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The spiraling absurdity of Germany’s pro-

Israel fanaticism
As repression of Palestine solidarity penetrates every sector of life, the state's
liberal self-image is fast becoming a story Germans can only tell themselves.

By Michael Sappir | March 21, 2024


A Palestine solidarity demonstration in the Potsdamer Platz area, Berlin, October 15, 2023. The police suppressed the demonstration shortly after authorizing it.

After years in which Germany has increasingly narrowed the space for
Palestine solidarity, the state’s intense clampdown on freedom of
expression in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 attack and Israel’s ensuing
assault on the Gaza Strip will have surprised few observers. Still, the
frenzy surrounding the country’s prestigious Berlinale international film
festival in late February took the absurdity of Germany’s fanatical pro-
Israelism to new levels.
Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham — who are Palestinian and Israeli
respectively, and both longtime writers for +972 Magazine and Local
Call — were censoriously smeared by German politicians after their film,
“No Other Land,” won the Best Documentary Award and the Audience
Favorite Documentary Award at the festival. The activists, who are two
of the four co-directors and subjects of the film, used their acceptance
speeches as a platform to challenge Israel’s violent oppression of
Palestinians and Germany’s complicity in the war on Gaza.

In response to Adra and Abraham’s words, which circulated widely on

social media, Berlin’s mayor Kai Wegner, from the conservative
Christian Democratic Union (CDU), tarred them for spouting “intolerable
relativization” and “antisemitism.” Germany’s Culture Minister Claudia
Roth insisted that she had only clapped for “the Jewish Israeli … who
spoke out in favor of a political solution and a peaceful coexistence in
the region” — but apparently not his Palestinian colleague, who spoke
out in favor of the same thing. This selective applause was all the more
bizarre given that Abraham’s speech was specifically critical about the
differential treatment to which he and Adra are subjected under Israel’s
apartheid system.

Such public denunciations have become a regular occurrence in

Germany, as have the calls for increased censorship and threats of
defunding that invariably follow. The atmosphere of generalized
suspicion has grown thick, threatening to suffocate the country’s
famously vibrant and international cultural scene.
 
Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham holding the Best Documentary Award for their film ‘No Other Land’ at the Berlinale film festival, February
24, 2024 (Ali Ghandtschi/Berlinale 2024)

On the rare occasion that the accused are so well-known and the
accusations so preposterous as to draw international attention, such
scandals must serve as a warning to the world — both about Germany’s
own illiberal trajectory, and about the dangers posed by enforcing Israel-
friendly politics in the public sphere.

Draconian bans
In the immediate aftermath of October 7, Germany imposed a near-total
ban on pro-Palestine protests. The few demonstrations that were
authorized (due to their small size or palatable messaging), or that took
place in defiance of the ban, were largely dispersed by police, some of
them violently.

In one startling example, Berlin parents organized a protest against

violence in schools after a teacher was documented physically striking
a student who wore a Palestinian flag — but even this was banned and
dispersed by police.

At the same time, and just as Israel unleashed the first phase of its
vengeful bombardment of Gaza while Israeli leaders spouted genocidal
rhetoric, German authorities embraced grand shows of support for
Israel, championed by leaders from all major political parties.
Authorities across Germany also issued draconian bans on pro-
Palestine speech and symbols.
 
A pro-Palestine demonstration in the Kreuzberg area of Berlin, October 28, 2023.

Police in Berlin, home to Europe’s biggest Palestinian diaspora

community, banned the age-old slogan “From the river to the sea,
Palestine will be free.” They even enforced the prohibition on variations
like “From the river to the sea, we demand equality,” or, according to
eyewitnesses, the skeletal “From the — to the —,” as one sign read. In
early November, when the federal government outlawed Hamas in
Germany, “From the river to the sea” was defined as a forbidden slogan
of the organization — in any language and regardless of what follows
those words.

In practice, however, enforcement was blatantly one-sided. In one

December video, pro-Israel protesters are seen holding up an Israeli flag
at Berlin’s Humboldt University and mockingly calling: “From the river to
the sea, that’s the only flag you’re gonna see.” The unnamed
cameraman approaches police, asking them to intervene against the
forbidden slogan, but they refuse, saying it is permissible.

In effect, German authorities took the position that support for

Palestinians must be understood as support for indiscriminate violence
against Israelis. Moreover, they explicitly adopted the view that calling
for an end to the war necessarily equates to denying Israelis the right to
defend themselves in the face of such attacks.

Accordingly, just as explicitly pro-Palestinian protests were shut down,

police often also suppressed calls for “ceasefire” or to “stop the war.”
And in response to South Africa’s charge at the International Court of
 Justice that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the German
government rushed to insist that this “accusation has no basis
whatsoever,” and authorities within Germany have often treated the
accusation as hate speech.

Sympathy is enough
Throughout November and December, after facing massive pushback
on Berlin’s streets as well as mounting legal challenges to the blanket
bans on protest, authorities gradually relented and began permitting
anti-war and pro-Palestinian demonstrations, which now take place
regularly across German cities. But other forms of repression have
continued unabated, intensifying a years-long trend.


Police suppress a pro-Palestine demonstration in the Neukolln area of Berlin, October 18, 2023.

In 2019, the Bundestag passed a non-binding anti-BDS resolution,

calling on institutions not to give a platform to anyone who might be
remotely associated with the boycott movement. This pattern of
silencing, which has steadily increased in the form of both censorship
and self-censorship, was immediately turbo-charged in the wake of
October 7.

As a result, artists, journalists, and academics speaking out against

Israel have lost their jobs; event after event has been canceled; and
spaces for free debate and expression have been disappearing at a
dizzying rate. The events that are targeted tend not to be directly related
to Israel-Palestine; it is enough that one of the invitees has expressed
sympathy with Palestinians.
 Quite often, these drastic measures, including outright firings, will be
meted out after pro-Israel activists or journalists publicize and attempt
to scandalize someone’s social media posts. Since October 7, many
posts related to the violence in Gaza have been subjected to this public
outrage. But it is not unusual for the scandals to feature years-old
“evidence,” such as signatures on open letters and petitions — including
those merely criticizing the anti-BDS resolution as a threat to free
speech.

Diaspora Alliance, an international group dedicated to fighting

antisemitism and its instrumentalization, has been tracking such cases
— an effort to which I began contributing research and writing in
November. We have documented some 25 cases between Oct. 7 and 31
alone, almost as many as the 28 documented in the nine months before
the war started.


A Palestine solidarity demonstration in the Potsdamer Platz area, Berlin, October 15, 2023. The police suppressed the demonstration
shortly after authorizing it.

One of the first cases marking the escalation in silencing occurred on

Oct. 8. Malcolm Ohanwe, a Black German-Palestinian journalist, had
penned a Twitter thread placing the October 7 attack in the context of
the decades-long Israeli occupation, the siege of Gaza, and the
suppression of Palestinian protests. Although the thread did nothing to
glorify the violence, providing such context was deemed sufficient
grounds for punishment, leading public service broadcaster Arte to
immediately and publicly cut all ties with Ohanwe.

Later that same month, the Axel Springer publishing house fired an
 apprentice journalist for raising questions internally about the
publisher’s pro-Israel policies. The Bundesliga soccer team Mainz 05
immediately suspended (and later terminated the contract of) one of its
players for posting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” on
Instagram, which he has since deleted — a matter first publicized by the
Bild tabloid, published by the aforementioned Axel Springer house.

Also in October, the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein saw its state

secretary for social affairs forced to suspend her duties because she
had shared a post condemning both Hamas and the Israeli occupation.

Tread carefully — or else

The scale of denunciation and paranoia has affected nearly every
sector of life in Germany. This includes academia, the supposed
bastion of free expression, such as when the Max Planck Institute fired
the renowned anthropologist Ghassan Hage in February. But the illiberal
turn has especially shaken Germany’s cultural scene, endangering not
only individual careers but entire institutions.

Throughout October, singers, artists, publishers, activists, academics,

and DJs saw their performances, museum talks, exhibitions, poetry
book launches, and conferences canceled, or had interviews retracted.
Some of them faced no particular accusation at all, as when a prize
ceremony for Palestinian author Adania Shibli, scheduled for the
Frankfurt Book Fair, was indefinitely postponed.


A Palestine solidarity demonstration in Berlin’s municipal square in the museum district, November 4, 2023.

The rapid pace of cancellations, disinvitations, and occasional firings

continued through November, with a new case surfacing almost every
day. And while the intensity has slackened since then, not a week goes
by without some new story of intrusiveness and harassment emerging.

For instance, at the same time as the Berlinale scandal, Egyptian

filmmaker Mohammad Shawky Hassan revealed that a Berlin gallery
had demanded that before he could put Arabic writing on a wall as part
of a group exhibition, he had to provide a translation for prior approval
by the gallery and its “cooperation partners.” The gallery director
justified the vetting by citing a requirement of translation attached to
funding from the city government.

In November, meanwhile, all the members of the Finding Committee for

the next edition of Documenta, a major contemporary art exhibition
held in the central city of Kassel every five years, resigned in protest:
one of their colleagues had been forced to resign after the Süddeutsche
Zeitung broadsheet accused him of antisemitism over his signing of a
2019 petition. Already mired in chaos after last year’s Documenta
became the center of a landmark antisemitism scandal, a new Finding
Committee has yet to be announced ahead of the next edition, slated
for the summer of 2027.

Meanwhile, the 2024 Biennale for Contemporary Photography in the

Rhine-Neckar Triangle region was canceled in its entirety after the
board took issue with one of the curators’ social media activity. In the
press release announcing the cancellation, the board notes its
consequences “jeopardise the future of the entire event” as it enters its
third decade.

In an alarming twist, giving a platform to Jewish critics of Israel has

itself become an excuse for German politicians to threaten cultural
institutions. Such was the case for Oyoun, a migrant-led cultural center,
which refused to give in to political pressure and cancel the 20-year
anniversary event of the Jewish anti-Zionist group Jüdische Stimme in
November. Berlin’s Culture Minister Joe Chialo ended the center’s
contract with the city government, effectively shuttering Oyoun, citing
“hidden antisemitism.”
 
A Palestine solidarity demonstration in Berlin’s municipal square in the museum district, November 4, 2023.

Echoing this dangerous precedent, some German politicians —

especially those from the center-right Free Democratic Party (FDP) —
have been questioning future public funding for the Berlinale film
festival due to the scandal around Abraham and Adra, as well as some
other artists who took to the festival’s stages to express solidarity with
Palestinians.

Generous state funding for the arts and culture has long been seen as a
critical part of maintaining a democratic society in Germany. But while
broad freedom of artistic expression is guaranteed by the constitution,
cultural institutions are dependent on public funds which politicians can
effectively threaten to sever, placing them under acute pressure to
conform. Even without formal rules restricting expression, such calls
signal to directors and curators that they must tread carefully — or else.

Legitimizing xenophobia
Throughout this cascade of censorship, German authorities and
politicians have proclaimed the same fundamental motive: fighting
antisemitism as part of Germany’s historical responsibility after the
Holocaust.

But while large swathes of the country’s political spectrum are willing to
accept and even support such authoritarian interventions in order to
uphold Zionism, it is increasingly glaring how these efforts play into a
generalized targeting of all those treated as strangers in Germany.
Above all, these are people with a family history in Muslim-majority and
 other Global South countries.

In recent months, Germany’s government has implemented a

“deportation offensive,” ostensibly responding to the country’s perennial
anti-migrant panic which is fueling an ascendant far right. One of its
justifications has been the specter of “imported antisemitism,” referring
to anti-Israel sentiment expressed by newcomers to the country,
primarily those from the Middle East.

These politics of supporting Israel while demonizing migrants as the

source of antisemitism in Germany unites the far right with the right,
center, and significant parts of the left, twisting the crucial fight against
bigotry into a legitimizing ideology for xenophobia. And when it ends up
directly harming Jewish people, the absurdity is impossible to ignore.


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a press conference with Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz at the Prime Minister’s
Office in Jerusalem, February 17, 2024. (Olivier Fitoussi/POOL)

When the post-Berlinale furor led far-right Israelis to accost Yuval

Abraham’s family home, he noted, in a tweet that was read by millions,
how outrageous it is for German politicians to whip up outrage against
Jewish critics of Israel, including descendants of Holocaust survivors
like himself. But as Germany has ramped up its “fight against
antisemitism” over the past decade, it is startlingly common for guests
invited from abroad, even Jewish ones, to be excoriated by Germans in
the name of this effort.
German authorities have increasingly institutionalized this agenda,
appointing “antisemitism commissioners” at all levels of government.
As celebrated Russian-American Jewish writer Masha Gessen noted in
a widely-circulated New Yorker essay published early November, most
of these commissioners are not Jewish — but many of their targets are.
Indeed, according to our documentation at Diaspora Alliance, almost a
quarter of all known censorship and cancellation cases in 2023 had
Jewish targets.

Just one month after their New Yorker essay, Gessen became part of
that statistic. A major pro-Israel group that is partly funded by the
German Foreign Ministry took issue with a comparison Gessen’s essay
drew between Gaza and Nazi-imposed ghettos, and successfully
pushed for the cancellation of a ceremony awarding Gessen the
Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought.

‘Strike Germany’
While many Germans may prefer to imagine themselves as “less
antisemitic than thou,” sometimes the international criticism cuts
through. When the person targeted is sufficiently prominent, as with
Gessen and Abraham, the harsh reactions from outside the German
bubble can become hard to ignore — especially for cultural institutions
proud of their international standing and prestige.

In Gessen’s case, the reactions led the Böll Stiftung to host a public
conversation with the writer after the canceled ceremony: the de-
platforming backfired, only increasing the visibility for Gessen’s
criticism.

But this result depended on the platform they already had; in the vast
majority of cases, few in Germany ever hear about this kind of
censorship, and fewer still get wind of it abroad. Activists have been
trying to draw attention to the flood of cases, resulting among other
things in an “Archive of Silence” followed by thousands on Instagram.

Most read on +972

 ‘Lavender’: The AI Six months a�er ‘The soldiers opened
machine directing October 7, a lament for the way for the
Israel’s bombing spree the paths not chosen settlers’: Pogroms
in Gaza surge across West Bank

Meanwhile, since October, cultural workers and academics around the

world have started publicly canceling and refusing invitations to
Germany in protest of the country’s censorship and anti-Palestinian
foreign policy. In January, a collective effort was launched under the
title “Strike Germany,” garnering support from such prominent figures as
Nobel laureate author Annie Erneaux.

In response, German journalist Sebastian Engelbrecht took to national

public radio to suggest that Germany itself is now being subjected to
antisemitism by virtue of its support for Israel. Strike Germany, he
argued, sought to “erase Germany from consciousness” in a manner
akin to the historical effort to physically erase Jewish life.

As the absurdity intensifies, it has also become harder for international

observers to ignore how Germany’s obsessive pro-Israelism has been
twisted into a tool of authoritarianism and xenophobia. As a result, the
country’s self-image — civilized, cosmopolitan, and open — is fast
becoming a story Germans can only tell themselves. And with attempts
underway in many other countries to clamp down on criticism of Israel
in the name of protecting Jews, the German travesty is a warning that
must echo far beyond its borders.

Germany | Berlin | Palestinian solidarity | pro-Israel | repression | freedom of expression | censorship

Michael Sappir is a leftist writer and organizer from Israel, based in Germany. Twitter: @meemsaf

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