by Jonas Feller
Israel, which has recently been condemned by the UN Human Rights Council because of their war crimes (1), asks Germany to build them two new warships – for free. (2)
After the German chancellor Merkel argued in front of the US congress that “whoever threatens Israel, threatens us” (3), it seems as if Israel will get what it wants. This wouldn’t, however, be anything new: At the turn of the millennium, Germany financed three submarines spending 560 Million Euros on them. In 2012, there will two additional submarines, this time German tax payers will have to pay 333 Million Euros. (4)
If the German government is going to deliver weapons to Israel, they are therefore directly responsible for taking part in the Zionist terror against the Palestinians, the Lebanese and maybe against Syrians, Iranians next… While they are talking about peace and human rights, they are going to support a war criminal who uses disproportional violence, who uses illegal weapons, who abuses civilians as human shields, one who bombs UN buildings, who is responsible for the human catastrophe in Gaza and who threatens Lebanon to wage the next war against it. Every peace proposal has been successfully undermined by Israel, while they expand their illegal settlements and we hear their extremist politicians talking about “eradicating the Palestinians” (5) and denying their right to return.
If the German government is going to waste millions for Israel, they are also blameworthy by their own citizens, whom they should serve instead of racist war criminals. No matter whether one talks about child poverty, long-term unemployment, education and so on – there are lots of possibilities to use this huge sum in a reasonable way.
But maybe this scandal can be understood as a prospect. If the German government really finances the new warships, many people will ask why the Israeli killing machine is more important than all the citizens who are suffering from poverty. And maybe then we will witness signs of growing solidarity with the struggle of the people in the south. One can argue that the international boycott campaign against Israel marked the beginning of these times: Only one month after the Gaza massacre Zionist news agencies reported that exports of Israeli goods decreased by 21%. (6)
A broad movement needs to make this scandal public preventing the planned agreement to become reality. It’s the best thing one can try to do, whether one calls himself peace activist, Muslim, Socialist, Democrat, human rights activist or anti-Zionist. As Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor who had entered the Gaza strip during the Israeli war, recently said:
“We must be patient… history taught us that many empires that lasted for centuries had collapsed in the end… We must be optimistic because if we let down that means that we betrayed the Palestinian people.” (7)
(1) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8310754.stm
(2) http://www.thelocal.de/money/20091023-22775.html
(3) http://talkradionews.com/2009/11/chancellor-merkel-addresses-joint-sessi...
(4) http://wrmea.com/archives/December_2003/0312012.html
(5) http://palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article785
(6) http://angryarab.net/2009/03/30/boycott-works/
(7) http://www.uruknet.info/?new=60108