This article was automatically translated and the translation checked by the author. The original article in French can be found here
Die Staatsräson (fr) (and wiki en), the German reason of state, nowadays means little more than unconditional support for Israel. Supposed to be the epitome of the lessons learned from the Nazi genocides and German repentance, this term serves almost exclusively to mark as constitutive of the German state its obligation to support Israel and in this case to impose on everyone the principle that Germany must always support the Israeli government.
An article in Deutsche Welle (DW) deals with the Staatsräson in such a biased manner that another article had to correct it. In the first, DW quotes an "expert" claiming that defining unconditional support for the current Israeli government as a raison d'état is a "smart move." It also contains this preposterous claim from DW (written by William Noah Glucroft):
"Freedom of speech is enshrined in Germany's Basic Law, which acts as the country's constitution. Pro-Palestinian protests have been banned and other forms of expression curtailed in accordance with Germany's criminal code that outlaws statements "approving criminal acts" or fomenting unrest. It is a delicate balance of competing interests, though how a state manages its obligations to those living within its borders is a domestic affair."
France, of course, has no lessons to give in matters of colonial violence and crimes against humanity, but it is this German peculiarity that is the subject of this post. This State reason has recently been used to ban Jews from speaking , to decide on the expulsion of foreigners (including European citizens) (and here) from Germany, to banning the terms genocide and apartheid in demonstrations against the massacres in Gaza, to withdraw already awarded subsidies, to withdraw prizes from artists, to disinvite intellectuals (all this is included in a very well documented and sourced article, (in French) on the ujfp website)... However, it is in its application in foreign policy and for domestic political purposes that it is the most devastating.
Germany justifies this by the Staatsräson, its arms shipments to Israel in the midst of its genocidal enterprise, its defence of Israel before the court of justice against the accusation of genocide, its total and hermetic diplomatic cover for the occupier in Palestine, its economic support and the non-revocation of the Israel-EU Association Agreement (fr), and even its refusal to accept immigrants supposedly hostile to Gaza's butcher.
This position, which serves as recognition by Germany of its responsibility for the Nazi genocides and reparations to the Jews, is nevertheless paradoxical in more than one way. First, the Roma, also victims of genocide by the Nazis, do not have an equivalent status. Even when Germany acknowledges its responsibility for genocide, it is far from providing the same reparations to the victims, and even less so to the states where some of their descendants live. The Federal Republic has indeed accepted its guilt in the genocide of the Hereros and Namas, but reparations are another story, and it does not consider itself in any way indebted to Namibia and is absolutely not obliged to support it diplomatically.
The Maji-Maji were also killed in large numbers by the Germans, but these latter never acknowledged their responsibility in what had all the hallmarks of genocide except for official recognition. Germany was also involved in the Armenian genocide (not as the main culprit), but not as a Staatsräson in this case. Moreover, it is at least problematic that The lesson of genocides is support for any government of a state where a portion, however large, of the population identifies religiously or ethnically with the most numerous victims of those genocides. Thus, the German resolution is not "never again for anyone" but, "everything for Israel whatever it does". Of course, many Jews are not Israeli, some are anti-Zionist in the sense that they do not recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a state, or as a Jewish state, many are opposed to the genocidal intentions and actions of the Israeli army and state. Are they any less bearers of the memory of the 50% of European Jews (6 million) exterminated by the Nazis for all that? Israel is not an ethno-religiously homogeneous country, except to deny the nationality of the Druze, Christians, Bedouins, and Israeli Arabs. Why then, this confusion between the duty of remembrance and sole and unconditional support for any Israeli government? What is this State Court that decides what a Jewish woman is allowed to say ( and here)when Jews may not speak because they might say things that could be interpreted as contrary to this undefined reason of state?)? What is this implicit yet incontestable higher reason that would allow one to stop a UN rapporteur with a diplomatic passport (en)? It is neither defined nor translated into law.
But the worst is this fundamental error that would have it that being an accomplice of a state that claims to represent (the descendants of) victims has a legal and moral importance superior to the clearly legally founded and ethically widely shared reason of avoiding the perpetration or continuation of another genocide against a people identified as ethnically different. It is not I, here, who (re)introduces a racist argument but rather the Staatsräson itself in that it considers the right of a people to be protected from genocide as inferior to loyalty to a state (and to a government) even if it is guilty of this same genocide. Germany, in a total perversion of its historical responsibility, makes itself an accomplice in a new genocide and justifies itself by this abstruse principle which would impose on it unconditional support for any act of a government of a foreign state. Even when the acts in question have a genocidal character.
In a word, the Staatsräson engendered and served to justify German support for the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. While awareness of previous genocides involving Germany, and in particular the memory of the one committed against the Jews (6 million exterminated), should have pushed Germany to do everything possible to stop the one currently underway in Palestine, it is for racist reasons, once again, that this European country has become complicit in a new genocidal enterprise.
The European Union, already supporting Israel to the point of violating the law and the very text of the signed agreements, is still being diverted from the meagre efforts of more reasonable countries like Ireland and Spain by a Germany and a president of the commission who are completely misguided and subservient to the policy of the Israeli state.
edit: sign the petition to end Israel-European Union association agreement.