‘Free speech is a facade’: how Gaza war has deepened divisions in German arts world
‘Free speech is a facade’: how Gaza war has deepened divisions in German arts world
Strong pro-Israel consensus among political leaders has led to conflict with Berlin’s diverse cultural sector and a fraught debate over antisemitism
Less than 10 years ago, Germany, and especially Berlin, was held up as a beacon of openness and inclusivity in a western world rocked by Brexit and Donald Trump. Angela Merkel’s decision to take in thousands of refugees displaced by the war in Syria boosted her country’s reputation in progressive circles, with many international artists and academics choosing to make the German capital their new home.
Yet the conflict in the Middle East is showing Germany in a new light, highlighting fissures in society and the arts world that until now had been easier to ignore.
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As someone living in Germany, the level of state repression I've seen towards artists and activists who speak against Israel's war on Gaza is terrifying. I never thought I'd see such a level of repression in Germany. Artists' funds are getting slashed left and right. The government is pushing venues to cancel appointments with artists that criticize Israel (including jewish artists/activists). Cultural venues have been closed down by the government for hosting some of these activists (Oyoun Berlin was closed down after renting a space for an evening to the local charter of Jewish Voice for Peace). Activists have been arrested/fined for chants like "From the river to the sea we demand equality" or "Jews against genocide". There have been countless non-violent activists raided by armed police in the early hours of the morning for their pro Palestine activism. Berlin police has enacted checkpoints in immigrant neighbourhoods. Journalists getting fired for asking the wrong questions. The state of Berlin is now trying to pass a law to allow universities to exmatriculate students on "behavioural" grounds (aka political stances). Politicians actively singling out activists on social media and redirecting insane amounts of hate their way. This place is getting very, very scary.
Activists have been arrested/fined for chants like “From the river to the sea we demand equality” or “Jews against genocide”.
I don't doubt that they don't know any nuance in anything that contains “From the river to the sea" but who was arrested for “Jews against genocide” and on what grounds?
Do you have a source for that?For repression in Berlin in general:
https://jewishcurrents.org/an-anti-palestinian-crackdown-across-europe
Open letter of Jewish people condemning the supression by the German government, German and English Version:
https://taz.de/Offener-Brief-juedischer-Intellektueller/!5965154/
https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/freedom-for-the-one-who-thinks-differently/
Recent arrest of jewish activists for peace, German and English version:
https://www.theleftberlin.com/police-brutality-at-palestine-solidarity-sit-in/
Sorry, but I couldn't find a single reference to "Jews against genocide" in any of these.
Also, open letters and opinion peaces by activists are by definition not neutral sources.I'm not saying that police are necessarily acting correctly, but do you have any evidence that someone was arrested for “Jews against genocide”?
https://twitter.com/derJamesJackson/status/1741488229201658142
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/10/germany-gaza-protests-crackdown
The problem is that German mainstream media is not covering these topics and had a ridicilous pro Israel bias until the last few weeks since it becomes impossible to ignore the deliberate starvation of people in Gaza and the continued genocidal rethoric of the Israeli government in regards to invading Rafah.
The problem is that German mainstream media is not covering these topics
Well English media don't seem to provide any proof for the original claim either.
Your first link shows a picture of a lady with a “Jews against genocide” sign flanked by two police officers.
I see no arrest and at least at that moment in time she is still allowed to show her sign.Link two contains these passages:
Her banner, which said she was ashamed to be German and that there was a “genocide” taking place in the densely populated Palestinian enclave being bombarded by Israel.
Police let her and her sign go, and she joined the march.At about 4pm, police pushed into the crowd and, to calls of “shame, shame”, pulled Monika Kalinowska out.
Her sign, written in red, read, “Israel is a terrorist state.”
After she was frisked and her identification checked, she was told there was nothing wrong with her sign – even though it was confiscated – and she was allowed to leave. She could pick up the sign the next day, police said.Again, I'm not defending police here but the claim was that people were arrested, so I want to know who got arrested and for what?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest
An arrest is the act of apprehending and taking a person into custody (legal protection or control), usually because the person has been suspected of or observed committing a crime. After being taken into custody, the person can be questioned further and/or charged. An arrest is a procedure in a criminal justice system, sometimes it is also done after a court warrant for the arrest.
I think you might confuse it with detention, where the police would keep you in jail for a limited time.
As for who and what, from the article:
The officer who briefly removed Kalinowska from the protest told Al Jazeera that there was no formal list or any particular guidelines to follow.
“Really, I just use my intuition,” he said. “If I see something I think is bad, we go and get it.”
And this is indivative of the wider problem here. Police can harass and attack protests without having to uphold a legal standard. So even if there is no legal basis to what they do, just storming into the protest and dragging someone out is used as an intimidation and punishment without crime tactic. It is always a violent act where not only the person apprehended, but also the protestors around them are physically attacked.
I admit, it might be a language problem.
taking a person into custody (legal protection or control)
What does taking into custody mean then?
Is police taking someone aside for 2 minutes to ask some questions an arrest?
Because then I don't understand the outcry over it, particularly compared to far more heavy-handed police action that definitely does happen every now and again.
Blogs, letters, and articles about letters are very weak sources. They're on the level of opinions. Do you have anything better?
So you think the pictures and videos that show the speaking activist being detained by the Police have been staged with the police? You think that recognised organizations who rely on their tax exemption would make false allegations against the government that could deny their tax exempt status and practically kill their work through that?
Pictures and videos are evidence of a single event each, not evidence of systematic opression
Any organisation can make statements which can be argued to be statements of principle, of opinion, or similar, and not face any consequences. Tax-exempt status is removed if they start working for profit, not if they work in the direction of their political beliefs.
They can and will lose their tax exempt status or have it threatened if the government argues them to believe "extremist" for which false allegations would be an indication.
Losing the tax exempt status based on broad allegations have happened to the VVN-BdA the Association of people persecuted by the nazi regime, federation of antifascists. Based on it being mentioned in the "constitution protection report" of the interior intelligence in Bavaria the finance office of Berlin has revoked its tax exempt status in 2019. The organization was targeted as "leftist extremists" as they have a decisive anti-fascist stance, given that the organization has been founded by Holocaust survivors and their descendants are organized in it.
https://taz.de/Aberkennung-der-VVN-Gemeinnuetzigkeit/!5645383/
if the government argues them to believe “extremist”
Considering not even the openly neonazi AfD are classified as extremist they can feel quite safe from that. Also, well done moving the goalposts.
The fact remains that expressing statements furthering their political interests carries zero consequences. Which is a good thing, without this democracy wouldn't work. It also means that your sources are closer to opinions than to facts. Got any peer-reviewed studies perhaps?
Considering not even the openly neonazi AfD are classified as extremist
except in many cases they are, and except the fact that this should be ringing alarm bells when left leaning organizations are targeted by the government. Taking their tax exempt status, like it was done with the VVN is a death sentence to non profit organizations.
Also how do you want to get peer reviewed studies about something that is happening right now and in that extent and with that attention since six months?
Yeah, only some of the Landesverbände, not the federal party - which is what really matters.
So would you say, there is as of yet insufficient evidence for a factual conclusion?
You really should recheck your sources. F.e. this case here
The state of Berlin is now trying to pass a law to allow universities to exmatriculate students on “behavioural” grounds (aka political stances).
is not "behavioural grounds", but because some students beat up a jewish student for political reasons and the university wasn't allowed to expell them due to legal reasons.
If they beat up someone, they should be charged with the crime they did. Why do new crimes need to be invented?
Criminal prosecution is not done by universities so if universities want to act on this they need a different legal basis for that.
Why do new crimes need to be invented?
This is not at all what they are saying. Such a new law would not introduce a new crime, but be an amendment to the university's rules so that they are allowed to expel students who committed certain crimes before.
Maybe more than a new crime it should be an aggravating circumstance. Beating someone for some petty reason and beating someone for political/religoius reasons are different in gravity.
It already is apparently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime#Germany
The German Criminal Code does not have hate crime legislation, instead, it criminalizes hate speech under a number of different laws, including Volksverhetzung. In the German legal framework motivation is not taken into account while identifying the element of the offence. However, within the sentencing procedure the judge can define certain principles for determining punishment. In section 46 of the German Criminal Code it is stated that "the motives and aims of the perpetrator; the state of mind reflected in the act and the willfulness involved in its commission"[44] can be taken into consideration when determining the punishment; under this statute, hate and bias have been taken into consideration in sentencing in past cases.[45]
Because a hate crime is different offence from a "normal" crime, duh
Yeah, it will definitely not get used against activists. Beating people up is illegal. The persons involved in such things should be handled by the authorities. With that being said, trading your rights for """security""" has always proven to be a stupid idea. Giving universities this power, especially given their track record of shooting down any kind of political dissent, will only end up in power hungry individuals abusing it.
The victim in that assault case has been shoving and grabbing students at the university before. That is of course much less severe than how he was beaten up, but in that discussion about throwing out students for violent behaviour that was conveniently ignored.
The whole discussion only started when he was attacked and it was about denying education to pro Palestinian and in particular Arab and other migrant sudents. It was headed among others by the racist major of Berlin (major in this case is also the head of the state government) who just a year ago won an election on the grounds of demanding police to release the names of suspect teenagers. This demand was made so the public could decide based on the names, if those suspects were "real Germans" instead of maybe "foreigners with a German passport". This is far-right nationalist ideology and primitive racism.
So it is clear what goals are aimed at with the demand to throw students out of universities if they are suspect of a crime. If it would be put in place it would be used to remove "foreigners" from universities, not to remove "good kids who have made a mistake".
What I want to say: Those cases are complex, have a lot of nuance and it is totally not ok that @febra@lemmy.world is going around and doing propaganda totally distorting the complexity of those cases.
But in that complexity it is also not yet clear, if the attack was an actual hate crime, with the goal to harm the victim because he is jewish.
some students beat up a jewish student for political reasons and the university wasn't allowed to expell them due to legal reasons
You mean they can't expel students for bigotry-related violence? I call bullshit.
They can't expel people for things they do off campus. That is true. However it also shouldn't be the case, as we had our wave of "red scare" persecutions of people in the 70s, destroying peoples lives based on often farbicated charges against people who were considered "too left".
Denying people access to education based on criminal charges is a slippery slope and in the current environment it is likely, that these will solely be used for political persecution.
Also it should be noted that the claim, that the attack was bigotry related is made by the victim and his supporters, with the victim having a history of violently engaging pro palestinian protestors on campus, ripping off posters that remembered killed palestinian women and children and repeatedly demanded all pro palestinian voices to be banned from campus.
The police didnt classify it as a hate crime so far and the claims of it being a hate crime are made on the allegation that jewishness and pro-israel and pro-zionism stances are identical. (Which is in itself antisemtic and used to repress jewish people in Germany who are critical of zionism)
Denying people access to education based on criminal charges is a slippery slope and in the current environment it is likely, that these will solely be used for political persecution.
Didn't consider that. That's an excellent point.
Also it should be noted that the claim, that the attack was bigotry related is made by the victim and his supporters, with the victim having a history of violently engaging pro palestinian protestors on campus, ripping off posters that remembered killed palestinian women and children and repeatedly demanded all pro palestinian voices to be banned from campus.
Yeah. Knowing that, it DOES stink..
that jewishness and pro-israel and pro-zionism stances are identical. (Which is in itself antisemtic and used to repress jewish people in Germany who are critical of zionism)
Absolutely.
You might call bullshit, it is bullshit, but sadly it is a fact. See this german article here: https://www.rbb24.de/politik/beitrag/2024/02/berlin-hochschulgesetz-universitaet-gewalttaeter-sanktionen.html
I would say that's because that society has found some degree of ideological security, an indulgence paper even, in supporting some dogmatic formalized single face of the Jewish people. Since that imagined document sort of shields them from necessity to look honestly at crimes much worse, I'd say quite a lot of things may happen to people who try to dismantle it, especially if they are Jewish. It's much more inconvenient to be accused of supporting fascism from that direction, after all.
Why would they support the Jewish? Aren't they supposed to be a bunch of people who murdered and hated others in the name of their god during the ancient times and beyond? /S
We are already at war. Not with our bodies, but the victims are our money and minds for now.