Foreign policy is not for the people
The German public and German Officialdom are not on the same Israel page.
If you are following recent events in Germany, you probably know it’s not a great time for free expression and critical writing. That makes it an extra great time for independent support!
They say you get the government you deserve, but on the world stage German Officialdom seems to be doing a disservice to the public it claims to represent. November’s DeutschlandTREND is out — the first since Israel’s failure to prevent Hamas’ horrific attack — and the results are remarkable for how far they fall from official rhetoric.
Ordinary Germans appear to have a more nuanced understanding of both the current carnage as well as their own history than most of their media and political institutions. One should always be skeptical of polling data, of course, but as far as polls go DeutschlandTREND is a pretty reliable one. It’s been coming out every month for just about forever. More broadly speaking, Germany is a fairly consistent place to poll.
Germans know a terror attack when they see one, and a country’s right to defend itself from/respond to it. More of them than not also know what “going too far” in that response looks like. And a lot of them — more than 60% — say Israel’s military action is “unjustified” in light of the unprecedented death and destruction it has brought to civilians in Gaza.
“Responsibility” is a tricky thing to assess and depends a lot on where you want to start the story of conflict. Here, too, Germans look to get it about right. While nearly eight in ten say Hamas is responsible for the current situation that civilians in Gaza face, a solid majority also pin some or all the blame on Israel. That is a sensible take. In the acute view, no Hamas attack on Oct. 7, no ferocious response from Israel. Bring in the broader, how-we-got-here angle, and the victim-perpetrator dynamic gets a lot messier. Israel’s ability to cut off Gaza almost overnight reveals just how much power it wields over the territory’s two-plus million people.
Back in the ‘Schland, media reports and lawmakers appear unable to distinguish between the Israel-fueled antisemitism that has emerged in isolated outbursts of “emotion,” and the totality of state-driven antisemitism that led to Germany killing six million Jews. Sporadic celebration of death is disturbing, but surely the more dangerous knee-jerk reaction is German Officialdom’s. Without evidence, it quickly made up its mind about who is behind a handful of recent attacks on Jewish property — simultaneously relativizing the Holocaust, exacerbating Islamophobia, and possibly even exposing Germany to Russian disinformation.
Germans, by contrast, come off more circumspect. Only a slim majority agree with the statement that antisemitism is spreading in Germany. That is down seven points compared to figures from October 2019.
The numbers are particularly interesting when broken down by party affiliation. Greens and Social Democrat members are the most likely to see antisemitism on the march. A far smaller majority of conservative Christian Democrats share this view. That seems at odds with leader Friedrich Merz, who has made ample use of the xenophobic and Islamophobic dog whistles, and is ready to tie German citizenship to an Israel loyalty oath.
It must be especially embarrassing to share the spot with supporters of the socialist Left — the CDU’s nemesis that is most often accused of antisemitism due to anti-colonial and pro-Palestinian positions. When it comes to the state of antisemitism in Germany, the party that claims to stand the closest with Israel sees things the same as the one known for having the harshest criticism of Israel. Just 56% of each party agree antisemitism is spreading — hardly a resounding confirmation that it’s 1938 again.
(Always worth noting: The biggest threat to both Jews and Muslims in Germany isn’t each other, but far-right and white-supremacist groups.)
Perhaps one reason for the lack of general alarm is confusion over what exactly to be alarmed about. Germany’s domestic intelligence acknowledges that establishing a definition for violent “antisemitism” is anything but straightforward. Germany’s oft-quoted antisemitism reporting association, RIAS, suffers from similar methodological shortcomings as its counterpart in the United States.
Or perhaps it’s just that most Germans don’t know Jews so they wouldn’t see a problem even if there was one. Germany has never been home to a large Jewish population, which is as true today as it was before the Holocaust. Most contact happens at the political level for political purposes, which means German officials have little better read of things.
Awkward: