Even implying in the slightest that they can be is automatically interpreted as if I said that they are actually all bad guys by you.

You like stereotyping as well, it seems. Anyway, it is great to hear your oppinions, I evidently have viewed things not in context enough.

All this underlines the fact of what pitfalls there are of being (or trying to be) patriotic in Germany. I just fell into one and came out looking like a naive bigoted neonazi. Quite an illustration, never viewed myself like that.

That's how it usually works, yes.

If you defend Israel, people will use the "Israel is not an angel" argument. And in case you admit that (since it has nothing to do with the discussion in question), they will use this opportunity to point out that "both sides are to blame", and suddenly we have achieved moral equivalence.

I don't think you were going that way, but I have learned my lesson a long time ago.

I do like stereotyping. But there is a time and place for everything.

Consider this:

1. The financial crisis was at least partially caused by home owners not paying back their mortgages.

2. The financial crisis was at least partially caused by black home owners not paying back their mortgages.

Both statements are arguably true, but mentioning the race of those specific home owners (and most of them were black, I have heard) is totally uncalled for and irrelevant to the point.

The relevant part of the sentence is that they were home owners, not that they were black.

Similarly, if Michel Friedman is an arrogant bastard, the fact he is Jewish should be irrelevant. You are not trying to make the case that he is Jewish or that there is a connection between being a Jew and being an arrogant bastard (and neither are all blacks home owners). You are trying to make the case that he is an arrogant bastard. Inserting the word "Jewish" is uncalled for and irrelevant.

But it's automatic. People in Germany, and I am generalising here, still think that there is something special (in a negative sense) about a Jew. Hence the sudden relevance of a Jews' nationality in the context of arrogant bastardry and the extreme focus on Israel while claiming that saying anything bad about Israel is somehow difficult or frowned upon by the worldatlarge. (How would you know? Do you or the people who make the claim ever talk as much about Sudan as about Israel? What's the point of reference here?)

I wouldn't go that far.

I don't think you are a Neo-Nazi. And I don't think you wanted to be bigoted. But I do think that you made a connection between nationality and negative attributes. You didn't think that the negative attributes were due to the nationality (as in "all Jews are liars") but you somehow figured that there must be a connection via the "cannot criticise him because he's Jewish" angle.

I was still living in Germany when the Friedman scandal came out. I overheard a conversation in a news agents': "They should deport him to Israel". Why do you think would a German say something like that about another German?

1. He feared that he couldn't criticise Friedman because he is a Jew. (This seems unlikely to me because he did criticise Friedman.)

2. He saw some sort of connection between Friedman's behaviour and his nationality. (Which is why he figured sending him to the Jewish country would be a proper solution for the problem.) At the same time he felt no fear of speaking up against the Jew Friedman. (Although I am sure if I would have said something, I would have heard this great story about how nobody can criticise a Jew in Germany.)

Note that deporting a Jew to Israel is not the same as deporting a Turk to Turkey. Friedman was born a German citizen (in Paris) the son of Jews saved by Oskar Schindler. He was never an Israeli citizen and for all I know never spent much time there (although I understand his brother lives in Tel Aviv). So this was not about deporting a criminal foreigner. It was solely about Friedman being a Jew.

If you want be a German patriot, buy Israeli products.

A large minority of Israelis are German Jews who would live in Germany now if it hadn't been for the Holocaust. Support them, and you support the Germany that you would have seen if it hadn't been for the Nazis.

Israelis certainly buy lots of German products.

And if you want to see German patriotism, read German-Israeli authors. Ephraim Kishon in particular (he was from Hungary) often defended Germany's positions going as far even as speaking up against Poland's claim to the former eastern part of Germany. He was also fond of Franz-Joseph Strauss.

Maybe you are just looking for German patriotism in the wrong place?

http://www.israeli-art.com/satire/patriot.htm

hmph, half the citrus fruit and melons found in the Supermarket are importet from Israel. But I doubt that you meant those lol. I love Kishon, I posted a story I find hilarious because this debate made me think of him, Jewish Poker. But all of his stories are awesome.

You know Germany, and you know that anything to do with Immigration, "Kinder mit Migrationshintergrund", unemployment, german culture etc. risks the danger of getting a nationalistic spin, all it takes is someone bringing up the Nazis and making some sort of comparison, doesn't matter how unfounded or true, and the shit hits the fan, even if you didn't even intent anything like that at all. It is next to impossible to have a public debate about a controversial issue without it turning in a mudslinging contest.

And then there are people like Martin Hohmann - i thought of using him as an example first but what he said is so totally out of line and it is not worth publicising his statements and thus giving him credibility .. I assume you'd have alot to say about him too. And Id probably agree with everything.

I was joking. It's impossible not to buy Israeli products. Israel makes Microsoft's security software (like the Windows Firewall), Intel's Core and Core 2 CPUs, many hardware firewalls and so on.

Kishon is awesome.

I agree. And in this case nationality is relevant. They are immigrants and it is valuable to know which immigrants are more likely to integrate well. It's not like most immigrants are so progressive. Most anti-Semitism in Germany, I would think, is really imported these days. (In Sweden it seems to be home-made.)

Martin Hohmann was so far out of line that even the Hessian Christian Democrats threw him out, and they have a very high tolerance level for bigots.

On the other hand Hohmann managed to offend pretty much everyone which makes his words far less dangerous. No Muslim extremist, for example, is going to act on Hohmann's words (since he also has something against Muslims). Moellemann was more dangerous.