Germany supports genocide – again

Ali Abunimah Rights and Accountability 14 January 2024

A group of women in bright flowing dresses and hats walk amid trees

Herero people gather at the verge of the desert of Omaheke, Namibia, to commemorate the beginning of the German genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples a century earlier, 4 October 2015.

Juergen Baetz DPA

Namibia is hitting back hard at Germany’s decision to defend Israel’s genocide in Gaza at the World Court.

“On Namibian soil, Germany committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904-1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most inhumane and brutal conditions,” Hage Geingob, president of the southwest African nation, said on Saturday. “The German government is yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil.”

“In light of Germany’s inability to draw lessons from its horrific history,” Geingob sharply denounced Berlin’s “shocking decision” to reject “the morally upright indictment brought forward by South Africa before the International Court of Justice that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”

“The German government has chosen to defend in the International Court of Justice the genocidal and gruesome acts of the Israeli government against innocent civilians in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories,” the Namibian leader said.

“Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations convention against genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza,” Geingob added.

Berlin’s support is far more than diplomatic and legal: Since Israel began its genocide in Gaza, Germany has boosted its arms exports to Tel Aviv tenfold.

President Geingob’s statement was posted on the Facebook and Twitter accounts linked from the official website of the Namibian presidency.

Unprecedented scale of killing

On Thursday, South Africa presented its powerful case at a public hearing at the International Court of Justice – also known as the World Court – in The Hague.

Israel responded on Friday with a litany of lies, distortions and excuses for its mass extermination of Palestinians that has so far killed more than 23,000 people, wounded tens of thousands more and systematically destroyed Gaza’s healthcare system and other civilian infrastructure.

Thousands more are missing under the rubble.

“Israel’s military is killing Palestinians at an average rate of 250 people a day which massively exceeds the daily death toll of any other major conflict of recent years,” Oxfam said last week.

The number of average deaths per day in Gaza is significantly higher than any recent major armed conflict including Syria (96.5 deaths per day), Sudan (51.6), Iraq (50.8), Ukraine (43.9) Afghanistan (23.8) and Yemen (15.8), according to the UK-based charity.

“On top of the already horrific death toll, many more people could die from hunger, preventable diseases, diarrhea and cold,” Oxfam added.

“It is unimaginable that the international community is watching the deadliest rate of conflict of the 21st century unfold, while continuously blocking calls for a ceasefire,” Oxfam said.

Germany backs genocide – again

And yet, on the same day Israel’s representatives denied this deliberately engineered reality before the ICJ judges, Germany rejected South Africa’s genocide case against Israel as “unfounded” and vowed to intervene in the legal proceedings in support of Tel Aviv.

Namibia’s President Geingob urged Berlin “to reconsider its untimely decision to intervene as a third-party in defense and support of the genocidal acts of Israel before the International Court of Justice.”

Namibia has other good reasons to grant the International Court of Justice the respect Germany denies it.

The court’s 1971 decision that apartheid South Africa’s occupation of Namibia was illegal is seen as a key moment in Namibia’s long struggle for freedom from the barbarity of European colonial rule – finally achieved with independence from the Israel-allied white supremacist Pretoria regime in 1990.

German genocide in Africa

While Germany is best known for its genocide of millions of European Jews, Roma and others during World War II, this was not its first genocide – as President Geingob reminded Berlin.

In the early 20th century, German settler-colonialists carried out extermination campaigns in several parts of Africa.

“In Tanganyika, between 1891 and 1898 the Germans killed upwards of 150,000 Wahehe who had revolted against German colonialism, and in Namibia between 1904 and 1907, they killed at least 65,000 Hereros (about 75-80 percent of the Herero population), and 10,000 Namas (35-50 percent of the Nama population),” Columbia University professor Joseph Massad notes.

Germany has made unconditional support for Israel – including supplying arms and paying billions of dollars – central to its identity and state policy, and Berlin continues to violently repress any expressions of support for Palestinians.

Notably, Germany considers its vast support for Israel to be “reparations” for the Holocaust, even though Israel did not exist at the time and was not the victim. It was European Jews, citizens of European countries, who were the victims of the genocidal German government and its collaborating European partners during World War II.

The German “reparations” and weapons supplied to Israel since the 1950s have enabled Israel to further dispossess and colonize Palestinians from their land, and now to perpetrate genocide against them.

But it is only the German state’s anti-Semitic equation of all Jews with Israel that allows this complicity with Tel Aviv’s crimes against the Indigenous people of Palestine to be marketed as “atonement” for Germany’s crimes against European Jews.

Little and late

Germany has belatedly acknowledged that its crimes in Namibia constituted genocide – an admission that came in the form of an “apology” in May 2021, more than a century after the fact.

But while committing a paltry $1.3 billion to “development” projects over 30 years, Germany is adamantly refusing to pay reparations to Namibia – a position Herero and Nama descendants of Germany’s genocide victims are challenging in court.

The so-called development aid pledged to Namibia by Germany averages to about $43 million per year, a tiny fraction of, say, the $8 billion Berlin has spent on weapons for Ukraine just since 2022.

Perhaps the best explanation for Germany’s racist double-standard towards Namibia, let alone its full support for the Zionist genocide in Palestine, remains the one provided by Aimé Césaire in his Discourse on Colonialism.

Césaire writes that before Europeans were the victims of Nazism, “they were its accomplices; and they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples.”

“That for Césaire the Nazi wars and holocaust were European colonialism turned inwards is true enough,” observes Massad. “But since the rehabilitation of Nazism’s victims as white people, Europe and its American accomplice would continue their Nazi policy of visiting horrors on non-white people around the world, on Korea, on Vietnam and Indochina, on Algeria, on Indonesia, on Central and South America, on Central and Southern Africa, on Palestine, on Iran and on Iraq and Afghanistan.”

This is why Germany perceives no contradiction between its constant self-flagellation over its past industrial scale murder of European Jews and its full support for Israel’s industrial scale murder of Palestinians today.

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Comments

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Shiva Shankar replied on

Germany is even more racist than france or the netherlands, and that is saying something.

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arne replied on

Shame on my government. But believe me, there are a lot of Germans who support the Palestinians.

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tom hall replied on

As is so often the case, ex-UK diplomat, loyal friend of Julian Assange and defender of the Palestinian people Craig Murray has identified the grotesque absurdity confronting us:

"While the court was in session, Germany has announced it will intervene in the substantial case to support Israel. They argue explicitly that, as the world’s greatest perpetrator of genocide, they are uniquely placed to judge. It is in effect a copyright claim. They are protecting Germany’s intellectual property in the art of genocide. Perhaps they might in future license genocide, or allow Israel to continue genocide on a franchise basis."

I urge readers to include Craig's blog in their catalog of sources.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

He's currently (and I hope temporarily) residing in Switzerland due to harassment by "anti-terrorism" police in the UK. His columns are invariably illuminating. Do check him out.

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Paul Greenwood replied on

Seibert was a TV journalist and Government press spokesman and now he is Germany’s prancing puppet in Israel

This is a good article and it is worth mentioning Hermann Goering’s Daddy in Namibia - Germany does seem “tollpatschig” as it fails to have any introspection before crassly marching forth into revulsion and self-destruction

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Frank replied on

According to January Poll (ZDF-Politbarometer) 61% of Germans think the high civilian death toll of the Israeli war on Gaza is not justified. About 25% are ok with it and the rest has no opinion. In light of the extremely one sided media coverage and the attempt to label solidarity and compassion with Palestinian People as antisemitic and pro Hamas this numbers are not so bad. Here the results in german (gaza was only a small part of it):
https://presseportal.zdf.de/pr...

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Ali Abunimah

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, now out from Haymarket Books.

Also wrote One Country: A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Opinions are mine alone.