Auf den kollektiven Arsch gefallen

■ Freitagabend, 7. 10., SFB

My free hours in Rome are spent chatting-up1 the pretty German high school boys in tight jeans and geil t-shirts who come with the class to visit the Coliseum and stare at the Pope, but usually I get no further than a deeply moving conversation with the whole dammned class about its eternal Topic No.1: Why We Abhor2 The Fact That We Are Germans. I have listened to dozens of these discussions and have noted that the contents vary only by the degree of vehemence with which High Schoolers from Wuppertal to West Berlin express their utter disgust at the refusal of Links and Liberalen alike to confront creeping fascist tendencies at home and the massacre of the Palestine people abroad. „No one seems to realize that the guilt we feel is for what Germans are doing now, not for what our grandparents did back then“, one girl from Bremen explained. „Official anti -Jewish racism has been replaced by official anti-Turkish racism“, so a gorgeous youth from Frankfurt declared. „We are all sick to death of hearing that Germans who comdemn the murders of Palestinians must be secret anti-Semites“, someone shouted, and the rest of the class cheered.

It is no great wonder that huge numbers of this country's young people have turned into apolitical Yuppies and that smaller numbers have become Autonomes in a society whose left wing has so steadfastly3 refused to draw parallels between German repression today and German repression in the past; it should be no surprise that lots of German young people would prefer to save for a Porsche than to align4 themselves with a left wing that shies from calling official Israeli government policies by their murderous name.

To any young people who feel a slight twinge5 of guilt at the fact that they were dancing to Acid House music instead of watching the most recent episode of Freitag Abend I wish to say: you didn't miss a thing. The topic was the Israeli-Palestinian-German Dreieck, and the discussion was enough to put most anyone to sleep. Once again, as so frequently when the issue is Israel, Germans demonstrated their bizarre ability of leaning so far backwards to be fair, that they fell on their collective asses. It was a very nice group of men and women that we saw gathered around Lea Rosh for two and one-half long hours. It was with very nice tones that they discussed what Israelis, Palestinians and, yes Germans dared/could/should/must do about one of the cruder, one of the more horrific, one of the more disgusting repressive regimes ont the current world scene.

There was Beate Klarsfeld, valiant6 unmasker of Waldheim -who-knew, keeping not-so-valiantly silent about Shamir-who -did. There was Michael Wolffsohn, Israeli-born Bundesdeutsche historian, telling us how much nicer things have been in Germany since Stunde Null. There was Ben -Haim, European correspondent for Maariv, explaining to us nicely how the Holocaust's aftermath has „united Jews and Germans“. There was Abdallah Frangi, the PLO's man in Bonn, managing somehow not to show his outrage at the daily killings of his people by Israeli soldiers. And there also were Uri Avnery, an Israeli publicist; Dietrich Goldschmidt of Aktion Sühnezeichen; and Gideon Freudenthal, a brave Isreali who speaks up firmly against the Siedlers and the destruction they reek.

But where was Likud? Where the pro-Siedlers? Where were the representatives of the voting majority of Israelis who aparently approve the ongoing slaying of Palestinian human beings? They must have stayed at home, as did author Ephraim Kishon, who at least bothered to send a caustic videotape of himself. When Frau Rosh explained politely that the Israel ambassador refused to appear because the PLO's man was on the show, there was no outcry amongst the panel members. Oh sure: we understand. No hard feelings.

The next time I'm asked to review a television programme, I hope it will be MTV: the message in at least a few of the lyrics might be more enlightening than what I heard on Freitag Abend, and if the words are too dreary to absorb, at least I'll be able to dance to the music.

Ran Jak

1 anschwatzen, 2 verabscheuen, 3 unerschütterlich, 4 sich anschließen, 5 stechen, 6 tapfer