Since a couple of weeks, we have heard from many about the necessity of expressing themselves regarding what is “happening now in Gaza”. Arguments that seem to almost suggest that a new war has started are common even in radical or anarchist circles. Since the break out from Gaza took place, the Palestinian struggle for liberation has been suffering in Germany from being reduced to Hamas’ actions. The German State, political parties, and even sometimes our comrades, are very concerned about how far or close one can be towards Hamas’ ideas. But very little about the historical roots of an asymmetric war that has lasted more than 70 years is brought into discussion by these positions. An ongoing massacre of Palestinian people has been happening since the days of British colonialism, assisted by the establishment of an apartheid regime in an artificially created settler society.
Today, the need to condemn constructed horror stories, even when they have been already denied in the hegemonic media, still prevails in Germany. Instead of listening to voices from Palestine or their exiled communities, there is little resilience to the orientalist discourse that the state and the media are pushing, constructing the image of “the Arab” as the ultimate evil. This dynamic has been present in all so called “Wars on Terror” since 9/11, but it originated long before. Individuals and collectives, who have never been sympathizers of Hamas, today find themselves backed up against a wall, expected to follow the directives of a white german movement. First they must publicly declare their distance from Islamist ideas before being given the space to speak about their own political ideas about liberation from the colonial and fascist oppression of Israel.
The level of violence displayed in Berlin in the last few weeks cannot be explained merely as a reaction to the break out of Gaza. Students can be slapped by a teacher in school, people are facing brutal police violence in the streets, and demonstrations are systematically banned. Although anti-Semitism finds its greatest expressions in this territory, and we see it as our responsibility to fight the multiple expressions of white christian supremacy – be it Aiwagner, AFD, Reichsbürger or others – the German state deflects attention from this by accusing others. The idea of imported anti-Semitism is and remains a way for Germany to find a new demon of history and to push anti-Semitism from itself to Palestine in a historically revisionist way. The results are evident today. With the usual racist agitation, by constructing the idea that Palestinians are anti-Semitic by nature, the German state is trying to divide our class along ethnic and religious lines, as a smokescreen for the division between us and the gun-grabbers who are currently earning a lot of money from Rheinmetall shares.
In order to silence any resistance to the complicity between the german state and the Israeli military and its Zionist authorities, the well-known narrative of guilt is utilized, unfolding it like a transparent mantle over the people socialized in the territory controlled by the german state.
Only now, after over 100 years?!
The sea of contradictions in which war is immersed weighs heavily upon us. Since over 100 years, we see images of Palestinian people being murdered by colonial forces. Since over 100 years, we see images of Palestinian people being displaced from their own territories. Since the II Oslo Accord in 1995, we have witnessed how the narrative artillery of peacemaking attacks all forms of self-defense and self-determination, characterizing them as barbaric, zeal-driven, or uncivilized.
We are sick and tired of seeing tons of rubble in Gaza, after decades of bombardments by the Israeli forces. And it is with this feeling that we observe the fences of the biggest prison in the world being torn down. People in Gaza have been subjected to constant violence, violence which we cannot even imagine being inflicted upon our own bodies but have normalized for others. After all, normalizing the oppression of certain people is a necessity of the colonial capitalist world we still live in. This beast needs the colonized to remain silent, to passively obey. The german “left” also loves victims to “care for” to redeem their guilt.
What disturbs some people in Germany today, is not the violence in and of itself, and not all deaths are equally disturbing. We internalize the valuation of the deaths we can put faces to, while we do not care about the faceless ones. We accept the fact that some can mourn for their beloved ones, and bury them, and at the same time we simply accept the disappearance of thousands and thousands. What disturbs some people, mostly the ones in power, is the fact that those expected to remain passive are taking action on a path to liberation, and this is when the system finally shakes. Through their actions, people in Gaza are forcing us in central Europe, to stop navel-gazing and to take a position on their reality. Today, people who should be pursuing the Western developmental ideal, throw in our faces a reality that is at times difficult for us to understand. This gets us out of our heads, forcing us to leave the place of those who dictate discourse, who say what is of interest and what is not, and demands that we draw attention to a reality that we all profit from. Or do we still think that our well-being and economic stability in this country is independent of the slaughter of others in the Global South?
For many here, it is a blow to their ego, to be confronted by this reality, to be exposed as not having a clear stance. Because until today they could have been indifferent, like some of us were, but no longer. Taking a stance in this genocide should be easy for anyone. For us it is painful, contradictory, and exhausting, but necessary. War puts us in the position of not having any ready-made option to choose, but requires us to build positions of our own, or get sidelined…
Maybe this can be a chance for many to begin to understand what colonialism means also for people here, for our daily life and praxis, and therefore to walk on the path of anti-colonial fights.
Facing contradictions while remaining in solidarity.
Despite the contradictions mentioned above, we do not distance ourselves from our anti-militarist and anti-war convictions. It is clear to us that the war machinery and the market of death are never the path to liberation. We learned that the idea of white supremacist peace, in which only the military of UN-recognized nation states fights in occupied territories, is not peaceful. It is simply an ignorant idea, which is intended to take away the space for self-defense by monopolizing violence on a global scale. All deaths that have happened so far are awful, as are those happening today. That is why we want a struggle that ensures that no one else dies, or is marked for death because of their identity, and becomes just another number in a global statistic.
And we know for a fact that the regime’s politics, which are shaped by the Israeli military and supported by the Palestinian Authority that ruled this land from the 90s on, did not provide any fertile ground to a life in freedom, and wouldn’t do so in any possible future.
In recent days, the news repeats the position that Germany stands with Israel. Well the german state might, but we have shown in Sonnenallee, Potsdamer Platz, O-Platz… that we stand with Palestine.
From West Sahara to the mountains in Chiapas, from Wallmapu to the Kashmir Valley. From our hearts to Gaza, 48, and the West Bank, that is to say, to Palestine as a whole, we embrace self-organization and the self-determination of peoples. We greet those who are oppressed and rise up for other worlds, and who engage in dialogue through actions.
We stand side by side with the people facing repression. Let’s join Sonnenallee, and be in the streets in any way one chooses.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Rigaer 94
Source: Rigaer 94