IIn middle school German classes, it is common to analyze political speeches. If the texts used there don’t come straight from hell, like Joseph Goebbels’ speech from the Sports Palace, they are often speeches from the Anglophone world: Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream”, John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” or Winston Churchill’s “Blood, Sweat and Tears.” Not that there aren’t any impressive German speeches. Nevertheless, the unfamiliarity with rhetoric is no secret in this country.
There are many reasons. On the one hand, there is a lack of training: high school students, like students, are usually taught more about reading and less about writing and speaking. On the other hand, the willingness to listen to pathetic words is limited in this country as a result of the excesses of anger before 1945. And finally, there is a long German tradition of reservations against speaking, which once resulted in the sentence that parliament is a “chatterbox”.
Robert Habeck has just given a speech whose form and content are suitable for breaking through these reserves when it comes to speaking. In a video recording, he addresses all citizens – four million are said to have already tuned in to the speech – to talk about the bloodshed in Israel and the Gaza Strip. But above all about the German reactions to it and the consequences in our country.
The meaning of the phrase “reason of state”
Because it is no longer just about a conflict far away. The Middle East is indeed close. Habeck describes the fears that Jewish citizens in Germany are currently exposed to. Their children are afraid to go to school, their sports clubs are withdrawing from the leagues, letters are no longer marked with a return address so that the recipients do not appear to be friends of Jews. Incitement is taking place in the streets under the pretext of freedom of expression, death is being wished for Jews in and outside of Israel, and destruction is being wished for the state of Israel.
Habeck’s demand is to take a hard stance against this. Human rights are not divisible, religious tolerance and tolerance in general must apply to everyone. Anyone who burns Israel’s flag and praises the terror of Hamas belongs in court, risks expulsion as a non-German, and provides reasons for being deported. For Habeck, this is the meaning of the sentence “Israel’s security is German reasons of state.”
In addition to Islamist anti-Semitism, which also appears loudly on German streets and can be expected to receive pats on the back from protest youth who misunderstand the left, there is the right-wing extremist trivialization of the history of National Socialism using phrases such as Alexander Gauland’s “fly shit” and the “final line” mentioned by Habeck. And then there are Putin’s friends who are incapable of recognizing the hypocrisy of deploring civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip while simultaneously bombing Ukrainian towns and villages.
The foreign policy aspect of the speech
Habeck’s speech gains its power from not allowing any form of trivialization or relativization of the murders committed by Hamas. “Context” is not a meaningful response to the mass slaughter of infants, teenagers and other civilians. Because there is no context that could frame the horror. How delusional do you have to be to give disinhibited criminals the reputation of a freedom movement?
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