17.06.2025
Swedish journalist Kajsa Ekis Ekman recently wrote a striking article titled “We can’t say we didn’t know.”
She describes how Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev and his soldiers who first entered Germany at the end of the Second World War were shocked when they arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp and couldn’t believe what they saw.
When Marshal Konev addressed the prisoners in the camp, “Comrades, you are free,” there was no movement among the skin-and-bones. He spoke in different languages, no reaction. When he finally said the same thing in Hebrew, there was some movement and joy among the half-dead skeletons.
The soldiers walking around the camp were terrified by the cursed images. They find six tons of human hair in a warehouse.
In the months that followed, horrific news and photos of the extermination of millions of Jews in various concentration camps spread around the world, and people had a hard time believing it.
The Germans who supported the Nazis defended themselves by saying, “We didn’t know, we didn’t know.”
It was partially right. For example, Himmler, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, told the party comrades about his plan to exterminate the Jews at the infamous Posen meeting, comparing it to “microbe cleaning,” but the world would only learn about that after the war.
However, Israeli Defense Minister Gallant announced his intentions to the media on October 9, 2023, saying, “We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.”
The International Criminal Court, UN officials, Amnesty International, and most of the world’s leading genocide experts are of the opinion that Israel is carrying out a planned genocide in Gaza. Photos of the devastated Strip and people about to die of starvation are everywhere.
Reminding us of these, Ekman emphasizes that no one can say, “I didn’t know, I didn’t know,” and adds: However, Swedish politicians from right to left still continue to say, “Israel has the right to defend itself.”
* * *
When it comes to the genocide and ethnic cleansing that Israel is openly carrying out, not only Swedish but almost all European centrist politicians only emphasize that Hamas killed 1,100 Israelis in the October 2023 operation. They distort history as if everything started that day.
Don’t also the Palestinians have the right to defend themselves?
Swedish Foreign Minister Sten Andersson, appointed by Olof Palme, the historic leader of the Social Democrats, spoke in the parliament when the Palestinian issue was being debated, 1988:
“What our citizens should do if Sweden were occupied by a foreign power is written in the Stockholm telephone catalogue:
‘No part of our homeland will be abandoned without fierce resistance. Even if the enemy takes a part of our homeland and manages to establish his own administration, it is still Sweden… Resistance will continue in the occupied territory. The occupier must never feel secure. The struggle must continue until the liberation of all homeland.’
“This is what international law says… What applies to the Swedish people applies to the Palestinian people as well.”
Nowadays there are hardly any politician in Europe who talk about the Palestinian people’s right to resistance.
* * *
The Nazi parallel Ekman takes up is illuminating, but how far does the similarity extend?
Sde Teiman is an Israeli military garrison near the Gaza Strip. Arrested Palestinians are brought there and subjected to systematic torture. They are repeatedly raped and face physical and psychological torture by male and female Israeli soldiers.
A Palestinian was recorded on video being gang-raped and severely injured when an iron bar was inserted into the anus. The prisoners are not given medical care. Some had their hands or feet amputated because the wounds caused by the harsh handcuffing had become gangrenous.
It is not Hamas members who are arrested and subjected to systematic torture; it is all Palestinians, including children and women, who are detained in Gaza. Most do not know what they are accused of.
According to the B’Tselem newspaper, Sde Teiman camp is just the tip of the iceberg. Similar systematic torture is carried out in many military camps.
Israeli systematic torture is described in various media: CNN or The New York Times or The Guardian or Al Jazeera or many other sources.
As far as we know, even the Nazis did not torture like this. The torture camps run with the knowledge of the Israeli government show that Israel’s genocide is almost more abominable and disgraceful than the Nazi genocide of the Jews.
* * *
Israel does not hide its purpose. Their goal is to expand Israel by annexing occupied Gaza and the West Bank.
The total population of Israel plus Gaza and the West Bank is about 15 million.
7.5 million Jews and 7.5 million Palestinians.
Even if they annex, there is no sustainable population structure. Moreover, Palestinians will soon surpass the Jewish population.
With the many laws that have been passed, Arabs living in Israel and the occupied territories have been turned into second-class citizens and do not have equal rights. This is apartheid, as it was once in South Africa.
Despite the apartheid regime, most Western politicians appear before cameras and voice the discourse that Israel is the “only” or “most advanced” democracy in the Middle East.
Despite the racist regime it created, Israel knows that it cannot go on with its current population structure.
The goal now is to kill or force as many Palestinians as possible to migrate.
The United Nations experts report that the Israeli army systematically targeted maternity clinics in Gaza, destroyed care units and devices, and prevented the supply of medicine, killing mothers and newborns.
Israeli army used to break the arms of young Palestinian rebels participating in the Intifada. Now they are killing women in labor and newborns, and shooting sleeping children in the head.
* * *
How is the Israeli brutality possible?
Thanks to the unwavering support of Western countries.
First and foremost, the US.
Former President Biden said, “I am a Zionist, you don’t have to be Jewish for this” and acted accordingly.
In the world of current President Trump, there is no concept of conscientious examination. He supports ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and will build casinos and tourist entertainment facilities there.
Except for Spain, Ireland and Norway, there is no serious reaction from any country in Europe.
Since the beginning of March, Israel has not allowed food and humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, so that people will starve or leave.
French President Macron said, “Let’s do something urgently, otherwise Gaza will kill the credibility of the West.”
Israeli leader Netanyahu gathered his cabinet and said, “The public in our friendly Western countries cannot stand seeing people dying of hunger, let’s open the door a little bit.” A small number of trucks were allowed to enter. Now, not even a fifth of the number of trucks that entered before are allowed.
In Gaza, the United Nations’ specialized agency UNRWA was distributing aid at 400 points. The Israeli-American duo, hand in hand, eliminated UNRWA, brought in a company affiliated with them, and now there are only 4 distribution points.
Even if enough aid arrives, it is not possible to distribute it adequately.
Israeli soldiers are shooting at poor, hungry and defenseless people who have gathered at four distribution points, killing dozens of them every day; then they say, they went outside the path we marked, our soldiers protected themselves.
The Labor government of Great Britain could not resist and announced its grotesque decisions: We will consider reviewing the Free Trade Agreement negotiations with Israel. Then, they decided to impose a travel ban and freeze the assets of two fanatical racist ministers in the Israeli government.
They know very well that these so-called measures will have zero results.
And of course, Britain, like other European countries, will continue to send weapons to Israel.
But the most difficult case to explain is Germany, the number one complicit in Europe for the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
It has provided the most military support after US since October 2023, contributing $550 million worth of weapon systems to the Israeli atrocities.
Baerbock, who until recently was the Foreign Minister of the Greens, which started as a peace movement, announced that it is appropriate to bomb public buildings, including schools and hospitals, with the innocent people inside, on the grounds of fighting Hamas.
The new Prime Minister Friedrich Merz says that he wants to bypass the arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court and ensure that Netanyahu visits Germany. No care for the concept of the rule of law.
While even the former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert wrote that Netanyahu is “the head of the criminal gang”, the German PM’s desire to bypass the law to embrace Netanyahu is not only a legal but also a moral corruption.
It is forbidden to criticize Israel in Germany.
Why is Germany like this?
Because in Germany, Israel is “Staatsräson”. We can interpret this as the highest principle of the state. In other words, for the German state, the existence and security of Israel are above all other principles.
The German who massacred millions of Jews in the Holocaust feels remorse, guilty and now supports Israel.
So far so good.
But how can the conscience of the German embrace another collective massacre just because of the pain of the collective massacre he committed elsewhere?
How can his conscience accept being a primary accomplice to another genocide?
What kind of conscience is this?
Is there an explanation for this behavior that goes against the very nature of conscience?
The German’s explanation is not convincing.
Could it be the same phenomenon that led the German’s executing the Holocaust yesterday and to his complicity in the Palestinian genocide today?
German racism?
Could it be the same blunt saw of German racism that mowed down the Jew yesterday and is assisting the slain of the Palestinian Arab today?
When I say German racism, I am of course implying to the awesome racism in the deep German tradition, but not that all Germans are racist.
* * *
The Arab countries are the ones who should primarily support the Palestinian cause. But authoritarian regimes and oil sheikhs do not and cannot put enough weight on it.
It is probably no prophecy to predict that the political earthquakes and upheavals experienced in the Arab world in the last 15 years will continue in the coming years.
As the world goes through a high-risk period, one of the facts we need to see is that the domestic regimes and foreign policies of Western countries are two different fields.
Yes, today, Western countries are the places where values such as the rule of law, human rights and democracy are best protected – despite all the serious flaws.
However, those values do not have a priority in foreign policy for the West. In fact, it has always been this way throughout history.
We will discuss this important matter in more detail at another opportunity (*).
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(*)- Originally published in Turkish, 13.06.2025