The lack of sufficient recognition of the contribution made by progressive and left-wing German Jews to Berlin’s Jewish Museum makes us question the state of progressive Jewry in modern Germany. The second war in Lebanon created a further rift not only between German Jews and Germans but also within the organized Jewish community. The majority of Jews in Germany supported Israel’s invasion of Lebanon with the rationale of Israel’s right to military self-defense. The sociological and psychological context of the German Jewish community serves to partially explain the lack of a lively politically progressive movement. “There is a total level of hostility against Jews and the state of Israel [in Germany],” commented Charlotte Knobloch, the first woman president of the Central Council of German Jews, in a Spiegel Online interview. Knobloch’s remarks captured the mood of a minority community that was the recipient of a voluminous amount of hate mail—and press criticism—during the invasion, thereby forcing the community to turn inward.

This feeling of a “bunker mentality” among German Jews was further brought to a head by Spiegel magazine—the most influential weekly magazine in Germany—in an opinion poll during the first week of the war that showed that the majority of Germans did not believe in Israel’s right to self-defense against the firing of Hezbollah rockets. Moreover, according to a European Union commissioned study in 2003, an overwhelming majority of Germans consider Israel as the greatest danger for world security. A further study issued in November from the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, a foundation with close ties to the Social Democratic Party, documented a number of alarming trends. Twenty-five percent of the 5,000 Germans who were surveyed believe that Germany requires one strong party that embodies the “Volksgemeinschaft.” The rise of xenophobia was confirmed by the fact that 35 percent of those living in the West Federal German States and 44 percent of those from former East Germany believe Germany is überfremdet (too heavily populated by foreigners). Approximately 14 percent of those questioned believe Jews do not conform to German society and are a “peculiar “or “strange” group. The desire to bring about high-level fascist politics was articulated by 15 percent who are seeking a strong man to run the nation. It is, in short, a bizarre and anxiety-ridden atmosphere for German Jews. They live between the extremes of philo-Semitism and anti-Semitism. This cultural landscape helps to partially explain the almost dogmatic support for Israeli governmental policies among the majority of Jews in Germany. The reliance on Israel as the most secure life insurance policy resonates in the Jewish community.

The reaction to the few dissenters who opposed the invasion in Lebanon is a window onto the courtyard of the Council of German Jews and the limits of free speech rights. Rolf Verleger, the chairperson of the conservative Jewish community in the Federal State of Schleswig-Holstein, wrote a public protest letter to the presiding committee of the Central Council. “You have in the last few days publicly taken sides with the military measures of the Israeli government against Lebanon. For that purpose, I cannot and will not remain silent. It is clear to me that you are expressing the majority opinion of the Jews in Germany. However, I had expected more from the presiding committee because of your love for Israel, your political experience, and that you are conscious, traditionally oriented Jews,” writes Verleger in the opening section of his letter. The first point of his letter addresses the fate of Israel. Verleger mentions that his siblings live in Israel with their children and notes, “The military actions do not make Israel more safe, rather unsafe. The anger and rage and the violence of the neighboring states will be quadrupled. The conflict will be expanded instead of contained.”

Verleger emphasizes the political origins of the conflict in the second section and writes, “The cause for the terror of Hezbollah against Israel is the unresolved Palestinian conflict. Every one knows that the alternative to the jungle of these interests (he refers to the U.S., Russia, Syria and Iran earlier in the paragraph) and this war requires that Israeli and the Palestinians negotiate with each other and reach agreements. In this respect, the Central Council of Jews in Germany has experience with negotiating with a government which was the direct legal successor of a band of murderers. Our success proves us right.”

He appeals in the final section of the letter to the religious definition of Judaism and quotes Hillel: “What is hateful to you, do not do it to your neighbor” and continues with the question, “Is that still the same Judaism as whose most important commandment our Rabbi Akiba named: Love thy neighbor as you would yourself”? Verleger cannot reconcile this notion of Judaism with a “Jewish state that discriminates against other people, penalizes the collective, and engages in targeted killings without invoking the judicial process. For every murdered Israeli is the killing of ten Lebanese allowed and entire city districts are turned into rubble and ruins. I can very well expect that the Central Council of Jews in Germany will at least see this as a problem.”

The Council, however, viewed Verleger as the problem child and the Council’s General Secretary Stephan Kramer labeled his opinion as “parroting anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic clichés and stereotypes.” Jewish representatives from other communities in Germany criticized Verleger as falling into the “choir of the one-sided condemners of Israel.” Verleger, who is a professor of neuropsychology at the University of Lübeck, was sacked as chairperson of his community in late August because of his critique of the Councils’ unwavering support for Israel. The Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery issued a statement of solidarity to Verleger and praised his act as a “Mitzvah.” An opinion piece from Sergey Lagodinsky in the Jüdische Zeitung, a new German monthly newspaper, criticized the repression of diverse opinion in the Central Council. Die Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung—the main weekly Jewish newspaper in Germany, which is published by the Central Council—predictably did not devote extensive treatment to Verleger’s dissenting view. Lagodinky, a Russian Jew who emigrated to Germany in 1993, argues that the Central Council is clinging to an antiquated German Jewish culture that fails to resonate with a community that speaks largely Russian and understands itself as an ethnic group not dominated by the “narrative of a victim community.”

A small group of peace activists organized under the name “European Jews for a Just Peace” maintained a presence during both the pro-and anti-Israel demonstrations in Berlin. Evelyn Hecht-Galinski is a member of the peace group and said in an interview on German radio, “It is for me especially unbearable, and for many of my Jewish co-fighters, that the Central Council understands itself over and over again as the chorus for the Israeli government in Germany.” Hecht-Galinski is the daughter of Germany’s first post-war president of the Central Council of Jews, Heinz Galinski.

Referring to Hecht-Galinksy, Henryk M. Broder wrote on the homepage of Die Achse des Guten (The Axis of Good), “And that is really all she is. The daughter. In Berlin one says that she ceased contact with her father when he lived and this does not, of course, prevent her today from calling upon her dead father to condemn Israel for ‘this aggressive settler politics, the entire disparaging of the Palestinians, the entire politics that Israel pursues.’ As the daughter of Heinz Galinski. Thus will a housewife become a moral authority and German radio a place where flying passions replace the program planning.”

During the height of the war in Lebanon, there existed a kind of hit-hard, hit-first and do not let personal feelings get in the way mentality among German Jews and the conflict of culture took place within a similar raging bull, New York-style atmosphere. Where is this tending? The German Jewish theologian Gershom Scholem charged German Jews with pretending to pursue a phantom dialogue with the non-German Jewish majority who rejected their overtures. Consequently, they remained prisoners of a self-deluded monologue. The eviction of Verleger from his post continues the monologue, but from within the minority group.

Benjamin Weinthal is the Labor Notes correspondent for Germany and Austria, and the Berlin correspondent for Gay City in New York. He is a Berlin-based journalist who also writes for other German and American publications, including the Jüdische Zeitung (The Jewish Newspaper), and Z Magazine.