A crackdown on political dissent is well under way in Germany. Over the past two years, institutions and authorities have cancelled events, exhibitions and awards over statements about Palestine or Israel.
There are many examples: the Frankfurt book fair indefinitely postponing an award ceremony for Adania Shibli; the Heinrich Böll Foundation withdrawing the Hannah Arendt prize from Masha Gessen; the No Other Land directors Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham being defamed by German ministers. And, most recently, the philosopher Omri Boehm being disinvited from speaking at this month’s anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald.
In nearly all of these cases, accusations of antisemitism loom large – even though Jews are often among those being targeted. More often than not, it is liberals driving or tacitly accepting these cancellations, while conservatives and the far right lean back and cheer them on.
Germany has recently taken a chilling new step, signalling its willingness to use political views as grounds to curb migration. Authorities are now moving to deport foreign nationals for participating in pro-Palestine actions. As I reported this week in the Intercept, four people in Berlin – three EU citizens and one US citizen – are set to be deported over their involvement in demonstrations against Israel’s war on Gaza. None of the four have been convicted of a crime, and yet the authorities are seeking to simply throw them out of the country.
When supporting the existence of an explicit ethnonationalist state is mandated by law, maybe the law is wrong.
tell you what, where do you live? i think i should have the right to build a state right there and you’d be a hateful bigot if you had a problem with it.
They’re German, which makes it even better, as you could legitimately argue that a Jewish homeland should have been partitioned out of Germany as reparations for the Holocaust.
It is antisemitic to denounce Israels right to exist.
It’s not “antisemitic” to say a country that only exists because Zionists in the British government convinced others to partition the ottoman empire and specifically create that country “as a national home for the Jewish people” (weird, sounds ethno statey, but don’t worry, they totally promised not to infringe on the rights of the natives) has no right to exist
Like you are an absolute fucking pig shit for brain moron if you think it’s “antisemitic”
Iirc it’s literally even against the fucking Jewish religion for them to return to Israel before their whatever messianic figure appears. Israel itself is antisemitic! (To say nothing of the fact that Palestinians are a semitic people, but i guess Israeli fascists pushing them into the sea is fine)
Person A: “I think the actions of the Netanyahu government are reprehensible and amount to ethnic cleansing. I think a government like that shouldn’t exist.”
Person B: “You can’t criticize the Zionist entity, that’s literally anti-Semitism”
Person A: “Well, this is a line in the sand for me that I can’t cross. So it’s all Jews then?”
Aren’t you at all concerned that you might create more anti-Semitism when you say that? It’s bad enough as it is — don’t give people legitimate reasons to turn into Nazis.
