The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Expands its Activities in Israel

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The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Expands its Activities in Israel

By Reuven Kaminer

The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which has been active in Israel for a number of years has recently upgraded its level of representation and activities, including the establishment of two new offices in Tel Aviv and Ramallah. It sponsored on March 11, 2009 in Tel Aviv a very impressive full day seminar devoted to Rosa Luxemburg and relations between the Israeli and the German left. It is almost superfluous to note here that the Polish, German, Jewish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, was one of the giants of revolutionary socialism, an important theoretician, and an indefatigable proletarian leader. Luxembourg was murdered in 1918, a few days after she was released from prison where she was held because of her consistent opposition to the war.

A Complex and Sensitive Mission

Representing the German Left in Israel is a complex and sensitive mission. The relations between the German people and the Jewish people are suffused with painful memory and fraught with tensions on the background of the Holocaust, after the horrendous murder of a third of the Jewish people. Matters become more complex when one remembers that the “return of Germany to the family of nations” after the WWII was facilitated by a budding Israeli-German romance. Back then Germany was being transformed into the faithful ally of the United States and a major force in NATO. On this background, Israel, led by David Ben Gurion, initiated the historic reconciliation which included the (in)famous reparations agreement, thus granting major assistance to restoring the moral stature of the “new” Germany.

There are those on the German Left who believe that the traumas of the past dictate a common German position in favor of Israel, which includes special consideration for all and any of Israel’s actions. Gregor Gysi, a central political figure in the German “Die Linke” is a typical representative of this current of thought. In an important speech, marking the 60th anniversary of Israel (“The Position of the German Left Towards Israel ” – April 14, 2008) Gysi calls on the German left to maintain its embrace of the “pro-Israeli” approach of the German establishment. The practical effect of this approach is to render Israel immune to any serious criticism. With all due respect, this approach to the matter is unacceptable in terms of its content and its political implications. According to Gizi’s approach, Israel is the direct and legitimate heir of all the victims of Nazism. It is Israel which represents them and is authorized to act in their name. Therefore, all the governments of Israel must receive special consideration in every area, and this includes, of course, the Israeli-Arab conflict.

In the Israeli left, we are quite familiar with this thesis, according to which Israel is the authentic expression of all Jewish aspirations, past and present and that Israel’s establishment is in some way compensation for the crimes by Nazism against the Jewish people. It is obvious why the Israeli establishment adopted and energetically advanced this thesis which became over time an important ideological weapon in rationalizing its behavior in the Middle East conflict. But there is no basis in fact for this thesis in historical reality.

Gysi does try to be honest and objective, but one senses that feelings of guilt have taken precedence over political logic. This is clear from the extreme credibility that he extends to claims by the Zionist establishment and Israeli governments according to which Israel is “surprisingly democratic” and “forced to act” as it does.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/8293/