Muriel Asseburg advises German politicians on Middle Eastern issues. However, her recommendations are biased against Israel, as a look at one of her texts reveals.
The interview with Muriel Asseburg, published on June 27th by the program "Jung und Naiv" (Young and Naive), caused a stir. Among other things, the employee of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), presented as a "Middle East expert," compared Israel's behavior towards the Palestinians to Russia's attack on Ukraine and referred to Israel as an "apartheid state." This prompted an outraged reaction from the Israeli embassy and a verbal attack from an activist in Tel Aviv.
The German ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, felt compelled to issue a reprimand. On Twitter he wrotethat Asseburg was a "reputable scientist".
In any case, she is a scholar with an agenda. A text from 2018 exemplifies her thinking regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The text, "Palestine's Blocked Path to Statehood," follows the motto: Israel alone is to blame for the Palestinians' situation; they, on the other hand, have always wanted nothing but peace. Asseburg employs the method of deliberate omission.
Specific national character
In the opening sentence, she states – not without a touch of smugness – that the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (1969–1974) was able to “deny the existence of a Palestinian people largely unchallenged” in the late 1960s.
She neglects to mention that there was a valid reason for this: the "Palestinian people" was, as is well known, only enshrined—indeed invented—in the second PLO Charter But by omitting this point, Asseburg can portray Meir as ignorant, someone who was only able to express her opinion unhindered because people back then were not as enlightened as they are today.
Asseburg continues her opening sentence by noting that the United Nations has recognized the "nation-like status" of the Palestinians. She provides footnotes referencing the relevant UN documents.
One crucial detail is missing, however: In the aforementioned PLO Charter, the Palestinians provide more detailed information about their "nation-like character." Article 12 states that Palestinian identity is transitional. It will remain intact until Israel is destroyed. The struggle against Israel concerns the entire "Arab nation," but "Palestinians" play a "pioneering role" in it.
Five years of the "Intifada" ignored
The omission of the PLO Charter is not the only omission in Asseburg's text. The author also fails to mention, for example, that the Arabs rejected the UN Partition Plan in 1947, and that the Arab League refused to recognize Israel or negotiate with the Jewish state in 1967.
Instead, the “consolidation of the Israeli occupation” was the reason why the Palestinians placed less and less hope in negotiations during the 1990s, despite the Oslo Accords. “As a result,” the Palestinians tried “more vigorously to pursue their goals of state independence and an end to the occupation through international recognition, internationalization of conflict resolution, and international legal recourse.”.
Asseburg's omission of the five years of the "Second Intifada" (2000–2005), which resulted in approximately 1,000 Israeli deaths, is downright brazen. At that time, the Palestinians had hoped to achieve their goals through terrorism, not through "international recognition.".
Asseburg also omits the fact that terrorism is the cause of the barrier ("wall") and the control of the Gaza Strip. Instead, she laments the "collective punishment" of the Palestinians, for example, in terms of their freedom of movement. This is practically a standard accusation against Israel; Amnesty International also raises it. A constructive alternative proposal for how Israel should protect its population is missing. Or should Israel not protect its population at all?
For Asseburg, this doesn't seem to be so important. With regard to the Gaza Strip, she proposes a "paradigm shift": "This is primarily about no longer subordinating the rights of the local population to the security interests of the occupying power." In other words: Palestinians must have their rights enforced; whether Jews survive is secondary.
Rejection of negotiations
The advice and demands that Asseburg ultimately puts forward are detrimental to Israel. For example, he suggests that Germany should ban the import of settlement products. However, such a step would also have a negative impact on Palestinians working in settlements.
Moreover, Germany should no longer insist that the conflicting parties reach a "two-state solution" through negotiations. Asseburg argues that this would "grant the occupying power a veto right over the exercise of the Palestinian right to self-determination." Given that Israel has faced rocket attacks for withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, this is cynical advice.
As is so often the case with such positions, demands on the Palestinians are lacking. One could consider a public and binding rejection by the Palestinians of the PLO Charter as well as the Hamas Charter, which also aims at the destruction of Israel.
At the end of the day, the text also has its merits: It shows that the demands it contains can only seem sensible to people who ignore essential aspects of the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict and Palestinian terrorism.
Asseburg wouldn't have to live with the consequences of this flawed thinking, but the Israelis would. We should be grateful that the Israeli security barrier isn't as riddled with holes as the kind of thinking displayed here. (Daniel Frick/Israelnetz)
