As of: March 10, 2024, 7:22 a.m
By: Luke Rogalla
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Despite 30,000 deaths in Gaza, German politics lacks empathy, complains Jules El-Khatib.
In an interview with IPPEN.MEDIA, the sociologist and former left-wing spokesman in North Rhine-Westphalia takes a critical look at the government and the media.
Cologne – The war between Israel and Hamas, which has been going on for five months, is a new high point in the decades-old Middle East conflict.
After Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th, which left around 1,200 dead and more than 200 hostages kidnapped in the Gaza Strip, Israel declared a state of war.
The declared goals: the liberation of the hostages and the elimination of Hamas.
Since then, Israel has destroyed large parts of the Gaza Strip through air strikes.
Almost two million people have been displaced and are fleeing.
Israel's military goals have not been achieved - but the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is catastrophic.
Meanwhile, Hamas and allied groups continue to fire rockets towards Israel.
Dozens of hostages still have to hold out in the Gaza Strip.
The family of Jules El-Khatib - who lives in Essen himself - is also affected by the war and is on the run within the Gaza Strip.
A conversation with the sociologist, activist and former state spokesman for the Left in North Rhine-Westphalia about Germany's attitude, double standards and debate culture during the war, the accusation of genocide against Israel and paths to peace.
IPPEN.MEDIA: Mr. El-Khatib, you have family in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip and also in Israel.
How do you keep in touch?
Jules El-Khatib: It's easy to keep in touch with Israel, there are no restrictions at all.
We also go to the West Bank.
The networks function normally.
In the Gaza Strip, however, it is a catastrophe.
Since the end of last year, the network has actually been constantly interrupted.
My family fled very early on at the start of the war.
That means, at the moment I don't actually know much about my family there, we only know that a double-digit number were killed, exactly how many is unclear.
Sometimes you read death reports in chat groups, but I know that a large number went to Rafah.
When they talk to someone on the phone, it's usually my uncles and aunts.
They rarely have electricity during the day and even more rarely have the network.
Sometimes we find out that the food is out again and are asked if we can transfer money for food, which is currently difficult to do.
All we know right now is that they fled to Rafah a few weeks ago.
And since the threat of attack on Rafah, many have fled again, this time to another part of the Gaza Strip.
Jules El-Khatib on the Gaza War: Germany's reporting "extremely unbalanced"
When was the last time you were in Gaza or the West Bank?
I've never been to Gaza.
Israel doesn't issue permits, even if you have family there.
In general, since 2005, since Israel withdrew, abandoned the settlements there and replaced them with a blockade, you have only been given one in urgent emergencies.
The last time I was in the West Bank was in 2022, when I met, among other things, Shireen Abu Akleh's cameraman - the journalist who was shot.
As someone with Palestinian roots in Germany: Do you feel represented or heard in the public debate?
Palestinian voices are really rare in media debates.
When Palestinians speak out, they are also attacked.
There are always articles that also highlight the Palestinian LeDeutid.
But it's extremely unbalanced when you look at the front pages of major media outlets, particularly public broadcasters.
Surprisingly, I find it even stronger with the ÖRR than with many other media, and I found it more balanced with other conflicts.
I also found it shocking to see articles that endorsed an invasion of Rafah - even when more than 30,000 Palestinians were already dead.
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About Jules El-Khatib
Jules El-Khatib (*1991 in Cologne) is a university lecturer in social sciences and lives in Essen.
From 2011 to 2023 he was a member of the Left, and from 2021 to 2022 he was the party's state spokesman in North Rhine-Westphalia.
In the 2022 state elections, El-Khatib ran together with Dr.
Carolin Butterwegge as the top duo for the Left.
He has German and Israeli citizenship and has family in Israel and the Palestinian territories in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Germany should advocate for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza war, demands Jules El-Khatib, sociologist and former state spokesman for the Left in North Rhine-Westphalia.
(Archive photo) © Chris Emil Janssen/Imago
And from a political perspective?
There are a few politicians who try to show both sides and advocate for human rights for everyone, who are committed to the release of the hostages as well as to an end to the bombing and the blockade of Gaza.
But there aren't many.
At the SPD, for example, it is Isabel Cademartori, who was the first member of the coalition to call for a ceasefire, or the Commissioner for Integration Reem Alabali-Radovan, at the Left Özlem Alev Demirel and Nicole Gohlke, at the BSW Sevim Dağdelen and Fabio De Masi.
In all other parties there is no one calling for a permanent ceasefire, most MPs are an absolute disaster when it comes to Palestinian suffering, especially those on the right of center.
There is hardly anyone who shows great empathy for the Palestinians, let alone calls for a ceasefire or an end to the blockade.
The fact that there is not even enough empathy in view of the suffering in Gaza is an indictment.
What do you want from the federal government besides empathy?
The federal government should have called for a ceasefire months ago.
We now have over 30,000 deaths in five months.
It is the war with the most children killed since Rwanda, with the most journalists killed in decades, more than in the Vietnam War.
90 percent of the population is displaced.
The numbers are getting worse every day - but to be honest, the situation was already catastrophic in November and it was clear where the journey would lead.
One should have called for a ceasefire, as other European countries have done.
There is no justification for not calling for it today, in view of the humanitarian catastrophe.
They should have stopped supplying weapons a long time ago.
The tanks that are now firing in Gaza: the government is considering whether to arm them with German ammunition.
That's absurd.
Delivery would mean that we participate in displacement.
We are complicit in people dying.
Hind, the little girl whose cry for help went around the world, wasn't bombed from the air, but by tank shots.
So we're thinking about supplying ammunition to ensure that Hind's fate repeats itself.
This is an absolute contradiction to what the federal government claims to represent, namely a humanistic foreign policy.
“Israel is violating the requirements of the ICJ”
The Federal Government emphasizes that it takes international humanitarian law and human rights into account, including when it comes to arms deliveries.
The International Court of Justice has said Israel must do everything it can to avoid harming civilians.
That didn't happen.
Since then, the number of food deliveries has fallen and the number of Palestinians killed has remained constant.
Now there are plans to invade Rafah.
The requirement to prevent statements calling for mass expulsion or more dead Palestinians was also not implemented.
Israel is therefore violating the conditions.
And our federal government knows that.
These statements from Israel are visible to everyone, and the number of dead and displaced people is carefully documented by the UN.
Anyone who still supplies weapons in this situation knows that this runs counter to the protection of life and the humanistic foreign policy and human rights orientation.
These deliveries are all about loyalty to the alliance.
According to the UN, more than 30,000 people have been killed so far.
Many livelihoods such as schools, universities and hospitals have been destroyed.
Hundreds of thousands are on the run.
Are allegations of genocide by South Africa and other countries justified?
I cannot judge this legally.
What we can be sure of is that crimes happen.
Israeli soldiers film themselves blowing up schools and houses as a joke after the population has been driven out, and even universities are being blown up.
They film themselves humiliating captured Palestinians and brag about shootings in videos.
At the border crossing with Israel, right-wing radical settlers, allies of Israel's Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, are blocking food deliveries.
I know people myself who have lost family members to starvation.
Israel is doing nothing to avoid this, on the contrary, there are thousands of trucks with food at the Rafah border crossing, the entry of which is being delayed.
The international court must decide whether this is genocide.
However, there are ministers who have called for genocide, for example Amihai Eliyahu, who wanted to drop an atomic bomb on Gaza or Smotrich, who has called for a new Nakba, and occupation fantasies that violate international law are also articulated.
Reports on the Israel-Gaza War
In its war against Hamas, Israel invokes the right to self-defense after the terrorist group breached the border on October 7 and carried out a massacre on the other side.
Israel accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields in the war in the densely populated coastal strip and deliberately causing many civilian victims, including thousands of women and children.
According to Israeli figures, the army has killed between 10,000 and 12,000 Hamas fighters so far.
The last battalions should therefore be in Rafah.
More than a million people found refuge there at the beginning of the war.
Currently almost exclusively Palestinian journalists report from the Gaza Strip.
Many reports cannot be independently verified, partly because Egypt and Israel do not allow foreign media teams into the Gaza Strip.
Humanitarian catastrophe in the Israel-Gaza war: “Bombs and hunger only serve radicalization”
Israel is waging war with the declared goal of fighting Hamas.
What would be the most effective way to do that?
The current path is the worst in the long term.
If someone has family members who have been killed, children who are starving in front of their eyes, a parent who is shot, has seen their own house destroyed, then there is a high probability that this person will become radicalized.
We know this not only from Gaza, but also from other wars, such as Afghanistan or Iraq; radicalization research shows this well.
Anyone who wants a long-term solution must also create a perspective for the Palestinians that guarantees them security and peace.
But bombs and hunger destroy perspectives and only serve to radicalize.
With the bombs and with statements that there will be no Palestinian state, the Israeli government is encouraging the lack of prospects and destroying prospects.
Hamas will be weakened militarily by the war, but its base will grow, not shrink, as a result of the war.
Before the war, approval in Gaza was less than 40 percent and in December it was 70 percent.
The war weakens the forces that rely on security for all people in the Middle East.
Instead of bombs, we urgently need a ceasefire and a conference at which an independent Palestinian state will be established.
Children in front of destroyed buildings in Rafah, in the very south of the Gaza Strip.
© Yasser Qudihe/Imago
Back to Germany itself. How did you perceive the reports and debate about the Berlinale?
Claudia Roth said afterwards that she only clapped for the Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham at the awards ceremony, not the Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra.
The fact that one stands up and says that one only clapped for the Israeli and not for the Palestinian, even though both said similar things, is an unparalleled lack of solidarity and shows that the message of the film, which stands against occupation and oppression, is for the you clapped, you didn't understand.
It also shows that solidarity is distributed arbitrarily and gives in at the first small headwind.
Many media and politicians have spoken of “anti-Semitism at the Berlinale”.
In Germany, people first have to come up with the idea of accusing a left-wing Jewish Israeli and a left-wing Palestinian, who are fighting together against racism, anti-Semitism and occupation, of preaching anti-Semitism.
It is logical that people living under occupation do not use the words that a politician uses from a comfortable distance in Berlin, but that cannot be a reason for a lack of solidarity.
I would not have expected that the German media and politicians would now accuse an anti-racist Jewish Israeli of anti-Semitism and it shows that people are quick to make judgments when the debate heats up on social media.
After a few days, there were more and more articles that backtracked, also because Yuval's family was attacked by right-wing extremists.
While Jewish and Palestinian peace activists are accused of anti-Semitism, there is silence about German politicians who post maps on their Twitter channels in which parts of Syria, Lebanon or all of Palestine belong to Israel.
They not only legitimize occupation and incorporation, but also want to move national borders - from Germany, even a former minister posted such a map.
This shows very well the double standards when criticism of the occupation leads to an outcry, the posting of cards and pictures that approve of the occupation but are ignored.
Nowadays people laugh at Germany
Jules El-Khatib
How is the debate in Germany perceived abroad?
I speak a lot with peacekeepers in Israel and Palestine.
People now laugh at Germany and the German debates.
One has the feeling that parts of German politics are regurgitating what Israel's far-right government says without critically questioning it.
And what about war opponents in Israel?
Week after week their protests are getting bigger, and there are now more and more young people who don't want to serve in the military because they don't want to take part in war and occupation.
A refusal for which they will go to prison.
The peace movement and all those who work for security for all people should be our allies.
However, there are many Israelis, especially peace workers and progressives, who are planning to emigrate.
Many of them used to go to Berlin.
Now they are thinking about emigrating to England or to Ireland or Spain because they don't have the feeling that their prospects are being taken seriously in Germany.
And that has to be taken into account that progressive Israelis and Palestinians no longer see Germany as a home.
So the forces that actively strive for peace.
Jules El-Khatib: “It was hoped that more of my family members would die”
You are active on X (formerly Twitter), sharing news articles and commenting on the war.
How have reactions to your posts or interactions on the platform changed since October 7th?
I spoke out very early on October 7th and condemned the Hamas attack, the killings and the hostage-taking, and repeatedly spoke out in favor of the release of the hostages.
My foundation is always humanistic and concerned with protecting every human life.
Violence against civilians is not legitimate anywhere.
Not in Israel, not in Palestine, not in Syria, not in Sudan, not in Congo, not in Ukraine, not in Russia - wherever.
At the beginning I received a lot of approval, but when I criticized not only violence against Israelis, but also the Israeli bombings and killing of Palestinians, I received an incredible amount of hatred.
I was wished dead, people hoped that more of my family members would die, or that I would be deported - even from people who were “against the right” or had an EU flag in their profile, I and all Palestinians were insulted and even dehumanized .
If people who describe themselves as critical of racism and right-wing positions suddenly represent positions like those articulated in Israel by people like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, who describe themselves as racists and fascists, then it should be urgently questioned whether one is really as anti-racist as people think.
Are you getting more popularity now?
Yes.
In the first two months I felt incredibly alone, it was really terrible.
However, there was hardly anyone on social media in Germany who dared to speak out and criticize violence against Palestinians.
Things then slowly, gradually improved because the suffering in Gaza became more and more obvious.
Now I don't get as much hate anymore.
I had often thought about not speaking out anymore, but then I thought: What are the threats and hate messages against me while children are starving in Gaza, while pregnant women are being bombed, while people like Maoz Inon, whose parents were killed on October 7th to stand in Israel and demonstrate for a ceasefire.
Twitter messages and online insults can't harm me.
I'm now completely overwhelmed by the hate messages.
What is positive is that solidarity is increasing and the recognition that there is a need for security for all people and a ceasefire.
More and more people are now articulating this openly, and that means a lot to me.
The phrase “from the river to the sea” has been banned in Germany for several months, as part of the Hamas ban order and, according to a government spokesman, when used as “a statement from Hamas.”
But not in a pro-Israel context.
An example of the double standards that pro-Palestinian voices accuse Germany of.
Is that fair?
No, that's not it, either a statement is forbidden for everyone or it is forbidden for none.
It is similar with maps on which Israel is shown in Palestine colors; these are prohibited.
Maps depicting Palestine in Israeli colors are not penalized and are even shared by MPs.
This is a double standard, because rights either apply to everyone or to none.
I expect a government that says it is based on human rights to work to ensure that these apply to everyone, that we have the same standards for everyone, that is, that we evaluate criminal statements equally regardless of whether they are about Palestine or Israel and that in domestic and foreign policy we really act according to humanistic principles and that the focus is always on the question of how we protect human life - every life.
(Interview: Lukas Rogalla)