1y ago

Award ceremony suspended after writer compares Gaza to Nazi-era Jewish ghettos

www.theguardian.com Award ceremony suspended after writer compares Gaza to Nazi-era Jewish ghettos

US-Russian journalist Masha Gessen won Germany’s Hannah Arendt prize for political thought

A German foundation has said it will no longer be awarding a prize for political thinking to a leading Russian-American journalist after criticizing as “unacceptable” a recent essay by the writer in which they made a comparison between Gaza and a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe.

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1y ago

Award ceremony suspended after writer compares Gaza to Nazi-era Jewish ghettos

www.theguardian.com /world/2023/dec/14/award-ceremony-suspended-after-writer-masha-gessen-compares-gaza-to-nazi-era-jewish-ghettos

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In the paragraph the HBS draws attention to, Gessen wrote that “ghetto” would be “the more appropriate term” to describe Gaza, but the word “would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.”
Not taking sides here, but it does seem to me like Gessen's phrasing was deliberately provocative towards those who might be offended by their comparison. I'm left thinking, "I mean, if you kick a beehive, don't be surprised if you get stung."
- Let's start with the basic premise that German institutions don't get to have a fucking little opinion about what a Jewish person may or may not say about the Holocaust.
- I agree that she‘s displaying a lot of self-awareness here and I‘d like to point out that this doesn‘t make her comparison any less warranted
- This must be the kind of stupid thinking they do in Germany I suppose.
- Yeah seems like he wanted to kick the can and make a lot of noise but it does get people to talk about you.
  I wonder if it's braver and better to willingly shove away the pointless reward to try and get people to talk about a subject you care about.
  
  Are you sure Masha Gessen is a man?
  
  Nope. They use Gessen's name the entire time in the article instead of a pronoun and I had a very androgynous photo to go off of and I may have misgendered them.
  
  They are non-binary, FYI. It's not an accident that Gessen isn't gendered in the article.
  
  Got it... Really wish we had a good way of representing that because it's gonna take a bit before people stop defaulting to use of pronouns even with best intentions

97 comments