Is it that academics are more morally bankrupt than the population at large, or is it that they just get more Press?
25 German professors co-signed a manifesto published in the Frankfurter Rundschau calling on Germany to stop giving Israel “preferential treatment,” because, among other reasons, the country “helped” establish Israel by expelling Jews from Germany during the rule of the Third Reich. Approximately 160,000 Jews who were expelled from Nazi Germany ended up in the British mandate of Palestine and strengthened the Jewish presence here at the expense of the Arab population, they claimed.
Visiting in Israel as guests of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and the Academic College of Netanya, four professors and co-signatories on the manifesto were debating their claims with Israeli academics who opposed them.
They claimed that approximately 160,000 Jews who arrived in mandatory Palestine enlarged Jewish control of the land from just six percent during the British mandate to approximately 60% after the War of Independence. Additionally, the Germans said their country has “paid off” its debt to the Jewish people by the sums it had given the Israeli government and survivors until today.
They admitted that the Holocaust was, nevertheless, an indelible stain in Germany’s history. (no kidding, ed.)
The professors called on the German government to improve its relations with Arab countries by adopting an “evenhanded” approach to both Israelis and Arabs.
