…
Just when you think you can’t hate a person more…
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This is good news… more on this…
But will the government listen to them?
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There have been protests weekly or more since October 7.
On that evidence, I’d say the answer is: “no.”
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I think these protests represent a serious expansion of the protests and seems to be merging a more general anti-war sentiment with the people protesting specifically for the hostages to be released.
But yes, given the reaction, it’s a firm no from the current government. It’s true that the support for occupation isn’t just a right wing problem, but there will be no forward movement with this current right wing government in power.
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