There is a debate in Austria about whether Austrians, as an ethnonational group, were responsible for the Jewish Holocaust along with the Germans, and if so, if subsequent generations of Austrians and Germans should also carry this blame. This article explains how “collective guilt” and other conjugate notions, operate as an emotional complex, largely inscribed within the subjunctive spaces of Austrianness and Germanness, has affected the Austro-Palestinian encounter. It argues that while the legal dimension of collective guilt has been largely substituted in international criminal law by the principle of “individual responsibility”, its political, psychic and moral dimensions still strongly shape the way ethnic Austrians and Germans engage with Palestine and Palestinians, often leading to denial of Palestinian suffering and to the impossibility of adopting a full decolonial stand. Furthermore, the paper also argues that mobilization of this emotional complex is a key component of the state of Israel’s realpolitik strategy, serving as legitimization to inflict “collective punishment” on the Palestinian population and to remain uncensored. The paper finally sugests that "collective responsibility" may offer a less ethnocentric ethical approach, in line with current post/de-colonial anthropological knowledge.