Across the globe there are, more or less, 200 sovereign nations. That is not very many by some standards and it is more than we can keep under our watchful eyes by other standards (finding 200 leaders who are not corrupt appears to be a global challenge more insurmountable than climate disaster).
However, despite a large number of countries sharing common languages, such as Russian, Arabic, French, Spanish or, for that matter, German, the number of languages across the globe is nearer 7,000. Seven thousand separate groupings of peoples who share a common linguistic culture. It would be interesting to contemplate whether, if the 7,000 languages constituted nation states in their own right, the world would be a less antagonistic, or a less … peaceful, place.
Among the 200 actual nation states on Earth, there are a couple that evoke a certain interest in terms of what these states represent. When the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dissolved, the permanent seat that had been accorded to it on the Security Council of the United Nations passed almost unnoticed to the Russian Federation. Of all the constituent parts of the USSR that had come into being from its dissolution, the Russian Federation was certainly the largest, but its claim to that seat on the Security Council was not per se a foregone conclusion. If size mattered, then the UK and France should have long since ceded their own seats to Canada, Brazil or Australia.
This glossing exercise is reflected in the assimilation of the Jewish people to the Israeli state. The Israeli state was, in terms of the Balfour declaration, founded as a home for Jews. But not all Jews live in Israel, and not all people who live in Israel are Jews. In terms of the Holocaust, the question that Germany has long since grappled with, and which Namibia would like it to grapple with again, is whether the Holocaust was carried out against the Jewish people, or against the state of Israel. One would have thought that, with Israel being founded three years after the end of World War II, the answer was simple. But so simple are things never. A brief résumé.
- A German foreign ministry spokesman replied to a press question posed in 2015 that, if one wanted to label the German annihilation of Herero and Nama peoples in German South-West Africa between 1904 and 1908 as a genocide, then, yes, it could be called a genocide.
- Since 2015, Namibia and Germany have been negotiating on a non-legally binding apology from the German state to the Namibian state. Negotiations are coming to an imminent close, but Namibia’s people are objecting to the form of the aid that will come from Germany as a result: development aid is not reparations.
- A Palestinian terrorist organisation attacked Israeli civilians and military in October 2023.
- Israel has ravaged the Gaza Strip in response.
- South Africa is claiming that Israel is thereby engaging in genocide.
- Germany has supported Israel in terms of that claim against it.
- Namibia has criticised Germany’s position, accusing it of double standards.
- Germany’s wholehearted support for Israel is born of its attempted destruction of the Jewish race in the years from 1933 to 1945.
- Germany’s dismissal of any duty of reparation being owed to its former colony of German South-West Africa—today’s Namibia—is born of the contention that what happened there in 1904-08 was not technically a genocide, since it pre-dated the UN Genocide Convention of 1948.
- Namibia’s objections to Germany’s position in relation to
(i) the acts of the German Empire as a colonial power in 1904-08 and
(ii) Germany’s support of the Israeli state since 1948
rest on the following posits:
a) there can be no distinction between the Holocaust and Namibia (i.e. between Germany’s acts in German South-West Africa in 1904-08 and those in Germany and its occupied European territories in 1933-45) on the ground that both series of acts (the Namibian genocide and the Holocaust) pre-date the UN Genocide Convention. They both pre-date the Convention, so, assuming the definitional criteria are indeed fulfilled, either they’re both genocide or they’re both not genocide;
b) both series of acts fulfil the definition of genocide, whether there existed an international convention expressly proscribing it or not;
c) the Namibian genocide was not a genocide against Namibia (or its forerunner, German South-West Africa). Rather, it was a genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples. If Germany contends that its apology is due, instead, to the state of Namibia, then the apology it was due to give to the victims of the Holocaust would be due to the state of Poland, the state of Hungary, the state of the Channel Islands, and so forth, even to the state of Germany itself (the German state would need to apologise to the German state).
Clearly, Germany’s contrition for its acts against the Jewish people 1933-45 is due to the Jewish people and therefore any apology, and associated reparations, due in relation to German South-West Africa are due not to Namibia but to the Nama and Herero peoples. The agreement that will imminently be signed by Namibia is not Namibia’s to sign qua nation, and takes no account of Herero and Nama peoples in Botswana and South Africa.
Just as it is not self-evident that Russia should take the USSR’s seat on the Security Council, nor is it self-evident that aid accorded to Namibia salves Germany’s conscience for a debt owed to the Nama and Herero peoples;
d) Germany’s unremitting support for Israel as a victim of genocide is based on several confusions. First, between the Jewish people and the state of Israel:
(i) the state of Israel is not de facto a Jewish state: it has inhabitants who are of faiths other than Judaism;
(ii) Germany’s apology for the Holocaust is due not per se to the Israeli state but, as argued by some in Namibia, rather to the Jewish people, wherever they happen to be;
(iii) genocide is a crime that can as easily be committed by a body politic that has itself never been the victim of genocide as by a body politic that has. Israel is not immune from accusations of genocide simply because the religious group making up the large part of its population was previously identified as having been subjected to genocide (or its closely related context of ethnic cleansing). In other words, Germany’s act of ethnically cleansing its population of Jews is not an automatic carte blanche for the state subsequently founded as a home for Jews to engage in similar acts on its own territory (supposing such be proved to have in fact occurred);
e) if Germany’s abhorrence is of genocide as an act, allied to its own contrition for acts of genocide that it has itself committed in the past, then its support of Israel should be predicated on its appreciation of whether or not Israel is now engaging in acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip and not, as seems to be the case, on whether Israel has itself, putatively qua nation, suffered previous acts of genocide itself. In short, genocide is to be abhorred, regardless of who does it.
- The Namibian deal is framed not as a response to Germany’s duty but as a gesture of goodwill by it towards Namibia, and not to the Herero and Nama peoples. It absolves Germany of any future discussions or claims in that regard. It closes the book.
- Germany doesn’t close the book on the Holocaust, however, and its acknowledged duty to the Jewish people must extend not simply over those it exterminated and oppressed in Germany, but also in the territories it occupied. This it equates to a continuing duty to Israel.
Ergo Germany is engaging in double standards.