Deutsche Welle has enshrined anti-Palestinianism in its code of conduct
JVL Introduction
“Supporting the right of Israel to exist” does not mean, as Peter Beinart makes clear in a recent article, does not mean the right to exist as a political regime discriminating against Palestinians.
Deutsche Welle, Germany’s official state broadcaster, makes no such distinctions.
In two separate case DW was found guilty of illegally sacking a number of Arab journalists it employed, after a smear campaign against them, based on false accusations of antisemitism. It has settled a third out of court as Ali Abunimah has reported in the Electronic Intifada and others are pending.
Giovanni Fassina of the European Legal Support Center (ELSC) has talked of how the institutionalization of the IHRA definition of antisemitism can lead to severe infringements upon freedom of expression and freedom of the press.
Successfully challenged in these recent court cases, DW has been busy rewriting its Code of Conduct.
Its new code now requires all employees, when speaking either on behalf of the organization or in a personal capacity, to “support the right of Israel to exist”…
It remains to be seen how this will be interpreted by the broadcaster and, if need be, the courts.
This article was originally published by +972 Magazine on Thu 8 Sep 2022. Read the original here.
German broadcaster requires employees to ‘support Israel’s right to exist’
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The one-sided policy is rooted in Germany’s post-1933 history which witnessed the most hideous-ever acts of antisemitism, culminating in the Holocaust.
That created a national trauma and national guilt that will never be erased and makes Germany a country that is constantly, almost paranoiacally, on guard against antisemitism even where it is not happening, for example in connection with legitimate criticism of Israel’s repressive policies towards the Palestinians.
As such, the policy of the German state is thoughtless, based on knee-jerk reactions and ultimately futile, defending as it does, in the name of the victims of the Holocaust, the most appalling violations of human rights and injustices by the Israeli state.
There is a lot in what Graeme Atkinson says but there are a couple of other factors worth considering.
The first is obviously Germany has experienced a more intensified manifestation of the corruption and lobbying that has been going on in other western countries on various scales.
The second is that Nazi crimes of eugenics and wars of aggression owe a lot to a form of empire envy – that it was felt Germany had suffered a loss of advantage in comparison to the other Great Powers, by getting into colonialism later and on a smaller scale (Namibia being an exception).
So there is a lesser awareness of the long-term reality of historical slavery and colonialism gravy-train and that there has been a Zionist colonial project campaign, within it, going back to the 19th C.
Given that – as part of the PR of minimising complaints of racism, inequality and the horrors of current western foreign policy – the realities and practices of the ‘slavery and colonialism gravy-train’ are largely being purged from representation, in British and other western media, we can’t be too smug about this either.
One wonders what would have happened in DW if in 1990 its code of conduct had included the “right of West Germany” to exist.