Why all the hate Israel? Kant, the idea of the nation-state and two opposing paradigms from
© Mercury, No. 740, January 2011 (
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Contents of this issue
) Tuesday, January 18, 2011
| is outdated the idea of the nation state? | ||||||||
| Every few months, Israel publicly in the international media and at universities around the world put in the pillory and the country down a real or perceived violation of human rights to the load. Last summer it was about the Israeli commando raid against a Turkish ship that tried to break through the blockade of the Gaza Strip, which nine people lost their lives. In a few months it will go to something else, perhaps to the Israeli action against the Islamic terrorist state in Gaza or the army against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and its ever-growing mountain of missiles. Perhaps an Israeli strike against the Iranian and Syrian nuclear program, perhaps to the revelation of an Israeli covert operation in Europe, perhaps to an incident at a roadblock in the West Bank. Maybe it will go to the visit of the Temple Mount by Israeli politicians or the purchase of a building in East Jerusalem by some Jews. But whatever may be the ostensible reason, and regardless of whether Israel's political leaders and soldiers do their work properly, we can be sure that the impact of this future event be a further abuse campaign in the media and the universities and from the political executive level is - a campaign of defamation, which no other nation in the world is exposed as regularly. We know that our nation will one day no longer treated as a democracy that fulfills its duty to defend its citizens and their freedom, but as a kind of plague. We will again have to witness how all the things we value and expensive, and what we think needs doing and we will be trampled. We will feel the shame that former friends turn away from us and Jewish students to quickly distance itself from Israel, to preserve the goodwill of outraged students. And we in turn will feel the brunt of rising anti-Semitic tide that has now returned the following after the Second World War low tide. As for the reactions of the Jews and the friends of Israel in this defamation campaigns, these have been during the last thirty years, ultimately, not changed: My friends from the political left still seem to believe that a change in Israeli policy, these abusive campaigns or eliminating it could at least reduce their influence. My friends from the political right seem to still say that we are above all a "better Public relations' needs.Israel's policies over the past forty years, very uneven, sometimes it was better, sometimes worse. And the skill with which Israel took its interests in the media and through diplomatic channels, was also sometimes greater, sometimes less. But delegitimize the international effort to defame Israel, and from the international community, and notices, went on and, despite the many changes in Israeli politics and public relations and more intense and effective. can do nothing to show this more clearly than the Jewish withdrawal from Gaza and the subsequent Gründung einer unabhängigen und kriegerischen islamischen Republik – etwa sechzig Kilometer vom Zentrum Tel Avivs entfernt. Die Israelis und die Freunde Israels können mit guten Gründen geteilter Meinung sein in der Frage, ob dieser Rückzug aus Gaza im Jahre 2005 oder der entsprechende Rückzug aus der Sicherheitszone im Südlibanon im Jahre 2000 wirklich in Israels Interesse war und ob der jüdische Staat dadurch gewonnen hat. In einem können wir jedoch alle einer Meinung sein, dass nämlich diese Rückzüge die sich über Israel ergießende Flut von Hass und Verunglimpfung in keiner Weise zurückgedrängt haben. Was auch immer dem Trend zur Delegitimierung Israels zugrunde liegt, dieser Trend function largely independently of any particular Israeli policy in this or that question.To put it another way: not the continuation of the security zone in southern Lebanon and Israeli control of the Gaza Strip or a commando raid against a blockade-breaking ship threaten Israel's position in the world. They are our enemies only manifestations of something deeper, which they always come back to the fore when they consider the Israeli state and its actions. And as long as we do not understand what this deeper problem is with Israel, we will be unable to understand the swell of hatred for us - and unable, however, we to defend.Most of this growing hostility worried people with whom I've talked to are convinced that Israel's reputation in Europe and elsewhere could be improved considerably if only certain facts would be known better. But that does not exist. Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions shownthat you do not normally someone who can persuade with facts, if he sees the world through a different paradigm - that of a rival conceptual frame of reference for his perception of the world. As for Israel's reputation in the eyes of many Europeans, is exactly the case. The political thinking Europe has experienced in recent decades, a paradigm shift, and the rest of the world follows, at least in part, such replacement. start with the old paradigm, which Israel originally owed its legitimacy. The modern state of Israel was both constitutional as well as to what the international community as a Na tionalstaat founded as the state of the Jewish people. He is, in other words, the result of an early modern development, which took the view that the freedom of nations was based on a right to defend itself against the depredations of international empires that occurred in the name of a higher authority. (1) And even if there has been for thousands of nation-states - the Jewish Kingdom of the Bible was the most classic example - focus for the story of the modern national state to the rise of England and the Netherlands and subsequently Richelieu's France, whose self-image as sovereign nations during the long struggle to liberate their peoples from the data collected since the mid-16th century demands of Austria-English Hapsburg on a universal empire cleared and strengthened. The victory of Elizabeth I in 1588 about the English Armada was for this reason a turning point in history of humanity, because it was consolidated with the rejection of the right to rule over England at the same time, the freedom of peoples to the Austria-English legal right, as the only protector of ruling the universal Catholic faith on humanity. The defeat of the universalist ideal of the Thirty Years War led to the enforcement of a new paradigm of European politics, in which a revitalized concept of the nation-state the basis for the freedom of nations offered anywhere in Europe. In the late 19th century, this idea of national freedom so widespread that it not only in Europe as a guiding principle was, but all over the world. For the sovereign nation-state that had the right to defend its government, its laws, its religion and language against the tyranny of imperial claims, entered advanced thinkers and politicians such as John Stuart Mill and Woodrow Wilson and saw it as the cornerstone of what eventually should be a new political order for humanity. Theodor Herzl's Zionist organization, which sought a sovereign state for the Jewish people in line, this has become common political model - and indeed the idea of a Jewish state was indeed achieved under British auspices. In 1947, the United Nations voted by a two thirds majority for the creation of an NES "Jewish state" in Palestine. And on the birth of Israel followed the establishment of dozens of other independent states throughout the Third World. But in the time since the founding of Israel strengthened the idea of the nation state is not about, but has been largely abandoned. With the European Union, the European nations seek to push through a new paradigm in which the sovereign nation state is no longer the basis for the good of mankind. On the contrary, the independent nation-state is now by many European intellectuals and politicians regarded as the source of all evil, during the multinational empire - the one form of government that had shown to John Stuart Mill the essence of despotism - is now repeatedly cited approvingly as a model of post-national human race. (2) This new paradigm also brings in other nations before attacking in the majority political discourse - even in the United States and Israel. why this happens? How is it that so many French, German, British, Dutch and others are now willing to help with the abolition of the states where they live, and against the rule to exchange of an international regime? To answer these questions we need to take a quick look at the origin of modern post-national paradigm in European thinking. This alternative view of European politics began in 1795 with the programmatic document Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Sketch. It was Immanuel Kant from a direct attack on the ideal of the nation-state by comparing the national self-determination with the lawless liberty of the savage: "Just as we now the attachment of savages to their lawless freedom, prefer to wrestle incessantly, as if a statutory to constituent by themselves, to submit to compulsion. . . See with profound contempt, and regarded as crudity, coarseness and brutal Abwürdigung of humanity, so, you might think, would have civilized peoples divided (each united to become a State), from such a depraved state, the sooner the better to escape: but instead Rather, each is Statehis majesty. . . exactly, to be subject to legal constraints no looks, and the splendor of his head is that it. . . many thousands at its disposal, for one thing, it's none, "to be sacrificed. For Kant, the willingness to entirely to waive the right to act on the basis of his political independence, the flag for reason in politics. This applies to the individual, if it is the lawful order of the political state subjects. And it applies to the nations that give equally any right of independent action and to join a "national state" must "to states in proportion to each other, there can be according to reason is no other way out of the lawless state which contains nothing but war; come out, than to give up just like their wild individuals (lawless) freedom to public coercive laws comfortable and so an (admittedly always growing) ethnic state (civitas gentium) that would last address all peoples of the earth form. " In Perpetual PeaceKant therefore takes the view that the establishment of a universal state, »last all peoples of the earth would include" the only possible topping-out speech of reason. People who do not agree with the submission of their national interests to the decisions of such a universal state are considered enemies of the historical progress of mankind to reason. The supporters of the nation state are considered supporters of a violent egoism at the international level, which amounts to a waiver of moral as well as the insistence on a violent selfishness in our personal lives. Lange took the Kantian paradigm, which accused the institution of the national state of inherent immorality, few supporters in Europe. In the 19th century, it was only a tiny number of Utopians and a handful of Catholic reactionaries own. This changed however in the 20th century. The Soviets and the Marxists put the blame for the carnage of two world wars of the institution of the nation state to the load. This argument convinced few in the European mainstream between the wars. After the Second World War, however, when Nazism was on the list of the nation state to the alleged crimes, this caused a different result. Nazism was seen as the rotten fruit of the German national state, and Kant, has always seemed rather to have had: For now it was considered a "coarseness" and "bestial Abwürdigung of humanity", if nations are armed and myself decided when to this wanted to use weapons. I think that argument is absurd. At the heart of the idea of the nation state is the political self-determination of peoples. The nation state is a form of government, their political ambitions to rule einer Nation beschränkt und die Schaffung der Freiheit für diese Nation. Der Nazistaat aber war das genaue Gegenteil davon: Hitler lehnte die Idee des Nationalstaates als einen Ausdruck westlicher Dekadenz ab. Seiner Ansicht nach sollte das politische Schicksal aller Nationen von dem neu entstehenden deutschen Reich entschieden werden: Hitler sah ja in seinem Dritten Reich eine verbesserte Version des von ihm so genannten Ersten Reiches, das nichts anderes war als das Heilige Römische Reich. Das Ziel der Nazis war also dem der westlichen Nationalstaaten diametral entgegengesetzt. Hitlers Traum bestand eben darin, sein Reich auf deren Untergang zu gründen. Doch viele Europäer weigerten sich, das so zu sehen und accepted the view that Nazism was more or less the ugly logical consequence of the nation state. So went the Soviet condemnation of the Western nation-state along with a new anti-Western nationalism, the hoped-in the name of Kant's progression of reason impatient for an end to the old order. Jürgen Habermas, one of the leading theoreticians of post-national Europe, pointed out that the proposed changes to the Germans was very easy - given the role of Germany in the Second World War and the fact that post-war Germany is already occupied by the Allies and not a sovereign state was gone. He might have added that the German People had historically lived differently than the English, French and Dutch never under a single government rule, so that was the dream of a nation state for them in any case less important. Anyway, this post-national perspective now found everywhere in Europe trailer. 1992, the European leaders of the Maastricht Treaty, which the European Union was founded as an international government, and restricting the number of rights that accompanied the history of European nations with national independence. Of course there are many Europeans who have not yet accepted this development. And it is still unclear how it will continue in the future - whether it will succeed in the nation states of Europe to preserve parts of their sovereignty, or whether these states will exist as independent nations only in memory. In any case, the effect of the new paradigm that drives the development of the European Union, already overwhelming. Both in Europe and North America grow, we see a generation of young people who no longer looks for the first time in three hundred years in the National State, the foundation of our freedoms. This powerful new paradigm suggests we can get along very well without the nation-state. The possibility that should step down as a nation like England, which was so often in the fields of politics, philosophy and science a role model for others, one day forever from the stage of world history, fills me with concern. And the same goes for other European nations. But my real issue is the Jews and their state, and I will try to understand how Israel looks like when viewed through European eyes. Or more precisely, through the eyes of the new paradigm that so many Europeans, and now a growing number of educated people in America and elsewhere in the world serves as a framework for understanding Israel. Not Herzl Zionist Organization had managed to convince almost all Jews around the world that there was no other way but to establish a sovereign Jewish state. This could only Auschwitz and the extermination of six million by the Germans and their accomplices. From the horror and humiliation of Auschwitz this unavoidable lessons have been learned: that it was the dependence of the Jews of military protection by others that had led to it. That message was already on November 30, 1942 formulated by David Ben-Gurion in the National Assembly of the Palestinian Jews unequivocally: "We do not know exactly what is in the Nazi Death Valley is going on or how many Jews have been slaughtered. . . We do not know whether the victory of democracy and freedom and justice will not take place in a Europe that has become a huge Jewish cemetery. . . We are the only people in the world whose blood may be shed with impunity as the blood of a nation. . . Because the Jews are not recognized politically, have no Jewish army, no independence and no Jewish homeland. . . Give us the right to fight and die as Jews. . . We demand the right. . . to a homeland and independence. What happened with us in Poland, which forbid, God, happened to us in the future is, all of our innocent victims, all the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and possibly millions. . . are the victims of a people without a homeland. . . We call. . . a homeland and independence. " These words vividly show the connection between the Holocaust and what Ben-Gurion that "sin is called the Jewish powerlessness. Auschwitz means that the Jews failed in their efforts to find a means to protect their children. They were dependent on others, decent men who were in America or England in power and when the time came, took practically no effort to save the Jews of Europe. Now believe most Jews continued that the only thing that has really changed, since they killed millions of their people - the only thing bucking to be a stronghold of the repetition of this chapter of world history - Israel. (3)
The Jews are certainly not the only ones for which Auschwitz has become an important political symbol. For many Europeans Auschwitz is the focus of the Second World War given lesson. But the conclusions they draw are pulled by the Jews diametrically opposed. Following Kant see them in Auschwitz, the most radical manifestation of that brutal Abwürdigung of mankind, the means of national particularism. From this perspective, the death camps provide the final proof of the evil that must happen if we allowed the nations to decide how they want to have the military power in their possession. The obvious conclusion is that it was wrong to give the German nation that power over life and death. If you want to prevent it from ever coming back to such a crime, then the answer can only be to abolish Germany and other nation states of Europe and unite all the European nations under a single international government. You create the nation-state from a once and for all - Ecrasez l'infame! - And it has blocked this dark road to Auschwitz. , note that it is not according to this view is Israel that is the answer to Auschwitz, but the European Union: A united Europe will make it Germany or any other European nation impossible to track once more. In this sense, the European Union just a guarantee for the future undisturbed peace of the Jews and even the whole mankind. We're here the introduction of two competing paradigms: two paradigms assume that the millions of Auschwitz Germans and their collaborators were murdered, the atrocities committed there were evil altogether and that Jews and others who died there were the helpless victims of evil. But then closes with the matches. From now on, to see individuals who view the same facts through different paradigms, different things. paradigm A: Auschwitz means the unspeakable horror of Jewish women and men who have to stand there watching naked and empty-handed and, as their children die because they lack a weapon with which they could protect them. Paradigm B: Auschwitz means the unspeakable horror, the German soldiers Spreading use violence against others and be legitimized by anything other than the views of their government on their national rights and interests. It is important to see that these two theories are actually describe views that are incompatible. In this, the agency among the killers seen as a source of evil, in that the powerlessness of the victims - a difference of views, which is a yawning gap, if we apply these competing paradigms in a different direction and Israel look through their eyes. paradigm A: Israel does Jewish women and men with a gun in his hand watch over their children and all other Jewish children and protect them. Israel is the opposite of Auschwitz. Paradigm B: Israel does the unspeakable horror, the Jewish soldiers spread use violence against others and be legitimized by anything other than the views of their government on their national rights and interests. Israel is Auschwitz. wins in both paradigms, the existence of Israel is of exceptional importance. For the founders of Israel seemed to be the fact that the survivors of death camps and their children were given weapons and allowed them to be trained as soldiers under a Jewish flag, a key Schritt der Weltgeschichte auf dem Wege zu Recht und Gerechtigkeit. Zwar konnte das keineswegs wiedergutmachen, was geschehen war. Aber es war nichtsdestoweniger gerecht und rechtens, den Überlebenden eben jene Ermächtigung zu gewähren, die, wäre es einige Jahre früher dazu gekommen, ihre Angehörigen vor dem Tode bewahrt hätte. In diesem Sinne ist Israel das Gegenteil von Auschwitz. Aber Israel gewinnt auch in dem neuen europäischen Paradigma eine außerordentliche Bedeutung. Denn in Israel griffen die Überlebenden und ihre Kinder zu den Waffen und machten sich auf, ihr Schicksal selbst zu bestimmen. Das heißt, dieses Volk, das noch vor ein paar Jahrzehnten dem Kantischen Ideal complete self-denial had come so close, but instead chose the path that is now considered the path of Hitler - the path of national self-determination. Just that underlies the almost limitless disgust that so many feel towards Israel and especially to all that has to do with Israel's defense efforts, regardless of whether these military operations are blameless or morally questionable. For when they attacked in the name of their own nation-state to arms, the Jews were the view of many Europeans, taken directly from the same evil that Germany had made to build the concentration camps. This may differ in details, but the principle is the same: Israel is Auschwitz. You try to see this through European eyes: Just try to imagine a proud Dutchman to be, whose nation was the first that kindled the torch of freedom in that desperate revolt against Catholic Spain in a war of independence, the eighty years lasted. "And yet I am willing to give up," he says to himself, "this heritage with its dreams of past glory to sacrifice and to say goodbye to the land of my forefathers to a higher will, I will bring this painful sacrifice for an international political union that will eventually cover the whole of humanity. Yes, I'll do it for the sake of humanity. " But which ventured civilized nations to turn away from this blessed efforts of morality and reason back? Imagine how shocked we Dutch must be: "The Jews! Ebendie be Jews who would have the first to greet the coming of the new world order, and are now proving their enemies and build their own selfish small state - in conflict with the world. How dare they? Do they not in the name of reason and good the same sacrifices as I do? Are they so corrupt that they are their own parents in Auschwitz can remember? No, she can not remember - because they are seduced and perverted been from the same evil, which had previously been taken our German neighbors. They are gone over to the side of Auschwitz. " It is no mere coincidence that we hear constantly how Israel and its soldiers are compared to the Nazis. It is not easy to be any slander, or the arbitrary value was chosen because of their rhetoric. In Europe and everywhere spread the new paradigm is the comparison with Nazism, as disgusting and absurd as it may be, as natural and inevitable as mud after rain. And that, I believe answered the question of how it is possible to count on a basic level facts no longer appear. How is it possible that even if Israel certainly is right, the land can be put on trial in libel campaigns that burn every year of painful and difficult decisions? How is it possible that after the destruction of the Israeli security zone in southern Lebanon and the retreat from Gaza, the hatred of Israel is only louder still? The answer is: true that the hatred of Israel at some point, quite honestly based on certain facts, but the international outrage against Israel and hatred of Israel are in fact not motivated by such facts. They are motivated more by the rapid spread of the new paradigm, with Israel and in particular the use of force alone in his defense are considered profoundly illegitimate. If you believe that Israel, in a sense represents a variant of Nazism, then you will be not very impressed by "improvements" of Israeli politics and public relations. An improved Auschwitz is still Auschwitz. If that is true and the comparison of Israel with the most hated political movement in European history an integral part of the new and is rapidly spreading paradigm of international politics must, it is not those who are supporters of this paradigm to come to the conclusion that Israel has no right to exist and should be abolished? My answer is: Of course, the comparison leads to this conclusion: If Germany and France have no right to exist as independent states, then why should Israel have this right? And if no one is willing to shed a tear on the date on which members of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are a thing of the past, why should anyone else in the case of Israel ? Behave On the contrary - while the Jews and their friends still fearful to speak about the "destruction of Israel," infuses this formulation the representatives of the different directions of the new paradigm, one not afraid to allow some of them already dream to be related to the policies to the Jewish state will allow the end of its existence. (4)
All this provokes the question: If the ever-increasing hostility toward Israel is motivated to a considerable extent by the fact that the idea of independent nation-state hardly support place, then why support as many of the sharpest critics of Israel, the establishment of an independent nation state for the Palestinian Arabs? Why do they refuse to criticize the use of force by other nation-states such as North Korea, Iran, Turkey and the Arab regimes and many other Third World countries? Many of these regimes are much more aggressive in business, violence as Israel - in some cases, they are committing atrocities on an unimaginable scale. If the nation-state paradigm is in disarray, then why is there apparently at least passive support of the right to independent governance, if it is perceived by those regimes is? As before, found a first answer in the works of the main architects of the new paradigm. Remember that human history is for Kant as a progressive movement from barbarism to the final triumph of morality and reason should be seen, which he equates with the establishment of a single world government. The first people to give their selfish, lawless freedom, by forming themselves into nation states, then those nation-states their selfish, lawless freedom to give up by subordinate themselves to a single universal government. Unlike Marx, for Kant, is uncertain whether these Movement of history is necessary. But he sees this as the only historical development, is legitimate for a moral and in accordance with reason can be seen located, since any other view of history compels us "our eyes. . . wipe with indignation. " This advanced view of history does not mean that all nations continue on the path from barbarism to reason with the same speed. Kant, indeed, believes that there are different levels of success on this way and that different peoples to reach at different times. As he writes in his essay Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Intention(1784) explains, let the people when they join forces to constitutional nation-state behind the barbaric and reach the stage of civilization. But civilization does not mean moral maturity, which is a completely different stage of human history. This highest level can be achieved only if there is the framework of an international government, "where everyone, even the smallest state in its security and rights of its own power, or its own legal judging, but only of this great League of Nations (Foedus Amphictyonum) , united by a power and the decision according to the laws of the united will could expect. " is Thus, a particular people at a particular time in a state of savagery, civilization or of moral maturity. The Greeks and Romans called it in Kant, bequeathed to Europe a continuous improvement of state constitutions, and Europe would "likely give way one day all other laws. But still there was no nation that the level of moral maturity was reached, and Kant prophesied that would be the civilized nations of much suffering and misery to endure, until they were ready, their "disorderly freedom to give up" and to submit to an international government . The rest of the world, which had remained uncivilized, had not even taken the first step to unite in the form of permanent national states. And they would have to do obviously, before we could make the idea of their further advancement into serious consideration. About one thinks Kant's argument carefully, you will notice that in view of our current world international situation leads to the exact position of the authorities of the new paradigm. According to this position, there is a place in the world, where nations have finally achieved the hoped for Kant, "moral perfection": the European Union. Only there for many it has become clear that the system of nation-states must be overcome. Only one is there to overcome on the way, the right to independent national action. Only the people there are morally ready - not only at the level of individuals, but also on all the nations. are from this point of view, North Korea, Iran, Turkey, the Arabs and the Third World on a much more primitive stage of historical development. They still seek to escape the savagery, nor seek to form a real nation-states under the national rule of law. Once they achieve that which can last for centuries, they also will be begin to understand how desirable it would be to their nation-states to rise and gain under an international governmental moral maturity, as do the Europeans now. This explains the enthusiasm of the representatives of the new paradigm for the creation of new nation states in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and their relative lack of interest in the aggression and atrocities committed by the not yet fully developed nation-states, which are found in these regions. In the eyes of the new paradigm is all just a necessary phase of development, they must go through: Like children, they have not grown up and know it not be better. All this naturally on Israel not to. In the eyes of the new paradigm, the Jews are regarded as a European people, and the Jews should be measured with the same moral standards as the Europeans. The Jews have thus reached the stage of civilization for a long time and should know better than anyone else, irregular that the system of nation-state, only the first stage of "freedom is" to be overcome in the name of moral maturity must. This accounts for the anger and the hatred directed against Israel and the Jews, because they insist, are all to resist: the Jews are not regarded as innocent Wilde. If they insist on a unilateral military self-defense or be supported by its own legal system, they are viewed as former Europeans who grotesquely left the road to moral maturity. They are not children who were not really responsible, because they know better. They are adults who know better and actually have chosen the way to irrationality and immorality voluntary. (5) This explains the bias to judge with which many in Europe on the one hand, Israel and also Iran, Turkey, the Arabs and the Third World. This chronic and ever-increasing double standards results directly from Kant's conception of history. Wherever the new paradigm takes root, it will be noted that the moral demands on Israel are screwed ever higher, while the expected standard of Israel's Islamic neighbors moral decline sharply and approaches the zero point. And for the simple reason that is accepted by the Iranians, Turks and Arabs, to be in their history not yet reached the stage where they could understand such a thing as morality and reason. Kant would say that one among them all "in the Great from folly, childish vanity, and often even from childish malice and destructiveness woven together place ". The course is easily overlooked because it is neither polite nor appropriate to explain that all these nations are no better than stupid and violent children and that they must not expect too much. But one scratch on the surface, and you will find that this condescension bordering on racism is everywhere. If this is true, and the vile campaigns against Israel, we are witnessing, therefore, move that Israel, although it is perceived as a "European" nation, while continuing as an independent nation-state acts - then we would have to cases initiated, where same Why a similar denigration of other nations meet. And if so, we can conclude that these campaigns are actually directed against nations that have failed supposedly the justice to be made at a European people claim for moral maturity? I know three other nations that caused varying degrees comparable moral outrage and defamation, as is the case with Israel, the United States, apartheid South Africa, Serbia. I want these countries are not comparable. The question I try to answer is whether there are other nations that the kind of smear campaign were exposed as they were directed against Israel in recent years. And this question can be yes certainly. If we want to understand the increasing efforts to delegitimize Israel, we come to the knowledge around, not that these international campaigns have significant similarities, and not a question of whether it is within the new paradigm, a common driving force for it. I start with the example of America. Much has been written about the anger and outrage that increasingly define the European view of the United States, but these explanations have not paid sufficient attention to the fact that most of the European criticism of the fact of the refusal is based, that the United States continue to act like a nation state. A careful reading of the shows in Europe against the United States, addressed criticism that the Americans are often just condemned because they see themselves as an independent nation has the right to act independently - that are not regarded as proportionate to the level of moral maturity which should have reached the United States now. have a look in the book published some years ago empires of the German political scientist Herfried Münkler. (6) Münkler is a professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin, member of the Federal Academy for Security Policy and understand, unlike many other political scientists, really something of the order of the nation state model. He knows as well that the main issue tackled at the international level today if the West continues to out nation-states established civilization be, or whether he will return to a world that compete in the empires together to dominate as many countries as to can tear. And Münkler expressed clearly to the fact that Nazi Germany was not a nation state: Hitler tried in the first place, "the national rule of Central and North and South Eastern Europe to dismantle and return to an imperial order. " And yet despite all this book Münkler rejects the idea that the independence of the American nation state and its right to act for the welfare and interests of its citizens in its sole discretion, to be respected. For Münkler rather the American policy in the post-Cold War concern "and" notorious, not because of the content of the measures taken by the Americans decisions, "the possible backgrounds and hidden objectives of the renewed military intervention by the United States in the oil-rich Golfregion, . . . dazu die tiefen Zerwürfnisse in den transatlantischen Beziehungen haben in Europa den Blick für die Entstehung einer neuen Weltordnung . . . geschärft. Mit der notorischen Weigerung der USA, internationalen Vereinbarungen beizutreten, vom Kyoto-Protokoll bis zum Internationalen Strafgerichtshof in Den Haag, zeichnete sich eine Neudefinition der amerikanischen Position in der politischen Ordnung der Welt ab. Es kommt hinzu, dass die Beziehungen zwischen den USA und der UNO . . . grundsätzlich zur Disposition stehen, nachdem US-Präsident George W. Bush . . . damit gedroht hat, die USA würden einige der drängenden sicherheitspolitischen Probleme im Alleingang lösen«. Schlimmer Moreover Münkler suspected the Americans to unseat the United Nations "as the central Aushandlungsort and last-resort decision 'to be prepared and its military apparatus should not be considered a serving of the" world community "related:" That this was no empty threat, has the Spring 2003 with the Third Gulf War demonstrated. Two interpretations of the new relationship between the United States to the UN Security Council were possible: Either the United States he sought to exploit as america impaired legitimacy donor or they began to emancipate themselves from the notorious use as a military arm of the World: They put their equally sophisticated . How expensive military machine no longer in the service of the international community, but put him in accordance with their own interests and goals " In these and similar passages is not criticizing Münkler the content of American politics: The problem is the behavior of the Americans to the investor is that the United States to act unilaterally, at its discretion. In other words, the problem is that the United States to act as an independent nation. (It is interesting that the American Münkler "independence war" referred to a "colonial empire as a" founding myth of the United States. "The European Union has "known no such" founding myth. In contrast to America and Israel War of Independence led them not to celebrate Independence Day no.) is the crucial point of his criticism that Münkler not actually the constitutive principles of the nation-state order accepted. Like other European intellectuals, he is basically not willing to recognize that America has the right to act in the service of its own citizens, their values and interests. Since it is not surprising also that Münkler represents the end of his book argues that the model of nation-state is dying. The dramatic last sentence of the book is:. "Europe's future will therefore work without issues is not the model of an empire" Münkler makes the failure of the United States to abandon him, according to their status as a nation state and an empire, responsible for the decline of the nation-state model of order. For me it makes no sense. The main criterion for an empire - the basic principle, rule permanently to an ever-growing number of nations - must take on the United States at all. I've never met an American who would be interested to take power in Canada, even if the United States to do the easy could. I've never met an American who would be interested in the long term to control Iraq or Afghanistan. The parallel with Israel, I believe is amazing. As in the case of Israel targeted the outrage and anger in each case on a particular individual decision by the United States: the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court, in the invasion of Iraq. Those special occasions come and go, and the objections are against every single action by the Americans apparently meant seriously. But they do not stand behind the growing outrage and anger. Because they are motivated by the fact that the United States in the right unilateral action, as far as is necessary to exist - that is, they insist on living in the old nation-state procedure. And here, as in the case of Israel corresponds to the consternation of systematic double standard: the Americans are reviled, and their behavior is deplored, because they decide independently and pursue the interests of their nation. Who would think in Europe only dream of criticizing China or Iran, because they decide independently and pursue their own interests? I want to mention two other examples of such moral denigration: the campaigns to delegitimize South Africa and Serbia came out. Although I have no doubt that the South African regime was morally repulsive and the Serbs after the collapse of Yugoslavia, committed crimes, but this question can not revolves around the objective moral failings of those nations - should also among respectable people are largely consistent. I submit that the hatred directed against those nations can not be explained simply by reference to the injustice committed by them. After all, who would seriously claim that the Serbs had to show a worse human rights record than North Korea, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Sudan or the Congo? Who would seriously claim that the suppression the blacks in South Africa, so it was certainly terrible, reprehensible than was the oppression of women in today's Saudi Arabia? The apartheid regime in South Africa was certainly reprehensible, and the actions of the Serbs in Kosovo was condemned in many ways. loud But I think if we want to know why these people were selected for a special hatred and loathing and for particular punishment, then the answer must be that they were seen as Europeans and measured by moral standards that bear no relation to the stood what was expected of their black African and Muslim neighbors. Consider this: Why should two million Albanians in Kosovo as a second independent Albanian state must be recognized - it is really useful to found a second Albanian state? - And 35 million Kurds continue to suffer every year from terror and persecution by the Turks and Arabs, because they do not own home? The crucial difference between the two cases is that the Serbs who see Kosovo as belonging to them, as a European people are perceived and should know better than such ", while the Turks and Arabs, the Kurds continue suppress and murder from the perspective of the new paradigm appear as childish savages, from which we can morally expect almost anything. The argument is counter-intuitive, but simple: If a nation the west in some sense, then match looking to expectations the European standards - which increasingly means Kant's standard of a complete renunciation of the national right to independent decision and action, especially with regard to the use of force. During the Iran, Turkey, the Arabs and the Third World are as primitive peoples, according to this view, which is not even the historical stage of under the rule of law consolidated nation-state has been achieved. In practice this means that most of them no moral standards should be applicable. I'm not suggesting that the disappearance of the nation-state paradigm is the only factor that is for the European hatred of Israel responsible accountability. This is obviously wrong, because what I describe as the resolution of this paradigm was not before seen in the sixties and in the West only during the eighties to a serious power. It existed long before much resistance to the establishment of a Jewish state in the Middle East, and there is no reason to the assumption that the underlying motives are gone: There are still people who believe should not exist Israel because it threatens the oil supply to the West or because the Jews are not really formed a nation and no right to a country would have - or because of a deep-seated anti-Semitism traditional kind, and of course there are people whose contempt for Israel really specific examples of Israeli policy, is contrary to them. When it comes to opposition to Israel, it is certainly not only one reason. But that does not mean that I have described specific factor - the dissolution of the nation-state paradigm - only one among many. Which is not so. Currently, he is by far the most important factor. People may shy away for fear of the oil weapon to upset the world of Islam, or they may displease the construction of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, or they may be anti-Zionists because of an inherited anti-Semitism from their parents. But those are not very dynamic factors. They are comparable to the threat, which are the conventional armies of the Arab states for Israel: The threat is still there and, under certain circumstances, a lot of damage. But it is not a rapidly growing threat, and we know more or less good as we deal with it can. The resolution of the nation-state paradigm by the European unification process is very different. There is an anticipated by anyone new power. It already exercises a profound influence on attitudes to Israel and displaced more traditional factors. It continues to gain strength and spreading, with no end in sight. And it is a power with which no one seems to work around among friends and allies of Israel know. Furthermore, this specific idea - that the nation-state is not the appropriate form of government of a civilized people - the ability when far enough is designed to destroy Israel by itself. And as long as we do not know how we should appropriately respond to it, this is my opinion, basically the only thing that matters. other hand, I would not be so sure that the traditional anti-Semitism is the issue of nation-state is not the least to do. Kant's proposal to abolish the nation states of Europe and put them under the domination of a single international government, the educational reprise of a much older Christian figure of thought - in the sense that humanity can be united under a single message of redemption. The Jewish resistance against the new Good News is somewhat similar to his opposition to the old one. It would not surprise me if it turns out that the perceived by the representatives of the new paradigm emotions in front of the Jewish rejection of the project to create the model of nation-state, those who are near relatives, who felt some of their ancestors in the face of the Jewish rejection of the Gospel . And I would not be surprised if Jews also develop in the face of this reaction, feelings that are similar to those who felt their ancestors once. And what will be the future development? Some years ago I visited a German diplomat in my Office in Jerusalem, who asked me that question, and I remember that moment I realized, this gentleman, who was without question a friend of Israel, to say nothing, what would satisfy him. Over the years I've been thinking a lot about the answer that I gave him, but I managed not to improve it significantly. The problem is that many in Europe have opted for a concept of international relations, the demands of national independence heavy sacrifices, when a nation wants to be recognized as truly legitimate member of the international community. There are victims, the difficulty in even some European nations. Realistically there is no way that Israel will bring these victims. Israel was founded with the express purpose of being an independent nation state, the state of the Jewish people, and will remain so for the reasons that my reasons. As long as many of them continue to work in Europe to create their own independent nation-states, they will continue the transition to a new paradigm forward, which it is extremely difficult to a nation like Israel is to give a place. I am aware that many Europeans are hoping for a different Israel. I personally hope that we will experience a change in attitude in Europe. Decent People should be able to look at Israel and to recognize that the Jewish state is not necessary so the new paradigm is unsuitable, because something is rotten in Israel, but because perhaps there is something wrong in the new paradigm. Perhaps the European Union is not in any way such a promising idea, as was suspected. Perhaps the people of Europe have been wrong and estimated their national independence is too low and were willing to forego a price too low for them. History is fickle and changeable, and who today can not recognize, maybe tomorrow it will recognize very clearly. If Europeans first occasion, have the value they accord to their national traditions and their national independence to review, is the example of Israel, perhaps of greater interest to them - in a positive way. And when that happens, I am sure, will strengthen the relations between Europeans and Israel, perhaps surprisingly fast. from English by Siegfried Kohlhammer
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