Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> It's a shame that the issue of the German support of Israel didn't
> get raised in the debate on Finkelstein & _The Holocaust Industry_.
> It's my impression that all sides of the debate on the Left --
> Finkelstein, his supporters, & his critics -- are clueless as to how
> to go about discussing German-Israeli ties. It is possible to
> discuss them _without_ falling into anti-Semitism. In fact, to
> prevent the German Right's cooptation of Finkelstein's work, I think
> it is imperative for the German Left to raise the issue. Who better
> to do so than you, Hinrich Kuhls, etc.? It would be great if you
> guys could write an article, intervene in the debate, & move it to
> the left.
>
Yoshie,
I feel honoured, but I fear you overestimate my influence on the German 'Left'.
In very general terms I agree with you that it is the primary duty of socialists to expose its own imperialists machinations in other parts of the world, especially when it comes to military support of repressive states. But, as always, you will find the devil inside the details.
Take e.g. the case of Israeli pilot Ron Arad and the mediation of the German secret service. In the NYT piece you forwarded German secret services were somewhat painted as an extension of the Israeli Mossad. (BTW: I think the whole NYT piece was quite a good piece of German Foreign Office propaganda directed at US-Jewry) But in fact the German secret services could be only in a mediation position because they are having quite good links to the Iranians and the Lebanese Hizbollah.
I think as anti-imperialists living in the imperialist core states there is always the general danger when attacking 'your' imperialists support for repressive states, that at the end of the day you will end up attacking some sub-imperialists. This frequently happens here when criticising the Turkish state's intervention in Kurdistan. At the worse you will end up appealing to 'your own' imperialists to bring their hirelings to account for 'human right violations'. This danger is even more enhanced when you have to build coalitions: liberals share illusions in 'humanitarian intervention' and the respective exile organisations are primarily interested in attacking 'their' ruling circles. I am not saying there are no ways of avoiding those pit-falls, but it still remains a slippery road.
To come back to Finkelstein and his German road-show: Unfortunately he was not helpfull for us here in Germany, to put it friendly. What could said be at best about his appearances here is, that is must be quite naive and that he does not know anything about cureent German policies. In fact his public appearances had been rallying points for that type of 'respectable' anti-semite types, who alyways felt 'the Germans' are cheated by 'the Jews', in short those ones who will never forgive the Jews, that they allowed Germans to commit the Holocaust. Now they got a Jewish crown-witness for their anti-semite stereotypes.
Furthermore Finkelstein's repeated remark about how generous the German government had been in compensation of Jewish victims do not help us here at all. Over decades the left here has been campaigning for compensation of slave labourers. The Red-Green government as turned this into a cheap PR campaign for German products in the US, (with the additional benefit of having an insurrance against class actions by former slave labourers). A sum of 10bn Marks was agreed, to be paid at even shares by the German industry and the German state (actually half of the industries half gets paid by the state through tax breaks). But even that money the German capitalists were not willing to raise, up to now they only raised 3,8bn Marks.
To quote an earlier post by myself 'but reading a setence (by Finkelstein) in a conservative German paper like: "Der Holocaust ist eine ideologische Keule, mit der Deutschland in Schach gehalten wird" ("The holocaust is the ideological club to keep Germany in check") makes me shiver.
The term 'Holocaust industry' has obviously a different meaning in Germany: It spells here IG Farben, Siemens, Daimler, Volkswagen... . Using this term as a description of whatsoever Jewish circles, lets the real Holocaust of the hook and makes the original big money that brought Hitler to power and tried to make profits out of the mass murder of the hook.
Since I have not read Finkelstein's book yet I cannot judge about the facts presented there, but from the reviews I have read I am geting the feeling that some can be challenged. At the moment I read Peter Novick's book, which is dealing with the same issues, but much more detailed. From what I have read so far I get the feeling that Novick's book is a much better starting point for a debatte.
Johannes