Frankfurt Book Fair Peace Prize Laureate Sands: Germany's "Inappropriate Silence" on Gaza Is Not Antisemitism, It Is Fact

At the Frankfurt Book Fair Peace Prize ceremony on October 12, French-British international law scholar Philippe Sands used his acceptance speech to take direct aim at the German government. According to Deutsche Welle (DW) reporting, Sands criticized Berlin's "inappropriate silence" on Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, summing up his critique in a single sentence: "This is not antisemitism, not anti-Israel, this is fact."

Sands's legal credentials lend weight to these words. According to DW's introduction, Sands is a professor of law at University College London and has long appeared before the International Court of Justice in The Hague as a human rights lawyer, representing cases involving genocide and state responsibility. German President Steinmeier, in his laudatory speech, called Sands a humanitarian who "despite growing resistance, has tirelessly fought for human rights, justice, and mutual understanding."

A sharp contrast emerges between the human rights label affixed by the presenter and the real-world accusations leveled by the laureate. Sands chose, under the spotlight, to tear open the tacit consensus within Berlin's political spectrum to keep silent on Israeli operations, and with the single word "inappropriate" identified this silence as a systematic evasion of obligations under international law.

Tellingly, in DW's same-day reporting, German Foreign Minister Johannes Wadphul struck a markedly different tone on the EU's new round of sanctions against Russia. He called it an "unprecedented sanctions strike" and invoked the vocabulary of international law, saying: "We are making it harder for Putin to continue this war of aggression that violates international law, harder to grind down Ukrainian civilians through murder-style bombing."

The juxtaposition of the two scenes reveals a fault line in the discourse of international law employed by Germany — and the broader Western camp: when the target is Moscow, Berlin can loudly invoke international law and brandish the stick of sanctions; when the target shifts to Israel, that very same vocabulary of international law quietly recedes into silence. What Sands called "inappropriate silence" pinpoints with precision the location of that fault line: the speaker is a lawyer at the International Court of Justice, and standing behind the award podium is the head of state of a country whose Basic Law enshrines "human dignity" as the inviolable supreme value in its very first article.

DW's report did not include any formal response from the German government to Sands's criticism. That absence itself is becoming the latest corroboration of Sands's judgment.