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Gaza war
German Israel policy under criticism: The desperation of the professors as a manifesto
A Palestinian family in front of destroyed buildings in Khan Yunis: Criticism of Israel’s actions is growing in Germany.
© Ramez Habboub/ABACA / Imago Images
More than 120 social scientists are protesting against the federal government’s Israel policy with a list of signatures. Your accusation: Germany could be complicit in war crimes. Is the mood changing?
If you ask Christine Binzel what prompted her to create a manifesto against the German one To write Israel policy, she answers: “Desperation is the motivation.” Binzel is a professor of economics with a focus on the Middle East at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg. She follows Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip out of personal and professional interest. She says: “Something is really wrong here.”
From Binzel’s point of view, the Israeli war after the Hamas attacks on October 7th soon ceased to be purely an anti-terror fight. Rather, the attacks were also directed against the civilian population. There were signals early on that “we should have reacted to,” says Binzel. Man – from their point of view, that is the federal government. Above all, war crimes must be labeled as war crimes wherever they are committed.
Together with Macartan Humphreys, politics professor at the Berlin Science Center (WZB), and Steffen Huck, professor of economics also at the WZB, Binzel wrote down her criticisms. The most important one: Germany is making itself a witness, if not an accomplice, to war crimes committed by the Israeli army in the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The three authors express this In their text, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) demand compliance with international law, but not to name any violations. “It is high time for the federal government to vehemently advocate for the universal application of international law and the protection of human rights, even if this means condemning and sanctioning the behavior of the current Israeli government,” it says.
Israel letter should be handed over to the federal government
It is the first manifesto by German scientists in connection with the Gaza war – and a significant sign of the growing criticism of pro-Israel politics in Germany.
Binzel, Humphreys and Huck are now collecting signatures. They spread their manifesto through the usual networks and are aimed at German social scientists at home and abroad and foreign social scientists at German universities. Shortly after Easter they had already collected more than 120 signatures.
The addressee of the letter is not the Israeli government, but the federal government. Above all, Binzel and her co-authors want to avoid Germany violating the values that it has represented since the founding of the Federal Republic after the Second World War. The letter will soon be handed over to the federal government.
“It’s high time to change course”
Unlike other critics of the Israeli war in open letters, the signatories also condemn the crimes of October 7th. “Hamas has carried out heinous attacks on civilians and continues to hold civilian hostages, including children. These and other actions violate international humanitarian law,” it said. This also explains “Germany’s largely unconditional political and military support” for the Israeli reaction. But the strategy of unconditional support for Israel failed. It is “high time to change course”.
The signatories criticize the federal government on several points. In this way, Germany is at least making itself a witness to war crimes. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic, the paper says. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), almost 2 million people have been displaced. “An estimated 100,000 people are dead, injured or missing, most of them children and women.” In addition, a large part of the civilian infrastructure, including many health and cultural facilities, was attacked and in many places literally razed to the ground.
However, the federal government “does not seem to recognize that this disaster is a man-made event and not an unavoidable or unforeseeable event,” the authors write. And then: “Israel has taken the horror in Gaza into account.” Evidence of war crimes since the beginning of the Israeli offensive has been documented not only by international observers, but even by the Israeli army itself. This situation requires “a clear identification and condemnation of the unlawful violence and destruction and the willingness to take measures that sanction and ideally prevent further violations of international law.”
Government is wasting international reputation
The second accusation is that the federal government is weakening international institutions contrary to its stated policy. As an example, the manifesto cites Germany’s statement on South Africa’s lawsuit against Israel before the International Criminal Court for genocide. The federal government had already declared that the allegations were invalid before the plaintiff presented evidence. “The question for Germany is: What price is it willing to impose on the international institutions it has supported so much in the past in order to protect Israel from criticism?”
The scientists also use historical examples from Vietnam and Northern Ireland, among others, to contradict the assumption that the extent of the Israeli attack and the high number of dead civilians are suitable for destroying Hamas. However, by supporting strategies that are not in line with its own goals, Germany is not living up to its historical responsibility. German politicians see Israel’s security as part of their raison d’être and partly interpreted this to mean that Germany must support the Israeli state even if it does not agree with its actions. However, this is not an effective strategy. Rather, it “risked German complicity in violations of international humanitarian law, with little to no prospects of improving Israel’s security in the medium to long term.”
In Binzel’s view, it’s not just about the immediate consequences in Germany’s relationship with Israel. Rather, the federal government is squandering international reputation that has grown over decades.