Paradise Lost Anti-Semitism in Germany

Before World War II, German was a language of high-culture. As late as the 1970’s, German was still a required language in college for scientific curriculums. Until the 1980’s, the German economy was admired as one of the world’s strongest. Until the past few years, German quality in BMW and Mercedes were worth the premium price.

Now, you’d be hard put to find German language enrollment in other countries’ universities. Its economy is stagnant, mired in welfarist anchors dragging it down, and double-digit unemployment is its norm. The quality of German automobiles is only average, and its automakers have laid off many thousands.

The resentments against the West that proliferate among Arabs is rooted in resentment at their sorry condition as a cultural and technologic backwater compared to the centuries past glories of Islam. Similar influences are at the root of current German attitudes toward the United States. Pride in the past compared to a currently fallen state leads those who are unwilling to modernize to seek refuge in delusions of us-them antagonisms.

My wife is from Germany. She is a “Jew by Choice,” otherwise known as a convert. Her family is a model of tolerance and decency. I am not anti-German. I have defended Germany among fellow Jews as being an exemplar of a nation -- indeed unique among nations -- that devoted huge resources to reeducating its people against anti-Semitism. My wife recently watched the 1947 U.S. classic film “Gentleman’s Agreement”, and was shocked at the level of anti-Semitism prevalent in America in the year of my birth.

A new anti-Semitism is taking root in Germany. It is seen in the overt resentment among elders and the young at being subject to any more of the anti-anti-Semitism education. Civility is diminished by anxieties about their fallen state and lost status – and Germans are undeniably a prideful people. It is seen in the blooming of anti-Israel propaganda from the left that in its one-sided propaganda is anti-Semitic. It is a part of, allied with, fed by the crude anti-U.S. remarks of former Chancellor Schroeder that he’s used to distract from his own ineptitude. It is, no less than the insanity of extremist Arabs, the politics of failure. It is not dissimilar (although not yet to the degree) to the feeding on resentments post-World War I that in Germany were fertile soil for the extremism of Hitler.

DavidsMedienkritik is an invaluable blog – moderate and usually understated -- from Germany, in English, to keep current on developments in Germany.

DavidsMedienkritik's latest post, about the German film Paradise Now, is angry at “the first openly anti-Semitic film I’ve seen in the German cinema. Joseph Goebbels would have been proud.” What’s even worse, “the German taxpayer ponied up an essential contribution to the production costs. The materials for discussion of the film in German schools authored by a federal authority from the Central Office for Political Education (BPB) would have met with [Goebbels’] grinning approval.” Another knowledgeable commentator says, “With this brochure, [BPB] is acting as a Central Office for Middle East Disinformation and Terror Acceptance….These materials do not call into question empathy with anti-Jewish mass-murderers, but rather expect it.”

DavidsMedienkritik summarizes: ”The only thing certain in the film is the guilt and malice of the Israelis...[in the] film’s striking polemics against the Israelis…No attempt is undertaken anywhere in the film to explain the Israelis’ position. Almost all of the Israelis appear in the film as soldiers – intimidating, menacing, anonymous, occasionally with sadistic impulses….The film expresses no moral criticism of the Palestinian suicide attackers’ practice of murdering Israeli civilians.”

In readers’ comments, one points out – no surprise – the German branch of Amnesty International awarded Paradise Now its 2005 Amnesty International Film Prize. Enough said about what should be renamed Propaganda Now.

Germans may find it disappointing to protectively wave the Amnesty award, as a replacement to alliance with the United States, in front of its domestic Moslem fifth-column or the Russian-aided Iranian missiles that can reach Berlin.