this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2026
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Germany's Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, backed a bill to criminalize the denial of Israel's right to exist on Friday, a motion that constitutional experts said could jeopardize freedom of expression.

According to the bill, anyone denying Israel's right to exist or calling for its abolition would be punished with a prison sentence of up to five years under the regulation. The bill will be examined by the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, after its summer recess.

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[–] crystalmerchant@lemmy.world 7 points 12 hours ago

Lmao there is a huge difference between "existing" and "actively deliberately genociding a people and culture they believe are inferior"

[–] b161@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Israel has no right to exist. Germany also has no right to exist. No state has an inherent right to exist.

[–] luciferofastora@feddit.org 1 points 2 hours ago

Any right is ultimately a product of consensus. Challenging a right is an expression of dissent, which is itself a human right.

It makes sense for a tolerant society seeking to protect itself to enshrine the rights of humans to exist, so as to avoid the paradox of tolerance. This is the compromise of free speech that must be made to defend it: to treat this consensus as a contract, whereby anyone who rejects it also loses the rights it confers. Likewise, anyone who denies other humans the right to exist must forfeit their own.

What's more, states are not people, but organisations. Their right to exist is the product of a consensus that this organisation has a sovereign monopoly on the use of force within its territory. But that right is strictly subordinate to the human right to exist and express opinions. It must be open to dissent.

And a state that denies people their right to live (Israel) or to express their dissent (Germany) is in breach of that contract.

Fuck our government. Fuck Merz, fuck the representatives and fuck the voters that enabled this travesty against human rights in general and our constitution in particular.

[–] SirMaple__@lemmy.ca 17 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Directed at the German parliament

[–] BottleBoardBakon@lemmy.ml 16 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

That's some Zionist bullshit. I guarantee that and criticism of Israel would end up being lumped in.

[–] Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca 7 points 16 hours ago

Already is in Germany. It's even illegal to protest in Germany in a different language, and that rule was specifically made to target the anti-genocide protests using Palestinian freedom slogans that have been around for decades

[–] ElectricAirship@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

And what about Palestine's right to exist? Lebanon? Syria?

[–] wheezy@lemmy.ml 38 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Can we first know what "right to exist" means for the context of a nation state? Surely, Nazi Germany didn't have a "right to exist". So, surely it's not a universal right like a person's right to exist? This means there are things a state can do that revoke it's "right to exist"? So, what does it actually mean?

  • All states (even Nazi Germany) have a "right to exist" and it cannot be revoked.

  • No states have a "right to exist".

  • All states have a right to exist until some defined violation that revokes that right.

  • It's a meaningless phrase that is only used in the context of defending a genocidal apartheid state.

I'm leaning towards thinking they are using the last definition.

[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 18 points 19 hours ago

Anarchism made a thought crime in Germany.

[–] EvergreenGuru@lemmy.world 53 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

The Germans really love genocide.

[–] luciferofastora@feddit.org 1 points 1 hour ago

Our government sure does. Their enablers probably don't actively love it, they just can't be arsed to actually think about the implications of just voting CxU. The reasons range from "I've always voted for them" (that just makes it worse) and "they're Christians" (the fuck they are) over various forms of "I like the status quo" (which they're making worse for everyone not already rich) to "the evil bad green / left parties are gonna take away my house, my car, make me eat tofu and whatever other propaganda bullshit my favourite sensationalist rag has told me that I believe uncritically".

They don't love genocide, they just love not having to care about politics and the cunts they elect abuse that merrily. Of course, there are also genuine genocide fans, but for the most part, it's more a habitual complacency with a chunk of domestic fearmongering.

As a democratic body, we've been slacking off for decades. Now the bill is coming due and the youth get to foot it. We get thrown in with the misguided, the lazy and the assholes. And the worst part is how many of us fall into the "domestic misery -> xenophobia" trap and prove you right.

I can't even argue with your conclusion. The difference between actively supporting and passively permitting is academic when the results are these pieces of shit in our government.

[–] raicon@lemmy.world 41 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

This whole shit about "Right to exist" is extremely absurd.

Never before, anywhere else on the planet, no other country was ever questioned to have the right to exist.

Fuck these genocidal colonialists, trying to smooth ambiguous sentences with acceptance for their genocide.

[–] arctanthrope@lemmy.world 14 points 22 hours ago

exactly. does Genovia have a right to exist? that's the fictional European kingdom from The Princess Diaries. it's doesn't exist. but does it have a right to?

[–] RockBottom@feddit.org 11 points 18 hours ago

Some countries hove more rights that some people.

[–] treehugger6@lemmy.world 29 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

I do not recognize terrorist states. Free Palestine. And fuck you Germany. You never changed.

[–] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 28 points 23 hours ago

What about Palestine's right to exist? They going to pass a similar law about that?....no?... Didn't think so.

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 22 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

People OK, government bad.

Israel should exist as a pluralistic society.

Apartheid Israel needs to undergo some very painful changes, starting with ending their genocide against Palestinians.

[–] Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 15 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Israel is a settler colonial project, it fundamentally cannot exist as a pluralistic society.

Palestine used to be a pluralistic society.

[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Settler colonial projects absolutely can become pluralistic societies.

[–] Hell_nah_brother@thelemmy.club -4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Israel should exist as a pluralistic society.

Pissrael is colonial apartheid white supremacist project. It needs to be completely dismantled and destroyed.

Many many people should be tortured and executed, all the rest can be imprisoned and forced to reconstruct every building destroyed. The sentence ends when Palestine is fully rebuilt.

Palestine should be the only state and we should mind our own business on how they should govern their land.

[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 6 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

I don't know what "Israel's right to exist" means. Like, I believe that Israel should exist as a secular, democratic country with fully equal rights for all people regardless of their ethnicity or religion, with the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return, with reparations for the victims of genocide and apartheid, with full accountability for the perpetrators of crimes against humanity, and with a national project overseen by the international community that will effect the deep institutional and educational deradicalization of the population, including a complete political and institutional repudiation of all kind of jewish-supremacist forms of zionism, as well as a German-style Erinnerungskultur, and by having as its Staatsräson a commitment to the defence and security of Palestine. Is it jail for me in the Bundesrepublik or not?

[–] Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca 4 points 16 hours ago

Yes, jail for you. German law is about Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state (and everything that comes with that which they don't speak about and ignore).

[–] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 8 points 21 hours ago

And may the Israeli themselves receive the same right to exist as they give the Palestinians.

[–] UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 6 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

That has been illegal already afaik, so what changed?

[–] treehugger6@lemmy.world 10 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

It was illegal to deny holocaust. Fuck Israhell

[–] UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

No, antisemitism (or really any kind of discriminatory sentiment) is / has been punishable by law already. Among other things, there is precedence that denying Israels right to exist can count as such. While German law is not based on precedence, it shows that it was de facto illegal to do so.

What is legal is to criticise Israel and call out their crimes against humanity, but the political bubble has somehow been convinced it's not that bad and they are the good ones.

[–] Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca 1 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

I don't see Germany making laws about other state's rights to exist. And also, states don't have rights to exist.

Don't be a dumb dumb protecting stupid laws.

[–] UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Don't be a dumb dumb and read stating a plain fact about law as defense of a new law that seems to be mostly symbolic. Or an expression of my take on states for that matter, because neither has happened here.

[–] Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca 1 points 13 hours ago

Then I apologize on both counts. I understood your matter of fact tone as normalizing the overzealous and biased enforcement of anti-hate laws.

[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I don’t read this as defending it, just explaining the German government’s view of antisemitism.

I’ll go further and note that this broad definition adopted by the government led to multiple instances of Jews being arrested for antisemitism for peacefully protesting the apartheid. I’m not defending the law at all, just lamenting that it’s sadly not new, as far as I can tell.

So I guess I also want to know if anything changed or if they just wanted to pat themselves on the back for formally codifying it.

[–] Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca 1 points 13 hours ago

That was my bad if they weren't defending the law (see my comment to their response).

And yes, I'm aware of the irony that German Jewish people were arrested for their stance against the Palestinian genocide.

[–] Ilixtze@lemmy.ml 4 points 22 hours ago

Fuck ze germans and fuck Israel