The Left Berlin News & Comment

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Month: November 2023

News from Berlin and Germany, 29th November 2023

Weekly news round-up from Berlin and Germany


29/11/2023

NEWS FROM BERLIN

Thousands in Berlin protest against the war drive

Despite the cold weather, thousands of people from all over Germany gathered at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin last Saturday to demonstrate in favour of disarmament and a ceasefire in Ukraine and the Middle East. The actual number of participants lies between the police’s estimate of 10,000 participants, and that of the demo organisers, of more than 20,000 demonstrators. People who already took part in the “Uprising for Peace” demonstration exactly nine months ago in February estimated this time that there would be significantly fewer people. On the previous demonstration, some attention focused on Sahra Wagenknecht, who was still a member of the Left Party at the time. Source: nd-aktuell

Warning strike at Berlin daycare centres

Once again on Tuesday, childcare workers and teachers are striking for more money and better working conditions. The trade unions ver.di and GEW are once again calling on employees of daycare centres to go on a warning strike. The background to this is the current wage dispute in the public sector of the federal states. No agreement has been reached in two rounds of negotiations. Negotiations are taking place nationwide, with the next round scheduled for 7 and 8 December in Potsdam. The trade unions have repeatedly drawn attention to their demands with warning strikes in Berlin in recent weeks. Source: tagesspiel

The Berlin stadium and its heritage

Some call the ensemble around the stadium the best-preserved Nazi artwork to date, while others speak of a “dark heritage”. Very little being actually contextualised. Instead, below the bell tower in the Langemarckhalle, you will find Hölderlin’s sacrificial motto in stone put there by the Nazis: “Live above, O Fatherland / and do not count the dead / Not one too many has fallen for you, dear one”. Those do not seem to be the best conditions for a Berlin Olympic bid. But that is what the black-red Senate in Berlin has done. On 14 November, the CDU and SPD signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” making a bid to host the Olympics. Source: taz

 

NEWS FROM GERMANY

The rights of the Palestinians

The Saarland Museum cancelled an exhibition by Candice Breitz with a video installation about prostitution, planned for spring 2024. The South African-born Jewish Breitz has recently advocated for the rights of Palestinians. Together with other Jews and Israelis, she organised a rally in Berlin on 10 November under the title of the cancelled conference “We still need to talk” for a ceasefire in the Middle East, the release of the hostages and freedom of expression in Germany. “We are the descendants of Esther Bejarano,” the South African referred to the Holocaust survivor and anti-fascist who died in 2021. Source: jungewelt

Peng! Collective Protest gegen Amazon

The German artist-activists Peng! Collective greeted the shopping frenzy of Black Friday Week with a campaign aimed at Amazon. Delivery companies in Germany like Hermes and FedEx as well as Amazon use subcontractors who often subcontract even smaller companies. Some of these operations, according to Rory Linton, spokesman for German union ver.di, are so small that they only employ two or three people and only exist for a short time. “They know they can’t fulfill the contracts if they have correct health and safety and pay a decent wage, so the big companies get rid of the responsibility,” he said. Source: dw

GDL move to strike again on the railway

The train drivers’ union GDL had cancelled the collective bargaining talks with Deutsche Bahn. This was announced by GDL boss Claus Weselsky last Friday. The reason for the cancellation of the negotiations was that the employers’ side did not want to negotiate in areas important to the GDL, he said. There was “no discernible will to negotiate” on the part of the railway, so further negotiations were “pointless”. In addition to the reduction in working hours, the GDL is also demanding an increase of 555 euros per month and an inflation compensation bonus for employees. Source: rbb

Number of major insolvencies at record level

According to a study by the credit insurer Allianz Trade, there are more and more major insolvencies in the German economy. “Major insolvencies have returned this year and are on course to reach their 2020 peak,” says Allianz Trade insolvency expert Maxime Lemerle. Allianz Trade defines major insolvencies as bankruptcies of companies with an annual turnover of at least 50 million euros. Allianz Trade study still points out the construction industry recorded the most insolvencies across all company sizes to date, followed by retail and companies in the service sector. Source: tagesschau

Wissing holds car manufacturers to account

Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) believes the industry has a duty to expand electromobility. Wissing also pointed out that politicians are working intensively on more progress in e-mobility and are pushing ahead with the expansion of the charging infrastructure. “There are currently around 100,000 publicly accessible charging points in operation in Germany. That’s twice as many as two years ago,” he said. The total charging capacity available has also risen from two to 4.3 gigawatts. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) wants to discuss the expansion of electromobility with the automotive industry this week at the “car summit” in the Federal Chancellery, too. Source: tagesschau

„Görlitzer Park für alle“? Why strong communities – not more police – are the solution

The latest enclosure of public spaces, coupled with the ramping up of surveillance measures in Görli, are part of an accelerating trend toward gentrification in Berlin.


28/11/2023

Debates surrounding what to do about Görli have once again been in the news over the last few months. This follows a case of sexual assault in the park on July 27th, allegedly perpetrated by a group of migrant men. Naturally, politicians’ stances have fallen along party lines, with the CDU mayor Kai Wegner seemingly on a personal crusade to boost police presence there. 

All of this prompted a Security Summit, which took place on September 8th to address the prevention of crimes in Görli and other so-called “crime-prone areas” (kriminalitätsbelasteter Ort) around the city. Among the proposed – and agreed upon – measures are the enclosure of the park at night and a police patrol in the surrounding Wrangelkiez. Notably, Wegner made reference to New York’s Central Park where similar actions have been taken following sexual assaults. 

The (racialized) topic of what to do about the “criminals” selling drugs in Görlitzer Park is itself one which has been discussed for at least a decade. There are the obvious critiques to be made of the situation: the increasingly heightened criminalization of migrants hailing from Africa and the Middle East (which is also currently being expressed in the repression around displays of solidarity with Palestine). There’s also the way that paternalistic hand-wringing over the safety and security of women serves to justify more police. 

But one other point that has struck me in all this is how the uptick in security measures is, ironically, being taken in the name of making Görlitzer park safe for “everyone.” Particularly when viewed in light of the trend in draconian policies implemented across the city in recent times, it is worth questioning who exactly constitutes “everyone” – and who is left out of the equation. 

Policy trend towards privatization

Specifically, we ought to consider the widely-publicized drama around Görli in conjunction with a larger constellation of recent political decisions. For one, the city’s conservative government has recently decided to cut assistance for youth facilities, addiction care, and the homeless in Neukölln, a district that’s home to two of the seven so-called crime prone areas in the city. There’s also the intensifying housing crisis, enabled by CDU judge’s overturning of the Mietendeckel in 2021, which has seen rents skyrocket nearly 30% last year alone. In addition, there has been a visible uptick in homelessness and drug use over the last few years, which will only continue to rise in light of the aforementioned measures. All of these decisions exacerbate social inequality, and research is pretty robust in indicating that inequality is positively correlated with crime – leading to further calls for more police. Yet, there is a brazen lack of concern for how all of these policies intersect to produce and perpetuate conditions that lead to crime – alienation, destitution, trauma, and so on. 

Meanwhile, the evidence that enclosing public spaces and ramping up police presence in Görli will really mitigate crime is tenuous. According to Tagesspiegl, even Berlin’s police chief accepts that, “The situation on site will not improve permanently through police measures alone.” Locals have also noted that the increased police presence in the area over the last few years has not helped the situation. Moreover, if the €3.75 million police station in nearby Kotti is any indication, more police are simply not making people in the area feel safer. If anything, they are only playing a role in the perpetuation of criminality and repression where people have fewer ways out in the face of austerity measures that limit access to assistance for drug addicts and poverty relief.

So I would have to call bluff on the politicians’ investment in making any part of Berlin safer for “everyone,” and instead see it as a push towards actualizing a policy agenda set on making our city more hospitable for big business and investment capital. If the aforementioned policies seem to contradict one another in terms of creating a safer situation with less desperation and destitution, they make perfect sense in line with an attempt to “clean up” the city’s streets of undesirables, push the poor out, make things more palatable for wealthier residents, and cast these neighborhoods in a veneer of homogeneity that would appeal to corporations looking to set up shop. As one Kotti resident put it, “The city has other plans for Kreuzberg. Rents here are too high for ordinary people. And once you bring in security, you’ll attract all of the big companies – Adidas, Nike and so on and so forth. Instead of Café Kotti, you’ll get – what’s it called? – Starbucks.”

Here I also think that Wegner’s comparison to Central Park is telling, as NY is a city with a $6bn police budget and, in terms of urban development, an exemplary case for gentrification, untenable cost of living, racial profiling, and the privatization of public spaces. Not to mention that German politicians have justified imposing increased surveillance and security measures such as round-the-clock CCTV cameras in parks based on the fact that it is already being done in other Bundesländer. 

These initiatives – the Security Summit, the enclosures of public spaces, the push for more police in the area – are not really an earnest attempt to mitigate crime in the area. At best, they’re a kind of public maneuver to show that the government is doing something about the situation, but at worst, they’re creating a Görli – and a Berlin – that isn’t for everyone at all. Rather, they’re actualizing a gentrified vision of Berlin. But we don’t want Berlin to be another NY or even like other states in Germany. 

So what is to be done?

It is my sociological opinion that the best antidote to most social problems lies in building strong communities. Luckily, these efforts are already being made by locals in the Wrangelkiez surrounding Görlitzer Park. There have been a number of community-led initiatives to address the issues in the area without the police, including Wrangelkiez United. 

In a recent Tagesschau article, a local resident and member of Wrangelkiez United, explains that increased police presence has only moved the drug trade out of the park and into surrounding neighborhoods. Instead, “It would make sense to try social solutions: overnight accommodations for people who are homeless, consumption rooms and offers of help for people who use drugs, and work permits for people who are here without papers.”

Meanwhile, another resident in the neighborhood included in the article, described as a man playing in the park playground with his grandson, asserts, “I feel very, very comfortable. However, I’m looking for contact with the people, with the criminalized people, so to speak.” He describes his encounters with the supposedly infamous Görli drug dealers, “We almost all know each other now. That’s why I think contact brings a better feeling of security.”

What would truly mitigate crime, therefore, would be addressing social inequality through policies that nourish community and encourage better quality of life: socialization of housing, legalization of drugs, assistance for addicts, and unhoused people. In other words, pretty much the exact opposite of what politicians are currently advocating. These solutions already exist, and it is only a matter of understanding whose interests the politicians currently prioritize. Either way, and as always, it will remain up to the people to mobilize in the name of creating a Berlin that is truly meant for everyone.

Workers of the World Must Unite for Gaza

By now, our politicians already know how we feel. It’s time we hit them where it hurts: in their bank accounts


27/11/2023

The genocide in Gaza has made it crystal clear that bourgeois liberal democracies are not in place to represent the will of the people. We’ve seen millions worldwide demonstrate en masse and representatives’ offices have been flooded with phone calls. There have even been direct confrontations with politicians in the streets, at restaurants, and on trains. Polls also indicate that growing proportions of people in the countries most complicit actually support a ceasefire. This includes 76% in the UK, 68% in the US, and even 41% of Germans believe the attacks in Palestine have gone too far (which outweighs the 35% who think the genocidal aggression is appropriate). 

…if we want to throw a wrench in the machine of genocidal warfare, we ought to do so not by appealing to the conscience of our depraved politicians… but by strategically wielding our power as workers who ultimately create the wealth of the world.

And yet, there is a very clear fracture in the political discourse where heads of state consistently refuse to cede or even consider the will of the people. In the US, Joe Biden openly asserts that there’s no possibility for a ceasefire, and the only Palestinian member of Congress was recently censured for openly demanding one. In the UK, MPs recently voted against a ceasefire (with 293 against and only 125 in favor). Of course in Germany, by now we’re all familiar with the egregious state of repression, police brutality, and the open genocide denialism of its leaders. 

This situation is being described as a mask-off moment that is radicalizing legions of citizens worldwide – particularly university students facing retaliation and discrimination for Palestinian solidarity. The discrepancy between what regular people want and what the government is doing is no aberration. Rather, it is an opportunity to witness precisely which forces truly have political sway in the so-called free world. Luckily, it also offers us a clear view of where our power lies and how we can most potently direct our outrage.

Beyond the farce of representative democracy, we can better ascertain to whom our politicians are beholden. Joe Biden alone is the senator – and presidential candidate – who has received the most money directly from the Israeli lobby. Billionaires in the US as well as Germany profit from arms deals in the form of military aid paid for with our tax dollars. Israel itself is so fiercely protected by the West because it serves as a military outpost in an oil-rich region that is of great strategic importance to the heavy industries of capital.  

So if we want to throw a wrench in the machine of genocidal warfare, we ought to do so not by appealing to the conscience of our depraved politicians – who by now already know how we feel – but by strategically wielding our power as workers who ultimately create the wealth of the world. The strategy of withholding our labor in the form of strikes has been successful not only to win workers’ rights the world over, but in resistance to precisely the same justices of apartheid and cruelty we are seeing now. For example, the international union movement was instrumental in bringing apartheid South Africa to its knees in the 1980s, and the African American-led public transit strikes and boycotts were crucial in ending Jim Crow laws in the US during the 1960s. 

This is where we hold the most collective power to shape the course of events, and this message is already beginning to spread in the case of solidarity with Palestine. On 16th October, Palestinian trade unions released a statement calling for their fellow workers around the world to stop arming Israel. There has since been a growing roster of industrial trade union actions worth taking note of. 

In Italy, rank-and-file unions in the country’s logistics sector are refusing to ship weapons to Israel. In Belgium and Barcelona, dock and transport unions have also announced that they will not load weapons onto cargo vessels headed there. Spanish workers at Airbus – a company notorious for engaging in corrupt arms deals with Israel – have also asserted that they will not be complicit in arms manufacture for the Zionist war machine. 

In the US and the UK, there have been a number of notable forms of labor resistance as well. Shipments headed for Israel have been blocked by thousands of workers in the Tacoma and Oakland Ports. Elbit and BAE Systems in both countries have been sites of occupation and shutdown by working class activists. Numerous other unions have also released statements calling for a ceasefire, defied protest bans and attended demos in blocs of solidarity with Palestinians. 

Indian trade unions have also pledged to resist sending workers to Israel – even despite the Israeli Builders’ Association’s request for 50-100k Indian laborers to replace Palestinians.

In Germany, as usual, Palestine solidarity is less advanced. Major unions in Germany such as ver.di and IG Metall have released official statements in staunch support of Israel. We intend to address this issue in a future article, and to ask to what extent other views are being voiced by rank and file union members.

We must continue to expand these efforts on an larger scale, by mobilizing through union infrastructure and via our communities – particularly where those billionaires and politicians who are profiting most off of this genocide will feel it most. We need to target those industries that are most prevalent here such as arms, oil, and security firms. We must call on unions to refuse to build weapons for Israel, to transport arms there, and also boycott industries that are complicit in Israeli apartheid, including multinationals like Starbucks, McDonalds, and Disney. 

It is through disrupting the gears of capital that we can use our collective might as workers to shape the course of world events in line with the will of the people. And when we use our power to resist the genocide in Gaza, we also liberate ourselves from the shackles of capitalist exploitation wherever we are in the world. 

The obscurantism of Javier Milei

What does the coming to power of the first liberal-libertarian president signify for Argentina and the wider region?


26/11/2023

Milei’s victory in Argentina undoubtedly changes the national and regional political landscape. The earlier defeats of Kast in Chile and Bolsonaro in Brazil, and the victories of Petro and Obrador in Colombia and Mexico respectively, signalled the rejection at a continental level of liberal-authoritarian forms of government. However the Argentinian election, along with Noboa’s victory in Ecuador, has reactivated the growth of the most crazed and extremist aspects of the continent’s right-wing forces. This impacts Latin America and also provides backing for Trump’s presidential ambitions in the USA.

Workers and the middle classes are confronted by elite sections at the margins of the traditional establishment: youtubers, presenters, economic advisors, supporters of the military, and other dubious figures of the global ruling class. They are the product of a world-wide societal decay. They portray themselves as “marginal” – so they don’t resemble the classic lawyer-type politician who thinks and speaks along conventional lines. They can therefore breach the limits of what is sayable. They self-promote an image as “pariahs” to portray a “commonality” with the truly marginalized, who live daily listening to politicians but who offer no solutions to their real problems. The cultural battle of constructing “nacional y popular” identities, falls to pieces when you can’t pay your electric bill or the rent. [nacional y popular refers to the the political persecutive of the kirchnerist government which puts the focus only on the cultural and hegemonical level in order to fight against the right wing parties].

Criticism of the “political caste”, is Milei’s media hobbyhorse. It was transmuted in just a few months into an alliance with the classical parties of the right, so Mauricio Macri and Patricia Bullrich joined with Milei in celebrating the results. There is only a superficial symbiosis between “marginalised” upper class individuals and the truly marginalised lower classes. But the upper class individuals, however uncomfortable Milei makes the establishment feel, end up closing ranks with their class companions. Macri quickly moved to bring structure and an apparatus allowing Milei stability to carry forward plans to dismember Argentinian society.

The poor will be poorer, the rich richer. Across the board violence will increase its hold over our society. Very shortly the government plan  proposed by Milei’s party La Libertad Avanca (Freedom Advances) will hurt the very people who voted for it. The privatization of publicly owned means of communication, public transport and especially YPF (the state-owned Argentine energy company, the biggest enterprise in the country) will be the first measures. To that will be added massive business closures, leading to a surge in unemployment and poverty. The cuts in state spending will impact directly on health, education and social services. This raises the question of how the government will be able to implement all of these regressive measures – the only possible route will be through the militarization of society, through the organization of paramilitary groups or the use of the armed forces.

How did it come to this?

It’s not as if workers were living in a golden age under the Kirchnerist-Peronist government. Milei’s regressive proposals emerged because inflation is at an unsustainable 140% annual rate, and the government was making cuts across the board while religiously paying the International Monetary Fund the interest on an illegitimate debt. People were also fed up seeing part of the political class not living in the same conditions as the people they claimed to represent. It’s significant that the candidate for the continuing Kirchnerist-Peronist project was Sergio Massa, the Minister of Economy in this situation of profound crisis. He is the typical besuited politician, moving from party to party, never politically involved beyond his office desk, ultimately someone whose political career is simply a means of advancing his own wealth and social position.

For many sectors of society, the electoral battle ended up being seen as between the current Minister of Economy (Massa) and someone who presented himself as an outsider to the political system (Milei). And although Milei plans to implement a neoliberal adjustment programme which voters have rejected in the past, he knew how to design an electoral campaign which carried him to victory.

Obviously others played a role in this victory. Most prominently, the political parties before the elections had styled themselves as of the “democratic right or centre”. They ended up forming an alliance with LLA allowing LLA not only to win the presidency but also to achieve a majority in congress. In particular Mauricio Macri, the European Union’s preferred politician, was key to Milei’s arrival in the Casa Rosada presidential palace.

On the other side Kirchnerism-Peronism played its part, as Milei’s victory would not have been possible without the chain of political and economic errors committed by the last government. The final straw was Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s decision to anoint Sergio Massa as presidential candidate. This put someone with dubious ideological beliefs at the head of the movement. Massa – well-known for having changed political parties more times than his clothes – pushed the political and militant base of Kirchnerism-Peronism, along with all human rights activists, to campaign for a candidate neither they nor others wanted.

It’s also important to say that part of the responsibility lies with FIT-U (Workers Left Front – Unity), the institutional left which defines itself as Trotskyist. The FIT-U finds itself systematically on the sidewalk of history, remaining distant and “pure” while watching political processes unfold. One can critique their call not to vote for either candidate. But the main criticism against FIT-U is their constant evasion of seriously constructing a discourse, a practice, and a political force capable of disputing power both inside and outside the state.

A lack of political projects proposing alternatives to deepen democracy, solidarity and equality represents the biggest difficulty and concern of the current moment. This is a painful absence and a huge challenge ahead of us when opposing our class enemy of the moment.

Putting a brake on Milei’s shock programme, which will resemble that of the Chicago Boys in Chile after the 1973 coup, will depend on how the working and middle classes can link their struggles and organisations. Four years of battles removed Macri as president, where people took to the streets almost daily. They were followed by four years of impoverishment, with millions of people surviving at minimum possible levels. As a result popular energies are at a historic low. However Argentina has shown before that, in spite of appearing defeated, people rise up to challenge political programmes of hunger and poverty drawn up in US and European offices.

The question for us all now – what is to be done?

The obvious response is to continue the struggle, organising and creating alternative political projects. We need to go beyond the proposals that led us here, constructing projects to remove the fertile ground that enables the growth of Bolsonaros and Mileis.

And although it appears a cliché, the Grandmothers and mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (protagonists of the struggles for memory, truth and justice in Argentina) remain the best example. They showed how even in the worst moments we can, in spite of fear and powerlessness, rekindle the hope that a better world is possible and can be built.

The historical examples of the resistance in Bolivia to the coup against Evo Morales, and the battles and organising in Colombia that ultimately placed Gustavo Petro and Francia Marquez at the head of the state are recent regional examples which give us hope; struggles can win, as our Latin American sisters and brothers have shown in practice.

However it cannot be denied that the political and social impact of  these last elections will impact on our country for decades. The terrible consequences are close at hand, Ecuador or Mexico are examples of the destructive path this combination of crazed military and neoliberals plan to follow.

We also shouldn’t underestimate the political role of Latin American migrants. Solidarity actions, in uniting reactions to specific political situations and linking struggles in Europe and in Argentina, are a political opportunity that we must not downplay. This was shown in the last elections in Argentina where 1.5% of those on the electoral roll were registered to vote outside the country (and large numbers did not register to vote).

We are convinced that consolidating a political force to build opposition in this profound political and economic crisis is a strategic task to stop the coming neoliberal, privatizing austerity.

It is commonly said that the enemy’s strength is relative to your own. It’s up to us to resist the monster Milei through constructing a political and social movement at this historic moment, until the horizon of a better world is so real that there is no longer a possibility that people like Milei will return to carry us into the abyss. With the historic force of the Grandmothers, the pickets of 2001 and solidarity from across Latin America on our side, the task is clear: organize the resistance.

This statement by the Bloque Latinamericano Berlin originally appeared in Spanish. Translation: Ian Perry. Reproduced with permission

Children, Generations and Rivers

Presentation and Performance given at the meeting “We need to talk: International Solidarity with Palestine”, Cafe Madame Berlin, 18th November 2023


25/11/2023

I am here because of these posters. I have carried them these last weeks at demonstrations. But I have also carried them for years at demonstrations. At a recent demonstration I was approached to be her today because of these posters. Afterwards, if you want, you can take a look at the posters. Today, I have added the voices of children in Gaza to the posters.

***

It is difficult in these times, to know where to begin. Where to turn.

For this moment, I want to turn to children. To generations. And to rivers.

***

I begin.

[nigun sung]

“Where life is precious, life is precious.” The words of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, African American abolitionist scholar and activist.

***

Eyes are for looking and seeing sun
Tongues are for greeting and saying fun
Legs are for walking slowly and also run
Hands are for shaking with friends not for shooting gun

written by Fatema Saidam, age 9. Killed in the rubble of Gaza.

And the child asked: Where do the sounds go,
when we don’t hear them anymore?

***

10,000 and more lives slaughtered; 4,000 , 5,000 and more of these lives, the lives of children.

The voice of Sarah al-Saadi, 14 years-old, in Gaza a few days ago: “This is not a war. This is the extermination of children.” I do not know if she is still alive.

The voice of Khalida Zakaria, 45 years-old in Gaza a few days ago: “This is a war against children. I cried so hard when I saw children writing their names on their hands and feet. Some of them asked me, ‘Does this mean we are going to die?’ I told them, ‘No, this is just a game.’ “

In wars of extermination, children are primary game.

To kill the children , is to kill the future. This is, horribly, an ancient genocidal strategy across times and spaces. It continues to our day. Across generations.

***

I always dream of a life clear as
the serenity of the sky,
And a heart beating with love & optimism …
Why our smiles do not bloom like the flowers?
Let us fly freely as those butterflies …
satisfied, colourful and flapping sky-high ,
away from worries, anxieties, and sorrows.

written by Obada Mohammad Abu Oda, aged 14, killed in the rubble of Gaza.

And the child asked: Where do the sounds go,
when we don’t hear them anymore?

***

There are different ways to kill the children.

Kill their bodies, kill their breath, their voices.

Kill their life-line to the breath, the voices, of those who brought them to life, made their life possible, today and all the yesterdays.

Maim, mutilate their souls in ongoing trauma, in ongoing catastrophe of being, in ongoing exile from freedom and peace.

Generations.

***

“I saw many videos of children who were torn to pieces. Nobody knew who they were. I saw pictures of children writing their names on their hands. That’s why I sat in the schoolyard and wrote my name on my hands and feet. Other children came around and I wrote their names for them. I felt sad, but this is life in Gaza.”

The words a few days ago of Reem Salama, 10 years-old. Is she still alive?

***

” … language has deserted me.”

Adania Shibli last week

As we know, there are many words we are not allowed to speak today. But, as we also know, this is not about what is not allowed. It is about what is allowed. Or more specifically, about what is authorized. How institutionalized denial and criminalization are one, creating meanings and authorizing systems of being, and beings themselves.

This author-ing has a very long and very deep history. With deeply embodied consequences across times and spaces. For generations upon generations.

In fact, one could say, it is all about generations.

I turn to generations. And listen.

In the mid-16th century there was a public debate in Spain between conquistadores and missionaries. The question they debated was: Do natives have a soul or are they natural born slaves? If they have a soul, then we have the Christian duty to save and educate them – in the interest of god, king and church. If they do not have a soul, then we can treat them any way we see fit in the interest of gold, king and church — enslave them, violate them, exterminate them.

The question was not “Do we conquer?” but rather: “How do we conquer?” The debate over defintions was a debate about how to authorize the conquest of the lands and their indigenous peoples. Are we mighty warriors or civilizing saviours? Are they brutish animals or lost souls? One way or the other, we define the embodied geography of being.

Language and its deployments are no sideline of genocide and occupation. Language and its deployment authorize genocide and occupation in their varied forms.

Language generates.

Even, especially, as it bans and criminalizes.

***

I turn again to generations. And listen.

In January 1996 there was an arson attack on a refugee hostel in Lübeck. Ten people were killed, 5 of them children. 38 were wounded. 4 young white German men were found near the burnt house with singed eyelashes, connections to neo-Nazi groups and had no alibis. But it was Safwan Eid, a 20-year-old man from Lebanon who had stayed on the roof of the burning house to help save others, who was almost immediately arrested and charged as the culpable criminal. The sole so-called evidence used against him: a first-aid worker claimed that Safwan Eid had said to him on the way to the hospital : “Wir war’n es” – ‘We did it / It was us.’

Within hours, across all media, across all public discourse, Safwan Eid became the embodiment of the ‘criminal, primitive, barbaric alien collective’ endangering the German ‘Volkskörper’ .

He faced 2 trials over the span of 3 years, and although there was never any evidence against him, he was never declared innocent. He was acquitted 2 times for ‘lack of evidence’. And thus remained branded a permanent suspect.

What remained was ‘Wir war’n es / It was us.’ The criminal, barbarian, alien collective – by definition , a permanent danger to civilization. A permanent suspect.

And what also remained : 10 dead, 5 dead children. And murderers left free to live as innocents.

This was 1996 in the new Germany. And it was a turning point.

I turn, again, to generations. And listen.

***

In the 80’s in the context of Glasnost and Perestroika, as it became clear that the US and the West had ‘won the Cold War’, the FRG started positioning itself to finally become a full member of the US-European axis of power. There was a surge of re-defining ‘ Germany’ and the German ‘Volk.

A surge of re-authorizing and generating ‘Germany.’

On the one hand, this articulated itself in a distancing from Nazi generations. Not as a rebellious youth as in the 60’s, but rather in the language of ‘adult responsibility’ and the ‘true German soul,’ — now finally able, again, to proudly take its rightful place at the adult table of the Civilized. In the language of Christian atonement: The re-newed Germany had paid its penance, was now mature, cleansed, born again. The atoned protector was born again from the ashes of jewish corpses. (No other corpses were or are relevant to German generations )

On the other hand, this re-birth articulated itself as the liberation of the Volk, repressed and shackled for far too long in guilt long beyond its expiration date.

These re-authorizings of the ‘new Germany’ generated an explosion of racist violence.

The early 90’s were filled with people being burned alive, beaten, tortured, terrorized and killed in a variety of ways. Hoyeswerda, Rostock, Mölln, Solingen, Lübeck … Always authorized in terms of the alien criminal , the primitive, the animal barbarian endangering the borders and safety of the German Volkskörper. And , parallel to this, was the massive overhaul and intensification of the repressive border regime and the emergence of Fortress Europe – deployed in the language of protecting the Volkskörper, protecting Civilization from dangerous invasions.

Whether Christian atonement & adult responsibility or breaking free from expired shackles of guilt, one way or the other, this re-newed Germany was – and is — authorized in the soil of jewish ashes and generations of Civilization.

The Lübeck arson attack, murders and judicial & discursive lynching of Safwan Eid was a turning point: it renewed, reauthorized and normalized a deeply rooted discourse. We hear Lübeck today – we hear Hoyeswerda, Rostock, Mölln, Solingen, Hanau, NSU today — from Sonnenalle to Staatsräson, from BDS legislation to deportations to Palestine.

From every banned river flowing to every banned sea.

***

Vincent Harding, the African American scholar, political activist and nurturer of the beloved community, spoke of the ‘river’ of African American voices and histories over centuries and generations . In his famous 1981 book There is River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America, he speaks of “the soul of the river, of its people, the living and the dead, the many thousands gone … the spirit of a community in hard and costly movement toward freedom. “

This river, this struggle for freedom, he calls the ‘beloved community.’

” [The river is] … at its heart a profoundly human quest for transformation, a constantly evolving movement toward personal integrity and toward new social structures filled with justice, equity, and compassion. … [The] river moves toward a freedom that liberates the whole person and humanizes the entire society … [This] is the magnificent opening toward which the river has been moving,

the great ocean of humanity’s best hope that it has always held and nurtured at the center of its own bursting life.”

***

“Where life is precious, life is precious. “

Fatema, Obada, Reem, Haya, Sarah, and all the generations …. these are voices of the river,

and they will flow,

and they will flow …

and they are the flow ….

[nigun sung]

***

References

The poems by Fatema Saidam and Obada Mohammad Abu Oda are on the website of the Hands Up Project https://www.handsupproject.org/. HUP is an educational project working with teachers and young people in Gaza. It is now doing podcasts of the voices of children and teachers they have worked with: some no longer alive, some sending messages from the rubble.

The words of Sarah al-Saadi, Khalida Zakaria and Reem Salama are quoted in, Does Israel want to exterminate Gaza’s children?, Ruwaida Amer, The Electronic Intifada , 13. November 2023 ()

Adania Shibli, quoted in : “In the last four weeks language has deserted me’: Adania Shibli on being shut down,” John Freeman , The Guardian

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “where life is preciosu, life is precious,” see for example the short film, “Geographies of Racial Capitalism”