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“They’re also accusing Jewish people of antisemitism”

On the defamation of Palestine solidarity by state appointed “experts” and the effects of the Bundestag Resolution on BDS


14/03/2021

Interview with Wieland Hoban

 

Wieland Hoban is a composer, translator and executive member of the organisation “Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost” [Jewish Voice for just peace in the Middle East]. He represents the organisation in the organisation IJCJP (International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine).

Questions: Emre Sahin (ES). Answers: Wieland Hoban (WH)

ES: At the beginning of February, Wieland – in your capacity of executive member of the “Jewish Voice for a just peace in the Middle East”, you received an answer to a letter that you’d written to the Berlin senate in November. In the letter you had criticized the appointment of the social scientist Samuel Salzborn as the state of Berlin’s contact person for antisemitism. Why?

WH: The severe criticism came from our horror that Salzborn had been given this post. The letter set out our points of criticism: for example, Salzborn had reacted polemically to the simple usage of the term “Palestine”. He had denied the Nakba (the mass expulsion of Palestinians which preceded the establishment of the State of Israel), and he claimed that people only left because some big landowners had sold their plots of land. He also denied the existence of Islamophobia as a matter of principle. He called for the removal of the term, because he saw it as a provocation.

Salzborn uses every opportunity to blame left wingers or Muslims for antisemitism, paying less attention to the large virulent danger from the right. He and other like minded people mainly speak about what they call ‘Israel-related antisemitism’. This also exists to an extent, but does not pose an important danger to Jews in Germany. This is why we asked for urgent talks.

At first we sent a letter to the senate administration by post. Some weeks later, we also sent an e-mail, with the document attached. Then I rang them every couple of weeks to see what was happening, but each time I was brushed off. They said, the answer was in progress, and we would hear from them very soon.

Finally I tried to apply more pressure and shortly afterwards they did send a very insubstantial answer.

ES: Were your points of criticism addressed?

WH: Absolutely not. The answer mainly consisted of a replication of information that was already known. The job had been announced, many people had applied, and Salzborn was the most qualified candidate. The process was over, and therefore they didn’t find it “productive” to organise a meeting. None of the criticism was addressed, which wasn’t surprising. They couldn’t have done so without looking very bad.

ES: Salzborn is also known for accusing the party Die LINKE of antisemitism. But he got his job from a government in which die LINKE is a partner. How can you explain this?

WH: I think that no one really concerned themselves with the facts. He was a ‘specialist’ on antisemitism and had written about it. Essentially he is part of, let’s say, an antisemitism industry, in which certain theoretical models are used to endlessly repeat the same theorems, often referring to the work of Theodor W. Adorno.

This also corresponds to the so-called “Anti-Deutsch” tendency. Virtually no one has concerned themselves with the substance. Maybe they’ve looked at Salzborn’s resumé and thought that he’s a qualified academic, has published some things and maybe there were certain personal relationships.

It’s also the case that in Germany – for understandable reasons – there is too little knowledge about questions which concern Jewish subjects, ideas or also sensitivities. Then there’s the obvious support for the State of Israel, and Salzborn positions himself as very strongly pro-Israeli. That was also important to the administrations because they thought: “antisemitism is about Israel, Salzborn is pro-Israel, so that’s good”.

ES: How does the appointment of Salzborn as contact person for antisemitism affect critical Jewish voices in Berlin? It’s clear that he won’t talk to your organisation.

WH: You could say that it is a slap in the face. But we know from experience that such voices like ours are thin on the ground in Germany. People with similar beliefs tend to hold themselves back rather than going onto the offensive as the discourse has been poisoned. If you want to join it, you must also be prepared to go to battle or to stand up to great defamations.

ES: What is the role of the Israeli government of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu? For example in 2018, Netanyahu sent a letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel demanding that the Jewish Museum in Berlin should not receive any financial support because the institution supported the pro-Palestinian campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). But the museum had not supported BDS.

WH: And although Merkel clearly rejected this request, the museum director Peter Schäfer met so much hostility that he eventually stood down. There are cases where the Israeli government really is involved, such as with the museum. Sometimes this is not from high positions, but through associations which have links with the government. As soon as you talk about this, you are countered that this is an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Even when you can prove it, connotations are made of some lobby or some government controlling everything from afar.

ES: Your organisation has been criticized by various Jewish institutions, societies and initiatives – in particular when you received the Göttinger Peace Prize in 2019

WH: There was also an attempt to prevent the prize giving ceremony by withdrawing permission to use the rooms. Fortunately this could be circumvented by using a different venue. On top of this, our bank account was closed because of allegations of antisemitic activities.

ES: Are the attacks on you still going on?

WH: We are a very small group, so not everyone pays attention to what we do. But we are working with others, and there was also the “Initiative GG 5.3 Weltoffenheit”. That aims to stop people being muzzled because of a real or alleged relationship with BDS, or a critical attitude towards Israel. This is very important as it brings the debate about BDS in the foreground again. The government wants to stifle discussion on the topic, especially a report from the ‘Research Services of the Bundestag’ which contradicts their views.

This report was commissioned by Felix Klein, the government’s antisemitism commissar, because he expected that the Bundestag anti-BDS resolution of the previous year was legal and would receive an official confirmation from the report. But the Research Services came to the conclusion that the resolution constitutes an excessive interference with the freedom of opinion, and that if it were made legally binding, this would be unconstitutional.

The resolution is curious in that despite its non-binding status – the Bundestag lawyers classified it as an expression of opinion – it almost had the effect of a law. This because it has been generally accepted on the ground. If you invite someone to a meeting and they can be put in some sort of relationship with BDS, you get no support, rooms, money etc. This leads to self-censorship and self restriction.

The discourse has now arrived at such a level that people like Salzborn or Felix Klein can also accuse Jewish people of antisemitism, for example when they support BDS. There is not the slightest attempt to listen or to want to understand, why they engage themselves like this. It is moreover pretty arrogant of them to claim this sovereignty of the discourse.

ES: Similar things happened in Great Britain. When Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party, there were allegations of antisemitism against the party in order to discredit him.

WH: Exactly. There wasn’t such a resolution in Great Britain, and in principle BDS as a term is not used as strongly to delegitimize people as in Germany. That is also connected with the Bundestag resolution, which was able to reduce a whole movement – that of Palestine solidarity – to 3 letters.

But it’s not the case that everyone who stands up for justice in Palestine is automatically for BDS. It’s also not the case that everyone who supports BDS believes that anyone who does not do this is at fault. The whole debate has been reduced to this. If someone argues for the Palestinians, without mentioning BDS, they are immediately asked: “Are you for BDS or not?” Or they are told “That’s going in the direction of BDS”. It is no longer possible to talk about the substance.

My hope is that through the ‘Initiative GG 5.3’ or the report from the Research Service, it will become less natural to reduce this discourse to 3 letters, or that BDS is something which can’t be discussed, something antisemitic. Then the discussion can be: what is BDS about? Why should it be antisemitic? Why it is not antisemitic? And, why are there also Jewish people who support BDS or Palestine solidarity as a whole?

ES: When the fight against antisemitism is so important for the Israeli government, how can they maintain good relationships with some ultra-right governments in Europe?

WH: That is because the government, and above all Netanyahu, are absolute opportunists. It is more important to them to have allies – above all against Muslims. They don’t care what Hungary’s premier Viktor Orbán thinks about Jews. The notorious tropes – for example, that George Soros manipulates world events, continuing the old antisemitic propaganda lie of a “Jewish world conspiracy” – these are also things which Netanyahu says himself, because a powerful Left supposedly threatens his rule.

In Poland there was a law which essentially banned any recognition of any Polish complicity in the Holocaust. Shortly after, Netanyahu was in Poland, and was not at all disturbed by this, because that’s not important to him as long as Poland’s political leadership is pro-Israeli.

Or Netanyahu’s tolerance for ex-US president Donald Trump, who has made many antisemitic statements, but who is also pro-Israeli. If the Israeli government or its defenders speak of antisemitism, they often mean an opposition to or critical opinion of Israel. They can no longer separate Israel from Jews as a whole.

ES: A further controversy was the appointment of Ephraim Eitam to the post of director of the Israeli memorial to the victims of the Shoah, Yad Vashem, at the end of 2020. In the past, he has insulted the Palestinians as a “cancerous growth in the body of the nation”. After protests, the appointment was withdrawn, and now there is an interim director. Why was there a calculated choice of Eitam for the job?

WH: The procedures have made it very clear that the memory of the Shoah is political in Israel. It shows how important it is that people in decisive positions are to some extent anti-Palestinian. Eitam is definitely that – to a more noticeable extent than others.

But that is not so rare as it should be for high-ranking officials in Israel. And this does not just work against Palestinians, but also against migrants and refugees from Africa, usually from Sudan. They have already been designated by high-ranking politicians as a “cancerous growth” in society. This virulent racism comes from the state doctrine that Israel is Jewish. This means that Jews are at the top and other communities must be subordinate.

This article originally appeared in German in the junge Welt. Reproduced with permission. Translation: Phil Butland. Free three week subscription to junge Welt here. Support the jW campaign Who’s afraid of whom? (English translation coming here soon).

The petty-bourgeois threat of QAnon

What drives a celebrity chef to ally with the AfD?


12/03/2021

What do progressives face in the phenomena of QAnon and QuerDenken? Who are they? How can we explain the motivations of people in these movements and their class basis? Both questions are addressed below, referencing their linkages in both Germany and the USA.

1. Origins of QAnon: What do they believe, and what are their political alliances?

By now, most people are aware that the beliefs of QAnon supporters are bizarre. However, their alliances with right-wing militias and individuals are under-appreciated. For example, QAnon clearly influenced the killer who launched the racist rampage in Hanau. In Germany, QAnon followers declare the state illegitimate:

“The gunman in the central German city of Hanau who killed 10 people and then himself in February alluded to topics circulating in the QAnon cosmos. In a YouTube video, he argued that there were subterranean military installations in the U.S. where children are abused and killed and where the devil is worshipped. QAnon followers also played a role in the storming of the Reichstag, the seat of German parliament, in Berlin in late August by a group protesting the authorities’ measures to control COVID-19. Naturopath Tamara Kirschbaum, who called on people to run up the building’s stairs to the entrance, is identified online as a “freelance employee” of Qlobal-Change, a portal of QAnon followers. She describes herself as “the voice” of the “X22 Report,” a YouTube show about QAnon-related topics… The Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the German domestic intelligence agency, in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia classifies her as a member of the Reichsbürger (or “citizens of the Reich”) scene, a group that does not believe in the legitimacy of the modern German state”. [1]

QAnon beliefs are stark:

“If you believe QAnon, everything that is going on right now in the world — from the COVID-19 pandemic to the #MeToo movement— boils down to one thing: a hidden cabal is working overtime to traffic (and sacrifice) children, enslave the populace, and enact a new world order.” [2]

Where did QAnon come from? In 2013, software developer Frederick Brennan started the website ‘8Chan’ after tripping on ‘magic mushrooms’. He then linked with James and Ron Watkins, to build a new un-moderated message board. In 2017, it grew by building on the myth of the ‘Pizzagate’ falsehood in the 2016 USA elections. This conspiracy theory alleged that Hillary Clinton was operating a child sex ring from a pizza parlour in Washington DC. [3]

Since then, QAnon led an attempted invasion of the German Reichstag, and the brief occupation of the USA Capitol. In addition to links with overtly political right wingers, they are intimately involved in the COVID deniers movement:

“From Stuttgart to Ulm, Gera, Düsseldorf, Munich, and Hanover, so-called hygiene demos against the lockdown have blurred lines between legitimate political expression, disorderly conduct, and conspiracy theories. An earlier such protest in Berlin—under the motto “Day of Freedom” – drew 20,000 attendees before it was preemptively broken up by police for not obeying public health measures. Organizers and their supporters—including some in the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party claimed that over 1.3 million people took part.” [4]

Another organisation in Germany in this potent mix is ‘Querdenken 711’. Both QAnon and Querdenken 711 are tied to open fascists. In Germany this is expressed in the “Pegida movement” and the fascist Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD):

“The leading organizer of Germany’s coronavirus rebellion is Querdenken 711, a diffuse and growing grassroots movement with origins in Stuttgart. Querdenken 711 has become the epicenter of Germany’s so-called Corona-Pegida movement—a reference to the Dresden-based anti-Islam, ethnonationalist Pegida movement that caught fire in Germany’s east. In fact, Pegida leader Lutz Bachmann has redirected his conspiratorial organizing away from Islamization and toward Merkel’s COVID-19 policies. The AfD has leveraged these sentiments by submitting parliamentary motions titled “Restoring fundamental rights despite corona,” implicitly claiming these rights have been taken from German citizens. Together with other movements such as the nationalist Zukunft Heimat in Brandenburg, some wings of the AfD and left-wing activists .. they have blamed shadowy elites, particularly the billionaire tech founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, for puppeteering the COVID-19 crisis. This loose alliance of right and left, conspiracy-fueled illiberal forces is eerily reminiscent of the Querfront cross-ideological affinities of extremists in the Weimar era.” [5]

Such cross-fertilisations make Germany an epicenter. In these connections, they also recruit articulate including ‘left’ elements such as the playwright Anselm Lenz. How large are these organisations?

“In recent months, Querdenken 711 has developed connective tissue with the Reichsbürger, Hildmann, and the growing German following of the QAnon cult of conspiracy. In fact, Germany has the second-highest number of QAnon believers after the United States. NewsGuard has identified more than 448,000 QAnon followers in Europe. On YouTube, Facebook, and Telegram, accounts dealing with the QAnon conspiracy have over 200,000 followers in Germany alone. Telegram Channels related to QAnon (such as Frag uns doch! WWG1WGA and Qlobal-Change) have gone from 10,000 to nearly 200,000 followers combined in the past five months. The German-language QAnon YouTube channel Qlobal-Change has over 17 million views.“ [6]

Daniel Koehner of the Stuttgart based ‘German Institute on Radicalization and De-radicalization Studies’ says the national database of the Federal Intelligence estimates there are now roughly 15-20,000 individuals – which has steadily increased over time. He makes the point that it consists now no longer only of the old trope (e.g. young skinheads), but has new forms of radicalization or sub-cultural forms. Every day the database estimates there are 2-3 violent hate crimes per day. [7]

This is clear when we see who leads this burgeoning apparatus. In Germany, two names have been indelibly linked, among others – are the celebrity chef Attila Hildemann and the pop singer Xavier Naidoo:

“Public figures such as the former national news anchor Eva Herman, the rapper Sido, and Hildmann have all expressed sympathy with the conspiracy theory. The German pop star Xavier Naidoo, a former judge on the German version of American Idol—Deutschland Sucht den Superstar—regularly shares QAnon content and tearfully lamented the supposed shadowy globalist sex-trafficking ring on YouTube.” [8]

Despite a nearly identical ideology, both are manifestly not the prototype of the ‘Aryan’ Hitler-ian. One is of Turkish origin, and the other is clearly Black. They also have recruited technically useful idiots:

“One prominent example is Sucharit Bhakdi, German Thai epidemiologist, who has started a YouTube channel claiming that COVID-19 deaths are exaggerated, linking deaths in China and Italy to air pollution, and calling lockdowns unconstitutional. His coronavirus-related YouTube channel has gained over 100,000 followers in less than six months, and his videos have over 8 million views total. Another example is Wolfgang Wodarg, a former member of parliament for the Social Democrats and a virologist by training, who has linked COVID-19 to attempts by the pharmaceutical industry to sell vaccines.” [9]

I have written previously of the link between medical mis-information and COVID deniers, and the link of these elements with the conflict of interests. For example, if Attila Hildemann cannot have cookfests at restaurants, it naturally serves his economic interests to agitate against epidemiologically sensible lockdowns. Without much more delving, I cannot as yet easily explain the attachment of Naidoo.

What about the USA – who took part in the Capitol riots? It is well known that QAnon members played a pivotal role in the Capitol riots, [10, 11, 12] along with many milita groupings. I do not dwell on this. But, while many left observers have detailed the QAnon involvement in the Capitol Riots, their analysis often does not allow insight into the social bases and classes of the movement. [13]

However, the left observations by Strether do allow insight. He noted as did Daniel Koehner noted above – a wide movement of diverse ages and background. Nonetheless, he found a significant representation of what I will term as the ‘petite bourgeoisie’. We define this term below.

.

Using a careful search strategy, Strether looked at occupations of the 107 rioters who had been charged. He found there were 10 ‘owners’, 3 real estate brokers, 2 suppliers, 3 self-employed small arts people; 3 contractors or marketers; and a variety of other likely self-employed persons (e.g. arborist, chimney cleaner). [14]

Other observers also point to a ‘middle class’ participation:

“Although any crowd that size is bound to include people who are struggling financially, no one should be shocked to see the middle classes so well represented among the mob”. [15]

“Amid the ranks of the costumed and cosplaying (i.e. character dressing up – author) in the halls of Congress were CEOs, average Joes, small-business owners and elite travelers who flew private jets to D.C. and then stormed the Capitol. Civic leaders and religious activists also took part in the melee.” [16]

2. What is the class basis of this reactionary right wing?

Most people reading this will recognize that in a capitalist society such as Germany or the USA, there are two main classes – the ruling class and the working class. To what class do shop-keepers, chefs, restauranteurs and the like belong? I think it is apparent that these layers of the ‘middle class’ – are what Marx called the petty bourgeoisie. They stand in between the two main classes. As Marx and Engels put it: “In countries where modern civilization has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed.” [17]

The petty bourgeoisie is defined as a class that owns or rents small means of production which it operates largely without employing wage labour, but often with the assistance of members of their families: ”A petty-bourgeois is the owner of small property.” [18]

As a worker, the petty bourgeoisie has interests in common with the proletariat; as an owner of means of production, however, he has interests in common with the bourgeoisie. In other words, the petty bourgeoisie has a divided allegiance towards the two decisive classes in capitalist society. Marx expressed this as: “Thus, the ‘independent’ petty-bourgeois producer is cut up into two persons. As owner of the means of production he is a capitalist; as a labourer he is his own wage-labourer”. [19]

Consequently this petty bourgeoisie vacillates, as they have a divided allegiance between the two decisive classes in modern capitalist society. Moreover, they are often in constant danger of becoming working class. Partly this is because they have such a limited capital resource:

“The lower strata of the middle class… sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital .. is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production” 15 . This is an incessant process: “The working class gains recruits from the higher strata of society. A mass of petty industrialists and small rentiers are hurled down into its ranks”. [20]

In fact, as capitalist society develops, it becomes increasingly polarised into two basic classes– wealthy bourgeois and poor proletarians: “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up… into two great classes facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat”. [21]

Conclusion

It is not surprising that those being ground down by the process, resent their loss of independence and likely loss of their living. It is often they that form the pool of resentment that swells the ranks of fascist parties and forces. These forces revel in exploiting fears and divisions to gain forces – just as they did during Kristallnacht.

There are obviously modern wrinkles on this old story. One is obvious: Neither the celebrity chef Attila Hildemann and the pop-singer Xavier Naidoo – are white. I think that this shows that colour is over-ridden by other interests, which at bottom are likely class interests. Only a determined broad-based progressive alliance can overcome these myriad forces that have lined up alongside openly fascist forces. Build the anti-fascist front!

 

Footnotes

1 Patrick Beuth & others; The Most Dangerous Cult of our times Der Spiegel, 24.09.2020

2 September 23, 2020 by Bernadette Giacomazzo; The People Behind QAnon Have Been
Revealed — and Youʼve All Been Had; CNN

3 Benjamin Restle, Why the QAnon conspiracy theory is gaining popularity; DW

4 Tyson Barker, Germany Is Losing the Fight Against QAnon – The German government beat back the coronavirus pandemic—but has largely given up against conspiracy theories; Sept 2 2020; Foreign Policy

5 Ibid

6 Ibid

7 Daniel Koehler, Director of the German Institute on Radicalization and De-Radicalization Studies, Interview with Worldview with Trudy Rubin: Philadelphia Inquirer at 18- 22 minutes.

8 Barker op cit

9 Ibid

10 Laura E Adkins & Emily Burack, Neo-Nazis, QAnon and Camp Auschwitz: A guide to the hate symbols and signs on display at the Capitol riots; January 7, 2021. Jewish telegrpahic Agency,

11 Gino Spocchia, What role did QAnon play in the Capitol riot? ‘QAnon has been calling on this kind of madness for years’, says analyst, 09 January 2021, The Independent

12 Sabrina Tavernise & Matthew Rosenberg, These Are the Rioters Who Stormed the Nation’s Capitol’; Janaury 7, 2021

13 Daniel Bessner & Amber A’lee Frost, ‘How the QAnon Cult Stormed the Capitol’; 19 January 2021, Jacobin

14 Lambert Strether, The Class Composition of the Capitol Rioters (First Cut) January 8, 2021. ‘Naked Capitalism’

15 Adam Serwer, The Capitol Rioters Weren’t ‘Low Class’ -The business owners, real-estate brokers, and service members who rioted acted not out of economic desperation, but out of their belief in their inviolable right to rule. January 12, 2021; The Atlantic

16 Adam Chandler, ‘Capitol rioters weren’t just clowns and militants — they’re our neighbors’; The Seattle Times, Jan. 22, 2021

17 Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ in: Karl Marx: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 231; 213; 205-6

18 Vladimir I. Lenin: Note to: ‘To the Rural Poor’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 2; London; 1944; p. 254

19 Karl Marx: ‘Theories of Surplus Value’, Part 1; Moscow; undated; p. 395.

20 Karl Marx: ‘Wage-Labour and Capital’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; London; 1943′ p. 280

21 Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels op cit

A Space in Germany to Speak about Palestine and Palestinians

Interview with the organisers of the exhibition “Eyes of Gaza”


10/03/2021

Eyes of Gaza عيون غزة is an exhibition of photographs which resulted from an exchange project between 10 young people in Gaza and students from a school in Gütersloh, Germany. Its aim is to give the students a first-hand impression of life in Gaza in pictures and in writing.

The exhibition is part of the Zait wa: zaʕtar Festival of Palestinian Arts and Culture, which was planned to take place in Berlin this Spring. Due to Covid-19-related contact restrictions, most of the festival has been postponed or moved online (register here for more information).

Phil Butland spoke to Nahed Awwad (NA) and Cora Josting (CJ), respectively coordinator of Eyes of Gaza and initiator of the Zait wa: zaʕtar festival

How did the project Eyes of Gaza come to pass? Who had to do what to make it happen?

CJ: From when I initiated the festival as a new Ibn Rushd project back in the fall of 2018, I always wanted to include a visual arts part. As showing painted pictures of established Palestinian artists is an enterprise that seemed too complicated and too costly, especially for the festival’s first season, the team agreed very early on that we should focus on photography. Photographs can be transported digitally and then printed in Berlin where we wanted to exhibit them on the opening evening of our three-day-festival.

This was the plan before Covid-19 came along and forced us to re-schedule multiple times; we are now on plan C with changes still being made according to the Covid-19 regulations. Then in the spring of 2019 Nahed joined the team and developed the idea to find a group of teenagers in Gaza who would take pictures themselves. We went from there developing the project step by step, adapting to the changing situation (mostly Covid-related) in Germany and Gaza.

NA: The idea was to have an exhibition from Gaza and I thought working with the youth from Gaza would make most sense. The percentage of youth in Gaza is very high, yet they are politically and culturally under-represented. We wanted to provide a platform they could use to speak for themselves and we did this through photography. Everyone went out and took their own photos, so that we can see Gaza through their eyes.

In order to achieve that we needed to conduct a photography workshop in Gaza with these teenagers. We chose two photographers, Amjad from Gaza and Stefanie from Berlin, to train the teenagers. It was important for me to involve a German photographer, because I wanted to expertly and culturally enrich the exchange between Germans and Palestinians.

The workshop taught the participants about technical and aesthetic issues – such as portrait, the use of shadow and light – as well as how to tell a story through photographs. The teenagers were introduced to the works of well-known historic photographers, like the Palestinian Karima Aboud and the US-American Vivian Maier, as well as to the works of the project’s own photography tutors Amjad Al Fayoumi and Stefanie Kulisch.

What are things looking like in Gaza now? How has Covid-19 affected things?

NA: There are lots of Covid-19 cases and Gaza lacks health infrastructure. They are cut off from the rest of the world, but they now have limited access to some vaccination doses after they were delayed at the borders by Israel. You know, Palestinians are not in control of their territory or borders. Under international law, the State of Israel as an occupier is responsible for the population under its control, but they refuse to do so, claiming that this would be up to “Palestinian Authorities” in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. But these authorities have no power. They need Israeli permissions for exporting and importing goods, including medicine like Covid-19 treatment, respectively vaccination.

In general, the situation in Gaza also affected us. We planned a three-day workshop with practical exercises for the kids. During the planning meetings we had to stick to the hours when electricity would be available in Gaza and be ready for cuts anytime. The Gazans had to plan to charge their laptops or phones for the meetings.

The initial workshop was planned for August, but Gaza was then in total Corona-lockdown. So we had to postpone to September due to the pandemic, and then to October 2020, and they did everything online.

So, yes, it was a challenging situation. But the team and the kids worked hard and we are proud of the results. It is actually impressive that young people in Gaza are able to produce beautiful and creative things, especially in art and culture, despite the siege and the limited resources.

My experience, certainly since the recent Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, is that while older Germans wrap themselves in knots worrying about Israel, the younger generation feels a much more automatic solidarity with the Palestinians. Did you also feel this?

CJ: I think there is a difference between the older and the younger generations and the way they feel towards Palestinians. The younger generation is, generally speaking, more ready to view Palestinians as human beings like themselves, while the older generation feels more obliged to stand with Israel, which to them still represents the victims that their elders made of European Jews, which makes them readier to ‘other’ Palestinians.

I think, and I hope, that the understanding of Palestinian suffering, trauma and ongoing oppression is growing, in general and also in Germany. Social media can be a supporting factor in this, especially since the younger generation Palestinians for the most part speak quite good English. But I would in no way call this an automatic solidarity, rather a hard-earned one.

NA: I’d hope for bigger solidarity with Palestine under Israeli occupation from the younger German generation, but I’m not sure if I can confirm. The older generations and some of the young ones are tied up to their history and past. It is not easy for them to think of the Israeli state apart from their history. It seems impossible for them to see the Palestinian point of view or even to admit that perspectives other than the dominant German one is permissible. So, they don’t want to see that the people that had to escape from Germany and Europe uprooted another people in Palestine.

The younger German generations are freer to think about the present and I would think that the range of information accessible online does its part. There is more literature, films, and art about Palestine and its struggle available in different languages, although unfortunately not enough in German. There is lots in English, which is more accessible for the younger generation, because they tend to speak the language.

And recently and most importantly, with the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement and growing anti-racist movements in the world, especially in the West, it has become more difficult to avoid discussing the colonization of Palestine.

What sort of kids were involved from Gütersloh? Was it just “Biodeutsche”, or also kids with migrant backgrounds? If there were different backgrounds, did the kids react differently?

CJ: I would like to state that I question this term. I know ‘Biodeutsche’ has been in fashion to describe – who, actually? Those born here, true for many children of parents with a different home country as well, or those who have – German genes maybe?? As there is no such thing.

What is now Germany has always been in the middle, people have been migrating to the region and from it for centuries and centuries. I guess I would be called a Biodeutsche, but then if I look a few generations back there were Huguenots and also Eastern-Europeans, not even sure from where exactly. And that’s the same for most people and families in Germany, it has just been forgotten over the post-2nd WW and its fixed borders and ‘iron curtains’.

As much as this may seem a detour from the question, I come back to it by saying the migrations to Germany that have happened in recent years and decades are just coming back to a more normal kind of state, in which people migrate to where they see a better future. And so, in our project we did have children whose parents migrated to Germany, like Turkish-German, or who migrated here with their parents, from war zones in the SWANA-region mostly.

NA: There were kids with Kurdish, Iraqi, and Polish backgrounds, or foregrounds, involved as well. And the kids in Gaza come from different parts of the Gaza Strip and from different schools, unlike the kids in Germany who all attend the same school.

How did the Palestinian kids react to their German (digital) visitors?

NA: Most of the kids in Gaza were happy to get into contact with the German students and they were eager to hear from them. They wanted to tell them about Gaza but also they wanted to hear about Germany and about freedom of movement and about their hobbies and interest in music or singing….

The exhibition is showing as part of the [zait wa: zaʕtar] Festival of Palestinian Arts and Culture. Cora is convening a panel discussion in the same festival on Orientalizing the Holy Land. Could you please explain a little more what that is about?

CJ: Images shape the way we think of places and of people. And images are being produced actively by those who make them – painters, photographers, filmmakers. There are lots of images depicting the place that is a holy land to those believing, and its people, be they historic or spiritual figures; start with Jesus being painted as a light-skinned blond man by most European painters from the Middle Ages onward, and think of the Arcadian landscape in pictures with a biblical reference which supposedly represents a historic place but is often closer to a religious or spiritual utopia.

Those were images that already influenced Christian travelers taking pictures of Palestine with their cameras around the turn of the 20th century. Those cameras were very slow instruments, so the photographs were no snapshots but carefully constructed images. What were they looking to depict, what did they maybe exclude? And how did their minds and their images influence ours, in how far do the images we have of Palestine and the disruption that must occur with the reality today, influence the way we think about Palestine, and how we might think it should be? These are some of the questions that will be discussed by the experts on the panel.

The discussion is about how the Western Christian travellers shaped the image of Palestine. Admission time: my grandmother was a devout Christian who worked in a bacon factory. Her main aim in life was to visit the Holy Land so she saved up for decades and went when she retired. Was she part of the problem?

CJ: Your grandmother was traveling to see places that were important to her belief, to her spiritual imagination. Like a pilgrimage, a spiritual quest, which I understand is important to many believers. The voyage itself, the time you take off to think of things larger than yourself and your life, can be a very good thing to achieve an inner peace, and poses no problem to anybody else as long as the believer travels peacefully, like she did, without aiming to interfere with anybody else’s lives; the crusaders for example were a different matter since they did not respect the present and the rights of the people living in it.

How has the image of Palestine changed between 1900 and now?

CJ: In the early 20th century, Palestine (under this name also) was advertised as a place to visit, a peaceful, Arcadian place which would help you reconnect with your spirituality and the past of your own culture (see above); politics were absent from this site. Since then, over the various phases of occupation and resistance, Palestine became like a synonym for terrorism, with Europeans and Westerners refusing to understand or even acknowledge the human rights of Palestinians. Through a globalized struggle of indigenous peoples for their right to exist on their own land and terms, the pendulum might slowly swing back to a more balanced view of the political situation.

Do you think that the German image of Palestine is different to that from other countries?

NA: Well, there is not the one German perspective only. But it seems that many Germans see Jews solely as victims, including Israeli Jews today. In this way it is impossible for them that Palestinians have been turned into the victims of the German victims, by the actions of the Israeli state. I understand they carry a heavy history, but I do not understand the German government’s biased stand towards Israel despite the many international laws the Israeli government has been violating for decades.

At least the populations, not governments, of other countries in Europe are more daring to confront these violations. Sometimes it seems that Germans are silent because they are afraid of being silenced when speaking about Palestine/Israel. And the BDS resolution of the Bundestag in 2019 has made matters worse for freedom of speech. Weirdly enough, in the last few weeks I learned about the German constitution and how it protects human dignity, freedom of speech and that people should be treated equally and not discriminated against. Well, it seems this protection doesn’t extend to Palestine and Palestinians.

CJ: Having grown up and lived under Israeli occupation, Nahed is of course very perceptive and sensitive to the atmosphere in Germany. If you grow up and live in Germany with no contact to Palestinians nor knowledge about the situation, you can easily be oblivious to it and focus on the German past; using it, in fact, as an easy way out of having to deal in a way this exact past commands with the situation today. I believe Germany has a greater responsibility, to humanity and human rights of all peoples; so also Palestinians. Which is a reason why we are trying to establish a space in which one can speak about Palestine and Palestinians in an appropriate way, with this festival, in Germany.

Is there a continuum between the way in which colonialists saw Palestinians over a century ago and modern-day Islamophobia?

NA: I think there is a connection. I agree with Edward Said’s book “Orientalism”, and also his “The Question of Palestine”. There are so many examples for this, I wouldn’t know where to start. It is all about stereotyping the other people, and a very simple view on culture and religion. About creating an image of “the other” who is not like “us”. In both books Said mentions how the West looks down on the East. And Zionism was created in the West, the first Zionists came from Europe to Palestine. So Islamophobia and the older colonial view are definitely linked.

What do you think the role of culture, and in particular photography, is in the fight for social justice?

NA: I believe in the power of image. Image can tell a lot when made well. In my opinion image is more powerful than politicians. As Palestinian, I believe that Palestinian culture, the films, art, and literature, plays an important role putting Palestine out there in a good and strong way. It is certainly contributing to the discussion on Palestine. In some cases, it can be even a better ambassador than politicians.

For years there are many Palestinian film and culture festivals established all around the world, by Palestinians and also by internationals that believe in the Palestinian struggle and human rights. Festivals all over Europe and in North America, South America, Asia and the Arab world. And I am happy that finally we do have one here in Berlin.

CJ: Social justice will only be brought about if minds are changed. I agree with Nahed, politicians and what they say will not be as strong as what is said in a novel, or a picture; they help you understand the thoughts and needs of others from the inside, by making you feel what they feel. Of course it is important to respect the human dignity of those photographed, to show them without exposing them.

This is why we chose to provide the teenagers with workshops held by professional photographers, to enable and empower them to take pictures themselves, and show us what they see and how they feel, instead of having them portrayed by someone else, which would have been in fact repeating the representation as it has been done historically.

You are currently doing several events around the International Women’s Day. Is there a special reason for this?

CJ: Women’s rights, self-determination and independence matter worldwide, also in the Arab World. There are multiple prejudices and stereotypes about the Arab World, maybe worst when it comes to women. With our program, two films by Palestinian film makers and a panel with diasporic Palestinian feminists, we wanted to counter these prejudices and stereotypes by showing films portraying Palestinian women in a different way and hosting a panel that is abreast of and up to date with the current international feminist discourse.

Your exhibition has been hit by lockdown restrictions. How can people view it now?

NA: The lockdown in Gaza was lifted for a week in November, so the team there used the opportunity to organize an opening in Gaza City, facilitated by the AM Qattan Foundation Child Center, on 14 November 2020. A limited audience was allowed to view the exhibition, mainly the participants and their families, as well as some media.

As for Berlin, we still hope that we’ll be able to show the exhibition in Berlin from May 18, even if only with a small audience and some journalists. We will film it and part of it will be on our website. After the opening in Berlin we’re planning to take the exhibition on a tour through Germany, France and maybe England, then back to Berlin.

I hope many will have the interest to come and see the Eyes of Gaza عيون غزة. Check our website and facebook page for information about the exhibition tour. And if you would like to host this exhibition in your town and want to help us make it happen, you are welcome to contact us, contact@zaitwaza3tar.berlin.

Nahed Awwad is an independent filmmaker and film curator. For the [zait wa: zaʕtar] Festival of Palestinian Arts and Culture, Nahed curated the film screenings Unseen Palestinians and coordinated the exhibition project Eyes of Gaza عيون غزة.

Cora Josting is the chairwoman of the Ibn Rushd Fund. Cora initiated the [zait wa: zaʕtar] Festival of Palestinian Arts and Culture and works closely with the team on all aspects of the program.

The pandemic radically changed Germany’s meat industry: is it enough?

A new law forces meatpacking companies to give their workers employee status, but this deeply problematic industry is unlikely to change overnight


08/03/2021

Meat: the pandemic has thrown an industry that’s hid from the public eye for decades into the spotlight. In Germany, serious outbreaks of COVID-19 at a number of meatpacking plants have drawn attention to cramped company-provided living conditions and unsanitary workplaces. In the United States, where 60,000 workers have become infected with COVID-19, the meatpacking company Tyson came under fire after management at one plant was found to be taking bets on which of the workers would contract coronavirus. And according to virologists, the conditions in the plants themselves are also perfect for the spread of the virus ­– cold, cramped, and stressful. All the attention the industry has received resulted in tangible changes for slaughterhouse and meatpacking employees, but the changes are not enough to fix the rampant problems that jeopardize the health of the animals, workers, and end-consumers eating the meat.

The fact that these workers have been some of the hardest hit by the pandemic should come as no surprise, as working in a slaughterhouse or meatpacking plant is one of the most dangerous jobs there is. The speed of the line on which workers dismember animals is mind-numbingly fast. In Germany, 1,300 birds, 110 pigs and 7 cows are slaughtered every minute [1]. Each worker in the line makes a few cuts to the meat, meaning that they make the exact same motion for the entirety of their shift, which can last up to 12 hours. Chilled air to keep the meat fresh leads to numb fingers and an extremely high number of knife and saw accidents. Workers stand close to each other in order to maximize efficiency. Maintaining distance all but impossible.

Isn’t this scale of production necessary to feed our population? Yes, and no. Meat comes from animals, and those animals need to be killed. But the industry is hyper-capitalist: focused on profit-maximization while at the same time deliberately hiding from the public eye. For the purpose of this article, I will save a discussion of the negative environmental impacts of industrial agriculture (including its role in rising antimicrobial resistance and the emergence of new zoonotic diseases) for another time to focus the workers and the relatively recent change in how meat makes its way from walking around to your plate.

The location and function of slaughterhouses have changed dramatically since the era of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a book that brought the harsh conditions of the slaughterhouses in the Chicago stockyards to light. Located in meatpacking districts of large cities to reduce travel distance, slaughterhouses were unsightly places, yet still very much in the public eye. Union membership was very common, and the workers were well paid, with wages above the average manufacturing wage in the United States. While the job was both physically and psychologically challenging, workers could strike for better conditions and wages with the backing of the unions [2]. Following technological advances within the slaughterhouses and in refrigeration, the situation changed dramatically. The industrialization of slaughterhouses resulting from these developments was called the “IBP revolution”, after Iowa Beef Processors (IBP), a meat packing company that is now a subsidiary of one of the largest meat multinationals in the world, Tyson Foods, Inc.

The changes were spearheaded in the 1960s by IBP’s development of boxed beef, a vacuum-packed product resulting from the removal of fat and bone from a carcass, which made transporting meat over long distances much cheaper and easier. Since the transport of live animals was no longer required, it became more efficient to slaughter in a single location close to the feedlots and transport the meat to consumers afterward. The slaughterhouses therefore moved out of the urban centers to rural areas, allowing for easier access to the supply of animals as well as opportunities for expansion of the facilities. Soon after, new industrial feeding operations developed close to the slaughterhouses to reduce their own transport costs [3,4].

After changing the location of the slaughter, further cost reduction focused on maximizing economies of scale through technological advances within the slaughterhouse itself. The focus changed to simplifying the slaughtering process by using a “disassembly line” instead of having skilled butchers slaughter one animal at a time. This disassembly line relies on a conveyor belt and breaks down the slaughtering/ packing processes into single, repetitive movements, greatly increasing the number of animals slaughtered per hour. Once the nature of the required labor changed, IBP used this “deskilling” to justify paying lower wages and recruiting from a wider labor force. The reduction in costs was so significant that other companies were forced to do the same to compete.

The change in the nature of the slaughtering process created an industry that was no longer forced to rely on skilled union labor and could instead recruit from a wide pool of low-skilled workers. The barrier to this recruitment was that the move from urban centers to rural areas placed the plants in towns without a large supply of workers. The slaughterhouse companies had to recruit outside of the communities, to which immigrant labor presented a good opportunity [5]. Companies started targeting their recruiting efforts specifically to immigrant communities, from workers on the U.S. – Mexico border, to refugees from the Bosnian war. In general, employing “foreign” (from outside the community) workers is beneficial to a company, as it discourages communication between laborers and with the surrounding community that could lead to strikes. This is a tactic that has been widely used around the world to reduce workers’ abilities to organize.

A similar trend of industrialization within the slaughterhouse also occurred on the European continent. In Denmark, home to one of the largest pork producers in the world, Danish Crown, the number of independent, cooperatively organized slaughterhouses fell from over 80 to two (of which Danish Crown is one) [6]. In Germany, the change can be seen in the number of animals that are slaughtered on farms. In 1993, over 1.2 million animals were killed by individuals instead of by companies. By 2017 that number had decreased to 80,000 [7]. And the deskilling of slaughterhouse work has opened up the industry to low-wage immigrant labor, similar to the situation in the United States and Canada.

When ten Eastern European countries joined the European Union in 2004, it opened up the possibility for them to exchange labor with E.U. members. Legislation was already in place to allow the free movement of workers contracted for specific jobs (Werkvertragsabkommen) and exchange of services (EU-Dienstleistungsfreiheit) throughout the European Union, which allowed laborers from Eastern Europe to travel to Germany for employment. Since wages are lower in Eastern Europe compared to Germany, people from Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria have historically been interested in finding employment outside of their home countries [8].

Slaughterhouses in Germany began to take advantage of this supply of labor, except instead of recruiting employees directly they did so through third-party contractors, using a system that was already in place within the German construction industry. The company in Germany employed a recruiting firm, often in a different country, which was responsible for finding workers and transporting them to Germany. The workers would then be supplied with housing, given jobs at slaughterhouses, and work for minimum wage. This production that relies on the low-wage labor of groups without a foothold in a country is what has allowed industry profits to skyrocket.

Tönnies, the largest slaughterhouse company in Germany, combined with Vion and Westfleisch accounts for more than half of the slaughtering in Germany [9]. All operated (prior to 2020) through this system of third-party contractors – at one Tönnies plant in Rheda, Germany, over half of the workers were not employed by the company itself. The explosion in cases at the slaughterhouses (until the end of October, a contract employee was eight times more likely to be infected with corona than the rest of the population), along with the companies’ inability to provide an address of record for their contractors, led to a new law that came into effect on January 1, 2021. Under this law, people who work in meat processing plants need to be employed by the company, which should in theory change the way that meat processing operates in Germany.

Unfortunately, according to interviews conducted by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, this doesn’t seem to be the case. The workers are doubtful the third-party companies will leave the picture, and even those who were already officially employed were never paid more than 10 euros per hour for their work. A bed in a ten-person room costs them 250 euros per month. And the conditions inside the slaughterhouses remain the same: fast-paced, dangerous work in the freezing cold. A workforce that is actually employed by the slaughterhouse companies will clearly benefit the workers, but won’t be enough to deeply change this massive, problematic industry.

The barrier to change is that consumers have have gotten used to extremely cheap meat, but consumers aren’t benefitting from it nearly as much as the companies are. In an interview with the Wissenschafts Zentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Matthias Wolfschmidt of Foodwatch said, “the large business groups determine the prices with their market power ­– at the cost of farmers and the animals. Even if meat in the supermarket weren’t 1.99 euro and instead twice as much, the profit margin of these groups would continue to rise under the current conditions.” [10]

Consumers don’t get a bargain because the system is working so well; the low price of meat reflects an industry that puts the health and well-being of animals and people in jeopardy in pursuit of profit. A German farmer is paid on average 150 Euros for a whole pig, and one fifth of the pork processed in Germany is slated for export [11]. Radical industry-wide change is needed, and that starts with highlighting the problems. The pandemic provided a start, but there’s much more to be done.

 

Footnotes

1 Ellguth, Paula/Fels, Marjam/Friedrichsen, Jana/Hamdan, Jana/Huck, Steffen. “Nicht-Orte der Fleischindustrie. Fakten und Hintergründe zum Schlachten in Deutschland.” (2018)

2 Broadway, Michael. “Meatpacking and the Transformation of Rural Communities: A Comparison of Brooks, Alberta and Garden City, Kansas.” Rural Sociology 72, no. 4 (2007)

3 Fitzgerald, Amy J. “A Social History of the Slaughterhouse: From Inception to Contemporary Implications.” Human Ecology Review 17, no. 1 (2010).

4 Stull, Donald D., and Michael J. Broadway. “Slaughterhouse Blues: The Meat and Poultry Industry in North America.” 2nd ed. Case Studies on Comtemporary Social Issues (2013).

5 Dillard, Jennifer. “A Slaughterhouse Nightmare: Psychological Harm Suffered by Slaughterhouse Employees and the Possibility of Redress through Legal Reform.” SSRN Scholarly Paper. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network (2007)

6 Bjarke Refslund. “Offshoring Danish Jobs to Germany: Regional Effects and Challenges to Workers’ Organisation in the Slaughterhouse Industry.” Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation 6, no. 2 (2012)

7 Ellguth, Paula/Fels, Marjam/Friedrichsen, Jana/Hamdan, Jana/Huck, Steffen. “Nicht-Orte der Fleischindustrie. Fakten und Hintergründe zum Schlachten in Deutschland.” (2018)

8 Heinrich Böll Stiftung, “Der Fleischatlas 2016 – Deutschland Regional”

9 Ellguth, Paula/Fels, Marjam/Friedrichsen, Jana/Hamdan, Jana/Huck, Steffen. “Nicht-Orte der Fleischindustrie. Fakten und Hintergründe zum Schlachten in Deutschland.” (2018)

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

Activities in Berlin for International Women’s Day

8th March 2021 Monday, March 8 is International Women*’s Day— a day with socialist-feminist roots, now legitimized in Berlin as a so-called “bank holiday.” Rather than the usual large march organized by Frauen*kampftag, several events are planned throughout the city to prevent a mass infection. This decision was made in solidarity with care workers— a […]


07/03/2021

8th March 2021

Monday, March 8 is International Women*’s Day— a day with socialist-feminist roots, now legitimized in Berlin as a so-called “bank holiday.” Rather than the usual large march organized by Frauen*kampftag, several events are planned throughout the city to prevent a mass infection. This decision was made in solidarity with care workers— a sector that is disproportionately made up of women*. Here’s a map that displays the decentralized events.

On Thursday, March 11, the struggle for women*’s liberation continues with a discussion (in German) organized by Die Linke Wedding on the history and current status of abortion in Germany and Poland.