A German foundation has said it will no longer be awarding a prize for political thinking to a leading Russian-American journalist after criticizing as “unacceptable” a recent essay by the writer in which they made a comparison between Gaza and a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe.
The hypocrisy of the Heinrich Böll Foundation (and the German government in general) is incredible.
Here you have a Jewish person who is a journalist and a renowned political thinker who was being given the award for being someone who “reports on power games and totalitarian tendencies as well as civil disobedience and the love of freedom”.
They 100% have the position, right, and accuracy to be comparing the state of Gaza currently to the WWII ghettos.
Edit: Something else to note. The Foundation made this statement "“But Masha Gessen’s views should not be honored with a prize intended to commemorate the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt”.
And I can’t help but laugh. Do they not know Arendt’s past stance on Israel? She was literally one of the first world-renowned Jewish anti-Zionists.
She literally compared the Likud party to the Nazis!
I literally just finished reading this piece, and it provides so much context to this ridiculousness
1948, too. Lived context.
This is the real, actual cancel culture, and usual suspects are silent, as expected.
Do they not know Arendt’s past stance on Israel?
Partly jewish, German citizen here. I’ll answer this for you. No, they don’t. They never worked out their own history. It’s all just teathre.
Hannah Arendt would be punished as antisemite in today Germany. What a cesspool that country is becoming once again.
That is incredible
According to the German newspaper Die Zeit, which broke the story, the prize will still be presented to Gessen, though “in a different setting”, and on Saturday instead of Friday. It remains unclear who will present it, what they will be presenting and whether Gessen and other invited guests still plan to attend.
In the paragraph the HBS draws attention to, Gessen wrote that “ghetto” would be “the more appropriate term” to describe Gaza, but the word “would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.”
On X/Twitter, they wrote that no German media representative had tried to contact them, despite the story being widely reported in German media on Thursday.
Supporters of Gessen, who is Jewish, and whose grandfather and great-grandfather were among family members murdered by the Nazis, have been quick to point out the irony of suspending a prize awarded in memory of Arendt, the German-born Jewish-American historian, philosopher and antitotalitarian political theorist who coined the phrase “the banality of evil”, in connection with the trial of leading Nazi Adolf Eichmann, which she covered as a journalist for the New Yorker.
In an open letter written with Albert Einstein and other Jewish intellectuals in 1948, Arendt had, Gessen pointed out, even compared the Israeli Freedom party to the Nazis after they used racially motivated violence against civilians.
“I am aware that this type of comparison, especially in Germany, is quickly seen as relativising the Holocaust. That’s why it’s so important to me that such a differentiated and intelligent thinker like Arendt didn’t shy away from this comparison,” Gessen told the newspaper.
Referring to people in Germany being wary of challenging “the logic of German memory policy” for fear of being accused of antisemitism, they added: “The problem is that criticism of Israel is often seen as antisemitic, which I think is the real antisemitic scandal. This overlooks the actual antisemitism.”
for those wanting to read the letter to the editor of NYT signed by Einstein and Arendt
Keep in mind Tnaut Harerut is the literal precursor to Likud. And was a political offshoot of the paramilitary that attacked both the British and the Palistinian groups because they didn’t like the idea of sharing power with palistinians.
Good timing, I was literally editing my original comment to note that when you posted at the same time!
Thank you!
Great minds think alike, hahaha
I wonder if in 100 years we’ll be looking at Israel like we look at Nazi Germany nowadays.
Well, if history is indeed cyclical, then in a 100 years Palestinians will have their own ethnostate and oppressing a different peoples. My guess is Kurds. /s
Not likely. Conjuring new nations out of former colonies isn’t really doable anymore.
100 years from now the MENA region will be uninhabitable due to climate heating and I doubt that anyone will want to visit it in some spacesuit.
That’s not what any of the worst case scenario in climate studies I’ve seen seem to think, what are you basing it on?
Your links don’t support your claim, and in fact contradict it. No doomerism please.
For the lazy, it’s their 6th, 7th, and 8th links.
Projected Air Temperature Extremes and Maximum Heat Conditions Over the Middle-East-North Africa (MENA) Region | Earth Systems and Environment
Climate change projections for the Middle East–North Africa domain with COSMO-CLM at different spatial resolutions - ScienceDirect
Climate Change and Weather Extremes in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East - Zittis - 2022 - Reviews of Geophysics - Wiley Online Library
Just posting a whole big pile of stuff and saying ‘the answers probably in there somewhere and you can’t disagree until you’ve been thought it all’ is something conspiracy theorists and idiots do.
The first paper doesn’t agree with your claim so it’s pretty obvious you didn’t even read it yourself.
This is not a big pile, these are only 8 peer-reviewed papers. This is a tiny snack on a coffee-cup plate.
I read many papers every day, and I intentionally posted some that don’t 100% back up what I said so you can have more nuance.
The difference is that this time USA supports the fascists
This time?
America supports whoever we think will benefit us the most geopolitically lol. Israel is a centerpiece in the MENA which can’t really be ignored for how much pressure they put on their neighbors.
I’ve got some bad news.
The US was fully prepared to support the Nazis right up until it looked like they’d probably lose the war.
Do you have a source for that? I tried searching but didn’t seem to find what you’re referring to.
I think they’re talking about American Nazi party involvement in the 1930’s (sources in the comment below the question) at the time leading up to America’s involvement, not necessarily official American foreign policy.
it’s certainly an interesting revisionist question (i.e. if America had been on the axis side of the war), but it’s definitely a-historical.
I‘m German, currently living in Switzerland and when I recently visited Germany I was appalled by the amount of unconditional support for Israel, for example a HUGE (maybe 10x10m?) israeli flag on the offices of the Grünen party and official posters calling for solidarity. I don‘t even think this is stemming from (however undifferentiated and misguided) historical considerations, rather than geopolitical considerations. Also on the subject of the article, I think that‘s a pretty apt and carefully done comparison.
I feel this really is because of plucking the historical guilt strings and “if you’re against Israel’s actions you’re an anti-semit”
But I am not in the know of the local German situation, so might as well be a wrong impression
Pretty much. It’s incredibly tiring
As just some asshole in America, the fierce blind support here seems to come from one of two places:
1- good old racism. just like the Irish, Italian, etc before them, jews have their “white card” with the bigots especially when the “enemy” are darker.
2- Religious nuts who think war around the holy land = the second coming and are going to root for anybody who keeps the war flowing.
100% accurate
Honestly what timeline are we on. I wonder if they’ve even asked themselves “are we the baddies?”.
Germans learned nothing from their Nazi past. Still love censorship and still love to consider some lives more important than others. They’te just acting like an Israel’s colony now.
I think Germany has actually accepted a lot more responsibility for the atrocities they’ve committed, compared to nearly every other European nation guilty of colonialism and genocide. I have British friends who were taught almost nothing about Britain’s colonial past in school, while every German has to learn about the Holocaust in school.
In a way I understand Germany’s reluctance to compare a Jewish ethnostate to Nazism, considering what they did to the Jews 80 years ago. But I think that comparison is completely justified and Germany should know better. Israel is an apartheid state, and Netanyahu is one Auschwitz away from being just like Hitler.They did accept responsability, but in itself has no value if they cannot raise their voices against another genocide that is happening right now. Totally agree with the res you say.
Yeah I completely agree. They know better than anyone what fascism looks like, and the fact that they choose to do nothing is sickening.
Hannah Arendt prize for political thought
Genocide Expert Award Rescinded After Genocide Expert Compares Genocide To Genocide
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A German foundation has said it will no longer be awarding a prize for political thinking to a leading Russian-American journalist after criticising as “unacceptable” a recent essay by the writer in which they made a comparison between Gaza and a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe.
In the paragraph the HBS draws attention to, Gessen wrote that “ghetto” would be “the more appropriate term” to describe Gaza, but the word “would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews.
At the time it stated that “as an analyst of decline and hope, Gessen reports on power games and totalitarian tendencies as well as civil disobedience and the love of freedom”.
Supporters of Gessen, who is Jewish, and whose grandfather and great-grandfather were among family members murdered by the Nazis, have been quick to point out the irony of suspending a prize awarded in memory of Arendt, the German-born Jewish-American historian, philosopher and antitotalitarian political theorist who coined the phrase “the banality of evil”, in connection with the trial of leading Nazi Adolf Eichmann, which she covered as a journalist for the New Yorker.
In an interview with Die Zeit published on Tuesday, Gessen spoke of the backlash Arendt had faced as one of Israel’s initial critics, warning against establishing a purely Jewish state in Palestine and in so doing excluding the Arab population.
In an open letter written with Albert Einstein and other Jewish intellectuals in 1948, Arendt had, Gessen pointed out, even compared the Israeli Freedom party to the Nazis after they used racially motivated violence against civilians.
The original article contains 760 words, the summary contains 266 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Well, if it wasn’t obvious a “prize for political thinking” that’s organized by a specific political party wasn’t total bullshit to begin with, it sure as shit is now.
I’m sometimes fine and sometimes flabbergasted with this german response. Can anyone tell me if they teach about the germans killing roma people in concentration camps as they found them? The murder was mostly about one group of people, but there are things you can learn from other minorities being persecuted.
I’m reminded of stories of muslim students resonating with jewish victims when visiting holocaust memorials, and being swiftly reprimanded for it by their white teachers. Because jews were the victims, muslims were not.
I’m sometimes fine with it because, well, at least nobody in Germany is shooting fire extinguishers at menorahs like in Poland.
yes they do (am German) but politicians are dancing on eggshells with Israeli behavior and the antisemitism-accusations
imo, uncritically supporting what the Israeli government is doing hurts the rememberance of the Holocaust - how can you sell ‘never again’ when civilians have to suffer like this?
The murder was mostly about one group of people
Funny how people focus on the final solution and completely ignore Lebensraum…
He’s not wrong. Been saying this since week 1 of this new stage of the conflict. Others have been saying this for decades.
In the paragraph the HBS draws attention to, Gessen wrote that “ghetto” would be “the more appropriate term” to describe Gaza, but the word “would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.”
Not taking sides here, but it does seem to me like Gessen’s phrasing was deliberately provocative towards those who might be offended by their comparison. I’m left thinking, “I mean, if you kick a beehive, don’t be surprised if you get stung.”
Let’s start with the basic premise that German institutions don’t get to have a fucking little opinion about what a Jewish person may or may not say about the Holocaust.
I agree that she‘s displaying a lot of self-awareness here and I‘d like to point out that this doesn‘t make her comparison any less warranted
This must be the kind of stupid thinking they do in Germany I suppose.
Yeah seems like he wanted to kick the can and make a lot of noise but it does get people to talk about you.
I wonder if it’s braver and better to willingly shove away the pointless reward to try and get people to talk about a subject you care about.
Are you sure Masha Gessen is a man?
Nope. They use Gessen’s name the entire time in the article instead of a pronoun and I had a very androgynous photo to go off of and I may have misgendered them.
They are non-binary, FYI. It’s not an accident that Gessen isn’t gendered in the article.
Got it… Really wish we had a good way of representing that because it’s gonna take a bit before people stop defaulting to use of pronouns even with best intentions
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That’s the opposite of what they’re doing. Germanys being way too careful to not offend Israel right now, in my opinion. They’re upset that someone is saying Israel is approaching nazi levels, not that what’s happening now is worse than the holocaust nor are they minimizing the holocaust.
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What it is obvious, is that school let you down not teaching you how to read.
