The Asymmetry of German Historical Responsibility: How the Weight of the Past Shapes Berlin’s Unequal Relations with Israel and Russia, and What Three Jewish Historians Teach Us About the Moral Obligations of Memory

The German history of the twentieth century has profoundly and permanently shaped the relationship of the Federal Republic to other states, yet it has done so in markedly different directions and with vastly different intensity. While the responsibility for the National Socialist crimes against the Jews of Europe has led to a particular sensitivity toward the State of Israel, the equally devastating war of annihilation waged against the Soviet Union remains significantly less determinative in its effect on the German-Russian relationship. This asymmetry raises the fundamental question of how historical guilt shapes the foreign policy relations of Germany in different directions and whether the responsibility derived from that guilt is taken equally seriously in all quarters. The following examination investigates this unequal treatment through the voices of historians, through current political developments, and through personal reflections on what it means to carry the burden of history without surrendering the capacity for moral judgement. It is an exploration that touches upon the deepest questions of how a nation reconciles its past with its present obligations and whether selective remembrance constitutes a form of continued injustice.

The Unequal Vigilance Against Prejudice

Every form of antisemitism is attentively registered and decisively combated in Germany, which is unreservedly justified in light of the historical responsibility the nation bears. Anti-Russian sentiment, by contrast, is frequently not even perceived as an independent problem but is regarded at best as a minor transgression and is in some circles even socially welcome. While explicit criticism of the State of Israel is classified as problematic and undesirable, clear criticism of Russia is considered unproblematic and politically desirable. This discrepancy in the perception and evaluation of prejudice toward two different groups deserves closer examination. It points to deeper structures in the German handling of historical responsibility that have never been fully articulated or honestly confronted.

The Problem with Declaring Friendship as State Doctrine

The explanation that friendship and solidarity with Israel form part of the German reason of state appears problematic from a critical perspective. By analogy, an identical declaration regarding the German relationship with Russia would also have to be regarded as misguided. Nevertheless, it would be appropriate if the same sensitivity, empathy, and caution that determine the relationship with Israel were to prevail in the relationship with Russia. A deeply rooted sense of guilt toward Russia would have to flow into a form of solidarity that is by no means free of criticism but is nonetheless reflective and considered. The historical responsibility of Germany is not limited to a single direction, even if it manifests itself in different intensity toward different peoples.

Hans Kohn and the Recognition of an Unsolvable Conflict

The nationalism scholar Hans Kohn, born in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-one and deceased in nineteen hundred and seventy-one, belongs to the most significant academics of his discipline and produced fundamental works on the Arab national movements. In his autobiographical reflections published in the nineteen sixties, he described how he and his wife decided in nineteen hundred and twenty-five to leave Europe and emigrate to Jerusalem. Already in this early phase of the Jewish-Palestinian confrontation, Kohn recognised the core problem of the conflict that remains unresolved to this day. The Jews, emboldened by the British declaration of November nineteen hundred and seventeen, did not find an empty desert in Palestine, no land without a people for a people without a land. For thirteen centuries, Arabs had lived there, and precisely in that period, shortly after the First World War and during the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, they hoped for a renewal of their national culture.

Understanding the Arab Perspective from Within Zionism

Although Kohn was attached to the Zionist movement, he experienced no difficulty in appreciating the Arab standpoint adequately, with great understanding, and even with sympathy. He could comprehend that the Zionist movement must appear to the Arabs as an accomplice of British imperialism. The Arabs pointed out that England, through its declaration, had promised the Zionists something that did not belong to England. The British assurances for the protection of Arab rights were regarded by the Arabs as wholly insufficient in view of the financial, organisational, and propagandistic means at the disposal of the Zionists worldwide. They considered it inevitable that poverty would force many Arabs to sell their land to the Jews, so that despite the English assurances, a Jewish majority and the formation of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine would inevitably result.

The Breaking Point and the Departure from Zionism

The Arab fears of the year nineteen hundred and thirty found their expression in a number of revolts. The struggle of the Arabs for their independence and their political rights was, however, suppressed with superior military force. This rigorous approach was entirely contrary to the convictions of Hans Kohn. After the suppression of the Arab uprising of nineteen hundred and twenty-nine, he carried out the break, sobered and disappointed. He left the Zionist movement and returned initially provisionally, then definitively in nineteen hundred and thirty-three with his wife, to Europe.

The Cost of Moral Clarity

This decision was by no means easy for Kohn, because it meant the renunciation of a hope in whose realisation he had worked for nearly twenty years. The foresight of his early assessment was to confirm itself in the following decades in a tragic manner. Kohn recognised already in the beginnings of the conflict what has remained unresolved to this day. His ability to understand and take seriously the perspective of the other side made him an exceptional figure in a time of increasing polarisation. His example demonstrates that critical loyalty and empathy for the opposing side need not be contradictions but can coexist within a single moral consciousness.

Arno Mayer and the Search for an Independent Path

Arno Mayer, born in nineteen hundred and twenty-six, comes from a Jewish family from Luxembourg that saved itself in nineteen hundred and forty through a months-long, adventurous flight via Marseille, Algiers, and Casablanca to the United States. Mayer and his family stood politically on the left. In the year nineteen hundred and fifty, when in the United States the persecution of alleged communists gathered pace and the Cold War turned hot in Korea, he spent a summer in Israel. This journey was intended as a kind of restorative retreat from the all-dominating East-West conflict. What drew him there was the historical promise and possibility of a Zionist state that was to be independent of both superpowers.

The Kibbutz, the Left, and the Vision of a Binational State

Mayer worked for two months in a kibbutz of the Marxist association and conversed with leading members of the left-wing party. He also visited the philosopher Martin Buber and the educator Ernst Simon, who were regarded as declared advocates of a binational, democratic, and secular Israeli-Palestinian state. Without minimising the security problem of Israel, Simon and the representatives of the left-democratic Marxism took a position against the uncompromising policy of the first Israeli governments toward the Israeli Arabs and the Arab neighbouring states. This policy, according to their conviction, could only lead to Israel’s future depending ever more on alignment with the United States. Upon his second visit to Israel in the year nineteen hundred and fifty-four, Mayer recognised how astonishingly farsighted these early expressed fears had been.

Saul Friedländer and the Turning Point of Nineteen Hundred and Sixty-Seven

Saul Friedländer, born in nineteen hundred and thirty-two in Prague, belongs to the most significant historians of the genocide of the Jews. He comes from a German-speaking Jewish family and counts himself among the victims of the persecution. Under the most difficult circumstances, he survived in occupied France while his parents were murdered, presumably in Auschwitz. Among the great themes of his autobiographical reflections published in the year twenty-sixteen is his ambivalent relationship to the State of Israel, shaped by closeness and distance in equal measure. He considers Israel’s great victory in the Six-Day War of nineteen hundred and sixty-seven as the fundamental, negative turning point in the history of the country.

The Moral Danger of Occupation

Friedländer admitted that in retrospect he was embarrassed that precisely he, who should have known what an occupation does to the occupied and to the occupiers, had not seen the warning sign. The only thing he perceived early enough was the danger of moral decay that the occupation could trigger in Israeli society. The Six-Day War became the decisive turning point in the history of Israel and marked the end of an era as well as the beginning of a fateful development. The rigid occupation policy following the war and the strengthening of nationalist and fundamentalist currents in Israeli politics turned Friedländer into an opponent. He also engaged in the Israeli peace movement, which was unusual insofar as many survivors of the genocide supported a hard line toward the Palestinians.

The Imperative Drawn from Persecution

Friedländer represented a position that stood diametrically opposed to that of many other survivors. He argued at every available opportunity that the only lesson one could draw from the persecution and annihilation of the Jews was a specific imperative. This imperative was to rise up against injustice, against arbitrary persecution, and against the refusal to acknowledge the humanity and the rights of others. For Friedländer, the historical experience of persecution was not a reason for inflexibility toward others but an obligation to empathy. This attitude makes him a remarkable voice among the survivors. His position demonstrates that there is no compelling connection between suffered injustice and the readiness to practise injustice oneself.

Three Voices Across the Decades

The reflections of these three Jewish historians cast a gaze at the confrontations in Palestine and Israel at different times, around nineteen hundred and thirty, around nineteen hundred and fifty, and after nineteen hundred and sixty-seven. They arrive at very similar judgements and spread little hope. The historical development since then has not merely confirmed their assessments and fears but exceeded them. The existence of the State of Israel is threatened less by hostile neighbours than by internal developments. This recognition weighs heavily, because it places the responsibility for the future of the country in the hands of its own citizens and politicians.

The Erosion of Legitimacy

Israel has been officially in a state of emergency since its founding, repeatedly in a state of war, and permanently in phases between war and peace. The country commits war crimes, violates human rights, disregards resolutions of the United Nations and international law, and suppresses as well as discriminates against the Palestinian and Arab population. All of this generates a serious, threatening problem of legitimacy. Israel is developing ever more into a state of racial separation. Critical media suffer under military censorship, and although Israeli civil society remains plural and vital, democracy and liberalism stand under growing pressure.

The Thought Experiment of Double Standards

One should imagine that Israel were not an ally of the West and not a protégé of the United States. How would one judge its conduct in this country under such circumstances? This thought experiment reveals the double standards that are embedded in international politics. The question is not whether criticism of Israel is justified but whether it is exercised according to the same standards as toward other states. The answer is sobering. The geopolitical affiliation of a state determines substantially how its transgressions are evaluated and whether they are condemned or excused.

The Comparison with Russia and the Question of Consistency

With regard to anti-Russian sentiment, it can be stated that Israel constantly and demonstrably does what Russia is loudly accused of without solid evidence. Russia is reproached for the annexation of the Crimea, while Israel has undeniably annexed East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights. Russia is accused of interference in the east of Ukraine contrary to international law, while Israel has flown a four-digit number of aerial attacks contrary to international law against positions in Syria. Most recently, Israel even caused the downing of a Russian reconnaissance aircraft with fifteen fatalities. Russia is accused of supporting right-wing populist parties in Europe, while Israel’s affinity for right-wing populists is multiply documented and moreover hardly surprising, given that the current Israeli government likewise consists of right-wing populist and right-wing nationalist forces.

The Asymmetry of Sanctions

Russia is covered with sanctions by the West for its alleged misdeeds. Whoever, however, in connection with Israel mentions the word sanctions or even merely the withdrawal of investments must face the accusation of antisemitism. This unequal treatment is one of the most striking double standards in contemporary international politics. The readiness to punish a country for actions that another country likewise commits apparently depends not on the deed itself but on the geopolitical position of the perpetrator. This recognition undermines the credibility of international law and of the values-based foreign policy that Western nations claim to pursue.

The Question of Influence on American Politics

Since the end of the year twenty-sixteen, the media of the United States have known hardly another topic than the alleged Russian interference in internal American affairs, particularly during the presidential elections. Yet how does one stand with regard to Israeli influence on the politics of the United States? Who in the past and who at present has the greater influence on American domestic policy, Russia or Israel? When a journalist posed this question in the spring of twenty-seventeen to a long-standing collaborator of the Democratic Party who was involved in the Russia investigations, the answer came without hesitation. The answer was that Israel naturally has the greater influence. Israel is the elephant in the room that everyone knows but hardly anyone addresses.

The Personal Burden of Criticism

Even if the author of these reflections does not hesitate to criticise current Israeli policy clearly and partially to condemn it, all of this is anything but easy for him. The intensive engagement with the Jewish history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, above all with concrete Jewish life stories, makes it difficult to approach the topic without inhibition. The crimes committed by Germans and in the German name against the Jews represent a burden that also leaves the relationship to the present-day State of Israel not untouched. Government-critical, oppositional Israelis and Jews assure that there is no reason whatsoever for such inhibition. Nevertheless, this inhibition has its merit, because it prevents carelessness and compels thoughtfulness.

The Obligation of National Shame

The German-Jewish history does not release the one who engages with it seriously. The feeling of national shame and national guilt is not a weakness but a prerequisite for responsible action. Whoever acknowledges the crimes of the past without deriving from them an uncritical loyalty toward the present-day State of Israel acts in the spirit of the Enlightenment. The historical responsibility does not consist in supporting every policy of a government that invokes Judaism. It consists rather in allowing the lessons of history to apply to all human relationships, also and precisely when it becomes uncomfortable. The German-Jewish history must not let go, and it should not be permitted to do so.

Beyond Criticism: The Search for Understanding

As necessary and legitimate as criticism of and protest against Israeli policy are, it cannot end there alone. As everywhere, the power elites in Israel must not be confused with the population of the country. Instead of resigning, one must repeatedly seek possibilities of understanding and dialogue. A difficult but promising path in this conflict as well consists in conveying historical knowledge and connections to younger generations. Only whoever understands the past can classify the present and shape the future.

The Shared Textbook and the Courage to Listen

In the year two thousand, on the initiative of a peace research institution in the Middle East, Palestinian and Israeli teachers came together. From their common discussion rounds emerged a controversially conceived schoolbook that narrates the individual stages of the conflict, now spanning a century, from the different perspective of both parties. However sharply the perspectives of the authors often contrast, their overarching conviction is present at every moment. It requires equally more people who understand Israel and more people who understand Palestine. The historical experiences, the viewpoints, the perceptions, the argumentations, the feelings, the fears, and the hopes of the respective other side must first be taken note of if it is to succeed in breaking up hardened fronts, questioning dominant narratives, perhaps correcting them, and entering into conversation with one another. This is the only path that leads beyond the cycle of accusation and counter-accusation, and it demands from both sides the very quality that the three historians described at the beginning of these reflections embodied in their own lives: the courage to see the humanity of the other even when history presses one toward blindness.