(JNS) Germany has spent generations teaching the world how to remember Jewish death. It is now confronting the more difficult and urgent task of defending Jewish life.
Eighty-one years after the collapse of the Third Reich, the nation that once sought to erase the Jewish people from history finds itself wrestling with a dilemma history never truly resolved: What does “Never Again” require when antisemitic hatred returns clothed in new language, symbols and political fashions?
German legislative body, the Bundesrat, has advanced legislation that would make certain public denials of Israel’s right to exist or calls for the destruction of the Jewish state punishable by law. This would be the case only when such speech can incite antisemitic violence.
The proposal still faces legislative hurdles, and reasonable people may disagree about where the boundaries of protected expression should be drawn. Yet the significance of this moment extends far beyond parliamentary procedure. Germany appears to be acknowledging a truth much of the democratic world has spent years evading: the campaign against the legitimacy of the world’s only Jewish state is...
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