Did you ever want to show how brave you are because you wanted to say what everyone was thinking anyway? Then go ahead and just write an essay criticizing Israel! The following offers you a small helping hand to the truth, points out how such a text should look and indicates as well a few – shall we say, stumbling blocks, that you must absolutely avoid and watch out for so that your publication will actually be understood as critical of Israel and not as …well, you know of course.

1. The witness

You should cite Jews who are critical of Israel, for whoever citesa Jew – this is in the essence of the matter – cannot hate Jews. In so doing, serve yourself for simplicity’s sake from the familiar pool of „critical Jews,” those who are gladly cited again and again in other texts critical of Israel.

2. Concentration

Do not mention Hamas in your article – or if you do only as a side-issue. Doing so only diverts attention from your theme. Your text is only about Israel.

3. Clarity

Chose vivid comparison so that those who know even less than you do about the Middle East can form a picture of what’s going on there. Compare the Gaza strip to the Warsaw Ghetto and the state of Israel to the apartheid regime in South Africa. If you have literary ambitions, you can also try these paraphrases and slogans: Describe Gaza as „a prison” or „camp” (Lager) in which human beings are crammed together. Express your hopes for a „Nelson Mandela” for Israel. Great prose emerges when the reader fills empty spaces.

4. When in doubt, always be on the Left

Make it absolutely clear that you are a leftist or that at least you have a leftist past. For whoever is on the left is against the Nazis and thus cannot be against the Jews – unless (and attention, it gets a bit complicated) – the Jews behave the same way as the Nazis. In this case you can show just how horrible you think the Holocaust was by placing it on the same level the crimes of Israel.

5. Moral tradition

Unconditionally and devoutly stress that you, precisely because you are German and on the left have a duty to criticize Israel because you must not be silent in the face of new injustice.

6. Thoroughness

Make your criticisms of Israel as sweeping as possible because too many facts will confuse the reader. Especially in such highly complex material, it’s very important not to get lost in details. Take your distance from the concrete sources and facts. Here you are the Middle East expert! You are the expert!

7. Critical solidarity

Always write that you only want the best for Israel, that you, in contrast to the „supposed friend of Israel” (Jakob Augstein) are its true friend or that you, as Harold Martenstein put it in the Tagesspiegel even „pray” for Israel.

8. Hinting at premonition

When you want to write something for which you have no evidence but which you nevertheless believe is correct (such as the [essence of] the real interest of Israel, the [reality of the] Jewish drive toward world domination, and the Jewish control of the media and politics) formulate it as a question or premonition! With Jakob Augstein, for example, ask „Who is served by violence?” And answer your question yourself: „And this time – by the way – it serves the Republican Party in the United States or the Israeli government.” In this „by the way,” the reader can read everything that you mean (see here also point 3: leave black spaces).

9. Immunization

Claim that one is not permitted to criticize Israel without being called an anti-Semite. In so doing, you show your own courage and also make your text unassailable because every criticism confirms your thesis.

10. Self-control

Proofread your text from beginning to end. Check to make sure – even if this is difficult – that you have written „Israel” instead of „Jews“. You, with your anti-racist ass, will thereby not permit the dismantling of what you have so painstakingly constructed.

First published in the taz, Germany, 12/15/2012. Translation by Jeffrey Herf, December 19, 2012.