Israel’s top military lawyer has dropped all criminal charges against five Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reservists who brutally assaulted—including raping—a Palestinian detainee held at the notorious Sde Teiman military detention centre during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
The only person now facing charges and even a jail sentence relating to the events is Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi—the IDF’s previous Military Advocate General who exposed the crime in the first place and initiated the original investigation and indictments. It was Tomer-Yerushalmi who released in August 2024 the infamous video showing the soldiers surrounding and raping a blindfolded Palestinian detainee against a wall for around 15 minutes.
Investigators are examining allegations against Tomer-Yerushalmi linked to the leak and related actions, such as obstruction or false statements, abuse of office, and disclosure of official information by a public servant. If convicted she could face up to three years in prison.
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And Germany was never properly de-nazi-fied. Many ended up in positions of government post-war, many more of course spread out to other countries.
I appreciate the compassion you’re showing but I think failure to properly deal with Nazis is huge for our history, it’s working against the case you’re making.
Given that nowadays Germany is one of the most Nazi-averse countries on earth, I think the system worked fine.
You can’t put 40 or 60 million people in jail, or execute them. You can execute the top leadership, throw active party members in jail and change the education system, legal frameworks and media structure to make sure that future generations learn from what happened… even if uncle Hans still thinks Hitler did nothing wrong.
“Nazi-averse” needs some pretty strong qualifiers friend. I guess if you mean strong rules about using the literal gestures, iconography, etc., no disagreement there. If you mean “really definitely NOT doing and saying the kinds of things Nazis liked to say and do”, well, we’ll find disagreement pretty quickly.
I was never suggesting putting 40-60 million people in jail OR executing them, again no disagreement there [identifying a quick edit I made here, apologies, I did initially read that piece carelessly and responded to something you clearly didn’t intend (about what I intended…), which is on me].
Moving on from that you essentially said “so otherwise what was already done is as good as it gets”, is how I read that, but I guess tell me if I’m the one being uncharitable here.
I think we could’ve done a LOT better and I think we’d better start, and well beyond there of course. No, I don’t quite know how either. Yes I do think sooner is better than later.
I wonder why you disagree.
Alright, so you can take your pick from a handful of things I’m aware of. I’m no expert on Germany or post WW2 history, but one doesn’t really need to be.
Regarding literal de-nazification - Wikipedia talks about a ~800k people amnesty program including people who participated in atrocities, and stats about resulting (“former”) Nazi participation in government. Gives stats and notable individuals. A credible read would assume “probably more and worse we don’t know about or who otherwise escaped scrutiny or punishment”. But even if you accept non-punishment, as you earlier may have suggested support for? Surely it’s foolish, bad policy, dangerous, and cruel to living victims to allow these people to operate in the government moving forward. Shouldn’t be too controversial.
Moving on there’s plenty of info about AfD’s modern sympathies for and associations with neo Nazi movements and ideas. Not gonna bother being a search engine for ya on that one, pick your flavor of source and take a look. And again, I’d say “these cowards have always hidden, so always assume there’s more than we see”.
Finally, I don’t know how anyone can call ongoing military support via weapons systems and funding to Israel anything other than fucking hyper Nazi shit. Some Nazis would probably find what’s being done to Palestine too rough.
Far as I’m concerned Germany’s de-nazification was primarily symbolic - meaning many Nazis continued to rule (77% of gov in 1957), there is a strong thread of that behavior and ideology in German action and political life, while the things we can point to, done in earnest or at least to some degree of competence, are really just suppressing literal symbols, and open voicing of support. Symbolic lip service.
I never said there are no nazis in Germany, let’s look at it in the context of time and place.
While the AfD is obviously a Nazi-flavored party…
their support among the general population is one of the lowest for a far-right party in Europe. In Austria the far right has been in the mayority for a decade. In Italy they are in government right now. In Finland the true Finns have had time to come into government, disillusion people, and crash out. In the Netherlands same. Sweden similar. In France the Le Pen family have been flirting with power for as long as I can remember. In the UK reform has a giant lead in polling. And Germany, being the biggest country and top economy of Europe, has probably more Russian money invested in destroying the country than the others, and still AfD can barely get over 30% on national level.
their support among other politicians is very low. There is a “firewall” to prevent them from governing and even the conservatives would rather enter coalition with the socialists rather than the AfD. Italy, Netherlands, Austria, Spain, etc have shown that politicians in other countries are far more willing to tolerate them to get into power themselves.
Regarding the post war scenario, just because someone worked in the tax office for the nazis, or directed the park department, or build water infrastructure, doesn’t mean they are a fervent supporter of the party, maybe they are just good at taxes, parks or water. A country needs beaurocrats, if you get rid of all of them for ideological reasons things go bad, see the soviets in the 1930s or the US today…
And the support for Israel is partially because doing anything against anything Jewish is felt as inherently wrong, as if the country “owes them”. Which might be true, but the country seems to have learned “opposing anything Jewish is bad” rather than “genocide is bad”. Which in the 19 hundreds might have been a trivial difference, nowadays not so tiny.
I don’t find this compelling.
Go read just the Wikipedia article on denazification, we’re not talking about JUST paper-pushing bureaucrats at all. And I indicated such, you are choosing to focus on people you imagine had almost nothing to do with atrocities. But that isn’t accurate, not even close. 77% of the govt in 1957 were former Nazi party members. If you can excuse that away, there is nothing for us to talk about.
The AfD claims are totally unimpressive to me as well. I’m not going to split hairs with you about “well they really aren’t all that influential…” - not compelling.
Germany did not properly denazify and you haven’t swayed my opinion on that whatsoever with this comment.
You’ll also notice I didn’t mention initial support for Israel, but modern support. It’s been decades of hell from them, continuing support is its own gross flavor of Nazi shit.
I don’t think we’re going to see eye to eye here. If it’s any consolation, in the US we utterly failed to deal with our vicious bigots, too, post Civil War in our case. And we have repeatedly paid the price, today directly follows from our failure.
I don’t need to read the Wikipedia page, I learned this at school, and I live it everyday. I used to go by the statue of Sophie Scholl on my way to work. My favorite sushi place is right next to the square of “victims of national socialism”. It’s not supposed to be compelling, it’s supposed to be effective and Germany, the country ruled by nazis, is the least Nazi country in the neighborhood, so if it was 77% or 78% 70 years ago is not the point, the point is where we are in 2026.
AfD is not splitting hairs, are they in power or not. Are they trying to invade Poland or not. Are women allowed to voted or not. Are we selling weapons to Ukraine or Russia. If “who has the power” is splitting hairs just because it doesn’t fit your narrative, our values are really not aligned.
Compare that to the US where people elected the “tiki torch jews won’t replace us muslim ban” Nazi, he destroyed the economy, killed grandma, sold state secrets, tried a coup and 4 years later they elected him again. That is a failed denazification program. Germany is doing all right, 80+ years later.
Why are we comparing it to the US? My original point was that Germany did not effectively denazify. You disagree, and clearly have greater lived experience with the place, I’m not disputing that. I still feel it was not done properly.
I have endless heaps of criticism, historical up through today, for so much of what my own country (US) has done. I could easily fill pages talking about our crimes (and perfectly legal abuses), plenty of which you’ve probably never even heard of. There’s zero value in addressing that here, to me, entire Lemmy servers handle that very well by my measure.
I’m asking you to evaluate your own country more critically. But merely in defense of my own statement that Germany did not sufficiently denazify, and nothing you’ve said changes my opinion on that thus far. I don’t think we have much else to discuss, but you might disagree.
Edit: in case it needs to be said, US inspired Nazis in the first place, and then welcomed the ones they found useful after the war, I would argue we barely denazified at all. And as you said, look at today. You’re making it “but the US”, my point was always and only about Germany.
Edit numero dos: maybe this is my clearest point, 77% in 1957, disgustingly Nazi shit today via ongoing material support of ongoing genocide, genocide, evil among evil. You claim denazification, and of course, none of those 77% (and moving forward) would be using such symbols. But are they doing the same kinds of things? Are you aware of what Volkswagen was doing in South America up until the modern era? Seems a loooot like Nazi shit.
If post-war German government is the Ship of Theseus - where’s the point where there’s roughly no more Nazi shit? It never occurred, too few boards were replaced, it’s still too much like the original ship.
Just acknowledging I’ve seen your message and will send over a proper reply when I’m more available.