Berlin art college withdraws funding to Israelis seeking to unlearn Zionism
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JVL Introduction
Mairav Zonszein’s opening sentence in this article from +972 magazine says it all: “In Germany, Jewish Israelis who seek to challenge the Zionist narrative are now effectively considered antisemitic.”
As the threat of right-wing antisemtism rises ever more, forces in German society identify the real traitors: Israeli Jews who dare to question the assumptions they were brought up on.
You couldn’t make it up…
This article was originally published by +972 Magazine on Wed 21 Oct 2020. Read the original here.
Berlin art college withdraws funding to Israelis seeking to unlearn Zionism
A Berlin art school abruptly withdrew funding for a program started by Jewish Israelis who seek to challenge the Zionist narrative they grew up on.
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I am horrified at learning about the actions of the uni. I feel like I want to apologise to those brave people who not only realised that their previous views and belief systems needed to change, but who had the courage to learn together to make those changes. Apologise to those who helped people on this journey.
The action of the Uni appears to me to be a somewhat dangerous appeasement, partially borne out of the guilt German people might be feeling, rather than working through history and learning the essential lessons from it: that any repeat of genocide, must never happen again. We can only be effective if we face it head on. This also means really facing up to racism. But instead of challenging this script of ‘good jews versus bad jews’ (which in my view is antisemitic), people and governments appear to play along with this way of thinking which only accepts certain viewpoints as legitimate whilst judging others as unacceptable, ie antisemitic. BDS is in my view not antisemitic. It is in my view a justified means of protest. It does not suggest that the state of Israel should not exist, but it gives a clear message that people feel that nobody should profit from illegal annexation of land at the cost of the indigenous population.
This particular matter is of interest to me because my own mother was excluded from Heidelberg University in 1934 because of her stance against the government of the time. I am excluded from the Labour Party for speaking (as a Christian) against the cruelty of the government of Israel.
I have lived in England most of my life, but I do have some insight into the German character.
As a technical point, the link including the Resolution mentioned in the article doesn’t indicate whether the Bundestag actually, formally, came to a decision on the Resolution, or whether the German government did.
The Resolution appears to have swallowed the IHRA definition whole, which surprises me in the light of the German capacity for analysis. However, it does demonstrate a German characteristic, which is not to stand up to bullies. In fact, there is a tendency to bully when it is possible. Added to this, is another characteristic, which is to follow a vociferous leader, as happened in the 30’s.
At the moment, we, all of us, are suffering from the results of another German characteristic, which is to brush details, especially the social aspects in the two instances I mention, aside in the expectation that they, being of less importance, can be sorted out later. This was manifested in Helmut Kohl’s pushes for re-unification of Germany and to establish the Euro as a single currency. In the latter case, consequences include the rise of nationalism, even fascism, in parts of the EU, as well as Brexit and anti-semitism, which, sadly, is in part a protest against the inequalities accentuated under neo-liberalism.
At what point can we say gate-keepers have become bullies?
Regards what Sabine said at the end of her post, I just did a search re ‘Israel’s right to exist’, and the following are clips from two of the articles that came up in the results:
The disproportionate number of Palestinians killed in the long-running conflict is a reality hidden from many in the West. Over the past 15 years, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, 8,701 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis compared to 1,138 Israelis killed by Palestinians. The disparity in the number of Palestinian children killed is even greater with a total of 1,772 killed during that period compared to 93 Israeli children.
Given this history, the repeated claim made by the United States and other Western nations that Israel’s military actions are merely acts of self-defense contradicts the reality on the ground. Surely it is the violence carried out by people forced to live under a violent illegal military occupation and blockade that should be considered an act of self-defense. After all, the French Resistance to the Nazi occupation of France during World War Two is viewed as a heroic struggle for national liberation. In stark contrast, Palestinian resisters are labelled ‘terrorists.’
https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/19/why-israel-should-not-exist/
And also the following:
The question should not be “Does Israel have a right to exist” but rather, “Is the way in which Israel exists right?”
And for us Palestinians at least, the answer is clearly no.
For Palestinians, the establishment of the state of Israel had very real and horrific consequences. It meant the vast majority of our people were forced from their land, separated from their families, possessions and property.
It meant their villages, hundreds of them, were destroyed so they wouldn’t have homes to return to.
It meant they might die in a refugee camp, longing to return to farm their ancestral fields. It meant they would live as second-class citizens, seen as a “demographic threat” to the state. And it meant that if they objected to this, or even just tried to walk home, they could be killed or imprisoned.
https://israelpalestinenews.org/does-israel-have-a-right-to-exist-is-a-trick-question/