August 1, 2025
Amos Brison
“This is how one pictures the angel of history,” the German-Jewish philosopher wrote of Klee’s angel in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” shortly before his death by suicide in 1940. “His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe … The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.”
Angelus Novus’ own journey across war-ravaged Europe echoes Benjamin’s description of its angelic subject. In 1933, fleeing the Nazi regime, Benjamin brought the work with him to Paris. In 1940, as German forces advanced on the city, he entrusted it to his friend, philosopher Georges Bataille, before fleeing on foot toward Spain. Hidden in the Bibliothèque Nationale for the remainder of the war, the print was later sent to Theodor Adorno in the United States and eventually reached Jewish mysticism scholar Gershom Scholem in Jerusalem, who donated it to the Israel Museum where it has remained ever since.
The Bode Museum exhibition, which closed in mid-July, paired Klee’s piece with a small selection of angelic works from Berlin’s State Museums, whose own histories of surviving World War II also add layers to the stories they tell. Giambattista Bregno’s “Kneeling Angel” (c. 1500), its wings severed and its limbs scorched, quietly gazes skyward. Directly in front of it hung a large black-and-white reproduction of Caravaggio’s “St. Matthew with the Angel” (16th or 17th century), the original of which was lost in a bunker fire in Friedrichshain in 1945.
With their war-scarred bodies, the angels serve as physical reminders of Berlin’s violent past. Upon entering the exhibition, the visitor is greeted by Richard Peter’s famous photograph “View from the Town Hall Tower to the South, 1945” — a black-and-white panorama of Dresden reduced to dust and ruin in the aftermath of Allied bombings (pictured above). Churches collapsed in on themselves, rooftops gutted by flames, streets turned to rubble.
But like Benjamin’s angel, they are also timeless witnesses. And what they behold today screams out in its absence from German political and public discourse.
Immediately, the apocalyptic landscape of Peter’s photograph feels eerily current. The jagged ruins stretching to the horizon, the charred concrete, the sense that something has been irreversibly broken: this is what most of Gaza looks like today. Yet as instinctive as the association might be for most informed observers, in Berlin in 2025, it remains mostly unspoken — or, indeed, silenced.
As the second largest arms supplier to Israel, Germany is a participant and an enabler in yet another genocidal campaign, one that has by now claimed the lives of tens — if not hundreds — of thousands of Palestinians, including multiple generations of entire families and over 18,500 children, 200 journalists, and 1,400 healthcare workers.
As Israel insists on taking the war in Gaza to its inevitable horrifying conclusion, German leaders continue to send weapons, provide diplomatic cover, and offer Israel carte blanche in its conduct in Gaza and the wider region. And with domestic public support for Israel declining sharply, the government continues to violently suppress dissent at home — all in the name of atoning for its own genocidal history. Yet in doing so, Germany has turned its back on the past, adamant in its refusal to acknowledge the wreckage of the past 22 months piling up at its feet.
A special responsibility
Guided by its unofficial Staatsräson doctrine — the idea that Germany’s very existence necessitates an unwavering commitment to Israel’s security as a moral imperative, rooted in the legacy of the Holocaust — Germany has always treated Israel as a special case, exempt from the kinds of scrutiny or conditionality applied to other states. In practice, this has meant continued shielding of Israel from criticism on the international stage, opposing calls for sanctions or accountability, and maintaining robust military and intelligence cooperation regardless of developments on the ground.
Yet while Germany’s double standard when it comes to Israel isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, some recent examples are worth dwelling upon.
In early 2024, Germany flatly rejected South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). A day before the start of proceedings, then-Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that Germany “cannot see this intention [to commit genocide] in Israel’s self-defense against the armed terrorist organization Hamas.”
Yet just a few years earlier, Germany had intervened in the ICJ’s 2019 genocide case concerning the Rohingya in Myanmar to suggest that the Court’s standard for inferring genocidal intent set the bar unduly high. “It is crucial for the Court to adopt a balanced approach that recognizes the special gravity of the crime of genocide,” its lawyers argued at the time, “without rendering the threshold for inferring genocidal intent so difficult to meet so as to make findings of genocide near-impossible.”
The same hypocrisy was on full display when Chancellor Friedrich Merz formally welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Berlin in March, flouting an active arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC). At a time when Israel’s campaign in Gaza had already been widely denounced by international rights groups as ethnic cleansing and genocide, Merz denounced widespread criticism of his decision. “It is a completely absurd idea that an Israeli prime minister cannot visit the Federal Republic of Germany,” he declared.
But merely two years earlier, then-Justice Minister Marco Buschmann stated that under an ICC warrant, Germany would be “obliged to arrest” Russian President Vladimir Putin if he stepped foot on German soil. The obligation was reiterated a few months later by then-Foreign Minister Baerbock: “Doing nothing, that would be wrong. Because if we don’t respond, the international community’s response to Russia’s aggression is impunity.
“My country, Germany, has waged inhumane wars of aggression and committed the most cruel genocide, killing millions of people,” Baerbock added. “That’s why we have a special responsibility to do our part to ensure that such crimes never happen again.”
Yet time after time, Germany has demonstrated that when it comes to Israel, the rules and values it applies to others are simply suspended.
Israel’s recent 12-day war with Iran provided another case in point. Within hours of Israel launching a surprise volley of drones and airstrikes deep inside Iranian territory, killing dozens of civilians as well as senior military and scientific officials, the German Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning “the indiscriminate Iranian attack on Israeli territory.”
How can a country that professes to be a gatekeeper of international law staunchly defend a state that so flagrantly violates it? How does a country that has spent 80 years cultivating a culture of remembrance, responsibility, and moral accountability show ironclad commitment to arresting one international war criminal, while warmly welcoming another? And how can a country that utilizes the image of the ruins of Dresden to teach its schoolchildren about the dangers of dehumanization and fascism be so blind to its own complicity in an unfolding catastrophe?
Such contradictions reflect a deep moral crisis at the heart of German political culture, as Israel’s actions, and German leaders’ unwavering support for them, contribute to the erosion of the rules-based international order that Germany claims to champion.
Balancing act
These tensions are increasingly proving too much to bear, however, and something had to give. Since the start of the war, Germany has consistently situated itself squarely on Israel’s side. But in May, after Israel ignored a European deadline to fully lift its blockade on humanitarian aid entering Gaza, there was a noticeable shift in the rhetoric of top political leaders.
“What the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip, I no longer understand the goal,” Merz said during a trip to Finland that month. “To harm the civilian population in such a way, as has increasingly been the case in recent days, can no longer be justified as a fight against terrorism.”
Merz’s forceful remarks, though, quickly proved hollow. Speaking to the Bundestag only a month later, the German leader came out against a proposal supported by a vast majority of EU countries to reexamine the bloc’s association agreement with Israel in light of its actions in Gaza. Doing so, he stressed, would be “out of the question with the federal [German] government.”
Such wild contradictions reflect a rising phenomenon in German political discourse. As Israel continues to trample international law and basic human decency, German officials appear increasingly cornered, oscillating between moral posturing and strategic ambiguity. This is producing a bizarre new balancing act in which German leaders’ condemnations grow more strident but without leading to any change in the country’s material support for Israel’s military campaigns.
One day, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul urges Israel to “think very carefully about what further steps to take,” as Germany “evaluates whether what is happening in Gaza is in line with international law.” Another day, ahead of a Bundestag meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, he reaffirms that arms deliveries to Israel would continue without interruption.
At the G7 summit soon after Israel launched its attack on Iran, Chancellor Merz revealed what lies at the heart of much of Germany’s enduring support for Israel. In striking Iran, he said, Israel is doing “the dirty work … for all of us.” He added that he has “the greatest respect for the fact that the Israeli army [and] state leadership had the courage to do this.”
This unsettling remark hinted at the colonial logic underlying much of Germany’s continued alignment with Israel. After all, who precisely constitutes the “us” Merz refers to, if not Western powers intent on preserving their global military dominance? And by outsourcing acts of coercive violence to Israel, these nations conveniently distance themselves from the moral and political accountability inherent in direct intervention.
But even as this imperative continues to endure, the number of people pushing in the opposite direction grows ever larger. Among Germany’s increasingly diverse population, criticism of Israel and of the so-called “unique relationship” is gaining ground.
Today, nearly one in four people in Germany has what the government calls a Migrationshintergrund (“migration background”), with many tracing their heritage to the Middle East or other Muslim-majority countries. For large segments of this demographic, support for Palestinian rights isn’t simply a political stance — it is rooted in lived experience, intergenerational memory, and a sense of transnational solidarity. And these German voices, once marginalized, are beginning to reshape the contours of the country’s public debate.
Refusing to be ignored
A recent study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, published on the 60th anniversary of Germany’s recognition of the State of Israel, highlights the widening gap between state policy and public sentiment. According to the poll, just 36 percent of Germans now hold a favorable view of Israel — a drop of 10 points from the already low 46 percent found in 2021, long before the October 7 attack. Sixty percent view Israel’s current government negatively, and only one in four feels any particular obligation toward the Israeli state.
These are not isolated findings. A poll released in June 2025 by the Allensbach Institute not only confirmed that a majority of Germans have negative attitudes toward Israel, but suggested that 65 percent regard Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as “inappropriate,” with only 13 percent voicing support. Perhaps most revealingly, 73 percent of respondents believe there is “some truth” to the assertion that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide.
Public disillusionment is no longer just about Gaza or the current Israeli government; it extends to the entire framework of German-Israeli relations. According to the Allensbach Institute’s poll, a majority — 52 percent — now reject the notion that Germany owes Israel a “special responsibility” rooted in the legacy of the Holocaust. And in a finding that would have once been unthinkable in postwar Germany, 37 percent now regard Israel as a threat to world peace, up from just 11 percent in 2021.
These shifts have undoubtedly played a role in forcing elected officials to adopt a harsher tone towards Israel. But as refreshing as that may seem, it reeks of being less a precursor to genuine policy change than a diversionary tactic — one designed to deflect attention from German leaders’ continued failure to confront the realities of Israel’s genocidal regime.
Much more than the occasional rhetorical wrist-slapping of Israel for its actions in Gaza, the German government’s main response to the turning tide of public opinion has been an extreme and violent crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests and dissent.
Peaceful demonstrators, some of them Jewish, have faced aggressive police tactics including pepper spraying, beatings, and arrests. Authorities regularly invoke vague security justifications to systematically ban Palestine solidarity events, effectively stifling freedom of speech and assembly.
Recently, Berlin police circulated a false narrative that an officer had been gravely injured at a Nakba Day protest, claiming he was dragged into a crowd and trampled. Forensic analysis of video footage demonstrated the officer was instead seen punching and kicking peaceful protesters, with no evidence of a mob attack. But despite the evidence against their narrative, the state used the fabricated story to intensify surveillance, criminalize activists, and introduce legislative powers aimed at further repressing dissent.
Notably, the slogan “From the River to the Sea,” a common rallying cry for Palestinian rights and liberation, has been effectively outlawed by some German courts. And in a particularly absurd illustration of the effects of such repression, protesters at a demonstration near the Reichstag were forbidden by police from speaking Hebrew, Arabic, or even Irish Gaelic out of concern that banned words or chants might go unnoticed by German officers.
Yet despite authorities’ best efforts, resistance has only grown. In late June, at least 50,000 people took to the streets of central Berlin in the largest demonstration against Israel’s genocide in the German capital to date. Held under the slogan #United4Gaza, the demonstrators marched past the Reichstag and the German Chancellery — a stone’s throw away from the Bode Museum.
Tucked in a small room amid the museum’s grand relics of imperial and ecclesiastical power, Angelus Novus feels even smaller and more unassuming than its fragile physical self. But its presence, like the protesters demanding an end to Germany’s complicity in Gaza’s annihilation of Gaza, refuses to be ignored.
The angel wants to “pause for a moment, to awaken the dead, and to piece together what has been smashed,” Benjamin writes, “but a storm is blowing from Paradise. It has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them.”
This, it seems, is where we find ourselves today: in a world where so much seems irrevocably shattered, unable to stop even for a moment to sort through the fragments before the ongoing wreckage of genocide propells us into the future. And it is exactly where Germany finds itself, too: desperate to shape a future from lessons drawn from its catastrophic past, yet driven ever further into the abyss by its obsessive pursuit of redemption.
Benjamin’s angel cannot fight the storm. And neither, it appears, can Germany.
Amos Brison
As
Israel obliterates Gaza with Berlin's backing, German public support is
plummeting. Yet the government is crushing dissent and refusing to change
course — all in the name of atoning for Germany's own genocidal history.
For two months, Paul Klee’s
notebook-page sized “Angelus Novus” (1920) hung alone in a small room at
Berlin’s Bode Museum, the centerpiece of the much-anticipated exhibition “The
Angel of History.” With its wide-eyed, jagged-toothed angelic subject seemingly
suspended between motion and paralysis, the watercolor print (pictured below)
has cast a surprisingly long shadow over 20th-century philosophy — especially
through the eyes of Walter Benjamin, who owned it for nearly two decades.
“This is how one pictures the angel of history,” the German-Jewish philosopher wrote of Klee’s angel in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” shortly before his death by suicide in 1940. “His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe … The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.”
Angelus Novus’ own journey across war-ravaged Europe echoes Benjamin’s description of its angelic subject. In 1933, fleeing the Nazi regime, Benjamin brought the work with him to Paris. In 1940, as German forces advanced on the city, he entrusted it to his friend, philosopher Georges Bataille, before fleeing on foot toward Spain. Hidden in the Bibliothèque Nationale for the remainder of the war, the print was later sent to Theodor Adorno in the United States and eventually reached Jewish mysticism scholar Gershom Scholem in Jerusalem, who donated it to the Israel Museum where it has remained ever since.
The Bode Museum exhibition, which closed in mid-July, paired Klee’s piece with a small selection of angelic works from Berlin’s State Museums, whose own histories of surviving World War II also add layers to the stories they tell. Giambattista Bregno’s “Kneeling Angel” (c. 1500), its wings severed and its limbs scorched, quietly gazes skyward. Directly in front of it hung a large black-and-white reproduction of Caravaggio’s “St. Matthew with the Angel” (16th or 17th century), the original of which was lost in a bunker fire in Friedrichshain in 1945.
With their war-scarred bodies, the angels serve as physical reminders of Berlin’s violent past. Upon entering the exhibition, the visitor is greeted by Richard Peter’s famous photograph “View from the Town Hall Tower to the South, 1945” — a black-and-white panorama of Dresden reduced to dust and ruin in the aftermath of Allied bombings (pictured above). Churches collapsed in on themselves, rooftops gutted by flames, streets turned to rubble.
But like Benjamin’s angel, they are also timeless witnesses. And what they behold today screams out in its absence from German political and public discourse.
Immediately, the apocalyptic landscape of Peter’s photograph feels eerily current. The jagged ruins stretching to the horizon, the charred concrete, the sense that something has been irreversibly broken: this is what most of Gaza looks like today. Yet as instinctive as the association might be for most informed observers, in Berlin in 2025, it remains mostly unspoken — or, indeed, silenced.
As the second largest arms supplier to Israel, Germany is a participant and an enabler in yet another genocidal campaign, one that has by now claimed the lives of tens — if not hundreds — of thousands of Palestinians, including multiple generations of entire families and over 18,500 children, 200 journalists, and 1,400 healthcare workers.
As Israel insists on taking the war in Gaza to its inevitable horrifying conclusion, German leaders continue to send weapons, provide diplomatic cover, and offer Israel carte blanche in its conduct in Gaza and the wider region. And with domestic public support for Israel declining sharply, the government continues to violently suppress dissent at home — all in the name of atoning for its own genocidal history. Yet in doing so, Germany has turned its back on the past, adamant in its refusal to acknowledge the wreckage of the past 22 months piling up at its feet.
A special responsibility
Guided by its unofficial Staatsräson doctrine — the idea that Germany’s very existence necessitates an unwavering commitment to Israel’s security as a moral imperative, rooted in the legacy of the Holocaust — Germany has always treated Israel as a special case, exempt from the kinds of scrutiny or conditionality applied to other states. In practice, this has meant continued shielding of Israel from criticism on the international stage, opposing calls for sanctions or accountability, and maintaining robust military and intelligence cooperation regardless of developments on the ground.
Yet while Germany’s double standard when it comes to Israel isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, some recent examples are worth dwelling upon.
In early 2024, Germany flatly rejected South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). A day before the start of proceedings, then-Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that Germany “cannot see this intention [to commit genocide] in Israel’s self-defense against the armed terrorist organization Hamas.”
Yet just a few years earlier, Germany had intervened in the ICJ’s 2019 genocide case concerning the Rohingya in Myanmar to suggest that the Court’s standard for inferring genocidal intent set the bar unduly high. “It is crucial for the Court to adopt a balanced approach that recognizes the special gravity of the crime of genocide,” its lawyers argued at the time, “without rendering the threshold for inferring genocidal intent so difficult to meet so as to make findings of genocide near-impossible.”
The same hypocrisy was on full display when Chancellor Friedrich Merz formally welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Berlin in March, flouting an active arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC). At a time when Israel’s campaign in Gaza had already been widely denounced by international rights groups as ethnic cleansing and genocide, Merz denounced widespread criticism of his decision. “It is a completely absurd idea that an Israeli prime minister cannot visit the Federal Republic of Germany,” he declared.
But merely two years earlier, then-Justice Minister Marco Buschmann stated that under an ICC warrant, Germany would be “obliged to arrest” Russian President Vladimir Putin if he stepped foot on German soil. The obligation was reiterated a few months later by then-Foreign Minister Baerbock: “Doing nothing, that would be wrong. Because if we don’t respond, the international community’s response to Russia’s aggression is impunity.
“My country, Germany, has waged inhumane wars of aggression and committed the most cruel genocide, killing millions of people,” Baerbock added. “That’s why we have a special responsibility to do our part to ensure that such crimes never happen again.”
Yet time after time, Germany has demonstrated that when it comes to Israel, the rules and values it applies to others are simply suspended.
Israel’s recent 12-day war with Iran provided another case in point. Within hours of Israel launching a surprise volley of drones and airstrikes deep inside Iranian territory, killing dozens of civilians as well as senior military and scientific officials, the German Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning “the indiscriminate Iranian attack on Israeli territory.”
How can a country that professes to be a gatekeeper of international law staunchly defend a state that so flagrantly violates it? How does a country that has spent 80 years cultivating a culture of remembrance, responsibility, and moral accountability show ironclad commitment to arresting one international war criminal, while warmly welcoming another? And how can a country that utilizes the image of the ruins of Dresden to teach its schoolchildren about the dangers of dehumanization and fascism be so blind to its own complicity in an unfolding catastrophe?
Such contradictions reflect a deep moral crisis at the heart of German political culture, as Israel’s actions, and German leaders’ unwavering support for them, contribute to the erosion of the rules-based international order that Germany claims to champion.
Balancing act
These tensions are increasingly proving too much to bear, however, and something had to give. Since the start of the war, Germany has consistently situated itself squarely on Israel’s side. But in May, after Israel ignored a European deadline to fully lift its blockade on humanitarian aid entering Gaza, there was a noticeable shift in the rhetoric of top political leaders.
“What the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip, I no longer understand the goal,” Merz said during a trip to Finland that month. “To harm the civilian population in such a way, as has increasingly been the case in recent days, can no longer be justified as a fight against terrorism.”
Merz’s forceful remarks, though, quickly proved hollow. Speaking to the Bundestag only a month later, the German leader came out against a proposal supported by a vast majority of EU countries to reexamine the bloc’s association agreement with Israel in light of its actions in Gaza. Doing so, he stressed, would be “out of the question with the federal [German] government.”
Such wild contradictions reflect a rising phenomenon in German political discourse. As Israel continues to trample international law and basic human decency, German officials appear increasingly cornered, oscillating between moral posturing and strategic ambiguity. This is producing a bizarre new balancing act in which German leaders’ condemnations grow more strident but without leading to any change in the country’s material support for Israel’s military campaigns.
One day, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul urges Israel to “think very carefully about what further steps to take,” as Germany “evaluates whether what is happening in Gaza is in line with international law.” Another day, ahead of a Bundestag meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, he reaffirms that arms deliveries to Israel would continue without interruption.
At the G7 summit soon after Israel launched its attack on Iran, Chancellor Merz revealed what lies at the heart of much of Germany’s enduring support for Israel. In striking Iran, he said, Israel is doing “the dirty work … for all of us.” He added that he has “the greatest respect for the fact that the Israeli army [and] state leadership had the courage to do this.”
This unsettling remark hinted at the colonial logic underlying much of Germany’s continued alignment with Israel. After all, who precisely constitutes the “us” Merz refers to, if not Western powers intent on preserving their global military dominance? And by outsourcing acts of coercive violence to Israel, these nations conveniently distance themselves from the moral and political accountability inherent in direct intervention.
But even as this imperative continues to endure, the number of people pushing in the opposite direction grows ever larger. Among Germany’s increasingly diverse population, criticism of Israel and of the so-called “unique relationship” is gaining ground.
Today, nearly one in four people in Germany has what the government calls a Migrationshintergrund (“migration background”), with many tracing their heritage to the Middle East or other Muslim-majority countries. For large segments of this demographic, support for Palestinian rights isn’t simply a political stance — it is rooted in lived experience, intergenerational memory, and a sense of transnational solidarity. And these German voices, once marginalized, are beginning to reshape the contours of the country’s public debate.
Refusing to be ignored
A recent study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, published on the 60th anniversary of Germany’s recognition of the State of Israel, highlights the widening gap between state policy and public sentiment. According to the poll, just 36 percent of Germans now hold a favorable view of Israel — a drop of 10 points from the already low 46 percent found in 2021, long before the October 7 attack. Sixty percent view Israel’s current government negatively, and only one in four feels any particular obligation toward the Israeli state.
These are not isolated findings. A poll released in June 2025 by the Allensbach Institute not only confirmed that a majority of Germans have negative attitudes toward Israel, but suggested that 65 percent regard Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as “inappropriate,” with only 13 percent voicing support. Perhaps most revealingly, 73 percent of respondents believe there is “some truth” to the assertion that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide.
Public disillusionment is no longer just about Gaza or the current Israeli government; it extends to the entire framework of German-Israeli relations. According to the Allensbach Institute’s poll, a majority — 52 percent — now reject the notion that Germany owes Israel a “special responsibility” rooted in the legacy of the Holocaust. And in a finding that would have once been unthinkable in postwar Germany, 37 percent now regard Israel as a threat to world peace, up from just 11 percent in 2021.
These shifts have undoubtedly played a role in forcing elected officials to adopt a harsher tone towards Israel. But as refreshing as that may seem, it reeks of being less a precursor to genuine policy change than a diversionary tactic — one designed to deflect attention from German leaders’ continued failure to confront the realities of Israel’s genocidal regime.
Much more than the occasional rhetorical wrist-slapping of Israel for its actions in Gaza, the German government’s main response to the turning tide of public opinion has been an extreme and violent crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests and dissent.
Peaceful demonstrators, some of them Jewish, have faced aggressive police tactics including pepper spraying, beatings, and arrests. Authorities regularly invoke vague security justifications to systematically ban Palestine solidarity events, effectively stifling freedom of speech and assembly.
Recently, Berlin police circulated a false narrative that an officer had been gravely injured at a Nakba Day protest, claiming he was dragged into a crowd and trampled. Forensic analysis of video footage demonstrated the officer was instead seen punching and kicking peaceful protesters, with no evidence of a mob attack. But despite the evidence against their narrative, the state used the fabricated story to intensify surveillance, criminalize activists, and introduce legislative powers aimed at further repressing dissent.
Notably, the slogan “From the River to the Sea,” a common rallying cry for Palestinian rights and liberation, has been effectively outlawed by some German courts. And in a particularly absurd illustration of the effects of such repression, protesters at a demonstration near the Reichstag were forbidden by police from speaking Hebrew, Arabic, or even Irish Gaelic out of concern that banned words or chants might go unnoticed by German officers.
Yet despite authorities’ best efforts, resistance has only grown. In late June, at least 50,000 people took to the streets of central Berlin in the largest demonstration against Israel’s genocide in the German capital to date. Held under the slogan #United4Gaza, the demonstrators marched past the Reichstag and the German Chancellery — a stone’s throw away from the Bode Museum.
Tucked in a small room amid the museum’s grand relics of imperial and ecclesiastical power, Angelus Novus feels even smaller and more unassuming than its fragile physical self. But its presence, like the protesters demanding an end to Germany’s complicity in Gaza’s annihilation of Gaza, refuses to be ignored.
The angel wants to “pause for a moment, to awaken the dead, and to piece together what has been smashed,” Benjamin writes, “but a storm is blowing from Paradise. It has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them.”
This, it seems, is where we find ourselves today: in a world where so much seems irrevocably shattered, unable to stop even for a moment to sort through the fragments before the ongoing wreckage of genocide propells us into the future. And it is exactly where Germany finds itself, too: desperate to shape a future from lessons drawn from its catastrophic past, yet driven ever further into the abyss by its obsessive pursuit of redemption.
Benjamin’s angel cannot fight the storm. And neither, it appears, can Germany.
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