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Yves right here. Fascism has arrived in Europe. The crackdown on speech, right here in Germany in help of Palestinian rights, is intentionally thuggish and appears set solely to worsen.
By Yanis Varoufakis. Initially printed at his web site
The speech that I couldn’t ship as a result of German police burst into our Berlin venue to disband our Palestine Congress (Thirties fashion) earlier than I might deal with the assembly. Decide for yourselves the form of society Germany is turning into when its police bans the next phrases:
Mates,
Congratulations, and heartfelt thanks, for being right here, regardless of the threats, regardless of the ironclad police outdoors this venue, regardless of the panoply of the German press, regardless of the German state, regardless of the German political system that demonises you for being right here.
“Why a Palestinian Congress, Mr Varoufakis?”, a German journalist requested me not too long ago? As a result of, as Hanan Ashrawi as soon as stated: “We can’t depend on the silenced to inform us about their struggling.”
Right now, Ashrawi’s motive has grown depressingly stronger: As a result of we can’t depend on the silenced who’re additionally massacred and starved to inform us in regards to the massacres and the hunger.
However there’s one more reason too: As a result of a proud, an honest individuals, the individuals of Germany, are led down a deadly highway to a heartless society by being made to affiliate themselves with one other genocide carried out of their identify, with their complicity.
I’m neither Jewish nor Palestinian. However I’m extremely proud to be right here amongst Jews and Palestinians – to mix my voice for Peace and Common Human Rights with Jewish Voices for Peace and Common Human Rights – with Palestinian Voices for Peace and Common Human Rights. Being collectively, right here, at present, is proof that Coexistence is Not Solely Attainable – however that it’s right here! Already.
“Why not a Jewish Congress, Mr Varoufakis?”, the identical German journalist requested me, imagining that he was being good. I welcomed his query.
For if a single Jew is threatened, wherever, simply because he or she is Jewish, I shall put on the star of David on my lapel and provide my solidarity – no matter the price, no matter it takes.
So, let’s be clear: If Jews had been underneath assault, wherever on the earth, I might be the primary to canvass for a Jewish Congress during which to register our solidarity.
Equally, when Palestinians are massacred as a result of they’re Palestinians – underneath a dogma that to be useless and Palestinian they will need to have been… Hamas – I shall put on my keffiyeh and provide my solidarity no matter the price, no matter it takes.
Common Human Rights are both common or they imply nothing.
With this in thoughts, I answered the German journalist’s query with a couple of of my very own:
- Are 2 million Israeli Jews, who had been thrown out of their houses and into an open air jail 80 years in the past, nonetheless being saved in that open air jail, with out entry to the skin world, with minimal meals and water, no probability of a standard life, of travelling wherever, whereas bombed periodically for these 80 years? No.
- Are Israeli Jews being starved deliberately by a military of occupation, their kids writhing on the ground, screaming from starvation? No.
- Are there hundreds of Jewish injured kids no surviving dad and mom crawling via the rubble of what was once their houses? No.
- Are Israeli Jews being bombed by the world’s most refined planes and bombs at present? No.
- Are Israeli Jews experiencing full ecocide of what little land they’ll nonetheless name their very own, not one tree left underneath which to hunt shade or whose fruit to style? No.
- Are Israeli Jewish kids killed by snipers at present on the orders of a member-state of the UN? No.
- Are Israeli Jews pushed out of their houses by armed gangs at present? No.
- Is Israel preventing for its existence at present? No.
If the reply to any of those questions was sure, I might be collaborating in a Jewish Solidarity Congress at present.
Mates,
Right now, we’d have beloved to have an honest, democratic, mutually-respectful debate on learn how to carry Peace and Common Human Rights for everybody, Jews and Palestinians, Bedouins and Christians, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea with individuals who suppose in a different way to us.
Sadly, the entire of the German political system has determined to not enable this. In a joint assertion together with not simply the CDU-CSU or the FDP but in addition the SPD, the Greens and, remarkably, two leaders of Die Linke, Germany’s political spectrum joined forces to make sure that such a civilised debate, during which we might disagree agreeably, by no means takes place in Germany.
I say to them: You need to silence us. To ban us. To demonise us. To accuse us. You, due to this fact, depart us with no selection however to fulfill your ridiculous accusations with our personal rational accusations. You selected this. Not us.
- You accuse us of anti-Semitic hatred
- We accuse you of being the antisemite’s greatest pal by equating the appropriate of Israel to commit battle crimes with the appropriate of Israeli Jews to defend themselves.
- You accuse us of supporting terrorism
- We accuse you of equating respectable resistance to an Apartheid State with atrocities in opposition to civilians which I’ve at all times and can at all times condemn, whomever commits them – Palestinians, Jewish Settlers, my family, whomever.
- We accuse you of not recognising the obligation of the individuals of Gaza to tear down the Wall of the open jail they’ve been encased in for 80 years – and of equating this act of tearing down the Wall of Disgrace – which is not any extra defensible than the Berlin Wall was – with acts of terror.
- You accuse us of trivialising Hamas’ October seventh terror
- We accuse you of trivialising the 80 years of Israel’s ethnic cleaning of Palestinians and the erection of an ironclad Apartheid system throughout Israel-Palestine.
- We accuse you of trivialising Netanyahu’s long-term help of Hamas as a method of destroying the 2-State Resolution that you simply declare to favour.
- We accuse you of trivialising the unprecedented terror unleashed by the Israeli military on the individuals of Gaza, W. Financial institution and E. Jerusalem.
- You accuse the organisers of at present’s Congress that we’re, and I quote, “not inquisitive about speaking about prospects for peaceable coexistence within the Center East in opposition to the background of the battle in Gaza”. Are you severe? Have you ever misplaced your thoughts?
- We accuse you of supporting a German state that’s, after the USA, the most important provider of the weapons that the Netanyahu authorities makes use of to bloodbath Palestinians as a part of a Grand Plan to make a 2-State Resolution, and peaceable coexistence between Jews and Palestinians, inconceivable.
- We accuse you of by no means answering the pertinent query that each German should reply: How a lot Palestinian blood should stream earlier than your, justified, guilt over the Holocaust is washed away?
So, let’ s be clear: We’re right here, in Berlin, with our Palestinian Congress as a result of, not like the German political system and the German media, we condemn genocide and battle crimes no matter who’s perpetrating them. As a result of we oppose Apartheid within the land of Israel-Palestine regardless of who has the higher hand – simply as we opposed Apartheid within the American South or in South Africa. As a result of we stand for common human rights, freedom and equality amongst Jews, Palestinians, Bedouins and Christians within the Historic Land of Palestine.
And in order that we’re even clearer on the questions, respectable and malignant, that we should at all times be able to reply:
Do I condemn Hamas’ atrocities?
I condemn each single atrocity, whomever is the perpetrator or the sufferer. What I do not condemn is armed resistance to an Apartheid system designed as a part of a slow-burning, however inexorable, ethnic cleaning program. Put in a different way, I condemn each assault on civilians whereas, on the similar time, I rejoice anybody who dangers their life to TEAR DOWN THE WALL.
Is Israel not engaged in a battle for its very existence?
No, it isn’t. Israel is a nuclear-armed state with maybe probably the most technologically superior military on the earth and the panoply of the US navy machine having its again. There isn’t any symmetry with Hamas, a gaggle which might trigger severe harm to Israelis however which has no capability by any means to defeat Israel’s navy, and even to forestall Israel from persevering with to implement the sluggish genocide of Palestinians underneath the system of Apartheid that has been erected with long-standing US and EU help.
Are Israelis not justified to worry that Hamas desires to exterminate them?
In fact they’re! Jews have suffered a Holocaust that was preceded with pogroms and a deep-seated antisemitism permeating Europe and the Americas for hundreds of years. It’s only pure that Israelis stay in worry of a brand new pogrom if the Israeli military folds. Nevertheless, by imposing Apartheid on their neighbours, by treating them like sub-humans, the Israeli state is stoking the fires of antisemitism, is strengthening Palestinians and Israelis who simply need to annihilate one another and, ultimately, contributes to the terrible insecurity consuming Jews in Israel and the Diaspora. Apartheid in opposition to the Palestinians is the Israelis’ worst self-defence.
What about antisemitism?
It’s at all times a transparent and current hazard. And it should be eradicated, particularly amongst the ranks of the International Left and the Palestinians preventing for Palestinian civil liberties –around the globe.
Why don’t Palestinians pursue their goals by peaceable means?
They did. The PLO recognised Israel and renounced armed wrestle. And what did they get for it? Absolute humiliation and systematic ethnic cleaning. That’s what nurtured Hamas and elevated it the eyes of many Palestinians as the one different to a sluggish genocide underneath Israel’s Apartheid.
What must be achieved now? What would possibly carry Peace to Israel-Palestine?
- A right away ceasefire.
- The discharge of all hostages: Hamas’ and the hundreds held by Israel.
- A Peace Course of, underneath the UN, supported by a dedication by the Worldwide Neighborhood to finish Apartheid and to safeguard Equal Civil Liberties for All.
- As for what should exchange Apartheid, it’s as much as Israelis and Palestinians to determine between the 2-state resolution and the answer of a Single Federal Secular State.
Mates,
We’re right here as a result of vengeance is a lazy type of grief.
We’re right here to advertise not vengeance however Peace and Coexistence throughout Israel-Palestine.
We’re right here to inform German democrats, together with our former comrades of Die Linke, that they’ve lined themselves in disgrace lengthy sufficient – that two wrongs don’t one proper make – that permitting Israel to get away with battle crimes will not be going to ameliorate the legacy of Germany’s crimes in opposition to the Jewish Individuals.
Past at present’s Congress, now we have an obligation, in Germany, to vary the dialog. We now have an obligation to influence the overwhelming majority of respectable Germans on the market that common human rights is what issues. That By no means Once more means By no means Once more. For anybody, Jew, Palestinian, Ukrainian, Russian, Yemeni, Sudanese, Rwandan – for everybody, in all places.
On this context, I’m happy to announce that DiEM25’s German political celebration MERA25 will probably be on the poll paper within the European Parliament election this coming June – in search of the vote of German humanists who crave a Member of European Parliament representing Germany and calling out the EU’s complicity in genocide – a complicity that’s Europe’s biggest reward to the antisemites in Europe and past.
I salute you all and recommend we always remember that none of us are free if considered one of us is in chains.
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