»We have the capability to take the world with us. And I can assure you that we will do that before Israel goes under.«**
And there it was again, today, in November 2024, in the daily newspaper, black on white: "Since October 7, 2023, anti-Semitism has been spreading at an unprecedented rate" – all over the world. That ominous October day, with the horrific slaughter of Israeli Jews and others by Hamas, a terrorist organization that calls itself a 'liberation movement' in Orwellian doublespeak, has become a wake-up call for a vehement lament for the dead: "The worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust".
Since then, at least in Germany, the immense fear of one's own horrific past has been haunting social life, discussions, and the media. Since that October 7, or rather, from that day on, it is incessantly proclaimed, 'anti-Semitism' has been running rampant through the multicultural societies of the West. And indeed, in the midst of the news storm from newspapers, TV media and the internet, one cannot avoid the impression that 'anti-Semitism', however one may define it, has now become a pastime for some Germans – and some immigrants to Germany. Whereby the term 'anti-Semitism' has now acquired such a colorful meaning that it only causes confusion for many people: for the increasing number of offical or self-proclaimed commissioners for the fight against anti-Semitism, as well as for representatives from politics, science and journalism.
A paradigm shift has taken place: while it was still reasonably clear what anti-Semitism meant in my childhood and youth shortly after the war and in the gradually emerging questions about the generation of perpetrators, namely hatred of Jews, extermination, exclusion of people of a different religion, language, culture and perhaps different appearance, this term has developed from its somewhat narrow biological framework into a broader institutional construct. Roughly and somewhat exaggeratedly speaking: a transition from the concrete human being to the abstract state. The "working definition of anti-Semitism" of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), adopted in Bucharest in 2016, is an eloquent testimony to this. The muddled explanation that "Israel as a Jewish collective" could well be the target of "Israel-related anti-Semitism" is increasingly being used to prove hostility towards Jews in general. The extended spectrum of victims, which has been declared in defense, now ranges from the Jewish people to the Jewish collective to the Jewish state. With one curious restriction: "However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic." The only question is who decides here what could be comparable.
The street fighting between Israeli soccer hooligans and Dutch hooligans in Amsterdam in November 2024 have given the transition of the victim from a people to a state a new quality of anti-Semitism; the Amsterdam days of violence have become an expanded point of reference for the definition of anti-Semitism. Thus, the Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar immediately rushed to the defense of his young, racist citizens in Amsterdam and proclaimed: "The new anti-Semitism has one goal: the destruction of the State of Israel." Immediately, voices were also heard in Israel demanding that the actions of the Dutch hooligans be characterized as "terrorism" and, consequently, a severe sentence be imposed. The "new anti-Semitism," now understood as a crime against the state of Israel. After the first reports of the street fighting in Amsterdam, leading Zionist politicians vied with each other in their eagerness to stir up the whole affair internationally for propaganda purposes: there was immediate talk of pogroms, Kristallnacht, Jew-hunting, and other historically charged terms. In addition to the foreign minister, even Prime Minister Netanyahu joined in the hastily created marketing campaign "We Jews are always the victims." The mayor of Amsterdam was besieged, as was the Dutch prime minister, and airplanes stood ready for the evacuation. Messages of solidarity came in from the United States, Germany, France, etc. And everywhere: not a word about the initiating violence of radical Israeli football fans, instead fake news from (almost) all angles of the Israeli disinformation battalions and their allies, which later turned out to be journalistic barrel bursts.
Interestingly, the internal reports of the cautious Amsterdam authorities and police paint a slightly different picture: the Israeli hooligans, some of whom were known to be right-wing extremists, were initially at least as involved in the outbreak of violence as the Dutch-Moroccan and Turkish youths from Amsterdam and vicinity. When asked, a spokeswoman for the police (ten days later on the evening news) hinted that among the rioters who could be identified from material on social media there were not only Dutch citizens but also some from Israel. Slogans such as "Fuck Palestine, the IDF will win" or chants with slogans like "There are no more schools in Gaza, all the children are dead. Olé, olé, olé," in concert with the burning of Palestinian flags and the destruction of taxis driven by Muslims, were provocations enough to fuel the violence.1 None of this in any way justifies violent actions against Jews, but this is not the 'Kristallnacht' that the pro-Semitic outcry wants to call up. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung at least was quick to present these facts to the German reader in an article. Meanwhile the internal report of the Amsterdam authorities stated: "What has happened in the last few days is the result of a toxic cocktail of anti-Semitism, hooliganism and anger over the war in Palestine and Israel, as well as in other countries in the Middle East." The liberal Israeli-Palestinian information site +972 ran the headline: "Weaponizing Jewish Fear from Tel Aviv to Amsterdam." In a commentary, the journalist Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz co-editor and one of the harshest critics of Israeli occupation policy, called the attempt to call any critique of Israel anti-Semitic "ridiculous and dishonest." If there is hatred towards Jews, then, according to Levy, it is mainly because the Jewish state has become embroiled in a brutal, devastating war or, as other critics say, has become a "pariah of the world community."
The assessment proclaimed by Israel and its Western European apologists, that these brawls are solely an expression of a "menacingly growing anti-Semitism," of course disregards the question of why something is actually growing. 'Old School' anti-Semitism has always existed in Germany, even after the Holocaust. The country just wallowed in its 'exemplary coping' under the guidance of the Allied victors – while old Nazi cadres quietly and secretly returned to office and dignity. The 'old anti-Semitism' democratized itself and established itself predominantly as a bourgeois-conservative mentality. The reasons for the recent increase in political initiatives against Israel obviously lie in the fact that the 'Jewish state' bluntly and brutally announces the expulsion of this population group from their ancestral settlement areas and also consistently carries it out. Such questions are at best only asked bashfully in the daily media hype. But they are not the core of a debate about this supposedly 'new anti-Semitism' and its causes.
The Shoah, the Holocaust, the final anti-Semitism of the Nazis hang like a warning sign over me and my generation. These topics have accompanied hundreds of thousands of people throughout their socialization, guided them politically and made them sensitive to the arrogance of racism, the hypocrisy of elites and the seductions of simple explanations of the world. Meanwhile, I feel – and I am not alone in this – with my back to the wall, almost powerless, surrounded by the propagandistic lies, especially from Israel's politics and military, senseless and stupid slogans like those of the 'German raison d'état' and unmistakable demands for solidarity with Israel. And lurking around every corner is someone like the Green Party informer in the matter of anti-Semitism Volker Beck, who can make one's life miserable and has proven so more than once. It is a staging following the dictum: the bigger the lie, the more invisible it becomes. The term anti-Semitism has become the currency for labelling people: By being accused or characterized as 'anti-Semitic' in public, people are stigmatized, branded an outsider almost without exception, as it may just the same apply to Jews and critical Israelis, who are objecting worldwide in large newspaper ads: "Not in our name!" The term anti-Semitism, which is now used without restraint, has developed from its original meaning into a word that primarily signals threat, intimidation and blackmail, and for some even social death.
That is why not everything is always said, why there are language bans or even just fear of putting one's foot in one's anti-Semitic mouth. Wolfgang Preikschat has taken a risk with this book, with this "self-assurance": to shed light on the background, to ask uncomfortable questions and, above all, to doubt the current explanatory models that are constantly being spread by interested parties. Simply the daring not to bow to this blackmail. Because these blackmail attempts will continue. In November 2024, holding a talk at the University of Heidelberg, in the presence of rectors and excellencies, the Israeli ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, delivered an address entitled "The New Middle East". In his lecture, the word 'Palestine' was only heard once in passing. Which is to say: "The New Middle East" ... without Palestine. The audience applauded approvingly, no protest. The blackmail brought about its effect.
A few days later, Benjamin Netanyahu castigated the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant against himself and his defence minister Gallant as 'anti-Semitic' - to the astonishment of an international audience. The career of this term in the highest echelons of international politics and international law seems unstoppable. But perhaps that is already its end. Because this permanent and one-sided expansion of the term, initiated by the Israel lobby, points directly to an inherent lack of substance: anti-Semitism as an ultimately purely instrumental form of defence against any criticism of Israel - without a substantive compass. Such conceptual (power) gimmicks do not actually help the really necessary fight against real hatred of Jews and minority agitation. On the contrary: they fundamentally sabotage this fight.
Blackmail only works if there is someone who can be blackmailed or who allows themselves to be blackmailed. Germany in particular is a compliant co-operation partner in this system. Its participation in the "theatre of reconciliation" between Jews and Germans (or Israel and Germany) as stated by Max Czollek1 - with all its political and economic side effects - can never really mitigate or even historicise German authorship of and guilt for the terrible crimes of National Socialism. There can be no "reparation" for this monstrosity. However, to stick to the genre, what is often forgotten, including by Czollek himself, in this stage production is the fact that not only Germany has an interest in appearing as a "positive hero", as chastened in this stage play, but that Israel, as the driving force and main actor, has also been able to take advantage of it for decades - economically, militarily and now even to the detriment of some Jews who do not want to support it. This way, the effective interlocking between the instrumental concept of anti-Semitism and a permanent threat of blackmail remains permanent.
Mario Damolin, January 2025
[*]Mario Damolin German documentary filmmaker and journalist. Damolin in 2010 accompanied the 'Ship-to-Gaza' flotilla with humanitarian aid and construction materials from Mediterranean ports that was raided by Israeli forces and ended with nine activists dead, several wounded, others taken into custody.
[**] Martin Levi van Creveld (Israeli professor at Hebrew University Jerusalem), Interview in the Elsevier Dutch weekly), no. 17 (27-4-2002).
[1]Max Czollek - Versöhnungstheater, München 2023; siehe auch: Michal Bodemann – Gedächtnistheater. Die jüdische Gemeinschaft und ihre deutsche Erfindung, Hamburg 1996