Robert Enke, One of the Last Defenders

Once in a while, I’m teasing a friend from Portugal. Portugal is the country where the evening news start with soccer results, and more soccer results, and lots of backgrounders, and comments from coaches and managers, and outfield players, and of course the last defenders. And may be after tons of information of that kind, the Portuguese will be informed about a big tax reform, rates of unemployment, or the death of their president (if their president passed away).

I won’t tease my Portuguese friend again. Maybe the Portuguese are a bit dumber than us, but we will soon catch up with them.

Robert Enke was a German football goalkeeper. He played at Barcelona, Benfica Lisbon, and Fenerbahce Istanbul, and until Tuesday, at Hannover 96. He was also one of the German national soccer team’s goalkeepers.

He was 32 years old when he died. He used a train and its drivers to get killed. In the media accounts, he “apparently threw himself in front of a train”. Or maybe he just stood there and waited for the train to hit him.

Bishop Margot Käßmann, recently elected to lead Germany’s Lutherans (“church must be where the citizens are. This is true for the sunday services, but also for radio and television”) led an initial memorial service in Hannover.

Enke and his wife had suffered a stroke from fate when they lost their daughter at an age of only two, and Enke had suffered from depressions for several years.

Now, everyone is very sad, which brings a line from the incomparable British Queen to my mind, after the death of Princess Diana, and H.M.’s immanent beheading for not showing her feelings (or so it appeared):

“Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew her, will remember her. I for one believe there are lessons to be drawn from her life and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death.”

Can there be a more subtle way to criticize a howling mob?

Robert Enke was probably an admirable man. Even more so, as he was ambitious, but not showy. He played a constructive role in public life, without the annoying attitude of a popstar. And he did his job as a last defender as long as he could. That he didn’t seek help when he needed it is a tragedy, but no exceptional tragedy.

Let’s hope that the train drivers – one colleague was making another familiar with the section around Hannover when their train struck Robert Enke – will be able continue their work, without a trauma. Very little is said about them.

And let’s hope that Mr Enke’s widow, Teresa Enke, will get what she asked the fans for: a funeral limited to family people and close friends. It’s a natural and legitimate request.

The fans should figure out someone who actually needs their sympathy. A soccer club is no family.

Russian Orthodox Church stops Cooperation with Germany’s Lutherans

Margot Kässmann (or Käßmann) is a Lutheran bishop here in Germany. Last month, she was elected to lead the Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, EKD).

Now the Russian Orthodox Church may decide to stop a dialogue which had started some fifty years ago.

To be fair, I wouldn’t want to work together with Margot Käßmann either. She’s a wannabe charismatic, and just annoying.

But that’s not why the Orthodox Church has a problem with her. They have their own share of wannabe charismatics and annoying people. Their problem is that Margot Käßmann isn’t a man. Worse, she is a woman, and the bible, besides telling you how to keep your slaves, also tells us, well, I dunno. And I don’t care.

I think that dialogue between different religions is a good thing. Stopping such a dialogue may be a good thing, too. After all, this one has been going on for fifty years, and I, a Lutheran in Germany, never noticed it.

I’m sure it can be nice to be Orthodox, too. I’m just wondering what’s so nice about it. But I’ll probably never know.

Palestinian Leaders: Live with us in ONE State (and be very afraid)

A government, or an elected authority, must act in the best interest of its people. It wouldn’t be easy to argue that Fatah always had the Palestinians’ best interests in mind in the past – or that the leaders will take their peoples’ interests into account in the future. But the Palestinian Authority might be in the process of finding a very effective position in the stalled peace process with Israel.

When Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office on March 31 this year, the Obama administration called on his government to halt all settlement building. But when confronted with Netanyahu’s blank refusal, Washington changed its stance and suggested that the most important thing was to get the negotiations going again. The BBC’s Jerusalem correspondent’s interpretation was that “on the issue of settlements, the Obama administration blinked first”.

Up to now, it seemed that lodging protests was the only option the Palestinian Authority had, apart from calling yet another Intifada, which would do nothing to make life in the West Bank any easier. Instead, PA president Mahmoud Abbas may simply not run for re-election in January.

To some extent, this may just be a face-saving operation, because it is hard to see how there could be valid elections in the West Bank and in Gaza anyway, if Hamas simply refuses to take part in them. And Abbas’ decision may not yet be final.

But there is a bigger picture behind Abbas’ reluctance to run again. In response to statements made by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday, in which she rejected the Palestinians’ demand for a full cessation of settlement construction as a precondition for the resumption of peace talks with Israel, both Abbas and PA chief negotiator Saeb Erekat suggested that Fatah could abandon the idea of a two-state solution, and a one-state solution could become an alternative. After all, with as many Israeli settlements as there were in the West Bank now, a Palestinian state wouldn’t be viable.

This could turn out to be the smartest approach Palestinian leaders have taken in six decades. Let’s live together in one state, Mr Netanyahu, and we’ll outnumber and outvote your people before you can spell roadmap.

Then again, Fatah isn’t exactly the African National Congress. The ANC, in principle anyway, respected the human rights of all South Africans, whites included, and people, no matter to which ethnic group in South Africa they belonged, were never as broadly and deliberately targeted and killed, as Jewish people were in sucicide attacks before the building of the “security fence”.

If Fatah manages to make a one-state-solution plausible to a global public, and to paint Israel’s government as some kind of Apartheid regime, things could become very uncomfortable for Mr Netanyahu and his government. But that would require that the Palestinians respect the human rights of Jewish people, just as they demand respect for their own human rights. Every suicide attack would mute the effects of Palestinian propaganda.

And so far, too many Palestinians still argue that injustices are done to them  Muslims, i.e. as members of the global Ummah, rather than stating the violation of Palestinian individuals’ rights: children, women, and men – no matter if they are Muslims, Christians, “Infidels”, or whatever.

The Muslim-solidarity appeals may earn them sympathies – and some support – from Morocco to Indonesia, but not in North or South America, in Europe, or in East Asia.

Anyhow, the Palestinian leadership would have reasons to drop the two-state solution. If  Washington can’t even persuade the Israeli government to freeze the settlements for the duration of peace talks, there is little chance that America can play the role of an honest broker in the actual negotiations. And in the absence of negotiations, the demographic factor might be working for the Palestinians.

That would be a lousy perspective for the individual Palestinians. But so would be “peace negotiations” without effective mediation.

Swine Flu: Lower Saxonians can put their Mind at Rest

Now I can put my mind at rest: my pater patriae (the father of our state of Lower Saxony), prime minister Christian Wulff, won’t die from swine flu, and his benedictory doings won’t be compromised by the bothersome infection, not even for one day. He got his shot on Thursday on 08:23 Central European Time, and according to the Hamburger Abendblatt, the vaccine is called Pandemrix. At first, he had a slight rise in temperature, but now, he could virtually feel the protection in his body, he informed us.

It would be nice if I, a humble servant of the State of Lower Saxony, could virtually feel that protection in my body too, because I had decided to get a shot, given my job as a teacher, meeting hundreds of people every day. But while Mr Wulff’s former minister for economic affairs, and now minister of health in the federal cabinet in Berlin, appeals for everyone going and have themselves vaccinated – the more people participated, the better the general protection from the disease, he is quoted -, many people in Lower Saxony will have to wait for weeks, and will be lingering on waiting lists until then.

I’m sure that Asma al Assad and her awkward and stiff, but also-very-young-as-well husband and president of Syria, will have had their shots, too (but of course, I’m not sure).

Anyway, for most Syrians (and maybe for Mme al Assad and His Excellency, too), the vaccine will reportedly be available in December.

And so it will reportedly be for many Lower Saxonians. But after all, we can put our minds at ease. Our pater patriae and supreme boss of Lower Saxony’s civil service is on the safe side now.