Please don't kneel before Erdogan, Mr. Scholz!

Please don't kneel before Erdogan, Mr. Scholz!

The soft-spoken, over-pressured German Chancellor receives a visit from Turkish President Erdoğan - an authoritarian Israel-hater with swanky aviator glasses. Can that go well?

I often write this column in a small café with large windows on a street corner in Berlin. There I usually stare at passers-by for a good hour, munching on sucuk panini and inhaling coffee, until something like a text finally emerges or the mixture of caffeine and time pressure makes my fingers tremble. The street is interesting, it can be the theater of our weird present. This morning, neon yellow bicycle policemen were again waving cyclists out for turning the wrong way, there was a lot of shouting and I thought of Israel.

The scene is remarkable because at the other end of the same street there is an open drug trade practically every day, within sight of police station 1 section 15. You walk up and down there once and are offered weed more often than a SZ subscription in the pedestrian zone. Sometimes there are arguments and shouting among the dealers, a few meters away there are swings for the children.

The officers in police department 1 section 15 seem to care little about the weed supermarket. However, this nonchalance is highly selective, see cyclists. And when a couple of disheveled media students set up an aluminum grill on the park lawn in the summer, it's like a flash: "Tatütata, ID cards please! It's only when a dozen migrants are scattered around the hill selling stretched weed that this is obviously a completely unsolvable problem for the state.

In love with Osama bin Laden

I don't really care about the dealers, there are personal reasons for their activities and asylum policy failures also play a part. But I don't believe that this demonstrative selectivity in law enforcement leaves the public unscathed. Some can get away with everything, others nothing. Different standards are applied and that is precisely what brings me to Israel.

After the massacre, countless sections of society, be it Muslim associations, left-wing students or the club scene, did not think of accusing Hamas of breaking the law. Some have dressed up their murder festival as resistance, not to mention those who are cheering it on, and this week even more stupid Tiktok influencers have fallen in love with Osama bin Laden's "Letter to America". The utterly depraved United Nations, an international leverage point for scoundrels and dictators, famously failed to even mention the murderous gang Hamas.

A much smaller check applies to Israel: the Jewish state received the first admonitions at a time when the last murder victims were still bleeding to death. UN experts currently recognize the "risk of genocide" in Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip. Strangely, the same experts were not to be heard on the beheading and slaughter on October 7.

Israel bashing and then handshakes

This is largely because many people around the world hate Jews and have found in the state of Israel a convenient proxy for their fervent anti-Semitism - it really is that simple. On the other hand, it is because Israel is seen as part of a community of values that can be legally contained, whereas Islamist states such as Syria, which bombed Homs into the Stone Age a few years ago, are not. Nobody took to the streets for over 100,000 deaths in 2015 alone.

This double standard extends to the very top of government. The appearance of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the Federal Chancellery was legendary: Abbas, who recently identified the alleged social role of Jews as money lenders as the real reason for anti-Semitism (he may have been listening to Precht and Lanz's podcast), was able to relativize the Holocaust and call Israel a mass murderer right next to the chancellor without Scholz even flinching. Finally, a friendly handshake: Come back soon!

Will this embarrassing, weak spectacle now be repeated with Erdoğan? Before his visit to Berlin, the Turkish president went out of his way to show how little he cares about the views of his host state. He described Israel's right to exist as "controversial": Israel - or should it be left alone? Erdoğan could have wiped his ass with the Star of David when boarding the plane, Germany still wouldn't have rolled out the red carpet. How is an authoritarian ruler with aviator glasses supposed to interpret this behavior if not as a genuflection with his pants down?

German-Western arbitrariness

This cozy German-Western arbitrariness comes at a high price. The only remedy against authoritarianism is authority. If you appear weak, you make yourself a victim. Germany's cozying up to Putin has contributed to the Russian president thinking that an invasion of Ukraine was a risk-free undertaking. But apparently history is doomed to repeat itself.

The Israelis understood this primitive mechanism of authoritarianism early on and by necessity: Their "never again" does not refer to never being attacked again - that would be illusory anyway, anti-Semitism comes out of humanity as badly as turmeric stains from a tablecloth. "Never again" means "never be a victim again". This mentality enabled an Israeli soldier in the October 7 massacre to throw back seven of the eight hand grenades thrown into a shelter before the eighth killed him. This "never again" is, as the journalist Michael Wolffsohn once pointed out, a fundamental and irreconcilable difference to the German "never again be a perpetrator".

In the run-up to Erdogan's visit, there were of course countless attempts to rationalize the visit. Turkey is a reliable NATO partner. What are the millions of German-Turks supposed to think if their leader is not welcomed? And they need Erdoğan to help them cope with the flood of refugees. This dependence is, of course, a self-made one: In 2016, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel struck the acclaimed refugee deal with Erdoğan and saved herself further trouble.

Value politics is a question of price

Value-based politics is therefore simply a question of price and can apparently be had quite cheaply. How much is the phrase "Israel's security is Germany's reason of state" worth in this market environment? In millions of refugees, for example?

The fact that Germany smiled away Erdoğan's recently refreshed hatred of Israel was already the first knee-jerk reaction. Now there is still one hope: that Scholz does not take a second knee during his visit. After all, this is a man with a recognizable stage fright meeting a proven ramp sow. The chances are slim.

But the chancellor should refrain from shaking hands after a verbal attack on Israel, if the market environment allows it.

German raison d'état is worth nothing if it can't cost anything.

1. Despite the controversy surrounding his views towards Israel, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is imminent, raising questions about how this interaction will unfold.
2. The author expresses concern about the double standard applied towards Israel, highlighting how criticism against the Jewish state is rampant, while Islamist states like Syria are often overlooked despite their human rights violations.
3. The incident involving Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the Federal Chancellery brought into light the tolerance of anti-Semitic remarks and hostility towards Israel in high-level government circles.
4. Germany's apparent lack of firm stance on these matters has led some to question the value of its foreign policy, especially when it comes to balancing strategic partnerships with countries like Turkey without compromising its principles.

Source: www.ntv.de