This Friday, Hamas wants to incite Muslims in Germany, and in the medium term it wants to wipe out Israel. And we? Do we notice anything else?
Diabetics can lose limbs if they do not feel the progressive inflammation in the foot. This freedom from pain is called indolence. It’s comfortable at first, but it has consequences – you only see them when body parts die. Indolence towards the mass murder of Jews also means watching a part of us die.
This week, Hamas terrorists came a lot closer to their ultimate goal, the genocide of the Jews. But between the carnage and the global pogrom mood, there were flashes of morbid moments of relief. Maybe let’s start with those.
On the streets of the world, whether Berlin, London or Palma de Mallorca, it became normal overnight to scream hatred of Jews into the sky: Yallah, we are watching mass murder on stream! Palestinians and their Muslim allies are relieved here: a taboo has been broken, there are many of us.
“Yes!”, the daughter is dead
The Irish father, who lives in Israel, is relieved and is happy about the death of his little daughter. Happy because his daughter can’t be tortured in Gaza. “Yes!”, he thought, he says crying into the cameras.
The right-wing fringe is relieved that it is no longer about him and the Holocaust. Look, that’s where the danger is, with the Muslims, not in our old school bags! They are relieved when women with headscarves laugh brightly about the slaughter on television; they are relieved when women with headscarves give tips on how children at school sympathize with Hamas. Expel everyone! This is called political momentum.
Jews in Germany also feel something like morbid relief. Because the world now sees what it is like when people are surrounded by the desire for destruction. Because many people don’t know what it means when Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran completely destroy Israel and every single Jew. That means: That they want to destroy Israel and every single Jew.
“May her memory be a blessing”
On Thursday, many people were briefly morbidly relieved because CNN International reported it There would be no evidence of burnt babies beheaded by Hamas. Thousands of anti-Semites who had quickly turned into fact-checkers had previously asked on social media why there were no images of these atrocities. What a bizarre hope shone through there: baby murder, yes, but at least not beheaded!
The Israelis looked at the whole thing and did what they always do. They drew conclusions. So the picture became public after all, a photo of a charred, headless baby corpse. A newspaper stated sparsely: “The Jerusalem Post can now confirm, based on verified photos of the bodies, that the reports of burned and beheaded babies in the Hamas attack on Kfar Aza are accurate.” The paper also added a remarkable sentence, a formulation of the Jewish commemoration of the dead: “May their memory be a blessing.”
Israel knows the cruelty of the indifferent. Any ambivalence in the news, be it the way in which a baby was murdered, strengthens the attitude of the indifferent onlookers of the murder. Here’s why: That’s why, as the Jerusalem Post writes, the memory of a charred, decapitated baby can be “a blessing.” Indifference is the biggest threat to existence next to Palestinian murderers. The Israeli government is hammering home the message to the public on all channels: Hamas is ISIS, Hamas is ISIS, Hamas is ISIS – even worse.
Hamas is sexy, ISIS is not
This communication is based on a difficult realization: Hamas is sexy, the “Islamic State” is not. A dead person arouses compassion, a dead Jew only under certain circumstances. Only Islamists applauded the head-cutters of ISIS – for the head-cutters of Hamas, baklava was distributed on Neukölln’s Sonnenallee. So how bad can these people be, think the indifferent.
Germany is particularly vulnerable to sinking into this indifference. Some leftists are so afraid of the return of German fascism that they celebrate resistance indiscriminately, even when it is against Jews. They see Hamas as freedom fighters. Politicians who constantly tweet cannot bring themselves to express solidarity with Israel for days. Pro-Palestinian groups are particularly visible in universities. The golden boy of the anti-capitalist left, Yanis Varoufakis, explicitly refused to condemn Hamas.
In the guise of decolonialism, they consider the bloody reversal of world history to be a heroic goal. This also creates supposed ambivalence, in the shadow of which indifference flourishes.
Equally valid means indifferent
So while Jews are still dying in Israel, indifferent senior teachers are already pulling out the ruler of international law to measure the army’s reaction in Gaza. Because: Both are to blame! Both positions are equally valid! Journalists write “retaliation” instead of “defense” and “fighters” instead of “terrorists.”
Some kinds of indifference are quite subtle. A senior German Social Democrat official in the Chancellery applauds the performance of the St. Pauli football club in the ongoing massacre. It was, we read between testimonies about massacred Jews, apparently a “genius game.” Others who are overwhelmed shrug their shoulders because “those down there are banging their heads in again.”
Only this indifference can explain the fact that Hamas terrorists have been allowed to operate on German soil, despite constant warnings from Israel. This is the only way to explain why the main Muslim associations do not bring themselves to clearly condemn Palestinian terror – because no one is seriously demanding it.
It’s the indifferent who matter
So when terror sympathizers in German mosques rush to attack Jewish institutions and Jewish people this evening, it’s the indifferent people who matter. Not to the Israel friends who, after exploding anti-Semitism, usually gather at the Brandenburg Gate and stare with pressed lips at the fluttering Stars of David in the afternoon sun.
Indolence causes us to overlook the fact that the foot is rotting. Indolence leads to mass murder. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has recognized this. We must work together to ensure the safety of Jews in Germany, he said in the Bundestag. It sounded as unpassionate as always, one so desperately wants Joe Biden’s powerful speech. But Scholz was right with every word.
We need more pain in Germany. Because if it doesn’t finally hurt now, then we should delete the “never” from “never again” – and replace it with “occasionally”.