I’ve lived in Germany for nearly a decade now, but the only people with whom I’ve ever been able to discuss the conflict in the Middle East are Israelis and Palestinians. Germans tend to cut off any attempt at constructive conversation with the much-favoured phrase that topic is much too complicated. As a result, the understandings I’ve reached about the geopolitical developments of the past three decades are the result of private conversations, safely tucked away from the judgmental eyes of a German society eager to lecture us on how any criticism of Israel is antisemitic.
I have also discovered that a transactional relationship defines the public representation of Jews in Germany – and it obscures the views of an unseen majority of Jewish people who don’t belong to communities financially supported by the German state, and don’t constantly emphasise the singular importance of unconditional loyalty to the state of Israel. Because of the enormous power the official institutions and communities wield, non-affiliated voices are often silenced or discredited, replaced by the louder ones of Germans whose Holocaust-guilt complexes cause them to fetishise Jewishness to the point of obsessive-compulsive embodiment.
