One thing you learn from frequenting the public square, if you didn't already know it, is that in political argument there is no combination of ideas, however outlandish, that you won't come across somewhere in due course. Here's one combination, from Gary Younge. Commenting on the case of Ashkan Dejagah, an Iranian-German footballer who declined to go to Israel with the German under-21 squad, Younge suggests that it was out of order for Germans to be criticizing him for this, and making accusations of anti-Semitism:
There are at least six million reasons why Dejagah would be better off not identifying with German history and culture when it comes to contemplating a visit to Israel.One reason is:
[Ashkan Dejagah] will find a far less murderous recent history of antisemitism in his Iranian heritage than he will in his German.I don't know anything about Ashkan Dejagah or what his attitude to Jews is. But you will see what's happening here: the annihilation of some six million Jews in Europe has become a reason why Germans of today may not cite the experience of their own country as a warning against anti-Semitism.
True enough, there are some words which in the mouths of some people carry no moral weight. But Younge is not lecturing members of the Nazi Party or the SS in 1946; he is putting in question whether Germans of the present generation have any place warning about anti-Semitism. It might be thought that Germans particularly - the sons and daughters and grandchildren of those who colluded in, or looked away from, what was being done by some of their compatriots to the Jews of Europe - have good reason to speak about the dangers of anti-Semitism. But Younge parses things differently. This he does apparently without noticing that he has reported, in the same piece, that Dejagah's refusal to play in Israel 'sparked accusations of antisemitism from German Jewish groups.' They, presumably, have some right to speak of the experience of the Jews of Germany. However, even if they do, it doesn't restrain Younge from wanting to block any use of the same historical reference by non-Jewish Germans. As if we must attend not to the merits of an argument but to its communal pedigree.