Transcription
There is hardly any country that is spoken about and discussed so emotionally in Germany as Israel. As soon as the name is mentioned, voices rise, arguments sharpen, fronts harden, and friendships come under pressure. On hardly any other foreign policy issue do many people seem to lose their composure so quickly. Why is that? Because, viewed purely objectively, Israel is such a small country. About 10 million inhabitants, smaller in area than Hesse. Not a world power, not an empire, not a giant. And yet, Israel occupies our public in an intensity that can hardly be explained by its size. I believe the reason lies much deeper. For many, Israel has long ceased to be just a state in the Middle East. Israel has become a projection surface for hopes, for fears, but above all for guilt, for ideologies, for political worldviews. When people talk about Israel, they often no longer talk only about Israel. They also talk a lot about themselves, because in many respects Israel does not fit into the worldview of many political milieus in Europe. Israel is a democratic state and at the same time highly militarized. Israel defends liberal freedoms and at the same time explicitly defines itself as the national state of the Jewish people. Israel is technologically highly modern and at the same time willing to spend enormous sums on defense. Israel is Western-influenced, but not willing to adopt every Western debate. And precisely this mixture irritates many people, especially in Europe, because Europe has given itself a different self-image in recent decades. We like to define ourselves through diplomacy, through dialogue, through restraint, through multilateral solutions, through moral language. There are good reasons for this. After two world wars, skepticism towards military power is quite understandable, but sometimes it leads to an attitude that fundamentally views strength with suspicion. The military seems suspicious, national pride seems backward-looking. Clear interests seem selfish. Confident demeanor seems arrogant. Israel, on the other hand, often sends precisely the opposite signals. Israel openly says: "Our first task is the survival of our state." Israel does not discuss for long. Once decisions are made, it acts. Israel does not first ask whether every international headline will be positive. It first asks whether its citizens are safe. One can certainly criticize individual decisions, and of course one must. Every democracy lives by it, after all. Israel's governments are often criticized within Israel at least as sharply as from abroad. But many debates in Europe do not seem to be about individual decisions. Rather, it seems that the very existence of a state that openly articulates national interests and is willing to enforce them militarily if necessary provokes a reaction. Of course, there are also understandable reasons for this. The Gaza war has caused immeasurable human suffering. This criticism belongs in every serious debate. Anyone who conceals it makes themselves unbelievable. At the same time, one must always name the perpetrator; it is Hamas, it is Palestinian terrorists. And equally problematic is the opposite development: that criticism of a government turns into a fundamental delegitimization of a state, that justified outrage over civilian casualties suddenly calls Israel's right to exist into question, that demonstrations no longer talk about concrete political decisions, but antisemitic slogans appear or terrorist organizations are relativized. And this development is real, and it is dangerous. I find one pattern particularly striking. We talk about many other states surprisingly soberly. Saudi Arabia, human rights problems. China, oppression of the Uyghurs. Iran, authoritarian regime. Russia, war of aggression. All correct. But these states are rarely discussed in Germany with the same emotional force as Israel. With Israel, every event seems to immediately become a total moral evaluation. Why? I believe it is because Israel challenges many political certainties simultaneously. It is a country of immigration and at the same time a nation-state. It is democratic and at the same time under constant security pressure. It is liberal and at the same time willing to use military force. These contradictions simply do not fit into a template, and there is something else added. In recent years, debates about Israel have changed significantly. Previously, they were primarily shaped by classic foreign policy positions. Today, images, narratives, and interpretations spread in seconds via social media, short videos, emotional snippets, dramatic images, often without context. Especially on social networks, serious information competes with targeted propaganda. Various actors try to influence public opinion. State bodies as well as extremist groups. Islamist organizations have been deliberately using the Middle East conflict for years for mobilization, fostering enmity, and recruitment. This of course does not mean that every position critical of Israel is Islamist. Quite the contrary, the vast majority of people who criticize Israel's government do so out of democratic and humanitarian motives. But it would be equally wrong to ignore that extremist actors try to instrumentalize precisely these debates for their own purposes. The only question is who then directs these emotions in which direction. Who explains the conflict? Who places it in a historical context? Who conceals certain information? Who ignores the crimes of Hamas? Who conceals the victims on the Israeli side? Who tells only half the story? Because it is precisely here that it is decided whether empathy leads to judgment or mere indignation. Israel, however, seems remarkably unimpressed by this, at least outwardly. Whether headlines are positive or negative often does not change Israel's security decisions at all. This also strikes many Europeans as strange. Some call it arrogance, others call it consistency. Still others would say that a state that has seen its existence threatened for decades inevitably develops a different list of priorities than a continent that has lived in relative security for generations. One does not have to share these priorities, but one should try to understand them. Perhaps therein lies the actual gain in knowledge from a debate about Israel. Israel acts like a mirror. Suddenly, fundamental political convictions become visible that otherwise remain hidden. How important is national self-determination to us? What role does military strength play? Can a democratic state be liberal and defensive at the same time? How do we deal with terror? How far does solidarity extend, and when does justified criticism become blanket rejection? Perhaps this is the positive effect of this difficult discussion. It forces us to examine our own convictions. Not every certainty withstands this examination. Not every ideological template explains reality. Precisely for this reason, we should be careful. Not all criticism of Israel is antisemitic, and not all defense of Israel is uncritical. Between these extremes lies the space for democratic debate, and we should defend this space with facts, with historical knowledge, with empathy for all civilian victims, and with the willingness to tolerate complex interrelationships. And for me, this is a very important realization. Israel will continue on its path. Europe will discuss it. The real question is therefore not how Israel deals with our criticism. The more exciting question is: What does our reaction actually say about ourselves, about our political reflexes, about our moral standards, [snort] about our willingness to distinguish between justified criticism, emotional outrage, and ideological reductionism? If we answer these questions honestly, the heated debate about Israel could even have something good about it. Not because we would then suddenly all agree, but because we would then learn to look more closely and think less in simple enemy images.