ourtimewillcome [any]

Timing is everything. Perhaps someone should have told the Bundesrat. Last Friday, the chamber of the federal states came together to pass a resolution on solidarity with Israel in the midst of the brutal genocide in Gaza. “60 years of German-Israeli relations” is the title of the resolution, which was tabled jointly by all the federal states. And yes, the government members of the “Left” and the BSW (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, translators note) had also joined in.

In terms of content, the resolution offered everything the “Staatsräson” desires: an emphasis on the “close and friendly” relationship, outrage at the “inhuman terrorist attacks by Hamas” and the “right to self-defense”. As a fig leaf, “all parties involved in the conflict” were called upon to comply with international law, before continuing with concerns about “anti-Israeli hate demonstrations”.

Business as usual while Gaza burns - surpassed only by the debate in plenary. As remote diagnoses are always difficult, we won’t speculate on what NRW Media Minister Nathanael Liminski (CDU) was up to when he presented his interpretation of October 7, 2023 in rhyme form: “Hamas tortured, violated and filmed and broadcast all of this.” (He did so to the rhythm of a known German children’s rhyme, translators note) Hesse’s Minister for European Affairs Manfred Pentz (CDU) called for “all means of the rule of law”, including to take action against “imported anti-Semitism” - explicitly in universities, schools, at gatherings and in the art scene. In addition, the “denial of Israel’s right to exist” should be made a punishable offense.

While calls were made to hunt down Palestine solidarity, the BSW and the “Left Party” kept a low profile. Once again, it is the state governments that are cuddling up to the warmongers beyond all party resolutions. The Bundesrats resolution is no different in thrust from the Bundestags “anti-Semitism resolution”, which the BSW voted against and which “The Left” now officially rejects. But the outcry remains absent.

At the conference of the DKP party executive committee, which took place last weekend in Leverkusen, its chairman Patrik Köbele called for the protest against the genocide of Palestinians to be taken to the streets. UZ documents excerpts from the speech:

There is no word that sounds more terrible than genocide and yet we have to realize that Israel is escalating the genocide in Gaza and is both taking people hostage and starving them out in multiple violations of international law. The media are not above reporting that a Hamas hostage has been starved to death, while the more than two million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are starving because Israel has been blocking the supply of food and aid for weeks. Then this starving population is urged by leaflets to flee immediately to another, also destroyed part of the Gaza Strip, because a few hours later they are bombed again and ground troops move in. When you see the few pictures in the media showing thousands of people with empty pots hoping for something to eat, it’s heartbreaking. And the federal government? They don’t think it’s great either - although we don’t know whether they are talking about the way people are being treated or the fact that pictures of it are being shown on television. The government continues to blather on about the Staatsräson (official euphemism for German-Israeli coercion, translators note).

There is protest against this in our country, some of which is repressively crushed. This resistance is still far too small. We, our party groups, must also do more to organize protest and solidarity with the Palestinian people and take this protest to the streets. The pressure against the anti-Palestinian policies of German politics must increase.

We must also make it very clear that this so-called Staatsräson is anti-Semitic at its core. Why? It is derived from the responsibility for the Shoah, i.e. the industrial mass extermination of Jews by the German fascists. To use this as a justification for claiming that it is Germany’s responsibility to defend the so-called security of Israel is to portray Israel’s policies as stemming from Judaism. That is in fact anti-Semitism. This policy of Israel has its cause in Israel’s role as the agent of imperialism in the Middle East in combination with a murderous policy of Zionism.

On May 25, 2020, the Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. Police officer Derek Chauvin suffocated him by pressing his knee on George Floyd’s neck for around nine and a half minutes. The racist police killing sparked protests around the world.

On the evening of May 25, 2020, officers from the Minneapolis Police Department in Minnesota stopped George Floyd. The 46-year-old Floyd had been accused of paying for a pack of cigarettes with counterfeit money. Videos recorded by passers-by show three police officers restraining George Floyd on the ground. Other officers prevent passers-by from helping Floyd. “I can’t breathe”, Floyd keeps saying to Chauvin, who is kneeling on his neck. Chauvin only pulls his knee back when a paramedic asks him to let go of Floyd. George Floyd dies shortly afterwards in hospital.

Police killings are not uncommon in the USA. 1,160 people were killed by police officers there in 2020 alone, the year in which George Floyd also entered the casualty statistics. His murder sparked protest and resistance all over the world. In the USA, millions of people took to the streets under the slogan “Black lives matter”. They demanded an end to institutionalized racism, racist police violence and the culture of impunity for perpetrators in uniform. The mobilization surpassed even that following the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968.

George Floyd’s murderer Chauvin had to stand trial just under a year after the crime. In June 2021, he was sentenced to 22 years and 6 months in prison. It is the first time in Minnesota’s history that a police officer has been convicted of the murder of a black man. It is the highest sentence ever imposed on a police officer in Minnesota. One of George Floyd’s family’s lawyers calls the sentence a “turning point” in US history. Several of Chauvin’s colleagues received multi-year prison sentences for assisting in Floyd’s arrest or for not assisting Floyd himself.

Five years after the police murder of George Floyd, we are further than ever from justice for him. National police reform is on hold. The US Department of Justice recently announced that it would stop investigating police officers accused of racist police violence. Voices from within the US government calling for Floyd’s murderer to be pardoned are growing louder.

In 2024, police officers shot at least 1,260 people in the USA - a new record.

The police murder of George Floyd also triggered demonstrations in Germany. In 2024, police officers killed 22 people in Germany - another record. Here, too, no political countermeasures are being taken. On the contrary: during a question and answer session in the Bundestag on Wednesday, MPs from the CDU and AfD, among others, called for more powers for police officers, including “lower-threshold” use of firearms.