– New German Citizens Must Now Affirm Israel’s ‘Right To Exist’:
As the war in Gaza continues, Western governments are pursuing increasingly disturbing avenues of eradicating ideas and speech that challenge pro-Israel narratives. In the latest demonstration of such an over-the-top policy, German law now requires applicants for citizenship to affirm that the State of Israel has a “right to exist.”
“New test questions have been added on the topics of antisemitism, the right of the State of Israel to exist and Jewish life in Germany,” the interior ministry told the Financial Times. The new law took effect on Thursday. Two days earlier, interior minister Nancy Faeser said:
“Anyone who shares our values and makes an effort can now get a German passport more quickly and no longer has to give up part of their identity by giving up their old nationality. But we have also made it just as clear: anyone who does not share our values cannot get a German passport. We have drawn a crystal-clear red line here and made the law much stricter than before.”
Somehow, “sharing German values” now includes embracing a very specific political stance about a single foreign country that’s 1,900 miles away.
Whatever your opinion about Israel, the idea that any country on Earth has a “right to exist” is profoundly problematic. “After all, what is a country — or, in more precise terminology, a state — other than a political arrangement?” asked Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities. “And why would any political arrangement be deemed as having ‘rights,’ much less a supposed right to never be altered or cancelled?”
In March, Germany weekly Der Spiegel reported that the applicants for German citizenship would also have to memorize the year of Israel’s founding and Germany’s punishments for denying the Holocaust.
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