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href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/germanys-new-nazis-see-israel-role-model">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/germanys-new-nazis-see-israel-role-model</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Germany's new Nazis see Israel as role
model</h1>
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<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah">Ali
Abunimah</a></span> <span class="field field-blog">-</span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single"
content="2017-09-25T19:32:21+00:00">25 September 2017</span></span>
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<p>“Unfortunately, our worst fears have come true,”
Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of
Jews in Germany, <a
href="https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/37208517/dismay-in-germany-as-hard-right-marches-into-parliament/">said</a>
of the electoral success in Sunday’s general election
of Alternative for Germany.</p>
<p>Known by its German initials AfD, the extreme
nationalist party won almost 100 seats in Germany’s
lower house.</p>
<p>“A party that tolerates far-right views in its ranks
and incites hate against minorities in our country is
today not only in almost all state parliaments but
also represented in the Bundestag,” Schuster said.</p>
<p>The party is notorious for harboring all manner of
racists and extremists, including apologists for
Germany’s war record and <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/18/afd-politician-says-germany-should-stop-atoning-for-nazi-crimes">Holocaust
revisionists</a>.</p>
<p>It was a disaster that Germany’s mainstream
politicians saw coming.</p>
<p>Sigmar Gabriel, the country’s foreign minister, <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-election-nazis/german-foreign-minister-equates-far-right-afd-party-with-nazis-idUSKCN1BM1L4">warned</a>
earlier this month that if AfD scored well at the
ballot box, “then we will have real Nazis in the
German Reichstag for the first time since the end of
World War II.”</p>
<h2>Pro-Israel funder backs new Nazis</h2>
<p>While Germany needs no lessons in how to be racist,
this catastrophe can in part be attributed to leaders
in Israel and their fanatical supporters: for years
they have made common cause with Europe’s far right,
demonizing Muslims as alien invaders who must be
rejected and even expelled to maintain a mythical
European purity.</p>
<p>It can also be attributed to German leaders who for
decades have strengthened this racist Israel by
financing Israel’s military occupation and oppression
of Palestinians.</p>
<p>What happened in Germany is another facet of the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/zionist-white-supremacist-alliance-trumps-white-house">white
supremacist-Zionist alliance</a> that has found a
home in Donald Trump’s White House.</p>
<p>In the past few weeks, liberal flagships <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/world/europe/german-election-russia.html"><em>The
New York Times</em></a> and <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/as-germans-prepare-to-vote-a-mystery-grows-where-are-the-russians/2017/09/10/07d47f54-9257-11e7-8482-8dc9a7af29f9_story.html"><em>The
Washington Post</em></a> have been hunting for the
<a
href="https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/911202559511195648">nonexistent
shadows</a> of Russian interference in the German
election.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, as Lee Fang <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2017/09/22/german-election-afd-gatestone-institute/">reported
for <em>The Intercept</em></a>, the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/gatestone-institute">Gatestone
Institute</a>, the think tank of major Islamophobia
industry funder Nina Rosenwald, was flooding German
social media with “a steady flow of inflammatory
content about the German election, focused on stoking
fears about immigrants and Muslims.”</p>
<p>The Gatestone Institute is chaired by John Bolton,
the neoconservative former US diplomat notorious for
his hawkish support of the invasion of Iraq.</p>
<p>Gatestone articles making claims about Christianity
becoming “extinct” and warning about the construction
of mosques in Germany were regularly translated into
German and posted by AfD politicians and sympathizers.</p>
<p>Story after story claimed that migrants and refugees
were raping German women and bringing dangerous
diseases to the country, <a
href="http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/rim3.htm">classic
themes of the Nazi propaganda</a> once used to
incite genocidal hatred of Jews.</p>
<p>In a tragic irony, Rosenwald’s father, an heir to the
Sears department store fortune, <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2017/02/17/muslim-refugee-rosenwald/">used
his wealth</a> to help Jewish refugees flee
persecution in Europe.</p>
<p>His daughter took a different path. Journalist Max
Blumenthal has called Nina Rosenwald the “sugar mama
of anti-Muslim hate.”</p>
<p>Blumenthal <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/sugar-mama-anti-muslim-hate/">reported
in 2012</a> that Rosenwald “used her millions to
cement the alliance between the pro-Israel lobby and
the Islamophobic fringe.”</p>
<p>In addition to funding a host of the most notorious
anti-Muslim demagogues, Blumenthal reported that
Rosenwald “served on the board of AIPAC, the central
arm of America’s Israel lobby, and holds leadership
roles in a host of mainstream pro-Israel
organizations.”</p>
<h2>The party of Anders Breivik</h2>
<p>In a <a
href="http://www.jpost.com/International/The-rise-of-Germanys-far-right-AfD-leader-sits-down-with-the-Post-505898">profile</a>
the day after the election, <em>The Jerusalem Report</em>,
published by the right-wing <em>Jerusalem Post</em>,
gave AfD deputy leader Beatrix von Storch a platform
to set out the party’s anti-Muslim ideology.</p>
<p><em>The Jerusalem Report</em> also quotes German
political scientist Marcel Lewandowsky explaining that
“AfD members view the European Union as a traitor to
Europe’s Christian heritage because they let in the
Muslims. The view is that the Islamization of Europe
was caused by the EU.”</p>
<p>“Replacement” by Muslims, Lewandowsky explained, “is
the core of the fear of AfD voters.”</p>
<p>This means that the core ideology of the party is
indistinguishable from that of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/anders-behring-breivik">Anders
Breivik</a>, the Norwegian who murdered 77 of his
fellow citizens, mostly teenagers at a Labor Party
youth camp, in July 2011, in the name of stopping the
“Islamization” of Europe.</p>
<p>One of the biggest benefactors of Rosenwald’s
largesse, according to Blumenthal, has been <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/daniel-pipes">Daniel
Pipes</a>, the influential pro-Israel, anti-Muslim
demagogue who Breivik cited 18 times in his notorious
manifesto.</p>
<h2>Admiration for Israel</h2>
<p>AfD deputy leader von Storch, who sits in the
European Parliament, also uses <em>The Jerusalem
Report</em> interview to lay out her party’s
pro-Israel stance, comparing its German nationalism to
Israel’s Zionist ideology.</p>
<p>According to the <em>The Jerusalem Report</em>, von
Storch is a founder of “Friends of Judea and Samaria,”
a far-right European Parliament grouping that supports
Israel’s illegal colonization of occupied Palestinian
land.</p>
<p>Bizarrely, that group <a
href="http://judeasamaria.eu/who-we-are/">lists</a>
as one of its contact persons the head of the “Shomron
Regional Council,” a settler organization in the
occupied West Bank.</p>
<p>“Israel could be a role model for Germany,” von
Storch told <em>The Jerusalem Report</em>. “Israel is
a democracy that has a free and pluralistic society.
Israel also makes efforts to preserve its unique
culture and traditions. The same should be possible
for Germany and any other nation.”</p>
<p>Von Storch’s identification with Israel echoes that
of US Nazi demagogue <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/richard-spencer">Richard
Spencer</a>, who has described his vision of an
Aryan “ethno-state” as “<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/trump-bringing-white-zionism-white-house">white
Zionism</a>.”</p>
<p>AfD chair Frauke Petry has also expressed support for
Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. In
February, she <a
href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/224027/frauke-petry-tablet-interview">told</a>
the right-wing Jewish publication <em>Tablet</em>
that her only visit to Israel gave her a positive view
of the country.</p>
<p>“Suddenly the picture you get is somewhat different
than what you got when you live far away,” she said.</p>
<p>These views, again, echo those of Anders Breivik. He
was a <a
href="http://world.time.com/2011/07/26/norway-terror-accused-breivik-on-the-jewish-question/">strong
admirer</a> of Zionism, and advocated an alliance
with Israel to fight against Muslims and their
“culturalMarxists/multiculturalists” supporters.</p>
<p>Israel’s settler leaders have taken note of AfD’s
support. As the world reeled from AfD’s electoral
success, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/yehuda-glick">Yehuda
Glick</a>, a lawmaker in Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, <a
href="https://twitter.com/YehudahGlick/status/912020925977124864">tweeted</a>
that all those who were “in a panic” about AfD should
rest assured that Petry was working “intensively” to
expel any anti-Semitic elements.</p>
<p>Glick, a leader in the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/these-are-israeli-leaders-who-want-destroy-al-aqsa/21166">apocalyptic
movement</a> that seeks to destroy Jerusalem’s
al-Aqsa mosque and replace it with a Jewish temple,
also <a
href="https://twitter.com/YehudahGlick/status/912173081216655360">recommended
an article</a> outlining AfD’s pro-Israel stance.</p>
<p>According to <em>Tablet</em>, Petry’s visit also led
her to believe “that Europe should be learning more
from Israel in its fight against terrorism.”</p>
<p><a
href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/loathed-by-jews-germanys-far-right-afd-loves-the-jewish-state/">According
to a recent survey</a>, this strong support for
Israel is felt across the ranks of AfD’s leadership.</p>
<h2>Alliance with Zionism</h2>
<p>There is a clear logic for AfD leaders to join the
newly invigorated alliance between far-right,
traditionally anti-Semitic forces on the one hand, and
Israel and Zionists on the other.</p>
<p>Party chair Petry has argued that Jews should should
be willing to talk to AfD over supposedly common
interests, explaining, according to <em>Tablet</em>,
that “it is the left wing in Germany and new Muslim
immigrants who are leading her country’s anti-Israel
movement.”</p>
<p>“Both anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are strongest in
the Islamic community, as well as the left,” von
Storch said. “They reject the fact that the
Judeo-Christian foundations of European civilization
are instrumental to its success. We recognize the
threat they pose to both Israel and Germany’s Jewish
community and their safety is a high priority for us.”</p>
<p>This is of course the most brazen revisionism: for
centuries Europe’s Christian authorities not only did
not consider Jews as a foundational part of their
“civilization,” but persecuted them mercilessly,
eventually attempting genocide.</p>
<p>But such facts are glossed over in the interests of a
present-day anti-Muslim alliance that is prepared to
torch the increasingly frayed fabric of pluralistic
societies for the sake of Israel and German national
purification.</p>
<h2>Israel’s support for fascists</h2>
<p>Critically, as Glick’s tweets indicate, this has not
been a one-way affair. It has been encouraged by
Israel and its lobby groups.</p>
<p>The notion that Israel is the spearhead of a Western
civilizational battlefront against Islam has been a
key claim of Netanyahu.</p>
<p>He and other Israeli leaders have <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-moves-quickly-exploit-paris-attacks">exploited</a>
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-spin-doctors-move-exploit-orlando-massacre">every</a>
<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-quick-exploit-manchester-bombing">terrorist
outrage</a> in Europe to advance the poisonous
message that Israel is “fighting the same fight.”</p>
<p>And powerful Israel lobby groups, such as the
Anti-Defamation League, that are now <a
href="https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/adl-says-election-of-extremist-party-a-disturbing-milestone-for-germany">expressing
alarm</a> at the electoral success of the AfD, are
far from innocent.</p>
<p>For years, the Anti-Defamation League – which poses
as an “anti-hate” group – <a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/08/2011829164395822.html">courted
and whitewashed</a> influential anti-Muslim
hate-preachers because they supported its pro-Israel
agenda.</p>
<p>This embrace between Zionists and their supposed
opposites continues to thrive in the welcome former
Trump advisers <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/steve-bannon">Steve
Bannon</a> and <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/sebastian-gorka">Sebastian
Gorka</a> have found from Israel and its lobby
groups.</p>
<p>Bannon will <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.809421">speak</a>
at the Zionist Organization of America’s upcoming
gala, while Gorka, who has ties to <a
href="http://forward.com/news/369683/exclusive-sebastian-gorkas-ties-to-nazi-allied-group-stretch-back-decades/">Nazis</a>
and <a
href="http://forward.com/news/national/367937/exclusive-controversial-trump-aide-sebastian-gorka-backed-violent-anti-semi/">violent
anti-Semitic militias</a>, was recently <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/why-did-un-participate-israeli-conference-nazi-sympathizer">welcomed
in Israel</a>.</p>
<p>It can be seen in the Israeli government’s <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/zionist-white-supremacist-alliance-trumps-white-house">long
and conspicuous silence</a> while the rest of the
world condemned August’s neo-Nazi rampage in
Charlottesville, Virginia.</p>
<p>It can also be seen in Netanyahu’s <a
href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/benjamin-netanyahu-hungary-state-visit-viktor-orban-anti-semitism-controversy-far-right-anti-a7846346.html">embrace</a>
of far-right European leaders including Hungarian
Prime Minister <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/viktor-orban">Viktor
Orban</a>, who has attempted to rehabilitate his
country’s <a
href="http://www.jta.org/2017/06/26/news-opinion/world/hungarian-jews-slam-prime-ministers-praises-for-hitler-ally-horthy">Hitler-allied
wartime leadership</a>.</p>
<p>While the brazenness of this alliance may be
shocking, it dates back to the early years of both the
Zionist and Nazi movements. As Columbia University
professor Joseph Massad <a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/2013521184814703958.html">has
pointed out</a>, Zionists and European anti-Semites
historically <a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/201212249122912381.html">shared
the same analysis</a>: that Jews were alien to
Europe and had to be moved elsewhere.</p>
<p>And it continues: Israeli commentators are <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.814100">noting</a>
that Israel has not rushed to condemn AfD.</p>
<p>Netanyahu – always quick to pounce on the alleged
anti-Semitism of Israel’s critics – <a
href="https://twitter.com/netanyahu/status/912057110648823808">took
to Twitter</a> to congratulate Chancellor Angela
Merkel on her victory, but has so far <a
href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/pm-congratulates-merkel-on-reelection-victory-stays-mum-on-rise-of-far-right/">remained
silent</a> about the subject that everyone else is
talking about.</p>
<p>Perhaps it is no coincidence that AfD <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/wwwMobileSite/world-news/europe/.premium-1.814164">hired
the same US political consultancy</a>, Harris Media,
previously used by Trump and Netanyahu’s Likud Party
to spread its anti-Muslim message.</p>
<h2>Going mainstream</h2>
<p>Despite its electoral success, AfD is riven by
splits: its chair Frauke Petry made the <a
href="http://www.dw.com/en/who-is-frauke-petry-the-afds-controversial-co-chair/a-40669970">surprise
announcement</a> on Monday that she won’t join her
party’s parliamentary caucus.</p>
<p>One strategy party leaders are deploying to make AfD
more palatable is to try to <a
href="http://www.jta.org/2017/09/25/news-opinion/world/leader-of-far-right-german-party-says-jews-have-nothing-to-fear">assuage
the fears</a> of the Jewish community.</p>
<p>Undoubtedly, it will continue to attempt to do so by
expressing admiration and support for Israel – the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/french-far-right-leader-slams-bds-woo-israel-lobby">same
approach</a> as France’s historically anti-Semitic
Front National.</p>
<p>We can expect to see AfD double down on its support
of Israel, including its colonial settlements in
“Judea and Samaria.”</p>
<p>But this is indeed a mark of its mainstreaming.
Historically, Germany’s postwar establishment,
including the governments led by Merkel, has “atoned”
for the country’s genocide of Jews by supporting
Israel to commit crimes against Palestinians.</p>
<p>Billions of dollars of German “reparations” went not
to helping Holocaust survivors, but to <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/ta-nehisi-coates-sings-zionism/15776">arming
Israel to carry out military occupation and
colonization</a>.</p>
<p>For Palestinians, then, Merkel’s “moderate” centrism
and AfD’s overt bigotry and racism, are little
different in effect.</p>
<p>Just as Donald Trump presents the unvarnished face of
the American militarism and imperialism that has
victimized people around the world for decades, AfD is
in some ways a more honest voice of a Germany that
speaks of “human rights,” while unconditionally
supporting an Israel whose main export is extremism
and Islamophobia.</p>
<p>Europe’s nativist racism joined with this ill-wind
from Israel produces a toxic mix.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated since initial
publication.</em></p>
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