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“I can’t stop thinking about Hind and how scared she was.” I look at you and I see your face changing. You feel the hurt and your heavy tears fall with the weight of all the starving people in Gaza.
“What do you think is going to happen to them?”, you ask me. My thoughts are scary, and they are real.
How come things are allowed to continue in the way they do? How come that Russia is so publicly and rightfully condemned, sanctioned, and excluded? How come that Israel can continue its’ cruel actions – the cold performance of killing and starving innocent Palestinians that they hold captive in an outdoor prison on a land that they owned – without any sort of punishment?
The silence of the people here, back in Germany, and everywhere is haunting me. Celebrities, politicians, and just people choose not to speak up. Out of fear of being called antisemitic? How is criticizing Zionistic action and the genocide committed by the Israeli government antisemitic? I don’t care if Netanyahu is Jewish. I don’t care if the dead Palestinians are Muslim or Christian or Atheist.
How is equating Judaism with Netanyahu(‘s government) NOT antisemitism?
I feel guilty for laughing, guilty for living my normal life. I feel powerless and stunned by the missing global effects needed.
What can I do?
Donate, demonstrate, confront politicians, share stories, boycott.
And the effect?
I will not save the dying Gazans and Palestinians.
And still, we must keep it up.
I need to stand among people I might disagree on many things with, because we stand together for the cause. Because 10.000 protesters are more than 9.999. How many will be enough?
People lit themselves up “for the cause”. Hundreds of thousands of people were demonstrating, many donating. When will we be heard?
“I have also promised him that we will find ways and means for him to visit Germany and also to be able to leave again without being arrested in Germany,” Merz said. “I think it is a completely absurd idea that an Israeli prime minister cannot visit the Federal Republic of Germany.”[1]
I think it is a completely absurd idea that Germany shows this level of inaction and complicity. Germany, how ironic.
What to do if people choose not to see the obvious?
Israel’s war on Gaza was never about rescuing the hostages taken by Hamas. They chose the horrific actions carried out by Hamas on October 7th as justification to eliminate Gaza and all who live there – on their own land. This is not a war against Hamas, in accordance with international law. This is a textbook genocide.
Whoever remains silent today, will have to ask themselves whatever this silence has supported and enabled.
The criteria for what constitute a genocide are there: Raphael Lemkin defined genocide as follows: “The intent of the offenders is to destroy or degrade an entire national, religious or racial group by attacking the individual members of that group.” (Lemkin, Raphael: Genocide – A Modern Crime, 1945.)
People like the finance minister Bezalel Smotrich have talked openly about exactly this intention.
In January 2024, the INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE determined with 15 to 2 votes that there is an initial suspicion for a genocide by the government of Israel. In October 2023, the Israeli Holocaust and genocide researcher Raz Segal called the actions of Israel a “textbook case” for a genocide.
And with all that, we just need to open our eyes and see the dead bodies, the destroyed homes, and see what really is there.
And we’re watching. I can’t.
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/merz-invites-netanyahu-to-germany-despite-icc-arrest-warrant/a-71788069, 22.07.2025, 16:00
Dirk Jakob Dreier 