A Sleazy Spectacle

Yesterday, 25 years years ago, on the fortieth anniversary of the end of WWII, Richard von Weizsäcker, then President of the Federal Republic of Germany, delivered a speech in an address to the German parliament that marked a new aera for the German public image: "May 8th was a day of liberation. It freed us all from the inhumane system of National Socialist rule." While this was, strictly speaking, true, that wasn't how most Germans saw it in 1945, so the message this speech was supposed to convey, namely that Germany had overcome its past of lies, silence, denial and repression, was plainly wrong. Apart from persecuted groups, political prisoners and concentration camps inmates, it is fair to say that virtually no one felt liberated and that the event was rather perceived as an anticlimax by the vast majority of Germans, an anticlimax which had caused, together with the demise of the state, that of their hopes and ambitions. The story of Germany since then has been one firmly assuring the world -- and themselves -- that Germans knew nothing or very little of what was happening around them and that they could have done nothing, even if they had known, anyway. This speech, no doubt given in good faith, delivered the ideological underpinning for that, so, although hailed as an important first step towards a new image, just gave the old rhetoric a new spin. The innocent German people had been hijacked by some evil, almost alien, force that went by the names of "Hitler" and "the Nazis". Austria and East Germany could even be less bothered with soul searching, hadn't they been, after all, according to their own interpretation of history, somehow been forcibly occupied by "Hitler's Germany" in the course leading to WWII.

Since then, "our past" has been, and is, shamelessly abused. For example, when Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer explained 1999 why he was in for sending German troops to Kosovo, it was with reference to the same "past" and who cared that this had been before a reason for Germany precisely not to send troops abroad: "No more Auschwitz, no more genocide, no more fascism", just as "our past" is, specifically disingenious, used as the excuse to side with Israel's enemies and to "stand with praise and censure at Israel's side as ethical probation officer to keep the victim from committing a second offence." Wolfgang Pohrt, who coined this priceless quote, went on saying that the Germans with their obsession with responsibility ("Verantwortungsfimmel") resemble a convicted child molester who thinks he is specifically qualified for a job as kindergarden teacher. All in the name of "our past".

Off my soapbox now and back to today's business. In the light of this, can somebody explain please what Merkel's business was to be in Moscow today? She looked even more incongruous than Hu Jintau and only marginally less so than the French troops. (And boy, DID they look incongruous! It was, after all, a victory parade.)

Either Germany lost the war and has still some responsibility to bear, then she had no business to be there, or the "Germans just needed to be freed from the inhumane system of National Socialist rule" spin has really won them all. But then, maybe it's REALLY just business and we'll have after Gazprom Gerd our very own Alfa Angie soon.

The Eternal Ugly German

Angela Merkel's visit to Israel predictably triggered off one of those unsavoury discussions about the German-Israeli relationships and two days ago, Liza posted 'Brief Guidelines for "Israel Critics"'. That reminded me of another case of this specific anencephalitis that only affects the German race and which had led an undisturbed life for several years on my harddisk.

Almost five years ago I got, among others, an email from an old American gentleman of German-Jewish origin. He had, in turn, gotten an email from a German girl, whom he had some time ago helped to get a place at an American college where she had studied for I have forgotten how long and I have forgotten as well what her subject was. The old gentleman was disturbed by the girl's views on the Middle East conflict and had asked some friends, whose knowledge of the matter he trusted, to send a reply with helpful information to "Dear B.".

The email of the girl was so utterly full of bull that I didn't send my reply to her directly -- I was too angry -- but to the old gentleman for some editing, which he failed to perform -- I have a hunch deliberately. The following is her text in the original, angrily interspersed with my reply, here in grey. I have edited some of my own typos and eliminated one specific expletive for publication here, otherwise, my reply is the one "Dear B." got.

Alright, here it goes:

What is wrong with being with the underdogs?
The Pals are not the underdogs, they are the aggressor.


The UN partitioned Palestine in 1947 and gave 55% of Palestine's land to the Jewish people.
Wrong. They gave 55% of the remaining 20% of "Palestine" (the British Mandate territory) to the Jews. 80% were given to Arabs already: Jordania. Jordania was intended as the Palestinian state before the Hashemites grabbed it, Jordania OUGHT TO BE the Palestinian state.


Within a year they had captured 78%.
They did indeed, but not exactly out of the blue. The Arabs rejected the partition, the Arabs declared war on the Jews, the Arabs lost. The Arabs paid with land. Not totally unusual after a lost war. Tough shit!


In 1948 the state of Israel was declared.
At least THAT is right.


Later Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Yes, they did that, 1967, and AGAIN not out of the blue, but after the Arabs had started a war AGAIN (the third time since 1947) and lost. AGAIN. Lose wars, pay with land, specifically when you've started the war in the first place. Probably difficult to understand for a German. We too had to learn it the hard way, so will the Arabs. One day. Hopefully.
By the way, it was ONLY THEN, after 1967, that the Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a "Palestinian people", two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.


Settlers were offered money to move into the occupied territories.
Well, so what? It was their land, wasn't it? Israel had won it after the Six Day War. Numerous legal authorities dispute the charge that settlements are "illegal." International law scholar Stephen Schwebel notes that a country acting in self-defense may seize and occupy territory when necessary to protect itself. Schwebel also observes that a state may require, as a condition for its withdrawal, security measures designed to ensure its citizens are not menaced again from that territory. Arabs are neither willing nor able to provide those.


Palestinian families were forced off their lands and driven into refugee camps.
In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. 68% left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.

Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.

The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries is estimated to be the same.

Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel.


Huge fences are built around the palestenian territories.
What fences (plural)? A (singular) fence is built now to keep out the terrorists. Israel has the right -- no, the OBLIGATION -- to defend herself and her citizens.

Just a couple of only too gladly overlooked facts about life in the territories:

During 20 years of Arab rule, Palestinian male life expectancy grew from 42 to 44. During the next 20 years of Israeli rule Palestinian male life expectancy grew from 44 to 63.

During 20 years of Arab rule, Palestinian female life expectancy grew from 45 to 46. During the next 20 years of Israeli rule Palestinian female life expectancy grew from 46 to 67.

During 20 years of Arab rule, Palestinian infant mortality rate decreased from 200 per thousand to 170 per thousand. During the next 20 years of Israeli rule Palestinian infant mortality rate decreased from 170 per thousand to 60 per thousand.

During 20 years of Arab rule, Palestinian death rate decreased from 21 per thousand to 19 per thousand. During next 20 years of Israeli rule Palestinian infant mortality rate decreased from 19 per thousand to 6 per thousand.

Before 1967, when Israel's "occupation" started, only 113 hospitals had been built in the territories. In 1989 Israel had helped establish more than three times that number to 387. Before 1967, only 23 Mother & Child Centers had been established, after 1989 about six times as many (135) .

Malaria, which had existed in the territories before 1967, was finally eliminated during the Israeli occupation.

Israel also more than tripled the number of Palestinian teachers and boosted the Palestinian educational system by establishing a number of universities. Among those universities were the College of Scientists (Abu Dis) - est. 1982, the College of Social Welfare (El Bira) - est. 1979, the College of Religion (Beit Hanina) - est. 1978 and the Islamic College in Hebron 1971.

This was not the only effect Israeli occupation had on the Palestinian education system and the Palestinian people. Before 1967 the percentage of illiterates on average had been 27.8% among men and among women even higher at 65.1%. By 1983 Israel had helped reduce illiteracy to only 13.5% among men and 38.9% among women.

Palestinians who continue to live in Israel do not have the same rights as Israelis and live as second-class citizens in their former homeland.
That is utter bullshit. Arabs have the full citizenship, the right to vote, they can become, and are, member of the Knesset.

And as far as the "homeland" myth is concerned, Arabs are not indigenous to "Palestine", they come from the Arab peninsula. But there was a constant presence of Jews in Palestine since time immemorial.

Mark Twain's account of his travel to the Holy Land is a fascinating read.

It is another only too gladly overlooked fact that Arab immigration occured together with Jewish immigration in the 19th and early 20th century and in even greater numbers. Neither the Ottoman census nor the Brits kept an exact account of the Arabs immigrants, whereas Jewish immigration was documented in detail.


I also think that the palestinian terrorism must be destroyed, but you must admit that many mistakes have been made beforehand.
And that were WHAT mistakes exactly? Apart from existing in the first place, that is.


After 9/11 Germany has shown its solidarity. Like Kennedy who said "Ich bin ein Berliner.", Schröder said "Heute sind wir alle Amerikaner."
Well he WOULD say that, wouldn't he? He could hardly dance in the streets and hand out candy like the Arabs did. He had to say SOMETHING and it didn't cost him much.


However, showing solidarity does not mean to give up one's own opinion.
No it doesn't. So?


Maybe Germans have sympathy for the palestinian because they know how it is to be on the "wrong" side.
"To be on the wrong side", that sounds like making a wrong choice of ally like, say, Italy did in WWII. Germans were not "on the wrong side" Germans WERE the wrong side, they CREATED the conflict, just as the Pals are the wrong side and created the ME conflict. They declared openly and unambiguously that their goal is not a "Palestinian state" but the extermination of Israel.


The US has always been on the "right" side - so they think at least.
And WHERE have they NOT been "on the right side"? (Just curious!)

Searching (unsuccessfully) for nuclear and chemical weapons in some parts of the world.
In WHICH parts of the world (plural) save Iraq?


However, there is no confusion over the extent and range of America's arsenal of nuclear and chemical weapons.
No. So???


Would the US government welcome weapons inspectors? Or Israel?
Is that girl out of her mind??? Israel and The United States are Western DEMOCRACIES, not some hellhole totalitarian states with a lunatic dictator at the wheel!


I think that Germany has the right to judge another government's politics even if its Israel or the US.
Who said it hasn't? In fact, Israel and the US are criticised here all the time, extensively and intensively by the vast majority of the media and damn unfairly to boot. So what a sort of statement is that? She's breaking down open doors!


The German government is not indifferent about the palestenian terrorism, but Sharon's politics are also not considered as right.
You don't say so!


Every German knows about German history. How could we forget! But I strongly believe that this burdens us even more responsibility to struggle for peace and humanity!
Here is what the Sociologist Wolfgang Pohrt said about German mentality, the "Michel Syndrome".

He coined the famous phrase that the Germans, as former perpetrators, feel that it is their duty to "stand with praise and censure at Israel's side as ethical probation officer to keep the victim from committing a second offence." He wrote, too, that the Germans with their obsession with responsibility (Verantwortungsfimmel) resemble a convicted child molester who thinks he is specifically qualified for a job as kindergarden teacher.

"Gerade wir als Deutsche", "Specifically we as Germans" refers to the obnoxious way to deal with their past as if it had entitled the Germans to some specific qualification to lecture all the world about all things humane.

If their past qualifies Germans for anything in particular it's to shut the fuck up!

This came from, mind you, a young woman qualified to teach at a German "Gymnasium", a grammar school, a teacher who is supposed to educate the future elite of our country.

My point is, of course, to expose the dogged, brainless antiamericanism and antisemitism (excuse me, anti-Zionism!) of a person who had, after all, spent some formative time in the U.S, to expose how somebody with a university education isn't better informed about something she allegedly feels so strongly about, but if it fits her agenda and is detrimental to Israel, knows her figures, so to say, down to the second decimal place behind the comma. Of course, the moronic reasoning without any attempt at a stringent argument is as embarrassing as telling as well.

But what REALLY got my goat was the clumsy English, the prolific use of the most hackneyed of clichès and the appalling sloppy spelling not even bothering with a spell checker or a thesaurus to look for a better choice of words, which shows that, when stupidity and rudeness meet head-on, something awful will come out.

Well, at least I had the final gratification of seeing "Dear B." being miffed mightily after reception of my (unedited) reply.

Happy Birthday, Israel!

A Nation of Middle East Affairs Experts

Although I'm cut off the Internet for the time being, I am following in the traditional media what is turning the collective German knickers in a knot right now.

No it is not the high unemployment rate, the general, and generally poor, state of the economics, nor the question how we will be able to go on funding a deluxe (And any German who has NOT suffered first-hand experience of the British NHS please shut up here!) health system. Neither of this. It is the German distress about and responsibility for the Jews, their manners, performance and conduct and how embarrassed we are if they are leaving a bad impression. We call that: "Our special relationship with Israel".

Here is my biased summary of the general mood in Germany, that of the man in the street, the politicians, the lobbyists, and, of course, the media who provide us with all this. If you think I'm exaggerating, you're wrong.

We are against Nationalism

We Germans are against nationalism. Look where it lead us! We learned our lesson! 70 years ago it was "Jews get out TO Palestine", which was a great mistake. Now it's "Jews get out OF Palestine!" As it ought to be. Zionism is, after all, the Jewish nationalism. And we are against nationalism. We are so much against it that we get all hot and bothered about a fifth-rate local conflict in a faraway tiny sliver of land with a death rate in the four-digit-range, when we don't give a damn about hundreds of thousands murdered in the Congo or elsewhere in Africa. There you see how objectionable we find nationalism. Of course, the "Palestinian" call for nationhood we find worthy of support because they are sure to snuff that troublesome Jewish nationalism. We are, after all, against nationalism.

We are anti-Fascists

We are anti-Fascists! We shudder at the thought of anything remotely "right wing extremist". Even if it isn't "right wing extremist". Then it still makes an excellent argument to discredit an unwanted opinion. We can prove that we are anti-Fascists. Aren't we suffering from collective insomnia over a party of little Nazi yobs that doesn't even manage to reach the magical 5 % of votes, after all? If that isn't proof enough that we are anti-Fascists, nothing is! And from this position of righteous anti-Fascism, we love to compare Israel's attempts at defending herself with Nazi-Germany because any crime committed by the Jews, real or perceived, makes us look a bit better and the Holocaust a smidgeon less awful. And don't you dare to call that antisemitic or clobber me with the Auschwitz-cosh! It just isn't allowed in Germany to tell the truth anymore! (In case you don't know, that is the politically correct version of that old Global Jewish Conspiracy thingy.) The Nazis hated the Jews. They were Fascists. We are anti-Fascists, so we can't be antisemitic per definitionem.

We are against occupation

We started WWII. We were occupiers. We have learned our lesson! We are against occupation! We specifically loath the fact that Israel "occupies" Palestinian territory, when the 50-year-long occupation of Tibet by China never worried us in the least. Or the previous occupation of the same territories by Egypt and Jordan until 1967, but generally, we are against occupation.

Of course we know that during 20 years of Arab rule in the territories male life expectancy grew from 42 to 44 and that during the next 20 years of Israeli rule male life expectancy grew from 44 to 63 and, correspondingly, female life expectancy from 45 to 46 and then from 46 to 67. That the Palestinian infant mortality rate decreased from 200 /00 to 170 /00 and during the next 20 years of Israeli rule from 170 /00 to 60 /00. That before 1967 113 hospitals had been in the territories whereas in 1989 that number was 387. That Malaria was finally eliminated during the Israeli "occupation". That before the Israeli "occupation" the percentage of illiterates had been roughly 27.8% among men and 65.1% among women. By 1983 illiteracy was reduced to 13.5% among men and 38.9% among women.

Of course we know all that. But did we say that we are FOR the Palestinians? We are AGAINST the occupation!

We have learned our lesson

We have learned our lesson from the war. We know what it means to be on the wrong side and it won't happen to us again. Ever! We know what it means to lose wars and WOW, weren't we graceful losers ourselves! Lose war, pay with land, specifically when you've started the war in the first place. A lesson as old as mankind's history. Nobody knows that quite like we do and how bitter it is. We've learned our lesson. That's why we are standing firmly at the Palestinians' side to make them understand that they, too, will have to … oh well, maybe not.

We are humanitarians

Another one of those examples of the UN's famous humanitarian efforts in the Middle East.

We are humanitarians. We'd never think murder is ever justified except when it's Jews that are murdered. Murderer of Jews have always the excuse that they are "desperate". Pals are very desperate, everybody says so, Kofi Annan too! Of course, Palestinian Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab societies out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, despite the vast Arab territory, but what does that matter? If it WOULD matter, they wouldn't be the only group of refugees worldwide who have that terrific special status with the UN. And carte blanche to kill Jews because the UN think that "despair" makes an excellent reason for that. And the UN can't be wrong or can they?

We are progressives

We Germans aren't reactionaries anymore. No! We are progressives now! No "kitchen church children" for our women anymore and we get our collective knickers in a knot about "gay rights" lest we may be called *shudder* "conservatives". We are progressives, wherever this progress thingy may lead to. We denounce the abuse of women and minorities. Everywhere! Specifically in the only country in the vast Middle East where they are not abused.

We are pacifists

We are pacifists. We have learned our lesson. We totally disagree with the use of military force. Anywhere. At any time. For any reason. Violence has never achieved anything. Well… yes, actually in history hardly any Evil has been brought down without it but who is interested in facts as long as the spirit is right. And here it is SO right! We will never get over the fact that those Americans used that bad bad violence against US to rid US of an Evil WE had fought so hard to retain. So who can blame us that we don't like it anymore. No, we are totally opposed to violence. Except against Israel.

Of course, for people with ethics as eminent as ours, even self-defence is out of question. If it isn't targeted at Jews, that is. Then it's "despair" and justified. And Israel's self-defence is excessive by virtue of being Jewish anyway. Jews should only settle the aggression against them through surrender. As they always did. As we used to know them. As we used to like them, in particular after they're dead. We deeply feel that it is our duty to stand with praise and censure at the Jews' side as ethical probation officer to keep them from committing a second offence.* Specifically we as Germans should be qualified to speak out about that. Who else, if not us?

*Wolfgang Pohrt's thoughts, not mine.

PostScript: Yesterday night, on the wireless (WDR 2), after detailed reporting of the killing of some [non-violent] Lebanese peasants who were just [peacefully and unsuspectingly] loading vegetables on a [non-military] truck when they were [out of the blue] hit by an Israeli projectile and who will, with some probability (Wasn't IDF-victim-extraordinaire Mohammed al Doura who famously "died in his father's arms" seen alive and well in Gaza lately?) turn out to be Hezbollah terrorists loading weapons on a armed vehicle (I may be wrong), a remarkable and previously unheard (at least by me) statement was made.

Please note, that the news of this station (sober, mainstream, public-owned) are listing each and every Arab casualty, including age, sex, and specific degree of defence- and blamelessness of the victim(s), whereas Israeli casualties are non-existent. Not to speak of the fact that Hezbollah is doing everything to let civilian casualties happen, whereas Israel is doing everything to avoid them. Or the fact that a frighteningly large majority of the Lebanese people support Hamas. I have given up to expect any knowledge of or interest in facts from the media quite a while ago.

However, at the end of the news report the presenter said something to the effect that Israel is suffering losses on a daily basis as well.

And here we were, thinking that those Jews are just having a ball killing innocent and helpless Arabs who want nothing but to live in peace with them.

Therefore, obviously, that needed spelling out.

A Coward's Conscience

Now, after finally nobody takes that embarrassing old goat David Irving seriously anymore, including his own wife and his brother, history revisionism has adopted a more acceptable and sophisticaded face.

We Europeans must never forget that we created the Middle East conflict
Justified criticism of Israeli policy needs to be informed by a sense of our own historical responsibility

Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday July 27, 2006
The Guardian

When and where did this war begin? Shortly after 9am local time on Wednesday July 12, when Hizbullah militants seized Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev - Israeli reservists on the last day of their tour of duty - in a cross-border raid into northern Israel? Friday June 9, when Israeli shells killed at least seven Palestinian civilians on a beach in the Gaza strip? January this year, when Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections, in a backhanded triumph for an American policy of supporting democratisation? 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon? 1979, with the Islamic revolution in Iran? 1948, with the creation of the state of Israel? Or how about Russia in the spring of 1881?
[…]
Yet observing European responses to the current conflict, I want to insist on Europe's own strong claim to be among the earliest causes. The Russian pogroms of 1881; the French mob chanting "à bas les juifs" as Captain Dreyfus was stripped of his epaulettes at the École Militaire; the festering anti-semitism of Austria around 1900, shaping the young Adolf Hitler; all the way to the Holocaust of European Jewry and the waves of anti-semitism that convulsed parts of Europe in its immediate aftermath. It was that history of increasingly radical European rejection, from the 1880s to the 1940s, that produced the driving force for political Zionism, Jewish emigration to Palestine and eventually the creation of the state of Israel.
[...]
Of course, this [the development of modern Zionism] is only one thread in perhaps the world's most complicated political tapestry; but it's a very important one. I don't think any European should speak or write about today's conflict in the Middle East without displaying some consciousness of our own historical responsibility. I'm afraid that some Europeans today do so speak and write; and I don't just mean the German rightwing extremists who marched through the town of Verden in Lower Saxony last Saturday, waving Iranian flags and chanting "Israel - international genocide centre". I also mean thinking people on the left, contributors to discussion threads on Guardian blogs and the like. Even as we criticise the way the Israeli military are killing Lebanese civilians and UN monitors in the name of recovering Ehud Goldwasser (and destroying the military infrastructure of Hizbullah), we must remember that all of this would almost certainly not be happening if some Europeans had not attempted, a few decades back, to remove everyone called Goldwasser from the face of Europe - if not the earth.

Let me be very clear what I mean. It does not follow from this terrible European history that Europeans must display uncritical solidarity with whatever the current government of Israel chooses to do, however violent or ill-advised. On the contrary, the true friend is the one who speaks up when you're making a mistake. It does not follow that we should sign up to the latest dangerous simplifications about a "third world war" against "an Iran-Syrian-Hizbullah-Hamas terrorist alliance" (according to the US Republican Newt Gingrich) or a "seamless totalitarian movement" of political Islamism (according to the Conservative MP and journalist Michael Gove).

It does not follow that every European who criticises Israel is a covert anti-semite, as some commentators in the United States tend to imply. And it certainly does not follow that we should be any less alert to the suffering of the Arabs, including the Palestinian Arabs who fled or were driven out of their homes at the founding of the state of Israel, and their descendants who grew up in refugee camps. The life of every single Lebanese killed or wounded by Israeli bombing is worth exactly as much as that of every Israeli killed or wounded by Hizbullah rocket attacks.

Does it follow that Europeans have a special obligation to get involved in trying to secure a peace settlement in which the state of Israel can live in secure frontiers next to a viable Palestinian state? I think it does. To be sure, since Europeans have one way or another affected almost every corner of the earth, such an argument from history could in theory take us everywhere - the legacy of European imperialism providing a universal moral excuse for European neo-imperialism. But the story of the Jews driven from their European homelands, and in their turn driving Palestinian Arabs from their homeland, is unique. Even if you don't accept this argument from historical and moral responsibility, Europe's vital interests are plainly at stake: oil, nuclear proliferation and the potential reaction among our alienated Muslim minorities, to name but three.
[...]
Yet the issue here is not just changing the realities on the ground in the Middle East. How Europeans speak and write about the position of the Jews in the region to which Europeans drove them is also a matter of our own self-definition. We should weigh every word.

Revisionist, self-flaggelating pseudo-reasoning like "we are responsible for the crisis in the Middle East" is usually bearing a German hallmark, but if it's opportune, an Englishman and, notabene, historian and Oxford don, happily takes up the whip as well should the circumstances call for it. And they do. BOY do they do!

The core deceit of this embarrassing, patronising history lesson by a man who surely knows better are two myths.

Myth number one is that Israel was founded because of the Holocaust, which is not true and easy to debunk:

In 1947, when the UNO decided to split up what little was left of Palestine (the bigger part had been already taken by the Hashemites and we know it as Jordania today), very little of the extent of the Holocaust was known.

Myth number two is that this was done at the cost of the Palestinian Arabs, which is a whopping lie but still needs a slightly more elaborate debunking effort. Alright, here is goes:

I wasn't a wave of strange European death camp survivors that had drowned Palestine post-1945 and ousted the Arab population. When the partition was declared (and rejected by the Arabs) there had been a functioning quasi-governmental infrastructure for the for a long time already under the authority of the Jewish Agency. The Brits had tried to encourage the Arabs to set up a similar governing body in preparation for statehood, but the Arabs were either unwilling or unable or both to do so. Had the Arabs not rejected the partition plan then, there would be nothing to fight over today.

So what about the European domination of the state of Israel, that strange body foisted on unsuspecting Arabs in the region?

The majority of Israel's Jewish population were and are Sephardim kicked out of the Arab countries and Iran. The property looted from these Sephardic Jews in those countries has been estimated to be worth $30 billion of which not a penny has ever been compensated. The entire considerable considerable Sephardic Jewish population of Iraq, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and other Arab countries (and Iran) "vanished" somehow after 1948 and was absorbed by Israel. No doubt, that was all because of Hitler and the European Holocaust.

The problem is not that Israel is not a Middle eastern country, the problem is that those Middle Easterners are Jews.

The Jews were not exactly imposed on the Arabs at any stage of history. Jews had always lived in the Holy Land "since time immemorial". The immigration from Jews from Eastern Europe started as early as the mid-to-late 19th century. They bought land at highly inflated prices from absentee Arab landowners. (B-O-U-G-H-T it! Land, mind you, nobody wanted and nobody cared for until the Jews bought it. Mark Twain's "Innocents Abroad" is quite an eye-opener here for those willing to see.

But hey, there HAD been many alien Ashkenazim immigrants from Eastern Europe driven by modern Zionism, hadn't there? What WAS the matter with those Jews from Eastern Europe? Why would "Europeans" want to settle in the swamps and deserts of Palestine?

The truth of the matter is that Jews were never treated as Europeans while they lived in Europe, but always as second-class foreigners (at best) or targets for genocide (at worst), even if they had been living there for a millenium or longer. There had been a short time of seemingly perfect Jewish "assimilation" to German society and we all know to what that had lead.

One can hardly have it both ways and call those Jews "Europeans" as soon as it suits one's agenda, when they have never been considered "Europeans" while living in Europe.

But, as we all know, antisemitism is a self-service shop.

The misconstrued responsibility Garton Ash claims is taken as a tool and an outlet for what the Sociologist Wolfgang Pohrt in a similar context said about similar and similarly embarrassing German attempts of dealing with the past. Pohrt dubbed it the "Michel Syndrome". The Germans, as former perpetrators, so Pohrt, feel that it is their duty to "stand with praise and censure at Israel's side as ethical probation officer to keep the victim from committing a second offence."

With their obsession with responsibility (Verantwortungsfimmel), Germans resemble "a convicted child molester who thinks he is specifically qualified for a job as kindergarden teacher", as Pohrt scathingly put it. "Gerade wir als Deutsche", "specifically we as Germans" is always the overture to one of those obnoxious attempts of sticking their meddlesome collective nose into things that shouldn't concern them, as if that past, of all things, had entitled the Germans with some specific qualification to lecture the world about all things human, good and noble.

Obviously, the "Michel Syndrome" is catching. So let's hand over to Garton Ash a whiff of what he is looking for, namely responsibility?

The Brits are not doing too badly as far as co-responsibility for the Holocaust goes, and even though they never got the opportunity, like other European countries, to deliver their Jews FOC railway loading bay to the eastbound trains, they DID refuse to bomb those railway lines because it might have cost them precious resources they couldn't be bothered to waste on Jews. They didn't bother to bomb the death camps themselves either because (listen good!) that might have "killed people". The fact that they sent back the pathetic boats with survivors of the German death camps to a grim fate in a concentration camp or to drown in the Mediterranean makes an excellent point in the case of "European responsibility", doesn't it, Garton Ash?

I know that isn't quite the way you wanted it, but now you're having it, what are you going to do with it?

Not too surprisingly and as any good little revisionist historian would do, you are turning that very accountability into a nice pretext for the same disgusting responsibility fixation from which the Germans are notoriously suffering. Its precondition is that there is a situation of equality in the Middle East conflict and that "we as Europeans" are therefore somehow not just responsible for the conduct and good manners of the Jews, but for the treatment of the Arabs, "victims" AS the Jews and OF the Jews, as well.

Good try!

If we as Europeans, and specifically we Brits and Germans, are responsible for anything, it is for having fed and furthered Arab antisemitism since before WWII and having armed even the most repulsive dictatorships in the region ever since.

But hey, don't let's forget that particular British resposibility for the abysmal management of the Palestine Mandate and specifically for the betrayal of the Jews when the Brits left Palestine and handed over the strategically important places to the Arabs, against all agreements and fully aware of what the Arabs were going to do to the Jews.

Here you are, Garton Ash! YOUR VERY OWN LITTLE BIT OF RESPONSIBILITY!

Now why isn't this Oxford don with impressive credentials in history, who can hardly claim ignorance as an excuse, grovelling about THAT?

Why isn't he whining about other parts of the world where European colonialism, for the most part that of the British brand, has left a host of angry Muslims? What about Pakistan? What about Indonesia and the Phillipines? Africa? Why doesn't he condemn Europe for their monstrous lack of interest that led to one million dead in Rwanda?

Go on! Do what you do so well: Grovel, cringe and squirm!

No?

Why not?

To cut things short, Garton Ash and big-mouthed, pompous phonies like him give an aviating fornication for the people in the Middle East, Jews and Arabs alike (or any other people, for that). It is just that any call for "responsibility" and hint of guilt is always handy for triggering off bitter resentment against the victims. That is a sad, but very real human mechanism and the comments following his drivel at the Al Guardian (are we amazed?), bear witness of it.

Why should he do that?

He says so himself. Weren't Europe experiencing such a colossal rising of Muslim influx, slimeballs like Garton Ash, who believe that the ogre Islam will devour them last if they behave like the nice little cowards they are, wouldn't dream of bothering us with such patronising and sanctimonious revisionist excrement and keep their antisemitism where it belongs -- at the dinner table.

And to make things easier, Mr. Double Barrel is even obliging enough to start his article with the long-busted Hamas lie about "Friday June 9, when Israeli shells killed at least seven Palestinian civilians on a beach in the Gaza strip" and thus removes the last doubt about where he stands.

Thanks at least for that!

Hat tip to Liza who provided me with the article and additional food for thought.

Pavlovian Dogs

From IRIS: Israel is shown in blue. Mauritania, Sudan and Somalia are somewhat cut off at the edge of the map.

Germans are suffering from an acquired reflex: Each and every time the word "Israel" resounds, they start slobbering and salivating. The tiny little sliver of land more than 3000 km away is the focal point and catalyst for everything that is great and good in Germany. Never mind hundreds of thousands killed in Sudan, never mind the decade-long occupation of Tibet by China, never mind the security wall that India has put up to protect itself against Pakistan and the millons of people involved in all this. Who cares? It's Israel that makes the German glands work overtime.

The examples of what Wolfgang Pohrt once called the "Michel Syndrome" (the Germans themselves call it "our special relationship with Israel"), namely the obsession to "stand with praise and censure at Israel's side as ethical probation officer to keep the victim from committing a second offence", are many. In fact, there are 564 hits for a Google search "besonderes Verhältnis" + Israel + Deutschland". A few freak matches and more than fivehundred moronic, hypocritical hits about how much Germany cares for Israel by siding with her deadly enemies.

This is coupled with a healthy sense of "Am Deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen" (The German Being Will Heal The World), even though we don't call it that anymore. But we feel deeply concerned and STILL know what is good for others, although we have learned and changed our methods.

Take Walter Kolbow, deputy chairman of the SPD (Socialdemocratic) parliamentary faction of the Bundestag who thinks that Israel has violated international law by invading the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Israel, according to Kolbow, should join negotiations "unconditionally" with a ceasefire and abandonment of all violence as the goal.

Hamas will LOVE that idea, Walter!

Thursday, Kolbow returned from a 4-day trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories., which had obviously served as a crash course and turned him into an expert. By the way, where were you, Walter, when the Pals bombed Sderot and kidnapped those soldiers? Wasn't that "against international law" as well?

Let's not forget that this is the same Kolbow, who wrote at his faction's website after Hamas had won the elections:

"Im Sinne eines friedlichen Zusammenlebens beider Völker und der dringend notwendigen Fortsetzung des Friedensprozesses ist zu wünschen, dass auf beiden Seiten Vernunft und Pragmatismus schnell die Oberhand gewinnen."

"On the grounds of a peaceful cohabitation of both peoples and the sorely needed
continuation of the peace process it is desirable, that on both sides common sense and pragmatism will prevail."

In the meantime, Hamas has proven impressively what they think of "common sense and pragmatism" and Kolbow and his ilk give a damn.

Of course, Kolbow is not a lonely caller in the desert. Minister for Foreign Aid Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, for example, condemned the Israeli "attacks" as "inacceptable from a point of view of international law, and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Saniora had a cosy twosome on the phone where they agreed to "push for a return to calm".

What that means is clear. "All powers in the region who are involved" are supposed now to "make an active contribution to de-escalation". Irrespective of their previous contributions to escalation, of course. After all, "proportionality" and "symmetric reactions" is what we need.

"It is necessary to break the spiral of violence," so Steinmayer, using a well-worn cliché. (I guess he couldn't help himself.)

What "spiral", Frank-Walter?

Some weeks ago, after Shimon Peres made it clear that Israel wasn't prepared to wait until Iran would follow through with their threat to create a Zionism-free world, the German newsmagazine FOCUS online dubbed the now famous headline: "Israel Threatens to Defend Herself", a nice Freudian slip.

The roles in the Middle East conflict are firmly cast in Germany, and Israel is the bad guy. Always, in any case.

And THAT is the "special relationship".

Child Molesters Comparing Notes

Germans made a fool of themselves once again. So what else is new? The Israel Hasbara Committee (www.infoisrael.net) inform us:

Hamas Minister Compromises Germany’s Position

By Anthony David Marks

(IHC News, 18 May 2006) Germany made very clear its policy about the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. It would not support or meet with any representative of the PA as long as they maintained their position not to recognize the State of Israel and not to honor past commitments of the previous Abbas-led PA.

Last month the EU decided to suspend all aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority until Hamas changes its position. This is the only way Hamas can effectively be pressured even though Arab countries and Iran have claimed, or Hamas has claimed on their behalf, that they will cover the Hamas-led Palestinian budget shortfall which, for all intents and purposes, is almost the entire budget. At present, Hamas is having great difficulty paying the salaries of 165,000 government employees. The Palestinian Authority has little or no income outside of aid money of one kind or another and this situation probably will not change in the near future. (The total population of the Palestinian Authority is around three million persons including children).

Representatives of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority are desperately looking for financial aid to prevent collapse of the Authority. They are eager to talk to anyone willing to talk to them. However, their positon is untenable. They want to maintain their policy of one day destroying the State of Israel and, at the same time, keep the aid money flowing to enable them to progress with such plans.

Sweden, a member of the twenty-five member EU, broke ranks with all other EU members to issue a visa to Palestinian Refugees Minister Atef Odman enabling him to travel freely around the EU countries of Europe and enter Germany against that country’s express wishes in order to meet with a German government official. This reportedly greatly annoyed German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

If nations do not maintain their current position on Hamas and gradually agree to recognize Hamas, then the result will be that they will have, in effect, agreed to recognize the policies of Hamas that are to destroy the State of Israel. Understandably, this would be a great embarrassment to the Republic of German that has worked so hard to try to right the wrongs of the past. It would undermine all of Germany’s efforts over the past sixty years.

No, not the Hamas Minister compromises Germany’s position, the Germans are very well able to do that all by themselves. Israel Hasbara Committee has yet to learn that the proud German tradition of working together with murderous Palestinian Arab scum has to be broken yet.

Hadj Amin el Husseini, self-appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, mass murderer of Jews, on Hitler's payroll since 1937, accomplice of Hitler in the Holocaust, honoured guest in Berlin during WWII (all expenses, hookers included, paid), founder of the SS Handzar division and post-war co-founder and President of the Arab League.

As early as 1933, Arab Nazi political groups started to rise their ugly heads throughout the Middle East, for example Young Egypt, led by Muslim Brotherhood member Gamal Abdel Nasser, later Egyptian President. Young Egypt’s political slogan "One Folk, One Party, One Leader" is a direct translation from the German.

1937 Hadj Amin el Husseini visits the German Consul in Jerusalem. He meets among others Adolf Eichmann, whose sense for keeping "Aryan" company must have a wee bit selective, to discuss "the Jewish question". Since then, he will receive financial and military aid from Nazi Germany. He spends the war safe and sound in Germany, all expenses paid by the Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt).

1942, Husseini intervenes personally with the Nazi High Command to refuse an offer by the Red Cross to exchange 10,000 Jewish children for German prisoners of war. The offer is refused and the children die in the gas chambers.

1943, he creates the Handzar Division of Muslim Soldiers in Bosnia, which is, with 26,000 soldiers, to become the largest division of the Third Reich military and participates actively in the genocide of the Serbians, Gipsies and Jews in Bosnia. The Muslim soldiers pledge allegiance to Nazi regime in an official statement drawn up by Heinrich Himmler. During the same year, Husseini is made "Prime Minister" of a Pan-Arab Government created by the Nazi regime. His headquarters are in Berlin.

Husseini and Himmler grow on each other. At his insistence. the "Mufti" is even given a private tour of Auschwitz death camp by Himmler, where he can see first-hand the murder of Europe’s Jews.

Heinrich Himmler, obviously another Nazi with a rather selective "Aryan" identity, informed Nazi chief propagandist Josef Goebbels: "[I] have nothing against Islam because it educates the men in this division for me and promises them heaven if they fight and are killed in action. A very practical and attractive religion for soldiers."

It was Himmler, too, who established and funded the "Islamische Zentralinstitut" in Dresden, with Husseini as head. The purpose was to create a generation of Muslim leaders that would continue to use Islam as a carrier for Nazi ideology into the 21st century.

Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt that the German Members of the Bundestag -- in the end, it were three lawmakers, one Social Democrat (SPD) and two Free Democrats (FDP) not one government official, whom the Hamas delegate met -- had neither genocidal intentions nor do they even know of the history I briefly sketched above. Yet it is more than just a, as SPIEGEL ONLINE dubbed it, "diplomatic slip-up".

As Henryk M. Broder puts it in his inimitable way:

What makes three MPs, against all decisions of the Federal Government and the EU talking to a Hamas-man and thus sanitising a "government" that may have been democratically elected, but in spite of that, or maybe exactly therefore, want to remain a terrorist gang?

If it wasn't admiration for a gangster in pinstripes, than it is sheer and undiluted bumbledom. What the USA, Russia, the EU, France, Germany, Egypt and a couple of other governments couldn't manage -- the three Members of the German Bundestag will fix it, namely to convince the Hamas to renounce terror and to recognise Israel.

Next, Addicks, Königshaus and Dzembritzki will meet representatives of the Medellin cartel to convince the drug lords only to deal in medicinal herbs in the future and transfer their profits to the Salvation Army.

The outstanding German blog Lizas Welt knows more:

By the way: The FDP-MPs Königshaus and Addicks are members of the Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft (DIG), but that is not contradictory in itself. Many people join that organisation to acquire a political clean bill ["Persilschein" used to be called the denazification certificate so freely issued after the war, because it "whitewashed" people, "Persil" being the household name for washing powder in German.] to fall foul of Israel even more effectively -- after all, it's only in the best interest of the Jew state if one talks to its enemies. And Dzembritzki is, among other things, chairman of the parlamentarian sub-committee for the United Nations, Unterausschuss "Vereinte Nationen", member of the parlamentarian committee for foreign affairs, Auswärtiger Ausschuss, deputy-chairman of the parlamentarian committee for international economical cooperation and development with the key-topic "Politics instead of War", "Politik statt Krieg", and speaker for the Forum "SPD & Religions of the SPD Berlin.

Happy inter-religious dialogue!

But seriously, "After all, it's only in the best interest of the Jew state if one talks to its enemies" sez Liza. Isn't that another classical case of what Wolfgang Pohrt called the "Michel Syndrome"?

Pohrt coined the famous phrase that the Germans, as former perpetrators, feel that it is their duty to "stand with praise and censure at Israel's side as ethical probation officer to keep the victim from committing a second offense." He wrote, too, that the Germans with their obsession with responsibility ("Verantwortungsfimmel") resemble a convicted child molester who thinks he is specifically qualified for a job as kindergarden teacher.

And, of course, compare notes with other child molesters.

---

Translation mine.

For further reference regarding Middle Eastern history go to:
Tell The Children The Truth
La bibliothèque proche-orientale.

For further information on how easily and gladly Germans are turned into useful idiots for the cause of Islam and specifically Palestinian Arab terror read my previous blog entries Barking up the Wrong Tree as an Art Form, Cacophony and Idealists Working together for a Higher Order.

Germans LOVE Jews

Red Army soldiers entered the grounds of the Auschwitz concentration camp on the afternoon of January 27, 1945.

No doubt, today we will have to suffer again all those disgusting lip-services that are deliverd with dogged monotony every year.

Will they help?

Well, let me digress a bit. Yesterday, Walter Kolbow, deputy chairman of the SPD (Socialdemocratic) parliamentary faction of the Bundestag wrote at his faction's website regarding the outcome of the elections for the PA:

"Im Sinne eines friedlichen Zusammenlebens beider Völker und der dringend notwendigen Fortsetzung des Friedensprozesses ist zu wünschen, dass auf beiden Seiten Vernunft und Pragmatismus schnell die Oberhand gewinnen."

"On the grounds of a peaceful cohabitation of both peoples and the sorely needed continuation of the peace process it is desirable, that on both sides common sense and pragmatism will prevail."

Blah blah blah blah...

But is it really JUST blah blah? There clearly is a message behind it. Yes, the pompous old coot is equalling Israel with the murderous -- ooops... make that "genocidal" -- Hamas scum!

The Palestinians voted for terror and genocide. Hamas has never been coy about its goal, namely Israel's destruction. A brief look at the Hamas Covenant makes that quite clear. And if Israel tries to defend herself she will be sabotaging the peace process, at least in the book of Kolbow and his ilk, i.e. the do-gooder majority.

Ah well... just another example of what Wolfgang Pohrt called the "Michel Syndrome", namely the German obsession to "stand with praise and censure at Israel's side as ethical probation officer to keep the victim from committing a second offence."

Pohrt wrote, too, that the Germans with their complex about responsibility ("Verantwortungsfimmel") resemble a convicted child molester who thinks he is specifically qualified for a job as kindergarden teacher.

Yes, we Germans DO have changed. We are no warmongers anymore, forget about "quick as whippets, tough as leather, hard as KRUPPsteel"!

But we have kept at least some of our better traditions. "Am Deutschen Wesen mag die Welt genesen" (German being shall heal the world) is still held in high esteem, we just don't call it that anymore. But we feel deeply concerned and STILL know what is good for others, what Wolgang Pohrt calls "Verantwortungsfimmel", but we have learned and changed our methods. We don't, of course, bloody our hands anymore.

Now we let others do the dirty work.

Happy Holocaust Memorial Day, Walter!

(And thanks to Gudrun who sent me the link to the text on the SPD parliamentary faction of the Bundestag website!)

Back to the Prussian three-class system of voting!

It pays to follow the Islamist media. This little gem is from IRNA, Islamic Republic News Agency:

The European Union Wednesday called on the Islamic Republic of Iran to resume talks to resolve the nuclear dispute and to forge a better relationship between the two sides.

''We urge Iran to come back to talks on long-term arrangements on the basis of the Paris agreement,'' Douglas Alexander, the British Minister of State for Europe told the European Parliament in Strasbourg during a debate on Iran Wednesday evening.
Alexander, whose country holds the current EU Presidency, said a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear programme should include an agreement on long term arrangements.
[...]
Angelika Beer, German Greens MEP and chair of the EP's delegation on Iran urged the Iranian leadership to play a positive role in the international community.

''Iran is a fascinating country with a young well-educated society,'' she said.

''We should not make the mistake of cutting off contacts with the civil society and slamming the door. We need to speak of rights and peaceful solution to disputes''...

...thus spake Beer and nobody laughed.




Fascinating with a young, well-educated society indeed. Hey, why don't watch a fascinating and well-educating stoning to death video!

That would be the same Angelika Beer who finds the delivery of two submarines to Israel "irresponsible", wouldn't it?

While spending her well-paid retirement in the European Parliament as a representative of the Greens, Beer, former "chairperson" of the Green Party, muses that Germany thus "jeopardizes her position as a neutral partner in the Middle East".

"With the unanimous decision of the old and the new government of Germany to deliver two more Dolphin-submarines," Beer informs us, "they torpedo in an irresponsible way the negotiations of EU 3 with Iran about their nuclear program."

By the way, my translation improved the original: «Mit der einvernehmlichen Entscheidung der alten und neuen Regierung Deutschlands, Israel zwei weitere Dolphin-U-Boote zu liefern, torpediert sie in unverantwortlicher Art und Weise die Verhandlungen der EU 3 mit Iran über dessen Nuklearprogramm.» WHO do "torpedo"? Can only be the old and the new government of Germany (plural), because they form the sentence article. So that should read then "sie torpedieren", "they torpedo", NOT "sie torpediert", "he/she/it torpedoes". But who cares about grammar as long as the spirit is right. And here, it is SO right, it makes me throwing up yesterday's breakfast!

I am not talking about that hypocritical, perverted "special relationship with Israel" Germans love to claim, which is more a sort of German masturbation icon tackled as, to paraphrase Wolgang Pohrt, with the typical German obsession with responsibility, comparable to a convicted child molester who thinks that his "experience" does qualify him specifically for a job as kindergarden teacher. No, I'm not talking about that.

I am not talking either JUST about the fact, that, in a case where the only democratic country with the rule of law in the Middle East stands with her back to the wall (or rather the sea) against the, to quote John Derbyshire, "howling, jeering forces of barbarism", a case of six million in a sliver of land against 22 million (give or take a few million, I am not petty) ready to kill at the spur of a moment as soon as that tiny slip of land shows a chink in its armour, that in such a case the phrase "neutral partner" rings a tiny wee little bit hollow.

I am not talking either about the fact that this deal was heavily sponsored by the German industry and those guys are not known for giving presents.

What I am talking about is that I'd wish back the times when the representatives of the people had a modicum of formal education and stood for their own, and, albeit egoistic, nevertheless SANE interests and not for some warm-and-fuzzy-feeling-of-one's-own-goodness-in-the-belly at best, a dangerous totalitarian ideology at worst. Beer is qualified to type legal documents or to clean a physician's instruments and should be allowed to make suggestions how to improve the filing system and that is where, in a sane society, her influence would end.

I say the times when political influence was limited to a person's actual importance and children had to present their fingernails for inspection on a regular basis had their decisive advantages!

The Editrix' Terminology

In alphabetical order:

Bullfrogs: American critics (usually from the religious right fringe or libertarians) of German/European circumstances of which they haven't bothered to acquire even the most basic of knowledge.

The term "bullfrog" refers to the inflating and mouthing appearance of the animal and, last but not least, to its obtuse-looking mien, thus aptly describing the self-righteous outrage of same critics over things that don't concern them and of which they haven't a clue.

----------

Dialie: Dia-lie stands for the dialogue/dialog with Muslims demanded by Gutmenschen.

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Fishwrap is a member of the media, of which I disapprove. It is, of course, purely metaphorical. One can not use the -- say -- BBC for anything useful, not even for wrapping fish, but it's still a fishwrap in our specific context.

----------

Fremdscham can be translated as "extrinsic shame". It is the feeling I am experiencing if somebody belonging to a group whose membership I, voluntarily or involuntarily, share (for example Germans, women or "conservatives") says something moronic.

It is a frequent occurrence.

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German with a migration background is the politically correct definition of a Turk or Arab with a German passport used by the German authorities and media. I am using it sarcastically.

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Gutmenschen: German term for that obnoxious brand of busybodies. The Goode family covers an important aspect, but only ONE aspect, of that kind, as the English term do-gooders is only a very inadequate translation. Gutmenschen are "outraged" (empört) and "concerned, dismayed and traumatised" (betroffen) at -- say -- the violent death of filthy dictators and their offspring when they never had any time for the victims of same dictators.

They are, too, prime examples of what the sociologist Wolfgang Pohrt once called the "Michel Syndrome" and which they are calling themselves "our special relationship with Israel", namely the obsession to "stand with praise and censure at Israel's side as ethical probation officer to keep the victim from committing a second offence" (Pohrt, translated by me).

This is coupled with a healthy sense of "Am Deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen" (The German Being Will Heal The World), even though they don't call it that anymore. They STILL know what is good for others, although they have changed their strategy.

America, not Saddam Hussein or Adolfdingbat are the source of all Evil, and their Kapitalismuskritik (critique of capitalism) invokes such quaint terms like Raubtierkapitalismus (predator capitalism) or "a swarm of locusts" for American investors. Those cherished traditional German idioms like "raffender/greedy" versus "schaffender/constructive" capitalism experience a happy revival under the reign of the Gutmenschen, only that the implications ("greedy" capitalism =Jewish, "constructive" capitalism =Aryan) are shunned. Yet and just.

In their personal relationships Gutmenschen are more often than not cold, unfeeling and ruthless.

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Gutmenschentum is the noun derived from Gutmensch.

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"it thinks": The playwrite Rainer Werner Fassbinder, in "Garbage, the City and Death", described antisemitism by letting his antisemitic protagonist say: "Es denkt in mir" -- "It thinks inside me." Fassbinder has been accused of antisemitism based on that play, however, that description is very apt.

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Ms.: If I am using that term myself and not quoting somebody else, it is an expression of contempt, as is the usage of the female suffix "-esse".

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Yobbofication: Yobbofication is derived from the English English epithet "yobbo". It describes the voluntary abandonment of everything that might be associated with traditionalism, good taste and dignity.

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By the way THIS may help to understand certain Germanisms.

A Torchlight Rally for Every Fart

There it is AGAIN! The German urge to have a torchlight rally for every fart in the true spirit of Hermann Goering:

New German Patriotism: The Road to Berlin Goes Via Baghdad
From Deutsche Welle 05.12.2003

George Bush may have hoped that a new national identity would emerge on the streets of Baghdad following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Instead, the war has helped forge a new kind of patriotism in Berlin.

Yes, Germany, having already undergone a transformation from dictatorship to democracy under American stewardship after World War II, is now being freed from the burdens of the past by the U.S. campaign to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. As strange as it may sound, Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq has made it okay to be German again.

Long averse to displays of patriotism due to the excesses and crimes of the Nazis, flag-waving outside of sporting events -- either real or figuratively -- has been largely taboo for this nation of 82 million. But now many young Germans have found new pride in the country's prominent role along with France and Russia in opposing the war in Iraq.

"I thought "wow" Germany stands for peace. It wasn't always that way, you know," explains the 23-year-old singer from Berlin who goes by the name Mieze. Inspired by recent events, she has written a love song -- not to a person, but to her home country. Only a few years ago, such a move could have quickly ended the career of a promising musician in Germany.

A new Fatherland

But instead of rejecting the Fatherland as left-leaning German youth have done for decades, a brave group of pioneers has begun to embrace a new concept of patriotism rooted in pacifism, tolerance and human rights. And as the idea of a liberal and modern Fatherland spreads, so too are the colors of the German flag -- black, red and gold -- beginning to show up in different aspects of society including fashion and music.

The movement, if it can be called that, has proven to be a boon for Cologne-based fashion designer Eva Gronbach, who for the past couple of years has created collections integrating black, red and gold along with other national symbols such as the German eagle. Far from just tapping into a growing trend, Gronbach's inspiration for the designs come from her own personal reconciliation with her country.

After fleeing Germany to study and work in London and Paris, she eventually began to see her own vision of her country was as outdated as that of many foreigners. The traditionally conservative images of the country did not represent modern Germany's open and tolerant multicultural society, and staid Teutonic stereotypes had nothing in common with the country's hip electronic music scene.

"People may now accuse me of just having a clever marketing strategy, but it's a very personal and very honest thing for me," Gronbach told DW-WORLD.

Turning down a job with Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto in Paris, she returned home to create a collection entitled "Declaration of Love to Germany" with nationally colored items for both men and women.

"I used to find the colors ugly," said Gronbach. "But I thought maybe I could consciously change what they mean to me personally."

Breaking taboos

But breaking the taboo was not easy. She described how terrified she was when she first wore her designs on the street a few years ago. Now, with more and more of her generation rethinking what it means to be German, her designs are appearing not only on stylish people on the street, but also the cover of glossy national magazines.
[...]
Back in Berlin, Mieze's band Mia have chosen to splash black, red and gold across the cover of their latest album and the singer even uses the colors metaphorically in some of her song lyrics to describe how her own relationship to her country has changed over the past year.
[...]
The song also addresses the frequent self-loathing that many young Germans experience growing up in the shadow of the country's Nazi past and how half a century later things may finally be changing: "If someone asks me now where I'm from/I no longer feel sorry for myself/I'll risk something for love/I feel as if I'm ready."

Well, what can one expect from a people that can't be bothered to protect themselves against their own criminals, which is bad enough, but calls that "designing one's privacy laws to prevent an all-knowing totalitarian state from ever emerging again" and thus turns politically correct cowardice into an ethical achievement?

And they can't be just plain silly, fatuous or tasteless like anybody else, no, they've got to call it "new patriotism" and make it ANOTHER great effort of dealing with their murky past. Oh yes, the young generation suffered soooooo heavily because they always had to feel sorry for themselves. But now they are OVER it! AT LAST!

And they really HAVE changed. They are all humanists, progressives, pacifists now! They are "terrified" when somebody wears "patriotic clothes" in public. Seriously. And they teach the world what goodness is all about. And all that with the zealous obsession about responsibility that makes them akin to a convicted child molester who thinks he is specifically qualified for a job as kindergarden teacher (what Wolfgang Pohrt called the "Michel Syndrome") .

"Specifically we as Germans", "We must never let it happen again", this obnoxious way to handle the past really serves as an excuse for every fatuous whim and foible as well as for serious ethical shortcomings. They know now where they are from, they no longer feel sorry for themselves, they risk something for love (whatever that is) and they feel as if they're ready.

For what? Silly question. Making "hip" music and designing execrable clothes, of course (I wonder about the stylish people on the street, surely NOT Germans, are they...?) and selling that as a historic accomplishment.

But let's be fair, knowing we are talking about Germans, it could be MUCH worse, couldn't it?

Having learned "under American stewardship" what evil is, they are now finding fighting evil instead of fighting Evil.

If their past qualifies Germans for anything in particular it's to keep their traps tightly shut.