2024-04-19 19:20:33
Former Greek economy minister Yannis Varoufakis was prevented from participating in a conference on Palestine that was taking place in Berlin. “The German Interior Ministry issued a Prohibition of activity against me, a ban on all political activity”, he wrote in X. “It is not only a ban on visiting Germany, but it extends to participation via Zoom.”
British-Palestinian plastic surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah, rector of the University of Glasgow, who spent 43 days working at Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli hospitals in Gaza, was also prevented from entering Germany for the same conference. To Middle East Eye, Abu Sittah says that he was questioned at the airport, informed that the ban on entry into the country extended until the end of the month, and that if he entered the conference online, or sent a video of his presentation, he could incur a large fine and up to one year in prison.
Here we are faced with this paradox: those who daily warn us about the danger of the extreme right are those who put into practice fascist measures, repressing political, individual, religious rights or freedom of expression in Europe.
“This is exactly what accomplices in a crime do: they bury the evidence and silence, harass or intimidate witnesses”, said the doctor, who has organized lectures across Europe denouncing the situation in Gaza, giving testimony of his experience. “As members of a gang who committed a heinous crime, Germany is doing its part in that crime, which is to ensure that there is total impunity and that the genocide can continue uninterrupted.”
The three-day conference, scheduled for last weekend with guests from all over the world, and credible media coverage, practically never took place. You streams were cut off and the conference space was invaded by the police late Friday morning. O mayor from Berlin, Kai Wagner, stated in X: “We have made it clear that hatred of Israel has no place in Berlin. Anyone who doesn’t comply with these rules will feel the consequences.”
One of the consequences is that there is practically no talk about what is happening in Germany (and other EU countries): there is ongoing systematic political persecution and criminalization of critics of Israeli Zionism, Israel’s genocidal policy or Germany’s unconditional support ( weapons included) to Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip. Several examples have come to light since October with regard to freedom of expression and political rights: cancellations, persecutions, silencing, arrests and expulsions from the country.
In December, Masha Gessen, a journalist, had her chance of receiving the Hannah Arendt Prize canceled for comparing Gaza to the Jewish ghetto during the Nazi regime, in an article in the New Yorker. The award ceremony, by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, was suspended following a decision by the German Green Party, to which five ministers from the Government of Olaf Sholz (SPD) belong, namely Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, both open supporters of the German policy of unconditional support for Israel and the criminalization and persecution of movements supporting Palestine.
American singer Laurie Anderson was “disinvited” as a visiting professor at Folkwang University in Essen after signing a letter against the apartheid Israeli. American Jewish academic Nancy Fraser is the latest victim: this week, she was withdrawn from an invitation to become a guest professor at the University of Cologne for signing a letter condemning Israel’s crimes in Gaza.
The list is endless, especially in more liberal sectors, such as academia, the arts, literature or cinema (at the Berlin festival or even the Oscars) – that is, in cases that reach the media that still have space to report dissent about Israel . We do not know, because the news that reaches us is diffuse, fragmented and not corroborated by the international media, what is actually happening in the pro-Palestine movements, in which activists from left-wing parties, and in which both Muslims and Jews, are to be persecuted, silenced and arrested.
This is how the power in Germany (and the European Union) is acting in the face of any movement in support of Palestine. German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said after the Congress was canceled: “It is good that the Berlin police announced the harsh repression of the so-called Palestinian Congress in Berlin. We are following the Islamist scene very closely.”
German Government spokespeople responded “no comment” to questions from journalists about the suspension of Congress and the entry bans on foreign speakers. A journalist questioned: “The Minister of the Interior says that there are Jews in the ‘Islamist scene’ here in Germany. Until now this language has been used for jihadists, for ISIS, for Hamas, but now it is being used predominantly for left-wing groups. Therefore, there are groups of Jewish, Palestinian and German leftists, some of them radicals, some of them revolutionary leftists, but we cannot talk about Islamists (…) how does the Ministry of the Interior define the ‘Islamist scene’?” The government spokeswoman referred the term “Islamist scene” to the Ministry’s report, stating that “these are fixed definitions and terms”.
“Islamist” is now the accusation for Israel’s critics. If before the question “do you condemn Hamas?” was the line that divided the legitimacy of the denunciation of Israel’s crimes against Palestine, since then this line has been pushed to the limit in so-called liberal democracies: the proposition that any defense of Palestine, any criticism of Israel, any denunciation of the crimes in Gaza is equivalent to unconditional support for Hamas is finally confirmed. Any criticism of Israel is no longer just “anti-Semitism”: it is pure terrorist practice.
Before, I wrote how it was expected that the criminalization of protests of solidarity with Palestine and resistance to the dominant media narrative would make its way into the “democracies” of the “free world” in which we live. This political persecution has been carried out, however, not by the extreme right-wing and reactionary movements that are growing throughout Europe.
The new “Putinists”
The criminalization of left-wing movements, whether against the war in Ukraine, in support of Palestine, criticism of Israel or the German government, whether of Jews, Christians or Muslims, now included in this “Islamist scene”, is being led by “democratic” governments and politicians, representatives of parties from the “arch of governance”, from the Social Democrats to the Greens, from the Socialists to the Christian Democrats.
Here we are faced with this paradox: those who daily warn us about the danger of the extreme right are those who put into practice fascist measures, repressing political, individual, religious rights or freedom of expression in Europe. At the same time that far-right forces stir up the tropes of violence and discrimination using signs that we all recognize (and fought against) from the past, there is institutional violence, attacks and censorship, legally being exercised by governments with state power, directed politically persecuting left-wing forces, Jews and Muslims.
In Germany, it is the “left” in the Government that is doing this. To those who today make abstract appeals for Democratic unity and the demarcation of red lines, there is a question to be asked: united around what and in whose name? In the name of democracy it will not be. There will be a name for this, but it is not democracy.
(Author writes under the old spelling agreement.)
2024-04-19 19:20:33