Germany escaping its past by lecturing Israel
Analysis: Has Germany done enough to justify Israeli trust or has it focused its efforts on making people forget the past by diverting the attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
The two countries will be able to decide on a series of festive events, which will showcase the long way the perpetrators of the Holocaust and their heirs and the state of Holocaust survivors and their heirs have come, together, in the past 50 years.
Such ceremonialism has been taking over relations between the two countries for a long time now. Too often, it amounts to hollow statements on both sides about the duty to "remember but forgive," the "never again" mantra and the German commitment to the future of the Jewish people and Jewish state.
However, the two countries will also be able to decide on the need for an open discussion, as well as about the many problems that still exist in their relationship, which has evolved over time.
While in the first decades of the fully formed relationship between Germany and Israel the emphasis was on the great Jewish sensitivity about these ties in light of the trauma of the Holocaust, in the past decades the focus of the sensitivity has moved to the German side.
A growing number of voices in Germany are calling to take the suffering of Germans during World War II into account, to free the young Germans of any responsibility for the implications of the Holocaust for the Jewish people, and to bring about a complete normalization of the relations with the Jewish state.
Moreover, instead of working on the development of bilateral ties, the German establishment is busy solving Israel's problems, as Berlin understands them.
These are not just problems related to the Arab-Israeli conflict – like the settlements, which Germany sees as the first obstacle to peace and stability in the Middle East – that are at the top of Germany's list of concerns. The German establishment, through the political funds it operates in Israel, is increasingly intervening in Israel's internal affairs.
Trusting the 'land of criminals'
Although German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, writing for Yedioth Ahronoth ahead of the governmental consultations, speaks about "the Jewish and democratic state of Israel," the political funds financed by his government are doing everything to convince the Israelis that Israel should not be Jewish, especially if it wishes to remain democratic. Some of these funds have organized conferences and conventions aimed at proving that Israel has not been democratic for a long time now."Will Israel ever be able to trust the 'land of the criminals'?" Steinmeier asks. The question which should have been asked as part of the events marking the jubilee of diplomatic relations between the two countries is whether Germany has done enough to justify "trusting the 'land of the criminals,'" or has it focused its efforts on causing people to forget the fact that it used to be the "land of the criminals," by diverting the attention from the relations between Germans and Israelis – to relations between Israelis and Palestinians.
If Germany is indeed investing so much effort in achieving a durable peace to secure Israel's future, what practical steps has it taken to make the Palestinians and Arab countries cease their endless anti-Semitic incitement, stop the isolation and boycott policy which has been going on for 66 years now, and recognize the right of a Jewish state to exist in the Middle East? Or is Germany's only contribution to peace telling the Jewish state what more it must do in order to satisfy the other side's claims?
No one is asking the German government to automatically adopt the policies of the different Israeli governments. But no one gave Germany a special right to exclusively lecture Israel. If Germany wants Israel to start gaining trust for the former "land of the criminals," perhaps it should convince Israel through actions that it is does not aim to intervene in its internal affairs and is sincerely interested in helping solve its foreign security affairs – first and foremost by advancing true peace with the countries of the Middle East.
The 50th year of the relations between the two countries should give Israel and Germany the option to hold an open discussion on these issues as well, and not just on issues Germany is interested in promoting.
