By Burak Bir
LONDON (AA) – Germany’s crackdown on a recent pro-Palestine event and the steps taken against invited speakers shows the extent to which Western nations are ready to damage their own democracies to protect Israel, according to Andrew Feinstein, a former South African politician and pro-Palestine activist.
Police in Berlin stormed the Palestine Congress venue last Friday, shutting off electricity and canceling the weekend-long event, which would have seen speeches from British-Palestinian surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis.
Abu Sitta, who worked for more than a month in Gaza and was recently appointed as rector of Glasgow University, was also denied entry to Germany, forced to return to the UK after landing at Berlin airport.
“How mad is this country … to stop a doctor speaking about what he has witnessed firsthand, something that the International Court of Justice thinks is likely a genocide,” Feinstein, who was also scheduled to deliver a recorded message at the event, told Anadolu.
“It is a reflection of the extent to which countries like Germany, US, UK and other so-called Western countries are prepared to go to corrode their own democracies and their citizens own democratic rights in order to protect Israel.”
On Abu Sitta’s deportation, Feinstein called out British authorities for failing to support the surgeon.
“The British Embassy in Berlin should have been there to protect the British citizen at the airport from being refused entry to Germany and being deported back to Britain,” he said.
“Where were they? Where was his diplomatic support as a British citizen?”
If being a Palestinian-British citizen means that a person does not get any support from the British state, that would suggest “extreme racism,” he added.
“I’m a Jew. I’m white. If I had been on the plane with the doctor, would they have arrested me too? Or would they just have arrested him?” he said.
What German authorities did is “insanity” and “completely unacceptable,” he asserted.
- ‘Smacks of racism, imperialism’
Feinstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor, slammed Western countries for their continued support to Israel.
These countries are arming Israel so they are “complicit in the genocide” being committed in Gaza, he said.
“They’re actually profiting and profiteering from the genocide that is being committed in Gaza,” said Feinstein.
“What the West is doing is a disgrace. It smacks of racism, it smacks of imperialism and it has to stop now.”
He said Germany itself has been involved in two genocides, the Holocaust and the genocide of Indigenous people in Namibia.
Germany seems to think they have to uncritically defend Israel because of the Holocaust, said Feinstein.
By doing that, he added, Germany assumes that “all Jews support what Israel is doing, committing a genocide in Gaza,” stressing that simply “is not true.”
“There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Jews around the world who are appalled and disgusted by what the state of Israel is doing. The state of Israel does not represent all Jews,” he said.