Talking Regions and Relations: Dialogues on Palestine/Israel with/in AsiaStephan Milich, Max Arne Kramer, Timo Duile, Claudia Derichs und and Mirjam Lücking

ASIEN – Nr. 174/175 (2025) pp. 108–25

Abstract:
The war in Gaza and the preceding Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, have been discussed in different contexts in Europe and Asia. The situation in the Middle East is accompanied by strong emotional reactions across the globe. While the discussions in Europe—and especially Germany—often stress the 7th October attack as the main cause of the current war and emphasize the Holocaust and antisemitism
as reasons for Israel’s right to exist and legitimizing Israel’s warfare in the Middle East as self-defence, many debates in Asian countries rely on a different historical perspective and perceive the conflict as an issue of settler colonialism and occupation. The contrasting comprehensions of the conflict in Asia and Europe are often portrayed as mutually exclusive; legacies such as the Holocaust in Germany, for instance, are positioned against the experience of apartheid, which informed South Africa’s interference at the United Nations. At the DGA Conference in Bonn in September 2025, several scholars from Germany discussed how we approach this issue with our colleagues and friends in Asia. Alongside abstract questions of the discursive pitfalls and indignation regimes we are embedded in, we also discussed which concrete actions and measures we should apply when it comes to severe human rights violations. In this “Essay & Perspectives” contribution, the panellists were invited to elaborate on some of their main arguments and to reflect on the panel discussion.