Photo: Lisi Niesner/Reuters
Lobna Shammout was initially only vaguely aware of the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, as she was celebrating her 40th birthday. "The latest news was that my phone crashed, I was like 'please, not today'," the Palestinian-German said. "When I finally checked... each news flash was worse than the last."
In the following weeks, as Israel launched a full-scale attack on Gaza in retaliation for the attacks, which killed 1,200 people, Shammout eagerly awaited news of her relatives and friends in Gaza. Some have been killed, among an estimated 15,000 Palestinians who have lost their lives, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
At the same time, Shammout, who runs a care home for the elderly in Lügde, West Germany, has become a conduit for information requested by her friends and colleagues to understand the conflict. (She says she gives them "the five-minute version.")
And she, like many Muslims, has watched with increasing frustration as Germany emerged as one of Europe's most unconditional supporters of Israel's strategy. The country's political leaders have spoken about Germany repeatedly and without apparent hesitation Staatsräson, or reason of state, a principle that places support for Israel at the center of national identity.
The Vice Chancellor, Robert Habeck, said in a video message: "The phrase 'Israel's security is part of Germany's security' Staatsräson ' has never been an empty phrase and it should not be. It means that Israel's security is essential for us as a country," adding that Germany bore a "historic responsibility" as a perpetrator of the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were murdered.
"It was my grandparents' generation that wanted to eradicate Jewish life in Germany and Europe. After the Holocaust, the founding of Israel was the promise of protection to the Jews - and Germany is compelled to help ensure that this promise can be fulfilled. This is a historical foundation of our republic," Habeck said.
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Shammout understands this. But she also believes there is little room for critics of Israel's response to speak out or feel represented by the German government.
"I respect the history of Germany," Shammout said. "I really understand the support for Israel as a state, as a safe place for Jews, and when I say 'never again' the Holocaust can happen. It's part of being German. But when this historical responsibility is used as an excuse to justify massive human rights violations, to violate international law, it makes me sad and crazy and I accept this so-called Staatsräson."
Since the Hamas attacks, Germany has been in a state of heightened tension. While pro-Palestinian marches have been banned in many towns and cities, others have been allowed to go ahead, with strict guidelines in place. (Federal Commissioner for Human Rights Policy, Luise Amtsberg, said: "Terrorism should not be celebrated. We have banned demonstrations when they aim to fuel anti-Semitism, and freedom of expression should not be abused to promote hatred.)
In the meantime, there has been a sharp increase in reports of anti-Semitic attacks targeting the country's estimated 200,000 Jewish population. The Rias group, which tracks anti-Semitism, says it recorded 994 incidents between October 7 and November 9, an increase of 320% compared to the same period in 2022.
Last month, before a two-day annual conference that brought together politicians, Muslim groups and representatives of the Christian and Jewish communities, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser called on Muslim groups to clearly condemn the Hamas attacks and distance themselves from anti-Semitism.
"I expect Muslim organizations to position themselves clearly and uphold their responsibilities in society," she told German television. They should condemn Hamas' attack, "and not just with a 'yes, but,'" she added. "It must be very clear that we are on Israel's side."
But many Muslims, part of Germany's second-largest religious group of 5.5 million people, say they are being unfairly targeted. There has also been a large increase in Islamophobic attacks recorded, and it is suspected that many more are going unreported.
Scharjil Ahmad Khalid, an imam and Islamic theologian, said there was extra security at his Khadija mosque in Pankow, north Berlin. "Just as attacks on anti-Semitism have increased, so too has hostility toward Muslims," he said.
Numerous attacks on mosques have been reported, including the deposit of burnt Qurans, pig carcasses and feces on their premises or in their mailboxes. In Magdeburg, Muslim graves were defaced with swastikas.
"Hate messages are regularly posted in our mailboxes, usually stating: 'You are not part of Germany', 'Islam is not part of Germany, go back home', 'You are responsible for importing the anti-Semitism that poisoning our country'. They have increased in line with negative media reporting...attributing anti-Semitism only to Muslims," Khalid said. "There is a blanket of distrust hanging over all of us."
Khalid wrote a commentary in the Berliner Zeitung in which he argued that the far right, on the rise in Germany, especially in the form of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), was far more likely to be behind anti-Semitic attacks than ordinary Muslims. The piece sparked many reactions on social media: why had an imam been asked to speak on the issue, some wondered, and how could someone with an Arabic name speak on behalf of the Germans?
"I was born and raised in Germany," Khalid said. "This is racist and deeply offensive."
Other commentators, such as Berlin-based Jewish-German-American author Deborah Feldmann, have expressed suspicion that the conflict is being used by the far right, including the AfD, as an excuse "to finally be able to say 'out' out loud." with those immigrants'... and it scares me because it brings back memories of the time when my grandparents were forced to flee," Feldmann told broadcaster DLF.
In his speech, Habeck addressed the social divisions and said that right-wing extremists were holding back anti-Semitic attacks "for purely tactical reasons" in order to be able to agitate against Muslims.
For Derviş Hızarcı, president of Kiga, a nonprofit founded to tackle anti-Semitism but also increasingly concerned with Islamophobia, the widely publicized speech was "good and useful." But I would have liked to hear him ask more questions and make more suggestions. For example, let's think critically about things we might have ignored, about our mistakes."
The rise of the far right and the continued growth of support for the AfD led Germans to wonder 'whether we are actually that good at Behavioral health benefits as we thought we were," Hızarcı said, referring to the process of coming to terms with the past that has been one of the main pillars of German post-war society.
"If people think that it is mainly the Shoah and our response to it that gives us our social identity, then this identity may be too weak if we do not understand ourselves and our responsibility to everyone," says Hızarcı, the son of Turkish Prime Minister. Guest worker (guest worker) parents who came to Germany in 1969.
In November, before the introduction of a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, participants in a pro-Palestinian demonstration gathered outside the Chancellery in Berlin to demand an immediate ceasefire, a call rejected by Chancellor Olaf Scholz. ("That would ultimately mean that Israel leaves Hamas the opportunity to recover and obtain new missiles," he said on November 12, calling instead for "humanitarian pauses.")
Nazan, 48, a German-born nurse to Turkish parents, said she had considered giving up her German passport because of the government's position. "I don't feel at home here anymore," she says.
It's a feeling that Shammout, who has a Palestinian father and a German mother, and whose grandfather had to flee his home during the 1948 Nakba, knows all too well. "It hurts on both sides of me, the Palestinian side and the German side," she said.
Shammout has attended two pro-Palestinian demonstrations in recent weeks and believes there are clear limits to her freedom of expression. "We are not allowed to say that we want a free motherland. The police have restricted us to using only a certain number of flags," she said.
"I do not support Hamas and absolutely condemn the attacks, but I reserve the right to protest and mourn our dead."
Shammout said friends had been stopped on the street and had to remove their friends keffiyeh. She knows a Palestinian student who was told by police that she risked being charged with sedition and losing her right of residence if she failed to remove a Palestinian flag from her balcony.
"I have always been proud to be a German with Palestinian roots," she said. "Now I'm starting to doubt my identity, as a teenager."
