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Imported antisemitism

According to the German punditry, both the art world and vast sectors of academia are awash in ‘imported’ antisemitism, a deplorable situation catalyzed by documenta fifteen. From this perspective, political intervention is both warranted and needed: the safety of the Jewish minority is at stake. But political encroachment in cultural programming, along with the practice of publicizing accusations of antisemitism with insufficient regard to evidence, preceded the latest edition of documenta by several years.

In 2018, the Ruhrtriennale announced that the Scottish band Young Fathers would be dropped from the lineup of the festival over their support for the international Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. Then came an open letter, written by Lorenz Deutsch, the cultural spokesperson of the liberal FDP party in North Rhine Westphalia, targeting Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe, followed by an article in Die Welt demanding an end to tax-funded ‘Israel-hatred’.[1] On Friday, May 17, 2019, the German parliament voted in favor of a motion to label the BDS movement as antisemitic. Signaling a further illiberal drift, Peter Schäfer, the director of the Jewish Museum Berlin, was forced to resign because the museum’s Twitter account linked to an article about an open letter, signed by Jewish and Israeli scholars, condemning the anti-BDS resolution. By 2020, the McCarthyist climate had intensified to the point a great number of German institutions established the ‘Initiative GG 5. Weltoffenheit’ (world-openness initiative) to counter the BDS motion. For the same reasons, it rejected the BDS call to boycott. Weltoffenheit rejected the parliament-sanctioned counter-BDS-boycott: it was ‘detrimental to the democratic public sphere’ and accusations of antisemitism were ‘being misused to push aside important voices and to distort critical positions.’ But their warnings went unheeded. Though not legally binding, the BDS motion had a chilling effect, collapsing the distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Israel’s state policies, as well as between criticism of Israel’s state policies and the denial of its ‘right to exist.’ [2]

After October 7, German institutions made international headlines by engaging in a spate of cancellations, which are by now too numerous to list. At the same time, both at the federal and regional levels, governing bodies sought to enshrine support for the state of Israel into German law. Early January 2024, the Berlin senate introduced contractual clauses that condition access to public funding on the adoption of the IHRA (the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism. In doing this, they follow in the footsteps of the Trump administration, which deployed IHRA as a campus hate speech code, in spite of objections made by Kenneth Stern, the lead drafter of the IHRA definition, who argues IHRA must remain non-legally binding because it clashes with constitutional law.[3] In addition to pledging to implement the IHRA definition and recognizing Israel’s right to exist, applicants were required to make sure that no public money would somehow trickle toward associations or activities that are classified as ‘extremist’. But, as recent events have shown, what and whom can be considered ‘extremist’ can often be surprising. [4]

In November 2023, students of the Universität der Künste in Berlin were accused of celebrating the 2000 Ramallah lynching of two IDF reservists, because they staged a performance in which they held up their red-stained palms.[5] That same month, Oyoun, a migrant, queer, and decolonial-oriented cultural center in Berlin, was defunded for hosting an event by the Jewish-led organization Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East. In January 2024, the city of Hamburg canceled a scheduled speaking tour by 88-year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor Marione Ingram, even though Hamburg was the city she fled to escape the Holocaust.[6] Palestinian artists Jumana Manna and Emily Jacir were accused of glorifying terrorism by the far-right Die Welt.[7] Manna’s solo exhibition planned for the Heidelberger Kunstverein was canceled, and her guest professorship at AdBK Munich was discontinued. Curator Edwin Nasr was singled out in a particularly vicious way for an Instagram story whose content could only be read as callous with the benefit of hindsight he had no access to at the time of posting. What passes for journalism in Germany is mostly tone-policing, paranoia, and pedantry, and it would all be ludicrous if it weren’t tied to a metric of mourning that is out of whack with the most basic compassion and moral compass.

On February 10th, the Hamburger Bahnhof put out a statement accusing a group of pro-Palestinian protesters of ‘hate speech’. Artist Tania Bruguera, whose performance When Your Ideas Become Civic Actions was disrupted, later clarified the ‘protesters’ were coordinating with her, and the first ‘disruption’ was, in fact, integrated into the project. Later in the afternoon, however, in an impromptu manner, the activists interrupted another speaker Bruguera invited, Miriam Wenzel, director of the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt. The protesters accused Wenzel, who is not Jewish, of representing a Zionist viewpoint (Wenzel’s institution suggested that demonstrations of solidarity with Palestinians can offer a cover for celebrating Hamas).[10] Things got emotional and heated, but to file a criminal complaint jumps the shark and plays into the worst racist tropes – the Aggro-Araber slur or the ‘terrorist’ analogy – circulating in Germany. That same weekend the Cologne Carnival featured a parade float that represented Palestinians as attack dogs, with ‘hate’ and ‘violence’ spelled on their backs.[11] Against this backdrop, why use the institutional megaphone to instill divisiveness? While Bruguera herself denied the protesters were violent,[12] the institutional response constituted a symbolic gift to the far-right press, which was swift to capitalize on it.[13] Antisemitism is indeed rampant in Germany,[14] but this was not antisemitism, this was a generational clash.

The botched event at HB also points to the limits, if not contradictions, of the liberal ‘public sphere’: Can one demand that German-Palestinians, confronted with a daily stream of children caked in soot and blood, being pulled from the rubble of the hospitals where they sought refuge, while routinely dehumanized, marginalized, and silenced by the German punditry and political class, abide by the protocols of polite society? What constitutes violence, and who enacts it, would be the real question at stake here, but the institution failed to rise to the task.

To boot, it is a strange premise that calling a non-Jewish person a ‘Zionist’ can be described as antisemitic hate crime, but in fact the conflation of Zionism and Jewish identity makes room for non-Jewish Germans to pose as the primary victims of antisemitic attacks, while pushing Jews aside. One should also note that, in Germany Jewish people are not afforded political identities. While the Jewish community holds widely differing views on Israel, Germany only welcomes Jewish voices that speak for the country’s foreign policy. As researcher Emily Dische-Becker points out, 30% of cancelled events in Germany involved Jewish authors.[15] Concerns for Jewish safety, though often feigned and insincere can appeal to the well-meaning. On the other hand, as Donald Kinder and Tali Mendelberg argue, racial animosity is always expressed in the language of those principles, which majority populations find familiar and compelling.[16] In a country laden with a harrowing back history, anti-anti-semitism became a convenient way to indulge the worst instincts: it masks racism as anti-racism. While all the measures put in place this year may do little to protect the Jewish citizenry, they certainly contributed to the normalisation of the most delirious remigration fantasies.

One can only be in a state of mourning for documenta fifteen

After protesting students were violently evicted from the campus of the FU Berlin, an open letter decrying the police assault landed an arbitrary number of signatories on the cover of Bild Zeitung. Doxxed as ‘perpetrators’ (UniversiTäter), a term usually referring to war criminals (NS-Täter), the signatories have since been the targets of personal and professional harassment.[17] In what ought to have been a major scandal, revealing a level of political encroachment on academic autonomy unacceptable in a democracy, the ARD magazine Panorama (NDR) revealed that the Federal Ministry of Education sought to have funding withdrawn from the signatories. Apparently unfazed by the country’s harrowing history when it comes to seizing Jewish property, the Berliner Sparkasse recently froze the account of Jewish Voices for a Just Peace in the Middle East.[18] After the state senate scrambled to find a legal ground to ban the Palästina Kongress [Palestine Conference], planned for 12–14 April 2024 in Berlin, the police shut down the event due to ‘the risk of anti-semitic hate speech.’ The German Ministry of the Interior subsequently issued a travel ban against Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis and Ghassan Abu Sitta, the Glasgow University Rector. The Bundestag is currently debating a draft resolution that includes a provision requiring anyone seeking federal funding to submit to a background check conducted by Germany’s domestic intelligence service.

In what Forensic Architecture’s Eyal Weizman has described as an ‘attack on facts,’ TAZ smeared the forensic findings on the Al Ahli hospital bombing.[19] Shielding Israel from criticism can also be done, and often is, at the expense of Jewish life: Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham and his family received death threats after the vicious press reception of his Berlinale 2024 prize acceptance speech. Together with Palestinian activist Basel Adra, Abraham won a prize for the documentary No Other Land (2024). Caught applauding, the German culture minister infamously said she was clapping only for the Israeli half. Studio Bonn apparently edited out a mention of ‘potential genocide‘ from Omer Bartov’s contribution to their discussion on ‘Art and Culture after October 7’. Bartov accepted this as a technical glitch, but the criminalization of those who use the term ‘genocide’ to describe the ongoing bloodshed suggests an alternative explanation. The term ‘genocide,’ though politically fraught, carries a sense of moral urgency: a genocide demands a response.[20] The German authorities want to make those using the term to describe the current events in Gaza liable to criminal charges, because its usage sheds an unflattering light on Germany’s foreign policy and its complacency toward ongoing war crimes.[21]

Needless to say, not everyone thinks that any indictment of Israel’s coalition government constitutes ‘sensationalist antisemitism’; there are also those who accept that war crimes are being committed but find it tactless to mention them. This silent majority believes that it is antisemitism, and not the accessibility of streaming, that draws youth protests and student encampments. Focusing on Israel’s infractions, be they real or imagined, can only be motivated by hatred of Jews, or yields hatred against Jews. From this perspective, the thematization of the war on Gaza is always ‘excessive’ and all forms of empathy are ‘suspicious.’

No one contests that antisemitism cannot be tolerated; what is contested is the ongoing attempt to codify political dissent as a hate crime. This is why there is cause for alarm when German president Steinmeier condemns the Documenta curators for making ‘political activism an art form,’[22] when Joe Chialo, the State Minister for Culture and Social Cohesion, argues that ‘we need to distinguish art from activism with artistic elements’; or when a contractual clause termed the ‘anti-discrimination clause,’ introduced under the guise of protecting pluralism, seeks to codify unwavering support for a state credibly accused of genocide as the condition for participation in the public sphere.

At a time when authorities are acting in such a polarizing manner, it is only fair to ask: Who gets to draw the line between ‘art with elements of activism’ and ‘activism with artistic elements’? Who gets to draw the line between political speech, which is constitutionally protected, and hate speech, which should be justly banned? The defense of liberal values can, and often does, acquire a use-value for those with an illiberal agenda. And there is an obvious precedent in Germany. What is meant by the distinction between ‘art’ and ‘activism with artistic elements’ if not a distinction between art and degenerate art forms? As the dust settles, we might just come to discover that German democracy dies in Gaza, that both contemporary art and hitherto constitutionally guaranteed rights are to be counted among the collateral damage. But to those who say the left had it coming because it allowed online call-out culture to flourish, I would just like to respond: this is not ‘cancel culture.’ Cancel culture is a term introduced to describe a pressure coming from the public, targeting institutions, celebrities, or elected representatives. This is the opposite. This is not about the public putting pressure on power but power putting pressure on the public. This is state-sanctioned censorship.