I couldn’t read the whole article because of the paywall but I had the feeling from the beginning that Germany because of his historical guilt throws all considerations that Israel might be doing something wrong over board and suppresses every voice which try to point that out, even the moderate voices.
People are critical of Israel here, too.
When Netanjahu pushed for his justice reform there were a lot of articles pointing that out. Very regularly people spoke up against the settlers-movement.
Israel for sure is not a white knight in this conflict but given that it’s a war that Hamas clearly started in the worst possible way and that Hamas is misusing their civilians as shields to produce public outcry when those people they hold hostage around their command centers die it’s hard to see how while still shitty in the big picture Israel is clearly in the right in this specific war right now.
Let’s hope that the Israeli people kick out Netanjahu asap (since they still can other than the people in Gaza that have no chance to kick out Hamas without outside intervention) and that there is a way to find a peaceful 2 state solution - but saying stuff like the statement that was banned won’t help with peace either as it’s just a wish to flip the war on the other side and genocide all the Jews from Israel.
Fueling hate against a group of people like this is not protected by freedom of speech in Germany in general. If someone repeated that statement of the Israeli minister about flattening Gaza with an atomic bomb in Germany that probably would also be illegal. This now is just making it clear where the line that’s always been there is in this conflict.
Everybody is talking about German guilt standing in the way of recognizing faults with Israel and I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. It’s rather that now all the actual anti semites are coming out of their holes and mix with people rightfully opposed to Israel’s actions, amplifying the hate against Jews in general.
It’s also becoming very clear, that many immigrants from that region and with that cultural background do not share our values and believes, in fact, many of them are opposed to it, making it even more muddy, because being opposed to Israel’s action doesn’t mean approving ofnHamas and the Palestinian situation either. And for many of these people there’s only two sides of the coin.
It’s the paradox of tolerance all over again…there is no right way to do it, all ways to get over this are going to be messy and probably also a bit violent. Free speech also only works, if people are willing to accept different opinions. Which is increasingly difficult with the rising extremism.
That also means that stifling some things is necessary, because free speech isn’t absolute. There are things that are simply not covered by free speech, because it goes against every value or believes. Sometimes it’s also instigating…and we’re back at the paradox of tolerance. To be tolerant of different values and free speech, some things have to not be tolerated.
