Opposing a Genocide Is Not Complicated

The Basic Law promised human dignity as inviolable, yet Germany suspends that principle for Palestinians. In doing so, it replaces moral clarity with historical guilt and political evasion.

An abstract sketch of Israeli assault in Gaza, Palestine

Germany presents itself as a state reborn from catastrophe. Its Basic Law, drafted in the shadow of Nazism, begins with a sentence that was meant to ensure that the horrors of the past could never recur: “Human dignity shall be inviolable.” 

It is the cornerstone of post-war German democracy, a declaration that dignity belongs to every person, without exception. Yet in practice, that promise has been selectively applied. When it comes to Israel’s war on Palestinians, Germany has elevated another principle above human dignity: support for Israel as Staatsräson, a doctrine that is treated as untouchable.

That doctrine now sits at odds with the very foundation on which the German republic was built. It also collides with international law. The International Court of Justice has made clear that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land is unlawful and that withdrawal is obligatory. Genocide scholars have issued a declaration warning that Israel’s assault on Gaza meets the conditions of the Genocide Convention. Germany’s answer to these findings has not been to uphold the international order it so often cites elsewhere, but to insist that the situation is “complicated.”

The word has become a shield. It is used to obscure rather than illuminate, to defer judgment rather than confront it. German politicians, intellectuals and media voices invoke “complexity” whenever the subject of Palestinian suffering is raised. The civilian dead are acknowledged in passing, but always with a balancing clause, always tethered to a defence of Israel’s “security.” By this rhetorical manoeuvre, clarity is muddied: the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, the displacement of millions, the destruction of an entire society, are cast not as atrocities with legal and moral clarity but as unfortunate episodes in a tangled history.

But genocide is not complicated. International law does not admit nuance when it comes to the deliberate destruction of a people. The Genocide Convention of 1948, drafted in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, prohibits such acts unequivocally. The ICJ has reiterated that prohibition. Genocide scholars across the world have warned in unison that Israel’s assault fits the pattern. In every other context, Germany is quick to invoke these institutions and precedents. In this context, it looks away.

The roots of this contradiction lie in Germany’s unresolved relationship with its past. Post-war Germany carries a profound and undeniable guilt for the crimes of the Holocaust. But rather than confront antisemitism as an enduring European pathology, Germany has displaced its guilt.

The violence once directed at Jews has been symbolically transferred onto Muslims, Arabs, and immigrant communities. German public discourse routinely casts them as the bearers of antisemitism, erasing the centuries of European persecution that culminated in the Holocaust. The result is a convenient narrative: Germany honours its history by defending Israel unconditionally, while projecting its unresolved bigotry onto racialised minorities at home.

This narrative is not just historically false. It is politically destructive. Antisemitism did not emerge from Asia or Africa. It was forged and nurtured in Europe: from expulsions in England and Spain, through pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, to the industrialised murder carried out by Nazi Germany. To suggest that antisemitism is an imported problem is to deny European responsibility. And to conflate solidarity with Palestinians with antisemitism is to rob Palestinians of their humanity while trivialising the very concept of antisemitism itself.

Germany insists that it has learned from history. But what lesson has truly been absorbed? If the lesson is that historical guilt requires unwavering support for Israel, even when Israel engages in mass displacement and mass killing, then the lesson has been dangerously misinterpreted. If the lesson is that dignity must be protected for all, then Germany’s practice belies its founding law.

The contradiction is most acute when one sets Article 1 of the Basic Law against present-day policy. Human dignity, the text declares, is inviolable. And yet Germany has criminalised demonstrations for Palestinian rights. It has banned cultural events, silenced artists, and smeared critics of Israeli policy as antisemites. The inviolability of human dignity has become negotiable—conditional on one’s ethnicity, religion, or political position.

Germany’s complicity is not merely rhetorical. It supplies weapons to Israel, shields it diplomatically, and suppresses dissent domestically. This is not the behaviour of a state that has absorbed the lessons of its past. It is the behaviour of a state that has substituted one moral failure for another, choosing loyalty to Staatsräson over loyalty to human dignity.

There is a tendency in German political culture to equate moral clarity with extremism. To oppose genocide, one is told, is to simplify a complicated conflict, to disregard history, to fail the test of nuance. But this is sophistry. The deliberate killing of children, journalists civilians, the destruction of homes and hospitals, the forced starvation of a population—these acts do not become morally ambiguous because the perpetrators are allied with Germany. They do not become complicated because Germany feels guilty.

Opposing genocide is not complicated. What is complicated is living with the consequences of silence, complicity, and self-deception. Germany has a choice: it can continue to treat Staatsräson as a sacred shield, or it can return to the principle that founded its democracy—that human dignity is inviolable, for all. The test of that principle is now, in Gaza.