Firing footballer, banning protests, abstaining from ceasefire: What's wrong with Germany?
Having been on the wrong side of history once, the Germans are doing an encore with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the temple.
German football club Mainz terminated the contract of their striker Anwar El Ghazi after he posted a pro-Palestine message on his Instagram account in the aftermath of Israel’s ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza that has flattened entire neighbourhoods and killed over 10,000 people over half of them women and children.
Here’s the offending post that El Ghazi later deleted:
Witchhunted for a conscience
In his post, the Dutch footballer made perfectly reasonable comments about the depravity of cutting off water, food, and electricity supply for a population of 2.3 million people, nearly 50% of whom are children. His post also included references to the sheer disparity in power between Israel and the inhabitants of Gaza, the copious amounts of funding the Israelis are getting from their allies to continue their genocidal quest, the extensive fake information the Israelis are manufacturing to manage the narrative in their favour, and the Big Tech’s complicity in helping the Israelis continue their industrial-scale massacre through censorship of the other side.
El Ghazi ended his post with a slogan of Palestinian nationalism: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
The message didn’t go down well with his employer. The club swiftly suspended the player and, on 17 October, issued a statement, deeming his comments “unacceptable.”
Undeterred, El Ghazi posted another message on 27 October: “I condemn the killing of all innocent civilians in Palestine and Israel. My sympathies are with the innocent victims of this conflict, irrespective of their nationality. I am committed to a peaceful and integrated Middle East region. To the extent my previous statements on social media have been misunderstood, I would like to make clear that I stand for peace and humanity for all.”
The club later issued a statement on 1 November, saying that the player had shown remorse and would be welcomed back to the team. The statement read: “Given his commitment to upholding the club's values and the remorse shown, and in keeping with the club's culture of using mistakes as an opportunity to learn, Anwar El Ghazi will return to training and matchday-related activities with FSV Mainz 05 soon.”
However, the player distanced himself from the club’s statement, reiterating his stance from 27 October.
From Mainz’s perspective, El Ghazi had crossed the Rubicon. On 3 November, his contract would be terminated with immediate effect.
Despite losing employment for the apparent heinous crime of opposing an ongoing genocide, El Ghazi remained defiant in his stance. He posted another powerful message on his social media accounts: “‘Stand for what is right, even if it means standing alone.’ The loss of my livelihood is nothing when compared to the hell being unleashed on the innocent and vulnerable in Gaza #stopthekilling.”
Another player, Noussair Mazroui, who plays for the German champions Bayern Munich, similarly faced similar backlash for taking the side of the oppressed Palestinians. However, he managed to keep his job.
Double standards
Supporting the genocide of Gazans by the Israelis is perfectly fine in Germany.
Fans of a supposedly left-wing club, St. Pauli (based in Hamburg), brought a banner to a game with a rather tone-deaf message: “From Gaza to Glasgow — Fight AntiSemitism. Free Palestine from Hamas.” The insertion of Glasgow in the banner was a rather unsubtle dig at the Glaswegian club, Celtic, whose fans have been steadfast supporters of the occupied Palestinians, unfurling the Palestine flag at every opportunity.
The message from Germany is clear. It stands with the genocidal regime of Israel.
It is remarkable that just over a year ago, the German football league draped itself in the colours of the Ukrainian flag in opposition to Russia’s invasion of the country in 2022. Players from across teams wore Ukrainian colours on their armbands, held anti-war banners; fans in the stands chanted abuses against Vladimir Putin and Russia and sang songs about the bravery of Ukrainians and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The German football league — known as the Bundesliga — ran donation campaigns on its official website to support the Ukrainians. One of the posts on its website read: “The Russian attack on Ukraine leaves millions of innocent people fearing for their lives and homes. The horror of this has led to expressions of solidarity worldwide in the past few days, including from the world of sports. At the same time, many have expressed their willingness to help and asked how they can aid the people of Ukraine.”
The post ended with two hashtags: #BundesligaHelps and #StandWithUkraine.
And it was propped up by video messages from no less than 26 of its top players and managers, asking people to donate to Ukraine.
But no such solidarity is allowed when the victims of a genocidal campaign are non-white and non-European Palestinians and when the perpetrators of their genocide are Israelis. Let alone institutional support, if El Ghazi’s treatment is any indication, even individual support for the Palestinian cause is a veritable career suicide.
German backing for genocide
Soon after the attack of the Palestinian resistance fighters on 7 October, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz tweeted his support for Israel. In another tweet, the Chancellor wrote, “In solidarity with Israel” and accompanied his post with the Berlin landmark, the Brandenburg Gate, being lit up in the colours of the Israeli flag.
Soon, the German government was offering military support to Israel and “agreed to an Israeli request to use up to two of five Heron TP combat drones that are currently leased by the German military and were already in Israel for the training of German service people.”
As the Israelis have continued their industrial-scale slaughter of civilians in Gaza, the German government remains steadfast in its refusal to call for a ceasefire.
Criminalisation of pro-Palestine protests
But it has unleashed the full power of the state on another group: the pro-Palestine protesters.
In the immediate aftermath of the 7 October attacks, the German authorities moved swiftly to paint over a Palestinian flag that was painted on a monument near Sonnenallee, Berlin. Germany has all but banned all pro-Palestine protests. The chant that El Ghazi posted — “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — has been declared forbidden and indictable.
Police have violently cracked down on protests across major German cities and have variously used pepper spray, water cannons, and excessive force against the pro-Palestine protesters.
Attempts have been made to criminalise even traditional Palestinian clothing. Katharina Gunther-Wunsch, Berlin’s Senator for Education, instructed schools that they had the option to ban “pro-Palestinian symbols such as the keffiyeh.”
“I was even forbidden to walk inside the city for 24 hours because I was wearing a keffiyeh. There’s a crackdown on all pro-Palestinian voices across Germany, and in my opinion, they don’t want anybody to speak up about the crimes against humanity being committed by the Israeli state,” a Palestinian protest organiser told Al Jazeera.
The German government has no words of support for over 300,000 Palestinians who call Germany home and who have family members in Gaza whose lives are at risk as the indiscriminate bombing of the besieged strip by the Israelis continues.
Germany’s raison d’etre
Following the end of World War II and in acknowledgment of its role in the Holocaust, the German state has made unconditional support of Israel its raison d’etre, what it calls ‘Staatsraeson,’ or reason of state.
During a visit to Israel in October 2021, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel was unambiguous in telling her hosts what the “central topic of every German government” was. “I want to use this opportunity to emphasise that the topic of Israel's security will always be of central importance and a central topic of every German government,” she told then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
At another session during the same visit, she added: “The history of the Shoah (Holocaust) is a singular event for which we continue to bear responsibility in every phase of history, including in the future.”
The German commitment to atonement for its sins of the past has fast escalated into acts of committing sins against another oppressed group in the present.
And the lack of any introspection is striking.
While Germany continues to wholeheartedly support the Israeli occupation and repression of the Palestinians, it has taken active steps to criminalise all acts of resistance by the oppressed. Merkel’s party labelled the BDS movement — which promotes boycotts, divestments, and economic sanctions against Israel — antisemetic. Regional governments in Germany have equated BDS with Nazi policies.
Activists advocating in support of the BDS movement have been actively prosecuted by the German authorities. Even Jews, advocating for equal rights for the Israelis and Palestinians, aren’t safe from the German high-handedness. They have been subjects of smear campaigns and, ironically, labelled antisemites.
The German problem
Jewish American educator and culture critic Neil Postman, in a 1985 essay titled My German Question, attempted to diagnose the problem with Germany. He wrote: “As Germans flee from the first terror — a culture without a past — they recoil from the second — an American culture that offers them intimations and shadows of that which ruined them…They sense that they have imported a culture with little intellectual coherence, uninterested in its own traditions, and preoccupied with the creation of spectacle.”
“[D]oes this situation make Germany dangerous? I should think it does. A culture that is frightened to look back and contemptuous of the only future that seems to lie ahead must always be considered dangerous. As to when and where and to who, I do not know. But this much can be said: there can be no laying the past to rest, no embarking on a creative future, no peace of mind as long as the twin nemeses of dread and loathing hover over Germany.”
Having been on the wrong side of history once, the Germans are doing an encore with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the temple.
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after the war of 1940-45, the new German government took it upon themselves to atone for the holocaust and forever promised to defend Israel, the problem is to get out of a promise of their
own making and become a free nation again
Really disappointing developments.
Thanks for sharing this.