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Man in front of BDS poster in Cairo, Egypt
Photo: Amr Nabil / AP
As always, the devil is in the detail, namely in the formulation.
In the open letter against the BDS decision, which more than a thousand artists and thinkers have signed, the "overzealous surveillance of the political views of cultural workers from the Middle East and the global South" is lamented.
That is »Racial Profiling through the back door«.
You have to let that sink in first.
BDS stands for »Boycott, Divest, Sanction« and is a movement that wants just that: to boycott Israel.
In May 2019, the Bundestag resolved in a resolution not to give its representatives any more rooms.
And the federal states and municipalities are asked to keep it that way.
When the Bundestag described the BDS movement as "anti-Semitic", did the Bundestag actually label people based on their appearance or skin color?
Showing solidarity with the State of Israel is that racism "through the back door"?
Absurd.
The resolution goes against what some people say or believe.
Not against what they are.
"We can only change what we confront" is the title of an appeal that was published today.
Only last week the initiative "Weltoffenheit 5.3 GG" went public, the heads of large German cultural institutions had complained that the BDS decision of the Bundestag was hindering their work.
Threat that doesn't exist
So now the artists and intellectuals.
Those invited by the institutions.
Or not.
At least that is the fear that speaks in the letter.
A "climate of censorship" is lamented.
But here a threat scenario is presented that does not exist.
What is it about you?
There is the case of the philosopher Achille Mbembe, who was supposed to open the Ruhrtriennale and who was previously accused of anti-Semitism.
Has he been "demonized" as the signatories claim?
No.
He was criticized.
And he wasn't unloaded either.
The Ruhrtriennale was canceled due to Corona.
Are the anti-Semitism allegations justified?
That is what the debate in spring was about, Mbembe was not censored, but was able to explain his position in detail.
Then there is the Kamila Shamsie case.
A British-Pakistani writer to be awarded the Nelly Sachs Prize in 2019 until the jury decided against it when she learned that Shamsie was a BDS sympathizer.
The prize is named after a poet who survived the Holocaust and whose work revolves around the associated experiences of loss.
The jury decided that such an award could badly go to someone who questions the state of Israel.
Is that censorship?
No.
It is uncomfortable.
For the author as well as for the jury.
But not anymore.
Very silly
Of course, it's extremely silly when a German-Jewish musician like Nirit Sommerfeld has to explain how she feels about Israel before every performance.
And yes, Peter Schäfer, the former head of the Jewish Museum Berlin had to resign under unworthy circumstances.
It is the voice of the new Berlin art and creative scene that is rising.
This has to be argued, and it has been, for months.
To suspect a common racist structure behind this dispute, with which the "voices of the global South" are to be silenced, is bizarre.
What's going on here?
A good half of the thousand signatories live in Berlin.
It is the voice of the new Berlin art and creative scene that is rising.
Most of the people do not come from Germany, but have immigrated from all over the world, from England, the USA, Israel, France, the Arab countries, Africa.
These people's perspective is international, and they see racism, colonialism and anti-Semitism as part of the same evil.
It is a cosmopolitanism that struggles with a specifically German perspective: namely the impression that a boycott of Israel can remind German ears of the crimes of their own grandfathers.
And not in post-colonial struggles.
more on the subject
Icon: Spiegel Plus Controversial BDS movement at festivals: Is it criticism of Israel or hatred of Jews? By Tobias Becker, Andreas Borcholte, Georg Diez and Jurek Skrobala
Berlin's anti-Semitism officer: »No freedoms are restricted« An interview by Tobias Rapp
No more support: USA classifies Israel boycott movement BDS as anti-Semitic
In fact, in the debate about the BDS movement, two different perspectives collide, which seem to be mutually exclusive.
For one, the Holocaust is a crime that Germans committed against Jews, unique in history.
From this follows the duty of every German to fight every form of anti-Semitism - and to show solidarity with the State of Israel, in case of doubt the last home of the Jews.
For others, the Holocaust is a crime against humanity, a universal code for the evil that people can do to other people.
To learn from this means to recognize the roots of this evil also in today - for example in colonialism and racism - in order to be able to counter it.
Unnecessary escalation
What many of those who interfere in the dispute over the BDS decision misjudge is that the two perspectives do not have to be mutually exclusive.
On the contrary, the debate about how these two perspectives should be related has been going on for a long time.
But whoever believes - like the signatories of this letter - that the specific conditions that led to the murder of six million Jews can be crossed out in Germany and transferred to a general history of violence in the world, is playing a dangerous game.
The Bundestag passed the anti-BDS resolution with votes from all parliamentary groups - only the AfD was against it.
Anyone who considers this to be racism (even if it is "through the back door") does not know what he is talking about.
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