Dear ladies and gentlemen,
Dear friends,
the occasion on which we are gathering here today is the current report by Amnesty International UK. That sounds far away – but for us Jews in Germany it is not far away. Because: this report will have consequences for us too.
The demonisation of Israel has a long tradition under a different name. Israel is nowadays frequently misused as a synonym for Jews, while it is deliberately ignored that by no means only Jews live in Israel – quite the contrary! The same pattern of thinking that was applied to Jewish people for thousands of years is today often used for Israel.
What is the problem with the Amnesty UK report? The core of the report is the accusation of apartheid: rightly a term that provokes revulsion and denotes the racist system that in its country of origin, South Africa, was fortunately overcome. Anyone who, against all the facts, accuses Israel of apartheid has only one goal: to delegitimise and demonise Israel.
Amnesty UK pursues the same goal when it accuses Israel of crimes against humanity. Crimes such as the Shoah, the genocide of the Armenians or the genocide in Rwanda are invoked here in order to demonise Israeli policy and to delegitimise Israel. Israel, mind you, as a state in which citizens, irrespective of religious or ethnic affiliations, naturally enjoy equal rights.
In the best case the accusations of apartheid and of crimes against humanity are to be put down to a mistake: an uninformed adoption of antisemitic propaganda whose goal is the destruction of Israel.
In the worst case, however, it is a deliberate deception of the public with the aim of demonising and delegitimising Israel. We cannot accept that, because that is antisemitic agitation! Not only because Israelis – of course only the Jewish ones – are made into an enemy image with false accusations. Antisemitism exists worldwide and in this case too it will affect German Jews.
Because of its work in many areas, Amnesty International is rightly an important voice in Germany when it comes to the fight for universal human rights. This fight is also central for us as WerteInitiative. Without a clear distancing from the report, however, it must be doubted that universalism counts for very much at AI Germany. Israel and its citizens are being made a target here. Jews
Because what does that mean for us Jewish people in Germany? With antisemitic narratives, Amnesty delegitimises the pluralistic and democratic state of Israel. Through its choice of words and the false information, Amnesty UK presents Israel – which many, however, read as “the Jews” – as evil. That sticks in people’s minds: the evil, the wicked, bad Jews. Resistance permitted! The deeply antisemitic narrative “victims in the past, perpetrators today” is to be served.
When evil is described and then the finger is pointed at those who are this evil, it will not be long before this seed sprouts. Until Jewish people are attacked by those who, after all, only want to take action against evil. Until stones fly at synagogues, because they do after all represent evil.
The words of this report, the demonisation in this report, stoke hatred among people in this country. Hatred that we Jewish people in Germany will feel. Do not be surprised at the antisemitic attacks that will certainly come. The hatred stoked by the untruths in this report contributes to it. These words of the report normalise this hatred.
For Jewish people in Germany, antisemitism is already part of everyday life. This report is an accelerant for hatred of Jews. We therefore call on Amnesty Germany to distance itself clearly and credibly from the report! We demand a correction of the report that is guided by facts. We call on Amnesty Germany not to fan the already white-hot fire of hatred of Jews in Germany still further!
WerteInitiative’s speech was delivered by Leonard Kaminski.
