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Al-Ahram Weekly 31 August - 6 September 2000 Issue No. 497 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 31 August - 6 September 2000 Issue No. 497
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Dressler's rehearsal
By Dominic Coldwell
Rudolf Dressler does not have many friends. Or at least too few of the sort that matter in politics. After serving a 16-year term as spokesman for a federation of German employees, the Social-Democratic lawyer was re-elected to Parliament by a 53 per cent margin in his constituency during the general elections of October 1998. But then he was decidedly too left-wing for the third-way centrism of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. So while Dressler was hoping for a ministerial appointment, Schröder decided to put his comrade out to grass as Berlin's new ambassador in Tel Aviv.
Sadly, the 59-year-old has cut no ice with his hosts either. Shortly before taking up his new post on 1 September, Dressler told the Bonn-based General-Anzeiger that he favoured a proposal by the Vatican for turning Jerusalem into a neutral city under international administration. Jerusalem's mayor Ehud Olmert promptly snapped back, "it's total stupidity to talk such nonsense. [Dressler's remarks] show that this man is not suited to be Germany's ambassador to Israel."
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a German diplomat told Al-Ahram Weekly that Israel told Germany it would veto Dressler's appointment. Only after further intercession by the Foreign Office in Berlin did Tel Aviv agree to accept Dressler under the proviso that the aspiring ambassador publicly repudiate his statements.
Dressler then beat a hasty retreat and announced he had been misquoted-- apparently, he had supported the proposals of the Holy See as chairman of a parliamentary working group on Israel years ago.
Meanwhile, Michel Friedman, the Vice President of Germany's prestigious Central Council of Jews (CCJ), berated Dressler in an open letter published by the conservative weekly Welt am Sonntag, saying "the least you [Dressler] can do to restore your credibility as a diplomat is issue a clear declaration that the status of Jerusalem may only be defined by an Israeli but not by a German... Jerusalem may never again be a neutral or divided city. Who, if not a German remembering the fate of Berlin, knows better?"
Never mind if Friedman got the analogy wrong-- Berlin was forcefully divided by Soviet occupation while Jerusalem's Arab inhabitants were forcefully welded together with their Zionist occupiers. The fact that Friedman can forbid Germans to discuss Israeli politics without encountering a modicum of protest from his readership- is a telling comment on German subservience to the Jewish state. Since the end of World War II, Germany's public and politicians alike have tried to atone for the horrors of Hitler's Holocaust by currying favour with Israel-- ostensibly at the expense of bootlicking those who continue occupying Arab land.
Friedman, therefore, is free to mouth even wilder fantasies. "Since Jerusalem has... become Israel's united capital,... the prospects of the city have improved," he contends, "even the prospects of the Palestinians have improved thanks to Israel, and not thanks to the Arab neighbours. Israel offers the Palestinians an escape route from the refugee camps into the future."
This is not to say that German-Israeli relations have been characterised exclusively by German sycophancy. It is true that the Christian-Democratic governments of former chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Friedrich Erhard refused to establish diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv until 1965, for fear that Arab states might retaliate by recognising the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
But as early as 1957, Germany's then Defence Minister Franz-Josef Strauss agreed to a proposal by Shimon Peres, then Israel's Deputy Defence Minister, to supply Tel Aviv secretly with free weaponry. Following a meeting between Adenauer and former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1960, Germany lavished increasingly large amounts of NATO tanks, airplanes, submarines, and artillery worth $120 billion on Israel. Only when the left-liberal paper Frankfurter Rundschau leaked news of the covert shipments in 1964, did US President Lyndon Johnson agree to replace Germany as Israel's main supplier of arms. Bonn, however, continued footing the bill for all purchases.
In 1965, West Germany established diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv and, one year later, also pledged to pay Israel $80 million worth of economic aid annually for a period of 25 years.
With the rise of left-wing student protests in 1968, the German public and politicians adopted a slightly more pro-Arab stance, condemning the Israeli occupation of land captured in the Six-Day War and upholding the Palestinian right to self-determination.
At no time, however, did this shift negate Bonn's partiality vis-à-vis Israel. While it is true that Germany remained neutral in the Six Day War, the government preferred the term 'non-intervention', because as then Foreign Minister Willy Brandt explained, "our non-intervention, ie neutrality in the sense of international law, cannot mean moral indifference."
The administration, however, violated its own pledge of non-intervention and a similar NATO ban on arms shipments to the Middle East, by agreeing to deliver 20,000 gas masks and lorries free-of-charge during the conflict. During the October War in 1973, Bonn displayed a similar brand of 'benevolent neutrality'. While most West European countries refused the transit of US weapons to Israel on their territories, German ports and airfields served as a vital conduit for American arms.
Only Brandt's successor Helmut Schmidt, feeling that Bonn bore a "moral commitment to the Palestinians who fled from the West Bank", pursued a more balanced Middle East policy, calling for the inclusion of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) in peace talks and stipulating that the Palestinian right to self-determination "includes their right to organise themselves as a state".
The accession of a conservative government under Helmut Kohl in 1982, however, dashed any hopes for continuing a policy of even-handedness. During the Gulf War in 1991, the government even went so far as to offer material compensation to Israel following reports that German firms had helped Iraq fabricate chemical and biological weapons.
The return of a Social Democratic government under Schröder two years ago has not dented governmental support for Israel either. Only last year, Germany delivered three Dolphin submarines that can be loaded with nuclear warheads to Israel.
If anything, German-Israeli cooperation is likely to improve further, not least because the country's Jewish population has mushroomed since Berlin began attracting Jewish immigrants from Russia in the early 1990s. While the CCJ comprised 29,000 members in 1990, it now boasts a flock of 85,000. An additional 30,000 Jews not registered with the CCJ are also estimated to live in Germany these days.
While the public's commitment to atone for the Holocaust remains in place, there are however also dissenting voices. According to Manfred Becker, a Berlin city official in charge of religious affairs, "nobody dares take an opinion poll on Jewish immigration. Suppose only 55 per cent were in favour. Imagine the outcry. My personal estimate is 70 per cent would approve, but our society lacks the courage to find out." Micheal Blumenthal, the director of Berlin's Jewish museum scheduled to open next year, also notes that "many Germans... feel that we have done all this and the Jews should be grateful to us and not keep on asking for more." Only recently, Germany has agreed to a deal for financial compensation to Nazi-era slave labourers. In 1998, Martin Walser, a prominent writer, also complained about the way in which the Holocaust was being used as "a moral cudgel" and "a tool of intimidation".
Arguments like these, however, have failed to impress politicians. Since Berlin's Jewish population doubled to more than 12,000 over the past decade, municipal authorities have donated $20 million annually to Jewish institutions, even though the city's public debt exceeds a staggering $30 billion. By contrast, Berlin's impoverished 170,000 Turkish immigrants are starved of any government funding.
Barbara John, the official in charge of Berlin's foreigners, confirms that "the Jewish immigrants are privileged. This should be seen as a form of reparation. Jews were murdered and we feel better if we do this." Israel, it seems, just has the right kind of friends. A lesson Dressler is learning the hard way.
