Germany – The Genocidal State!

In an online seminar on 5 March 2026, the Palestinian academic Abdaljawad Omar reflected on several universal insights, which have come to light as a result of the ongoing Genocide perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza. His second universal insight focused on a truth, which has always been there, but has only now come to light for everybody to see. Israel's brutality against the Palestinian people has, of course, always been there at least since the Nakba in 1948. It is now that it is openly permitted to act like a monster, attacking indiscriminately schools, hospitals, universities and locations of worship. However, it is not only permitted by the international order to carry out these heinous acts considered by organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to constitute genocide. Israel is actually supported by Western countries. The liberal order committed to universal human rights has always only been partial. What many observers always knew can no longer be denied. While the liberal order pretends, the authoritarian order underneath the liberal mask does not. In view of the ongoing genocide, pretending is no longer possible. The mask has been removed and while the language remains the same, is still the language of the mask, everybody can now see through it. What does this imply for Germany and its continuing support of Israel?

 

In my view, the same argument can be related to Germany and its apparent ‘atonement’ for the Holocaust, the genocide committed by Nazi Germany against Jews and other groups of people in Europe during the Second World War. It was especially from the late 1960s onwards and then during the 1970s and 1980s that the Holocaust was increasingly subject in history lessons across several years at school in West Germany. The lesson taught was clear – Never Again was Germany to be involved in a genocide (see The Holocaust, Gaza and lessons from history).  

 

And yet, for years Germany had strongly supported Israel, considered to be a ‘lasting historical responsibility’. This has now fully come to light in Germany’s military and diplomatic support for Israel since October 7, 2023. Germany is Israel’s second largest arms supplier and it has regularly provided diplomatic cover for Israel at the international level. Not even a ban on all imports from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank is something the German government is willing to support. Respective moves at the EU level are currently held up by the German government’s insistence on an unanimous vote in this respect. Equally disturbing is the intention of German car manufacturers to move into defence production. There are reports that VW is in talks with the Israeli state-owned weapons manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defence Systems to repurpose its plant in Osnarbrück for the construction of components for Israel’s Iron Dome system.

 

Atonement for the Holocaust has become reduced to supporting the state of Israel. Atonement for one genocide has led to supporting another. Here too the mask has slipped and underneath the ghastly face of the genocidal state has been revealed. From the massacres of the Hereros and Nama people in Africa in the early 20th century via the Holocaust during the Second World War to the support of the genocide of the Palestinian people, there is a clear and direct connection. Germany emerges as a Genocidal State!

 

I am travelling on a local train in Southern Germany. At one of the stops, a group of young school children come on board. They see my Palestine pin. ‘Oh, you are supporting the Palestinian people. So do we.’ They are ten, eleven, perhaps twelve years old at most. It is these youngsters, who are the future of Germany. Free from personal involvement in the Holocaust and untainted by the ultimately misguided and failed attempt of atonement in school education during the 1970s and 1980s, they can see the onslaught on Gaza for what it is, a genocide life-streamed in real time. They are not distracted by masks and false appearances. They see it as it is and they respond accordingly in a human way. Nobody who cares to look cannot see the ongoing genocide. These children understand that solidarity with the Palestinian people can be the only response.  

Andreas Bieler

Professor of Political Economy

University of Nottingham/UK

Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk

20 July 2026