The German state supports genocide against the Palestinians

For over three weeks Israel has been bombing Gaza. Over 8,000 people have been killed by the Israeli military and over 6,000 children injured. The videos of parents carrying the lifeless bodies of their bloodied children from the rubble of what used to be their home, are a daily phenomenon. 

After US president Joe Biden recently voiced doubt that the numbers of killed Palestinians is true saying, “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.” or as one TV pundit recently put it “the Arabs lie. That’s part of the culture”, the Palestinian health ministry published an extensive document listing all the names and ID numbers of the Palestinians killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.

Last week UN Secretary-General Guterres called for a ceasefire on humanitarian grounds. This was rejected by Greens foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, who claimed that Israel’s fight against “terrorism” demands that no ceasefire be set in place. 

In the UN Germany abstained from the vote on a humanitarian ceasefire. 120 nations voted for the ceasefire, 14 against and 45 abstained. Although Germany did not vote for the ceasefire, the Israeli ambassador to Germany as well as multiple Zionist German pundits critiqued the German state for not voting against the vote, saying that Germany must support Israel full-heartedly. 

German chancellor Olaf Scholz responded that Germany abstained when it was not able to achieve a resolution that does “justice to the situation”. He continued that the  “brutal, murderous aggression by Hamas that killed many people, children, babies, grandfathers and grandmothers […] cannot be accepted and we will clearly support Israel in defending its own security.”

The German state has reiterated once and again that it stands unconditionally on the side of Israel and that Israel has a right to self-defense. The “collateral damage” of 8,000 plus Palestinians being slaughtered, the genocide of Gaza, seems to be the “price” the German government is willing to pay for its imperialist interests in the region. 

But in Germany there is resistance to the German state’s stance on the ongoing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. Demonstrations in the last couple days have ranged from 12,000 in Berlin to 7,000 in Düsseldorf. 

Despite the mass state repressions (in forms of criminalization, police violence, demo bans, threatening deportations) against the Palestinian solidarity movement, many people refuse to be silenced in Germany. 

For the 4th of November a mass demonstration – organized by the Palestine Campaign together with the Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden (Jewish Voice for peace), Jewish Bund and Palestine Speaks – in Berlin is planned under the title “Free Palestine will not be canceled”. 

The Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists are supporting this call to demonstrate with many other organizations, among them German leftists like the organization Revolutionäre Linke. It is the duty of Leftists now to offer a clear alternative to the pro-genocidal positioning of the German state. The German reformist party, DIE LINKE has been incapable of doing so, voting for the banning of Palestinian organizations together with the fascist AfD in parliament this month. Leftists now must build broad united fronts against the criminalization of the Palestine solidarity movement and position themselves clearly against their own ruling class which is supporting the slaughter of Palestinains in Gaza as we speak.