I’m as appalled as anyone here, but as someone who speaks German, follows German media and worked in Germany for several years, please stop with the misinformed “Germany supporting genocide again, I guess they never change hurr durr” bullshit.
Germans know their history and every kid is taught a deep shame of what past Germans had done. They feel they owe an infinitely large debt to all Jews for the horrors of the holocaust. They all still feel responsible.
There are laws against antisemitism. Again, this is reasonable for a country with this history. They don’t want any of this to come back, or to make a joke or justification of what happened. Joke about Nazis in public and you’ll find yourself in trouble immediately.
About the current events in Gaza. German media and politicians interpret criticism of Israel as coming from antisemitism, even if the criticism itself may be justified. They may not hear your arguments at all, if they think you’re just saying these things because of some secret antisemitic agenda. It’s not that there isn’t any criticism, but there is very little and it’s always surrounded with a lot of “I’m not antisemitic” qualifiers. You can say something about the Israeli government, but not about the existence of Israel itself. You can call the killing in Gaza terrible tragedy, but never a genocide. Public protest doesn’t do that kind of nuance, so it’s regarded as highly suspect. The chant “from the river to the sea” is tainted, so you can’t say it at all, regardless of intent, interpretation of its meaning, they will flat out stop you. In this sense, dialog is certainly difficult. Once you cross the line, they will dismiss anything after that as the ramblings of just another antisemite. It’s not possible to have the difficult conversations at all.
I’m not saying I agree with any of this, but this is how German society at large sees it. For me personally, zionism and Israel are harmful remnants of colonialist thinking that have no place in this century. Germany needs to grow up when it comes to their stance on Israel. Israel can’t keep oppressing Arabs the way they have. Peace can only come from trying to restore justice and that means equal rights for non-Jews, return of land, right to return of refugees, economic aid, etcetera.
Germany should look at South Africa, Northern Ireland and to their own German Unification as examples from history to follow, and admit their holocaust trauma is distorting their view of the current situation.