The late social philosopher Jürgen Habermas was a friend of Israel. Following the massacre on October 7, he refuted the accusation that Israel was committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
In 1977, the social philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who passed away on Saturday at the age of 96, visited the Jewish state for the first time. The occasion was the 80th birthday of the Berlin-born historian of religion Gershom Scholem. Thirty-five years later, he recalled the trip in a conversation with the journalist Rachel Salamander.
When asked about his reception in Israel, Habermas replied: “We felt we did not deserve such a welcome. Scholem had been given a car with a chauffeur by the Academy for a day. He took us along and showed us Jerusalem all day long, from top to bottom and from morning till night. It is hard to describe, because it was his city that he was showing us.” The actual purpose of the visit had been the “moving birthday celebrations” in Tel Aviv.
Habermas also described his impressions in 2007 in the “Münchner Beiträge für Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur”: “Although Israeli history is entangled in the Holocaust, one cannot be in Jerusalem without one’s gaze drifting back to the biblical beginnings; one cannot be in Israel without one’s gaze turning to the explosive present of the conflict with the Palestinians.”
He went on to write: “A trip to Israel cannot be compared to any other. Not even with those difficult journeys to Poland, where one has the feeling of being unable to move without treading on the bloodstains we Germans left there. In Israel, it is not the ground that reminds us of history. History is present in the people, in the improbable tales of the contingencies of escape and survival.”
“Left-wing fascism” and the “Historians’ Dispute”
Habermas was critical of the ’68 movement in Germany. He introduced the concept of “left-wing fascism”. This referred primarily to the protest methods of those who claimed to be denouncing the failure to come to terms with National Socialism.
He also initiated the “Historians’ Dispute”. In the summer of 1986, the representative of the “Frankfurt School” responded in the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit” to leading contemporary historians in the Federal Republic. He accused them of relativising the Holocaust. At the centre of the criticism was the Berlin-based contemporary historian Ernst Nolte; he had established a causal link between the Nazi extermination of the Jews and the Stalinist acts of terror in the Soviet Union.
When Günter Grass published his poem “What Must Be Said” in 2012, he met with opposition from Habermas. In it, the German writer criticised Israeli nuclear policy and wrote: “Israel’s nuclear power endangers world peace, which is already fragile.”
Habermas described the statements to the Israeli newspaper “Ha’aretz” as “uninformed, unbalanced and provocative”. He expressed concern “that the murky flood of the usual prejudices has, for the first time, been opened by someone who possesses such prestige and political clout”. Grass was undoubtedly not an anti-Semite, “but there are things that Germans of our generation should not say,” the late author is quoted as saying in the “taz”.
Solidarity with Israel after the massacre
Even after the Hamas massacre of 7 October 2023, Habermas stood by Israel’s side. Together with political scientists Nicole Deitelhoff and Rainer Forst, as well as legal philosopher Klaus Günther, he authored “Principles of Solidarity”. With this position paper, they sought to respond to the “cascade of moral and political statements and demonstrations”. Another aim was to identify the unshakeable cornerstones of a properly understood solidarity with Israel and Jews in Germany, which should not be called into question.
The authors also rejected the accusation, raised shortly after the terrorist attack, that Israel was committing genocide in the Gaza Strip: “Whilst we are deeply concerned about the fate of the Palestinian population, the standards of judgement are completely skewed when genocidal intentions are attributed to Israel’s actions,” they wrote in the paper published on 15 November 2023. By contrast, Hamas very much does have the intention of destroying Jewish life in general. Israel’s actions “in no way justify anti-Semitic reactions, least of all in Germany”.
A counterstatement was not long in coming; it was signed by 107 academics. “Among other things, they accused the universalist Habermas of having universalist gaps, because his concern for human dignity overlooks Palestinian civilians, let alone identifies so-called Islamophobia in Germany as a problem,” writes the “Jüdische Allgemeine”. The legal philosopher Paolo Becchi of the University of Genoa accused Habermas of betraying the “principle of human dignity”. For him, the “Frankfurt School” was dead.
Habermas undertook many more trips to Israel after 1977. One took him to Jerusalem in 1982 – for the funeral of his friend Gershom Scholem. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University awarded honorary doctorates to the German scholar, who had been such a vehement advocate for Israel.
Source: israelnetz.com | Author: Elisabeth Hausen (in German)