On Germany and collective responsibility

[Yaakov Mendel]

I’ve been thinking about last week’s heated debate over collective responsibility focusing on Germany. To me, it essentially revolves around the following question : should today’s members of a specific community be punished for crimes committed by their ancestors ?

It seems fair to me to say that descendants who could not do anything to stop what happened (simply because they were not born or because they were too young) should not be held accountable for crimes committed by their ancestors as long as :
1) They publicly condemn what their ancestors did and they make every effort to adequately punish those individuals who are known to have been guilty
2) They do not benefit from what their ancestors did
3) They do their best to repair as much as they can the damage caused by their ancestors

Based on these principles, what I find true is that there has been inadequate punishment of those responsible for the Nazi atrocities. It is well-known that a large number of perpetrators have escaped justice and lived happy lives after the war, which is of course disgraceful.
It can also be argued that the German people as a whole paid too moderate a price, considering that it is now well-established that the majority of them knew what was going on. However, that does not mean that the adequate price should be paid by today’s young Germans because they are not the ones who did not do enough to stop the Nazis.   
I also believe that one can easily make the case that, since 1948, Germany has not done enough to support Israel, considering the gravity of what it did to the Jewish people. But that certainly does not justify any potential military attack of Germany by Israel, let alone any attempt to “destroy Germany”.
However, although I would not act this way for a variety of reasons, I can understand the attitude of people like Meir Kahane or Chaim Ben Pesach who pledge they would never put a foot in Germany nor allow any German official in Israel’s institutions.

Finally, are descendants of the executioners entitled to turn against the descendants of the victims ? In theory yes, if the descendants of the victims begin to do evil deeds. Of course, that principle does not entail condoning condemnations made by today’s Germans of the state of Israel because the state of Israel, precisely, has strong legitimacy, whether you have a religious or a non-religious point of view. And a case is easily made that it is even more shocking when we see Germans supporting Arabs against Israel than when it is other nations that support Arabs.

[Raulmarrio2000]

We cannot punish or condemn individuals or nations for what some of their ancestors did. But I think all Mankind have a collective responsibility for the Shoah, not just Germany. 2200 years of anti-Semitism (since Greeks of Antiochus). And even today, besides the well known fact that most of the World is biassed against the State of Israel, also most people have anti-Semitic trends and hate directly to the Jewish nation. In fact, the anti-Semitimism rate is now higher in most countries thgan in Germany. Even amny of those who support Israel, do so due to the force of the evidence that Israel is right, but in spite of the fact Israelis are Jewish.

[Rubystars]

Most individual people from there I've talked to hate Nazis as much as I do. It's true that promoting a "Palescumian state" is like asking for a second holocaust, but I don't think most people understand that  in any country. It's more confusing for the average person when the leaders of Israel itself are pursuing that goal.