 Hello, hello, hello, and welcome. I'm Merron Khalili. We are DM25, a radical political movement for Europe, and this is another live discussion with our coordinating team, featuring subversive ideas you won't hear anywhere else. And today, once again, we're looking at Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, and specifically around the clampdown on pro-Palestinian voices in Germany. Now, we've covered what's happening in Palestine several times on these live streams, but let me first bring you up to date just quickly. Today, it's the 179th day of Israel's war on the people of Gaza in retaliation for the October 7th attacks by Hamas. The death toll is nearing 33,000 civilians, mostly women and children. Israel has now completely destroyed Gaza's largest hospital, an act that has produced some of the most gruesome images I've ever seen on social media of children with patients under the rubble. Just yesterday, Israel killed seven international aid workers who were delivering food to Gaza's starving population, and also yesterday in a move that seems designed to provoke a wider war, Israel has killed two prominent Iranian generals in an airstrike at the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Iran's president says this action will not go unanswered. But the enablers, the facilitators of all this horror and destruction are right here in Europe and in the US. They're the governments we pay taxes to. The politicians many of us may have voted in who continue to support Netanyahu's massacre of Palestinians and continue to supply him with the weapons to carry it out. And yet, protesting against their actions here in Europe and showing solidarity with the Palestinian cause is something that could get you in serious trouble. Nowhere more so than in Germany, which sees unconditional support for Israel as part of its moral reckoning for the Holocaust. Now, you'll remember the story of Iris Hefetz. We had her on the livestream back in November. She's an Israeli Jew who was taken into custody by police in Berlin back in November for calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza in a public place. And since then, the climate of repression in Germany has escalated dramatically. The German government and its institutions have canceled a stream of cultural events for Palestine, smearing prominent artists and intellectuals, many of them Jewish as anti-Semitic. They've intimidated activists and searched their homes. They've even made cultural grants, and in the case of one German state, citizenship contingent on support for Israel. And recently, about a few days ago, a German bank blocked the accounts of Jewish voice, a leading NGO that's critical of Israel. In its press release announcing what had happened, the NGO said once again, Jewish money is being confiscated by a German bank. And now German politicians are trying to ban the Palestine Congress, a vital event that's due to take place about 10 days from now in Berlin to unite activists around a ceasefire in Gaza. So tonight we're asking, what's going on, Germany? What's lying beneath this insane, illiberal stance of German politicians? And how does it all relate to the country's Nazi history? How successful have these clampdowns been in holding back activism for Palestine? And as we move into the European elections, what might this climate of repression mean for Germany, for other countries in Europe, and of course for the plight of the Palestinian people? Our panel, including our own Janice Faroukakis and our crew of activists and thinkers and doers from across Europe, many of them in Germany right now who will be reporting from the ground, they'll be tackling this question tonight, and you, you out there, if you've got thoughts, comments, rants, things that you urgently need to get off your chest and put them in the YouTube chat, this is live and we'll put them to our panel. Let's hand the floor over to Janice. Thanks, Marjan. In all these years that I have been, like many of you and many of our viewers, been engaged, painfully engaged with a question of what on earth is happening to the West to turn our hearts into, you know, sort of stone when it comes to the 80-year-old plight of Palestinians. How did that happen? They were, during all those years, and I'm old enough to be able to say that it's more than four decades since, you know, I first noticed this crime against the people that impacted massively on my psychology as well. During all those years, there were two interventions that I think are very pertinent to today. One was by Edward Said, the remarkable Palestinian-born scholar who made his career in the United States. He is famously the author of Orientalism. He changed the way in which we in the West think of the way in which we think of the Middle East and the Near East and Asia more generally. Edward Said once said that one of the major reasons why we should all show solidarity towards the Palestinians and why we should all fight for Palestinian emancipation. And he was talking to an American audience, is that without the Palestinians becoming liberated, the United States cannot be liberated. And I think that this is pertinent today in Germany, in Europe as a whole, because what is going on in terms of the silencing of voices in solidarity with Palestine? Like the ones we experienced as DiEM25 or Mera25 in Germany, like the Jews' voice for peace in Germany's experience, like it is habits we mentioned before, when Jews are being arrested and have their money confiscated by Aryan German policemen and German authorities, you know there's something wrong, right? When this is supposedly done in order to combat antisemitism, because essentially what you have is an indirect way in which to end freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom to express solidarity with the people who are suffering in a place like Germany. But it's not just in Germany. We can see this everywhere now in Britain, in France, in my country. This morning, the major newspaper in this land, right, the newspaper called Kathimerini, The Daily, called me an antisemite because I said that the people of Palestine, the people of Gaza had a moral duty to themselves to knock down the wall that surrounds them and effectively creates the open air prison that Gaza was for them. The second expression, which I think is pertinent, one is Edward Said. If Palestinians are not freed, then we are not freed. The second expression comes from Nelson Mandela. Nelson Mandela once said that the reason why the British, he was referring to a British audience at the time from within his prison. The reason why the British must join the anti-apartheid movement is because it's the only way they can liberate themselves. Not so much because of what went on in South Africa had the direct impact in terms of the same police force oppressing people in Manchester or Birmingham. But his point to the extent that I understood it properly was that unless the people of Britain and that generalizes the people of the West realize that the British Empire, like every imperialist empire treats its own core, its own petit bourgeois people in a way that evolves and develops in the columns. So think about it, the British Empire destroyed India, destroyed large parts of Africa, created the circumstances that begot apartheid in South Africa and so on and so forth. And in the process, with exactly the same project unfolding, it ensured that the working class in Birmingham in Manchester and Liverpool was enslaved to the same regime that was creating apartheid in South Africa. That was Mandela's part. So we are not facing a situation where the people of Europe are simply censored when it comes to be talking about Gaza. No, the reason why we're being censored in Germany, in France, in Italy is because this censorship is part and parcel of exactly the same process by which we cannot talk about the dispossessed in East Germany. We cannot talk about the dispossessed here in Greece. We cannot talk about the impossibility of making ends meet if you live in the Baleas just outside of Paris. So it's one thing. And therefore the struggle for emancipating Palestine, as Edward Said said, is the struggle for emancipating our dispossessed, the many, the demos that is excluded from our democracies. To the extent that there are anti-Semite Zionists, and there are, think of the Nazis in the United States who have the swastika on one hand and the Star of David on the other. To the extent that there are Nazi Zionists, to the extent that there are Jews fighting against Zionism, the attempt by the German government and by the European Union in general to identify anti-Zionism, a critique of Israel with anti-Semitism is the equivalent of telling me that I am anti-Greek, because I fight against my government, because I find against, I fight against those who want to be silent about the ethnic cleansing of Slav speaking Macedonians in Northern Greece. It's exactly the same. This is why, that's my point, that silencing progressives, especially progressive Jews who are fighting against the identification of Zionism with being a Jew. That project of the regime of Germany, of Greece, of Britain and so on is exactly the same project as the ultra-right wing agenda which ensures that progressives in Germany cannot talk against the oligarchs in Germany, progressives in France do not talk about the oligarchs in France and so on and so forth. This is why I think Edward Said's point was so pertinent unless the Palestinians are liberated. We are not liberated. It's not simply a nice slogan. It's not just a way of extending our humanity and projecting it all over the place. It's a very pertinent political analysis of a prerequisite for our freedom and that is the freedom of Palestinians. Of course, we, the supporters of Palestinians and the supporters of universal human rights, we have also to come to terms with the fact which is inexorable. In the land of Palestine, of traditional Palestinian land, all Palestine. As we speak, we have more or less 7 million Israeli Jews and 7 million Palestinians. The Zionist project on which Israel has been founded is a people without the land, sorry, land without the people for people without the land. Essentially, it's an argument. It is a project of eradicating the 7 million Palestinians, either half of them and subsuming the other half in the form of quasi-bonded labor like the white supremacists wanted in apartheid South Africa for the blacks or expulsion. That is the situation in the old Palestine in the traditional Palestinian territories. The solution cannot be to exterminate the 7 million Israeli Jews. This is why it is essential to understand that liberating Palestine is essential for liberating the Germans or liberating the French, but also liberating Israelis from the fear that if they did not exterminate the Palestinians, the Palestinians will exterminate them. Thank you, Yanis. Johannes, Johannes Fair, based in Germany. I know you're not physically there right now, but you're normally based in Berlin. Can you give us an indication of how things have got to this point in Germany? I know it's quite an expansive question, but tell us how it feels, firstly. As a pro-Palestinian activist in Germany, to have your voice basically suppressed. Thank you, Madan. And thanks for us to be talking about this important issue tonight. I think that's a really difficult question to give a short answer, because basically, of course, there's all the history and years of our education system educating us, rightfully so, about the horrors of the Holocaust and the Nakba is simply not mentioned there. So I think the whole kind of establishment in Germany doesn't want us to know much. So also for me and I think for many others that got active on the issue, it was also a process of self-education and education through information in working in politics in an organization like DM25 or in other organizations. And I think that's how you make the way to know, really understand what has been going on in the last 80 years in Israel-Palestine and to then also be able to take the rightful position. And of course, especially it's shocking that a country like Germany that's perpetrated to genocide in its history, one in Africa and one on European soil, as we all know, is now supporting another genocide going on that we can see in real time on our phones. And I know that the public reaction to that has been different inside Germany than, for example, even to the rest of Europe. I think there's a huge difference. And I'm often explaining the German mentality through my own experience through our international comrades in Berlin, for example, that are just shocked by this. And I have to say that I'm also shocked when I talk to people even around me, even sometimes in my family, that just don't know much of what's going on. I think, though, that there's also a difference for the younger generation and generally for the population that the media and the political establishment is really somewhere else than the general population where there is much more awareness and much more knowledge about what's going on. Now, as I said, you can watch these things and these atrocities being committed every day on your phone if you dive into it, which is also, of course, a difficult thing. You can do it too much, but I think it's important for us to know what's going on and it's important for us to be active on it. On the crackdown that has been happening and is ongoing in Germany, I wanted also to make the very important point that the first people that are, or the people that are most victims of this crackdown are the Palestinians in Germany and are all those people that don't have a German or an EU passport because they are in real danger of getting deported and even the current so-called the center-left government, which it has announced that they will be deporting people who don't follow the so-called rules and I think that's really, really important for us to acknowledge that those people that houses have been searched of peaceful activists that just have been blocking roads and being active on the topic here in Germany, the bank account has been mentioned and there's really all kinds of also harassment. People have been doxxed by the right-wing media. All these things are going on and the first victims are, of course, those that are the ones that can not as much defend themselves as a white person like myself can and I think it's really, really good for us to be active on this issue, to talk about it tonight and I wanted to mention that we also pretty proud to announce that we are actually setting up an office in Berlin in one of the institutions and the buildings that have been suffering from the crackdown because the Berlin Senate has taken away the funding already in, I think it was, November from an institution in Berlin called OU that was really a center of cultural activities of all kinds, of progressive discussion and evenings of a really beautiful place and their funding got canceled and we are now moving into exactly that building for our election campaign that is upcoming and we hope that we can do our little bit in this work against this oppression also with the Palestine Congress but I'm sure Karin will talk more about that. Thank you. Thank you, Johannes. Karin, Karin Dorigo, our lead candidate for our bid in the upcoming European elections in Germany. I mean, you've heard what Johannes just said. Would you say that these efforts to clamp down on pro-Palestinian activism have been successful or are they, you know, is there a lot of pushback and actually they're animating activists to rise up even stronger? Thank you, madam. Well, I would say that definitely many people got scared. Got scared because of the passport situation that Johannes already mentioned but also because in every sector there are attempts to really literally shut up anybody. So that said, the community, especially in Berlin, is really strong and I'm really proud to be part of it and I must say that we are very strong and we will fight until the end. So we are not really getting so scared as they may think. But I would like to go a bit in depth of some episodes that happen to put everything in perspective because it's also the details that count sometimes. And in this sense one important thing that is missing from the conversation now is that it's not only actions that have been criminalized, it's words. Because since I think November the Senate in Berlin forbidden to use the sentence from the river to the sea in Berlin and in some other states as because it's it can be interpreted in many different ways. So technically someone could mean that we are against the existence of Israel. So for this reason I have been arrested in demos. I mean we are facing a level of repression that I would have never imagined possible so far. Another element could be for example the criminalization of students in universities because big media don't speak obviously about it just in a negative sense because there have been a lot of protests and a lot of requests also from the students and they have been all shut down. There has been the attempt to spread a brochure called the Mitz of the land theft of Israel 1948 in the high schools in Neuköll, which is a neighborhood here in Berlin where basically there is the attempt to rewrite history canceling totally the NAFBA and presenting everything as just a legal transition of land from Palestinians to Israeli people. So and also another detail very scary is that not only the Berliners Sparkase froze the account of a Jewish voice but they asked for a list with names and addresses of all the members. So if this is not intimidating I don't know what would that be. I mean people are righteously getting scared. That's why it's also our task we white European people to defend them and to try to bring their voices in the forefront and this is not only a matter of Palestine or Israel this is a matter of internal politics because the right-wing groups the AfD are thriving in this moment they are presenting themselves as the saviors of Israel when we know very clearly that they are all anti-Semitic because they are just trying to push their propaganda, their agenda anti-migrants, anti-Arabic anti-Muslim in order to externalize the enemy the economic situation now is not good at all in this country and they are trying just to preserve things as they are by blaming someone else who cannot defend themselves because many of them don't even have the right to vote. So in all this and I think this externalization has almost been completed because you see the police doing nothing when it comes of group of Nazis meeting in Potsdam to discuss mass deportations but when it comes to to arrest all the ladies against the genocide then they freak out so what I would like to say and because this is the right obviously we can expect this from them but what about the left for what has remained of the left has pleaded in populist groups and the other part has done like the ostrich hiding the head in the sand because when it comes about Palestine either they have been blind or deaf for five months because just very recently they have started to speak about ceasefire in a very shy way but I asked myself really who would like to be represented especially in the coming election by people who cannot even recognize the difference in five months between a genocide and self-defense so I rest my case Thank you Karen some comments from the chat Anton asks why is the position of post-colonialism anti-genocide referred to as pro-Palestine Adrift notes that Germany is always on the wrong side of history and Chris Coe talks about something that happened in Frankfurt where the city of Frankfurt tried to forbid a rally that was called from the river to the sea and the city lost in court and they had to allow it Judith Meyer also based in Berlin speak a little more to the how the far right is benefiting from this and maneuvering themselves on these issues in German society at the moment Yeah, I mean it's a godsend for the far right because everyone is repeating their stereotypes against Muslims now and of course the largest group of Muslims in Germany are the Turks and somehow they managed to conflate all the prejudices that people have against Arabs against Hamas and also apply them to the Turks it's like one big mush of prejudice that somehow are more generalized and generalized and jealous until they apply to everyone that they don't like and they getting help now from the government, from the plans to make it easier to deport people if they have prejudices against Israel against Israelis yeah, it's great for them and I must say I knew always that the right wing would benefit from the general the bad situation of the economy but also from this particular development of course but what I was most disappointed by was really a Linke party because some of their MPs okay, the Linke now sometimes talks about ceasefire that's progress, after 5 months they finally want a ceasefire sorry some of their MPs are still calling to outlaw Palestinian organizations in Germany just for organizing protests demonstrations together with Israeli groups it is really unbearable that no party currently represented in parliament speaks in favor of the right to demonstrate for Gaza it's really absolutely impossible and Johannes is right people just don't know that much it feels like a big decision has been made not to let any information get to the average citizen for example Al-Chifa hospital the complete destruction of Gaza's largest hospital and all the people killed the patients the doctors the torture of the doctors before the destruction all of that you won't find anything on it in German media, like the biggest national newspapers have not had an article about Al-Chifa in the past couple days and if you search for it okay, you'll find like a short note on Takashaw that the Israeli army has now withdrawn from Al-Chifa after a very targeted operation it comes right out of IDF propaganda department so I'm not surprised that the average person is so uninformed and so ready to believe the Israeli side and so ready to believe the worst about Palestinians because the quality of information in Germany is just so so bad unless you have a habit of looking for political information on social networks and even there it's getting harder and harder, like the other day and this has happened to me several times I was trying to write about Gaza on Facebook and after I wrote my little post I wrote the same thing on Twitter as well Facebook told me processing your message will let you know when it's ready this is the message that you get when you post 600 megabyte video like a large video that has to be processed but it was a text message it should have been instant and every time I write about personal life about language learning and so on it posts instantly but whenever I write about Gaza I get this message now processing your message will let you know when it's ready and then I look back like a day later they're empty, like they posted an empty message so now you are in the situation on Facebook that you can't even go to your friends profiles and read what they may have written I mean we know that all networks including Twitter limit the reach of unpopular opinions so that you may not see them in your feed when you're just scrolling scrolling scrolling like you do but normally at least on Twitter you can still go to people's profiles and see what they've written but on Facebook if you go to people's profiles you'll see like an empty message or no message where people would have written something about Gaza and that is I think a very very concerning development I'm not sure if it's limited to Germany or if people elsewhere are experiencing it as well but this is part of the effort to just completely keep us uninformed so that we don't protest and I don't believe that the people doing this making these decisions about Nuskovich and so on or the German government with the new rules I don't believe that they are motivated by guilt over the Holocaust I don't think that any positions of power are motivated by emotional reasons like that I think that they have very practical reasons and in Germany the reason is clearly that Germany is the second exporter of arms to Israel right after the United States the exports have increased tenfold since October Germany is earning a lot a lot of money in sending all these weapons to Israel and obviously it would be a really big problem if Germans started to strike in front of the factory gates stop the ships stop the planes that just cannot happen and I think that is why people are being kept ignorant thanks you did so I mean if I take what you say you seem to be suggesting that it's actually working this kind of suppression with regard to the media would you say that there's a any kind of I mean how would you split it demographically would you say perhaps that old people maybe are plugged into the media and accepting their narrative whereas young people are more on social media are getting all the facts or how would you split it if you could split it at all with the people that you speak to on the ground in Berlin well I don't think that people I speak to are very representative but from some service that we've seen yes the young people obviously have a very different view on Gaza on the Palestine issue then all the people this is the true I think across countries also in the USA and I think in Switzerland there was a similar study so I wouldn't be surprised if it was worldwide like that because of social media because of especially Tiktok which is so popular with a young audience and I am a bit more optimistic because recently there was a study done in Germany where 61% of Germans now think that is the population of the Israeli military are not justified given the number of civilian casualties which is you know a very very long way from calling it a genocide but at least it seems like something is shifting that the information cannot be held back they are being too obvious about it they are bragging too much about the war crimes Thank you you did some quick comments from the chat Katja says it really pains me how my government in Germany is behaving morally Osiman says I am very angry and ashamed of my government for these undemocratic developments I was raised in the GDR and I know what undemocratic means Damas notes well he first he says YouTube approves this genocide in relation to social media censorship of propensity and voices and he also quotes Norman Finkelstein which I think is worth saying here the biggest insult to the memory of the Holocaust is not denying it but using it as an excuse to commit genocide against the Palestinian people Evie, Evie Petzagoraki from Greece for yours So good evening from me as well I heard today on the radio that the German military exports to Israel was upfolded by nearly 12 to 13 times these 10 times was just in November 8th according to Reuters well the majority of individual export permits 185 out of 218 were grounded after October the 7th so Germany Germany's military exports total of 8 and a half billion euros or at least this happened the 9 first months of 2023 before then because afterwards there was an even more higher increase of exports and Germany primarily supplies Israel with components for air defense systems and communication segment according to the German Press Agency which first reported the figures so according to a 2023 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute which studies conflicts and arms 69% of Israel's arms purchases come from the US firm 30% from Germany and 0.9% from Italy the study found that Israel and Germany's dependence is fairly mutual with Berlin importing a 60% of its arms from the Jewish state which is the second biggest supplier the the institution the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute is highlighting the purchase by Germany last year of an RO3 long-range air defense system as an expression of this relationship meanwhile Israel is Germany's third largest destination for its military exports receiving 12% of exports behind Ukraine and Egypt so by the end of 2023 pending deliveries of major arms to Israel included 61 compact aircraft from USA and four more submarines from Germany the institute noted that not all of the information on weapons is transported particularly on the Israeli side and for some information is probably missing in this report did participate also some times of Israel stuff meanwhile Palestine action activist successfully closed down Elbit systems in time worth UK the largest Israeli arms factory Elbit systems has sold its elite KL factory in time worth Udur endless protests by Palestine action in the city the company had previously produced cooling and power management systems for military vehicles but decided to sell the factory due to declining profits because resulting from Palestine actions activities the British government has received advice from its own lawyer stating that Israel has breached international humanitarian law in Gaza but has failed to make it public according to the liquid recording obtained by the observer last month Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Jolie announced that Tava had stopped arms exports to Israel over the military offensive of Gaza Strip Italy announced in January that it had halted the exports at the start of the war and I touch court ruled last month that the Netherlands must stop delivering US own parts of air 35 fighter jets to Israel so all this gives us a good idea of what we are talking about on the reasons that are causing this crackdown on protesters in Germany and my personal experience since many decades, 1990s talking about the World War II in Germany was a kind of taboo so there is a widespread lack of information as it was noticed before about motives, conditions events, actions, results ideas, methods and propaganda of this period this leads to the proliferation of fake news, distorted image and conspiracy theories just like it was happening before the World War II and during the World War II with the same among others victims Jews. I think a very useful distinction for everyone private and in public is about Israelites and Israelis the people all over Europe did difficult till nowadays to distinguish between them the first one, Israelis are persons whose religion is Judaism the second are citizens of the State of Israel the second, the State of Israel was created because of the first the Israelis now the German authorities have decided that the second ones are Semites their origin and the first ones are anti-Semite important notice Palestinians are also Semites well in adding this in the image we may have a better idea of what really is going on thank you, thank you have you put this in the picture there Lucas Pabrero our communications director based in Berlin as well Florez yours tell us about what you're experiencing there thanks, Maren it's a bit hard to know where to begin really with what's been going on here in the past few months a lot of it has been alluded to already by other people joining us from Germany, by Johannes by Karin, by Judith Johannes mentioned the Palestinian activists who just last week if I'm not mistaken woke up at 6 in the morning to the sight of police officers staring at them in their bedrooms after breaking down their doors executing search warrants to try to track devices these are friends of mine their crime was organizing pro-Palestine protests here in Berlin one one of them in particular you might have seen in the face before on social media she has been disrupting several events here in Berlin with a judge from the Israeli Supreme Court with Hillary Clinton doing what I think is one element which is really important when we talk about activist work in times like these is not only organizing mass protest but also making sure that the people who are responsible for this don't have a minute of peace when they walk in public as long as everything is done non-violently of course also we spoke at length about the repression of not for the first time incidentally and sadly probably not for the last time about the repression of Jewish voices in Germany the suspension of the bank account of Jewish voice for peace that's one particularly sad irony of these times in Germany I think in my mind a lot of people don't realize this but Jewish people don't even make up 1% of the population in Germany and I think today there's no place where you're more likely to meet a Jewish person, to run into a Jewish person than a pro-Palestine protest just about anywhere in this country so to see the repression that's reserved to them, we've had the adhesive Feds here talk about this, she was arrested on numerous occasions for holding up science saying things to along the lines of as a Jew in Israel stop the genocide in Gaza and we talked a lot about this as we should but it's also important to remind ourselves and the Jewish comrades here that I know are better than no one else at doing this reminding ourselves that the real victims here are the Palestinians not the real victims but the first and foremost victims are the Palestinians not only in Palestine obviously but also in Europe and the West in general and in Germany in particular something that stuck with me from the time we had Edith join us here in the live stream she said to be an Arab, to be a Palestinian now in Germany is horrible and I think that's a very powerful thing to say obviously about Germany and it's especially very powerful when it comes from a Jew, when it comes from an Israeli Jew I wanted to very briefly try to answer the question that we're posing ourselves in the title of this of this live stream what is going on in Germany, I think the point that you made is very important to keep in mind we talk a lot about guilt misplaced guilt there's an element of that especially when you talk about society on the whole but I think you need to retrace how that came to to permeate your society as it does today and this point is important because there is a very real material element here that simply it's a relationship that serves the interests of the East in Germany it goes back to 1960 when and basically kicked off the modern relations that we see today between Germany and the state of Israel which to simplify means cash and weapons to Israel in exchange for moral absolution very in mind that Germany never fully denatified and as a matter of fact Adenauer himself reversed a lot of the notification process and was very close with former people in power during the Nazi period global care there was particularly close to him and so that was obviously a deal that was expected by Israel as well because it served their interests and as a matter of fact Israel and Zionism in general had much trouble weaponizing anti-Semitism as long as it furthered the Zionist project and so in order for that to be established then you had to create this in a lot of ways fictitious sense of guilt in order to justify unlimited support for the state of Israel of course it's not as always fixed some people really have it and as they should but of course the solution here is completely misplaced but the question I think is we talk a lot about Germany being on the wrong side of history I can't remember I can tell how many times I've heard that in the past few months in the thousands by now which I'm not saying I disagree with that obviously there is a lot of truth in that expression but I think it's important to ask the question what is it that we're talking about here what side is this that Germany were in once maybe more than once and now find themselves in again I think the answer is that's the side of dehumanization which is I think the ultimate lesson of the crime of genocide Germany as a as a state Germany leads they do not see Palestinians as human beings there is no other way to explain it there's no other way to put it just as they didn't see Jews as humans in the past and this is what needs to be reversed and it's fixing essentially another thing that's very encouraging that you also pointed out is the fact that if you look at the German population more broadly a very significant portion of them perhaps even majority at this stage is very much against what Israel is doing in Gaza and in Palestine in general and I think it's encouraging to see that it's a trend that has been ongoing since late last year the science are encouraging which makes it all the more mind boggling that there is no political party there is no mainstream media outlet speaking to those people and that's where people like us come in that's where organizations like the M25 political party M25 come in we have seen a huge numbers of people being driven towards the M25 towards M25 they're the ones who made it possible for us to even be on the ballot for the European elections in Germany and I think you know if mainstream politicians are so committed to this absolutely reprehensible deal that Germany has made with Israel that it made decades ago and continues to this day then we'll stand up against it and if we manage to get into power one day rest assured that we will end it and that we will work towards what we were created to do which is to create realistic but radical solutions to create justice at the end of the day and that's what we have with our proposal for Palestine which calls for equal rights in the land of Palestine regardless of ethnicity regardless of creeds regardless of anything equal rights for everyone who calls Palestine their home that's what we're fighting for and that's what we wish you to join us to fight for as well thank you Lucas I would like to do what Lucas suggested and join dm25 there are some people also asking in the chat then there's a simple address dm25.org slash join Johannes, Johannes Fair back to you thank you Madan I just wanted to towards the end of this live stream mention two things first of all I think probably people that follow us have already seen it there's a Palestine congress being organized until the 14th of April in Berlin in Germany the crackdown on that also has been huge the bank account of Jewish voice has been cancelled because of that because of them helping with their bank account to raise funds for the conference and dm25 has stepped in with the donation page to help raise funds for the Palestine congress so I think we can put the link into the chat for that and also I think the tickets are sold out because many people there's a big interest in this happening and we will support and you should support the congress and actually taking place also at the same weekend we organize dm25 and m25 members meeting for German members in Berlin on that 13th of April if you want to come by please let us know and join the organizations to be part of that and to also follow the Palestine congress together and last point if you're in Berlin this Friday our Berlin group organizes a local fundraiser event on Friday 5th of April at 7.30 at Café Madame at Meringplatz in Berlin where you can come by and support this congress actually taking place we have our members meeting some of these Palestinian activists that we have been talking about so it would be great if you can support the Palestine cause in Germany actively if you're here and if you are brought the donation page there it's also possible, thank you Thank you Johannes some last comments from you guys out there on the chat, Michelle Norris talking about the killing of aid workers the IDF missile attacks on the world food kitchen aid workers was obviously deliberate the three vehicles involved all had large logos on their roofs, this was no accident I think we'll see huge condemnation from the world now Neil Curry wonders when historically did non-violence work against these kinds of demented regimes, it's a valid question but could also check out the work of Erica Chenoweth on non-violent civil resistance out of Harvard that helps to that question somewhat and Tim from Germany notes that it's disturbing how ignorant my peers are about Gaza they do not care at all some of them even support the genocide Johannes, bring you into close Just to prove that the N25 were not monolithic in our views that we can even disagree amongst ourselves within the context of our togetherness a couple of points of descent from me firstly, Germany has not always been on the wrong side of history you see this is too easy too lazy if we were to assume that Germany is always on the wrong side of history then that creates a kind of kismet how could it be different well, that would be a great boon for the politicians in Germany today because effectively it would absolve them if Germany is always on the wrong side of history they are not at fault because Germany has on location been on the right side of history let me remind you that when George W. Bush Tony Blair and John Howard invaded Iraq the coalition of the willing the German government said no, nine and they were on the right side of history point number one, point number two you did, I respect your position as you know immensely but I don't buy the story the vast majority of the German people are taking this line because Germany has a vested interest in selling arms to Israel I just don't buy that I mean, we've had many many occasions when a very large very substantial chunk of a population take a position a principled position against the interests of the arms dealers and of the oligarchs in a country what happened to believe that there is much to say about a convoluted form of guilt over the Holocaust it's not straightforward and I'm not a psychoanalyst I really don't like psychoanalysis very much anyway so I'm not going to indulge in analyzing the collective German psyche but I can report to all of you comrades and friends a conversation I had a few days ago a quite upstanding and high level Social Democrat member of the ESPD whose name I can't reveal because it was a private conversation but what he said to me was why are you bleeding and screaming blue murder all of you pro-Palestinians over the deaths of thousands of Palestinian children of course every child death is regrettable he said but you know the allies killed thousands and thousands of German children in the closing stages of the second world war and that was the right thing to have done because it was the only way to defeat Nazism that comes from a German SPD high ranking person and if that's how you think of Palestinians as if they are the population of Nazi Germany who started the war with a result of 40 million people dying and then immediately your mind goes to where the head is coming what do you expect we are going to turn your country into a car park and that comes from a German so there is the second analytic part I won't say more about this except this this is a typical case of truth reversal over Palestinians the Palestinians are being suddenly presented as the equivalent of Nazis right and not just Hamas because they say well you know they supported Hamas they voted for Hamas so it's not just for the Hamas operatives that they say that they deserve the bomb that is coming to them and to their children but in the same way that the Germans were treated by bomber hires and other allies as a legitimate target of the air raids similarly well if 30,000 Palestinian children need to die in Gaza in order to defeat a population which is supporting aggression then you can see the logic in banning us confiscating money in censoring you can see the logic of course you can't agree with that but you have to understand that the logic turns on truth reversal the Palestinians as aggressors as if the Nakba never took place as if it wasn't true that 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and that's how the war started between Israeli Jews and Palestinians before that for centuries Palestinians and Jews were living side by side in the land of Palestine there was never any conflict until the British came along and the Europeans permitted the logic of people without the land for the blood without the people effectively declaring that the Palestinians are not the people they're not humans, they're dehumanization and you can see that first reversal beginning in 1948 but ending up today because the same day operative functionally said to me when I said but hang on a second your government believes in the two-state solution right now how is this going to happen when you're obliterating that population and the answer was that we need to eradicate Hamas this is a Netanyahu answer we need to eradicate Hamas so as to bring about the two-state solution again a truth reversal between the cause and the effect because he's presenting it they're presenting and this is the standard of view in Germany and beyond Germany they're presenting it as if the problem is Hamas makes the two-state solution impossible when the direction of causality is exactly the opposite Hamas didn't exist really at all before Ariel Sharon and his successor Benjamin Netanyahu destroyed the two-state solution and because they destroyed the two-state solution because they ignore the Oslo cause they ignore the peace process and they made sure I mean Netanyahu made it his business to become prime minister to kill off the two-state solution that Hamas was born so truth reversal is at the heart of that German and beyond Germany European white supremacist complicity with Johnson thank you Thank you Yanis and we're at the top of the hour so with that we're going to close if you would like to support DM25 we have no big funders no big backers it's all small donations from people like you out there to keep us going go to dm25.org slash donate and if you like what you've heard here tonight we're running in the European Parliament to give voice to the kinds of ideas we've been discussing here to oppose this genocide and shout it from the floor of the European Parliament and hold the perpetrators to account if you'd like to support us dm25.org slash join to be a member again dm25.org slash donate to donate you don't have to be a European citizen to donate or to join as some people have asked here in the chat yes we've got plenty of supporters in the US but we're always looking for more so please do support us thank you again to our panel thanks again to you out there for watching and see you at the same time