Germany on Monday vowed continued support for the International Criminal Court, ahead of a trip by its foreign minister to the Hague-based court that is currently in the US administration’s crosshairs.
Donald Trump has long opposed the ICC and recently urged countries to leave the “evil” court immediately.
His administration has sought to punish the court over investigations into US personnel as well as its arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Many governments, especially in Europe, have reacted by rallying behind the court, describing it as a cornerstone of international justice.
Considering Germany’s slavish obedience to Israel in most things I don’t know if anyone should trust this.
They are slowly coming around. Germany’s (and Austria’s, where I live) relationship with Jews is understandable a pretty complicated issue, and even entertaining the thought that our victims might become guilty of exactly the same crime we inflicted on them was a pretty taboo subject. In general, criticism of Jews was avoided for decades, and the guilt regarding the holocaust is still alive.
And the commitment to the ICC is sincere and born out of the same complex issue, but the ICC is not a bunch of murderous bastards.
Israel is not the same as “the jews”. I wish people would learn that. It would get rid of so many false antisemitism claims
Actually criticism of Israel is anything but without precedent in Austria. I would point to one of the most influential Austrian chancellors in the 2nd republic: Bruno Kreisky. Yes, he had himself jewish background, surviving the Nazi regime by fleeing in time into exile. He was absolutely hated by Israeli politicians and zionists alike, understandably so I might add.
Yeah, but that was somewhat like PoC saying the N-Word - if he didn’t have a jewish background, it would have caused outrage across the country. For the average politician everything regarding jews that didn’t involve remembering and apologizing for the holocaust was simply a no-go.
Now even our ancient ex green party leader who is president openly criticized Israel in front of the UN and didn’t get widespread pushback. That’s quite the development in comparison.
For better or worse, if you take the situation in Germany an just think it was the same in Austria, you are mistaken. Kreisky’s position was supported by the larger SPÖ.
And then Austrian politicians, Kreisky and others, where not afraid of working together with ex-Nazis.
The development in Germany is a lot slower (in politics, not so much in the population), i’ll give you that. And yeah, the SPÖ stood behind him, but they would have never said out the same things out loud as Kreisky did (at least not at the same political level as Kreisky).
Yep, denazification was by far not as effective as it should have been, simply because far too many people bought into nazism which left the state with not much choice if it wanted somewhat competent civil servants. Still no excuse IMO, but things probably fell into normalcy a lot faster that way.