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.
The hypocrisy of the Heinrich Böll Foundation (and the German government in general) is incredible.
Here you have a Jewish person who is a journalist and a renowned political thinker who was being given the award for being someone who "reports on power games and totalitarian tendencies as well as civil disobedience and the love of freedom".
They 100% have the position, right, and accuracy to be comparing the state of Gaza currently to the WWII ghettos.
Edit: Something else to note. The Foundation made this statement ""But Masha Gessen's views should not be honored with a prize intended to commemorate the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt".
And I can't help but laugh. Do they not know Arendt's past stance on Israel? She was literally one of the first world-renowned Jewish anti-Zionists.
Huh, the IDF is currently pushing Gazans into smaller and smaller areas by not allowing them to evacuate through their lines and forcibly removing civilians who didn't evacuate.
They also plan to maintain the blockade they've had on the strip that heavily restricts people and material from moving.
What historical parallel could there possibly be to this situation?
Oh well. Better not listen to the guy who studied it hard enough to earn the award in the first place.
I‘m German, currently living in Switzerland and when I recently visited Germany I was appalled by the amount of unconditional support for Israel, for example a HUGE (maybe 10x10m?) israeli flag on the offices of the Grünen party and official posters calling for solidarity. I don‘t even think this is stemming from (however undifferentiated and misguided) historical considerations, rather than geopolitical considerations.
Also on the subject of the article, I think that‘s a pretty apt and carefully done comparison.
According to the German newspaper Die Zeit, which broke the story, the prize will still be presented to Gessen, though “in a different setting”, and on Saturday instead of Friday. It remains unclear who will present it, what they will be presenting and whether Gessen and other invited guests still plan to attend.
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.”
On X/Twitter, they wrote that no German media representative had tried to contact them, despite the story being widely reported in German media on Thursday.
Supporters of Gessen, who is Jewish, and whose grandfather and great-grandfather were among family members murdered by the Nazis, have been quick to point out the irony of suspending a prize awarded in memory of Arendt, the German-born Jewish-American historian, philosopher and antitotalitarian political theorist who coined the phrase “the banality of evil”, in connection with the trial of leading Nazi Adolf Eichmann, which she covered as a journalist for the New Yorker.
In an open letter written with Albert Einstein and other Jewish intellectuals in 1948, Arendt had, Gessen pointed out, even compared the Israeli Freedom party to the Nazis after they used racially motivated violence against civilians.
“I am aware that this type of comparison, especially in Germany, is quickly seen as relativising the Holocaust. That’s why it’s so important to me that such a differentiated and intelligent thinker like Arendt didn’t shy away from this comparison,” Gessen told the newspaper.
Referring to people in Germany being wary of challenging “the logic of German memory policy” for fear of being accused of antisemitism, they added: “The problem is that criticism of Israel is often seen as antisemitic, which I think is the real antisemitic scandal. This overlooks the actual antisemitism.”
On the bright side I really appreciate how many people speak out against Israel. I feel like their government has finally abused the "you're either for us or antisemitic" card enough for people to stop caring about that bs.
Truth is that government never really wanted peace and many Israeli didn't either. Not that Hamas is any better. The point is there are no good guys here. Just idiots and criminals and civilians who are being slaughtered because of the former.
It's very very much like the Polish ghettos. You tell me, did Jews in Warsaw get put into an open air prison? Did Jews in Warsaw have their food and water and electricity taken away? Were the Jews in Warsaw allowed to leave the ghetto? Were the ghettos bombed and terrorized by Nazis?
Germans learned nothing from their Nazi past. Still love censorship and still love to consider some lives more important than others. They'te just acting like an Israel's colony now.
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