An incomplete list of German anti-Palestinian racism and antisemitism

Or, cataloguing this via rage-tweeting is a pain in the butt

This one’s pretty much what it says on the tin, folks. My brain is swimming with what it has charitably termed “German nonsense,” though I think the flippancy of that term obscures and euphemizes racism and white supremacy, which we should name as such. In any case, I’ve attempted to put in one place the instances of authoritarian crackdown in Germany that I’m aware of. They are geographically dispersed and gobsmacking. I’ve inevitably missed some, so do feel free to comment (or repost, or whatever) with others. The plurality of English-language sources here suggests that the intended audience is non-Germans, as Germany itself is kind of a lost cause, but I’ll stress that my aim is not to exceptionalize the German case here. I just study Germany. One could generate a similar list for the US, UK, and every other country that’s allied with Israel.

Just a quick note on terminology: some would call Germany’s exoneration of who it thinks Jewish Germans are and what it thinks they want “philosemitism.” I use “antisemitism” deliberately to note that philosemitism is itself antisemitic, as its core principle is that non-Jewish Germans should be allowed to dictate what Judaism is and how it can be expressed, driven by lingering Holocaust guilt and deep willful ignorance of German racism and colonial legacies, to say nothing of misunderstanding Jews and Judaism. I am expressly interested here in instances of Germany censoring, arresting, etc. anti-Zionist Jews. There have also, unfortunately, been other antisemitic incidents in Germany recently that were not perpetrated by the state, such the firebombing of a synagogue in Berlin on October 18. That said, the actions of the German state do create the conditions of the possibility to make such violent antisemitism more likely by refusing to tackle the actual roots of German antisemitism and instead misidentifying it as the audacity to insist that Palestinians are human.

Since October 7: The government of Berlin (a city-state) has banned multiple pro-Palestine rallies and protests. Bans have also been enforced in Mannheim, Frankfurt, and Munich.

October 9: Germany suspended all aid flows to Palestine subject to review, thereby further undermining the security of ordinary Palestinians during a genocide. It reversed this decision the same day after widespread backlash, including from other EU countries.

October 12: Saskia Esken, the leader of the Social Democrats, canceled a meeting with US Senator Bernie Sanders because he called Israel’s bombardment of Gaza a violation of international law. Which it is, and no serious person is disputing this. (Sanders, for his part, said that no one-on-one with Esken had been planned; rather, she’d been invited to his book launch in Berlin.)

October 13: Berlin police also banned an event planned by anti-Zionist Jews, “Jewish Berliners Against Violence in the Middle East.”

October 13: The government of Berlin directed schools to report students saying “free Palestine” or wearing “free Palestine” stickers to the police on suspicion of support for terrorism. Schools were also urged to ban the keffiyeh entirely.

October 13: The Frankfurt Book Fair called off an award ceremony for Palestinian author Adania Shibli. Her book, Minor Detail, is critical of Israeli violence.

October 15: The Academy of Fine Arts in Munich disinvited musician Nicolás Jaar from giving a workshop after he posted an Instagram story noting that Palestinian resistance to Israeli apartheid is not “unprovoked.” (Critiquing this language of “unprovoked” is also what brought out the Germans on Twitter to yell at me. Germans: good at historical exceptionalization; not good at context.)

October 17: FSV Mainz O5, which plays in the Bundesliga (the highest tier of German football), suspended player Anwar El Ghazi for posting “from the river to the sea” on social media. His contract was terminated entirely in November. A friendly reminder that arguing about whether a call for liberation is genocidal when an actual genocide is happening is a distraction! (Also extremely telling that the BBC calls the reason for Ghazi’s termination is for making a “pro-Palestine” post—a telling slip revealing the actual boundaries of dissent in Germany.)

October 18: Berlin police stomped out vigil candles for the dead in Gaza that Palestinian Germans had set up in Sonnenallee, a prominent street in the majority-migrant Neukölln neighborhood. Fair warning that there is video footage at the link and it is extremely disturbing.

October 18: The House of Poetry, a cultural center in Berlin, canceled the launch of a poetry anthology featuring Arab and Palestinian artists.

October 20: The Hamburger Bahnhof, a Berlin museum, removed Palestinian artist Emily Jacir from the list of speakers at a workshop they were hosting.

October 23: The Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin indefinitely postponed a performance of the play The Situation, a play about Israel/Palestine politics, because “war is a great simplifier” and “the terrorist attack of Hamas puts us on Israel’s side.” My most academic analysis: …did no one read the play.  

November 6: The Berlin Cultural Committee cut all funding for Oyoun, an arts and culture center doing crucial work for queer and migrant communities, in response to an event held there by the Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East. You can sign this letter to call for a restoration of Oyoun’s funding for the important work they do.

November 8: German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier went beyond anti-Palestinian racism to declare that all Arabs in Germany should “distance themselves from Hamas.” This is a repeat of the insistence on condemnation by association as the entry ticket to “legitimate” political discourse in Germany and full membership in the German polity.

November 10: The German culture minister threatened to pull funding for Documenta, an art festival, after a member of the festival’s selection committee signed a letter put out by the Indian division of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement denouncing Zionism and Hindutva. Multiple local and national parliamentary resolutions in Germany have attempted to outlaw BDS.

November 13: Interior minister Nancy Faeser banned the slogan “from the river to the sea,” alleging that it is a slogan of Hamas (which is banned in Germany) and thus constituted “anti-constitutional” sentiment, which is illegal. I do not have the energy to unpack the layers of wrong in that last sentence, so I will summarize: very bad, not good.

November 13: UK politician Jeremy Corbyn was disinvited from an event hosted by the leftist Rosa Luxemburg Foundation after the venue, Berlin’s Volksbühne, refused to host him due to “statements he had made in the past.” These are widely believed to be statements critical of Israel. The Volksbühne is a traditionally left-leaning theatre and I need y’all to understand that the left is not protected from anti-Palestinian racism; it is a near-universalism in Germany.

November 15: The Museum Folkwang in the city of Essen canceled an art show on Afrofuturism after the show’s curator, Anaïs Duplan, liked and commented on pro-Palestine posts on Instagram that did not  “acknowledge the terroristic attack of [Hamas].” Again, condemnation becomes the entry ticket to participation in German society.

November 19: The Irish band Lankum, who were due to play a show in Leipzig, had their gig canceled by the organizers due to their vocal support of Palestine.

November 21: The German Biennale for Contemporary Photography dropped renowned photojournalist and filmmaker Shahidul Alam for alleged “antisemitism,” which amounted to him calling out Israeli apartheid.

November 24: A Jewish artist, Candice Breitz, had her upcoming exhibition at the Saarland Museum in southwestern Germany canceled because she had dared to voice support on Instagram for Palestinians’ right to resist while also condemning the October 7 attack. I remain haunted by the words of Berlin-based Jewish journalist Ben Mauk: that for Germans, viewing Palestinians as human beings is a step too far.

November 29: University of Sydney professor John Keane resigned from his fellowship at the WZB, an internationally renowned research center in Berlin, after being threatened by the organization on November 21 for voicing support for Palestine on social media. Keane’s action accompanies numerous other recent moves by non-German academics to boycott academic events and invitations in Germany due to its horrific anti-Palestinian racism.

December 5: The eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt began requiring that all applicants for naturalized citizenship affirm support for Israel’s right to exist. This follows an earlier call on October 23 from the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), one of Germany’s major political parties, to make this a requirement at the federal level (which has not yet happened).