We received a letter from a Jewish student who wished to draw attention to a series of events at the Berlin University of the Arts. The events were conceived by students, but were evidently overseen by staff of the university and of the Berliner Landeszentrale für politische Bildung (Berlin State Centre for Civic Education).
We therefore wrote to the Governing Mayor of Berlin (the most senior official of the State of Berlin) and to the office of the then Commissioner for Antisemitism of Berlin. The correspondence follows below:Dear Governing Mayor Müller,
Dear Ms Paulus (on behalf of Mr Korgel),
with reference to your email, I am forwarding to you a letter that a Jewish student at the UdK sent to the head of the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, Mr Gill. She wishes to remain anonymous for fear of personal reprisals.
The resolution of the Berlin House of Representatives of 23 May 2018 states: “Organisations, associations and individuals that delegitimise the existence of Israel as a Jewish state or act in an antisemitic manner in any other way shall – as far as is legally possible – not be provided with rooms or spaces. Nor shall they receive grants or subsidies from the State of Berlin.”
This series of events meets the criteria named in the resolution:
https://praxis-udk.de/2020/06/24/kulturelle-kollaborationen-im-nahen-osten/
https://praxis-udk.de/2020/06/24/stimmen-aus-nahost/
In our view, both the Universität der Künste and the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung are in breach of the above resolution.
We ask you to urge those involved to examine the remaining events for balance and, where necessary, not to hold them, and to ensure that nothing of this kind can happen again in future.
For the sake of good order, we would point out that we intend to publish this letter and, where applicable, your reply. Any personal contact details would of course be redacted.
Yours sincerely
Dr Elio Adler
Chairman of the BoardLetter from an anonymous Jewish student at the UdK:
Dear Mr Gill,
This email concerns the teaching series “Stimmen aus Nahost”, which opens on 20 July with the media and cultural journalism students of the Universität der Künste and was developed in cooperation with the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Berlin.
Following a personal telephone conversation, you asked us to send you and the co-organisers sources documenting the positions and the public impact of your event and explaining why we regard the guests you have invited as problematic in a university setting.
- By way of introduction, the event description (for the image, see the attachment):
“For decades, cultural practitioners in the Middle East have been confronted with the opportunities and the pitfalls of cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis. How do occupation and logistical restrictions affect cultural exchange and creative processes? Are there possibilities for cooperation beyond a normalisation of the imbalance of power?“
Here I would like to begin by addressing the rhetoric of the organisers, who clearly draw on the jargon of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.
Using the term normalisation in this context does not presuppose a NEUTRAL position.
BDS-Debatte: Über Normalisierung und selektiven Boykott http://bds-kampagne.de/2012/04/01/bds-debatte-ueber-normalisierung-und-selektiven-boykott/
“Normalisation is the English rendering of the Arabic word tatbi’, making something abnormal appear normal.”
Further quotations:
-It is helpful to understand Normalisation as a “colonisation of the mind”.
-Those who practise Normalisation , either ignore this oppression or accept it as a status quo that one can live with.
-… that the term normalisation applies to relationships that convey a misleading and deceptive image of normality, symmetry and equality where there is an obviously abnormal and asymmetrical relationship of colonial oppression and apartheid.Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions/ Wikipedia
“BDS regards cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians as “normalisation” of a supposed state of oppression that must be fought.”
“Kenneth L. Marcus, founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law, sees the primary BDS strategy, in the tradition of earlier boycotts of Jews, as aimed at warding off any Normalisation of relations with Israel, contrary to the hope of early Zionists that the Jewish state would deprive antisemitism of its basis.”
- Invited speakers
Their event description also states: “In a digital panel discussion we want to engage critically with these and further questions. The focus will be on voices from and about initiatives in which Palestinians and Israelis cooperate in two different ways. To this end we will speak with Adnan Jaber, member of the cultural initiative Tech2Peace, and with the journalist and photographer Ahmad Al-Bazz, member of the collective ActiveStills.”
We ask ourselves to what extent a genuine panel discussion can come about here – and we know which “further questions” will quite obviously arise in this sham debate.
If only two Palestinians are invited, to what extent will and can the Israeli/Jewish perspective be addressed here in order to illuminate the “pitfalls”?
We have also examined the invited collective ActiveStills and the person who represents it at the UdK.
Ahmad Al-Bazz has already given extensive interviews to BDS Turkey (http://bdsturkiye.org/bds-haberler/activestills-ile-soylesi-bir-gerilla-fotografciligi-gunduz-direnisi-fotografla-gece-sergi-ac/) and works for Electronic Intifada, which, on account of antisemitic outbursts, was already described in Germany in 2017 by the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, in line with the criteria of the working definition of antisemitism of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia as disseminating “antisemitic propaganda”. (Offener Brief Arte Doku ~ Amadeu Antonio Stiftung. In: amadeu-antonio-stiftung.de. 22 July 2017, accessed on 7 August 2017.)
In the interview mentioned above, Al-Bazz expresses himself as follows:
“Apart from that, cooperation is never acceptable to me. For example, no cooperation is acceptable in art, in sport or even in peace dialogues. If this sounds too strict, I will raise the simple question: could we ask the coloniser and the exploiter to work together while the apartheid and colonial system in South Africa continued? Absolutely, the natural answer is no. Why? Because dialogue and cooperation between different segments came about only after the end of decolonisation and apartheid. Everything before that served to “normalise” the relations between the coloniser and the exploited within the ongoing repressive system.This raises the question of why a person is invited to speak about the question of cooperation when they reject it on principle.
He further says: “I have to say here that there are only very few ‘anti-Zionist Israeli activists’ whom I see as my partners in the Palestinian struggle.”
The Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Federal Agency for Civic Education) has published a worksheet on the subject of anti-Zionist antisemitism. It states clearly that anti-Zionism denies Israel’s right to exist: “Consciously or unconsciously, such a position amounts to the abolition of a secure place of refuge for Jews and to the persecution that goes with it.”
If Al-Bazz permits cooperation with Israelis only as long as they are anti-Zionist, that is, opposed to Israel’s right to exist, if he speaks of an apartheid regime and allows only one-sided, selective dialogue, the question arises as to why this person is granted paid freedom of speech at a state university.
- The UdK’s responsibility towards Jewish students
With the drastic increase in antisemitic violence at American universities, this event appears particularly threatening to Jewish students.
The event suggests a dialogue between, which in the worst case is conducted at the expense of Jewish students.
“Stimmen aus Nahost” gives space to anti-Zionist antisemites; this should be critically questioned, as should the staging of a sham “dialogue”.
Both the UdK and the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung have an educational mandate and bear the responsibility of NEVER AGAIN making antisemitism in any form socially acceptable.Yours sincerely,
A student.
Dear Dr Adler,
thank you very much for your message and your feedback on our event.
The Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK) – more precisely, the master’s programme in cultural journalism at the Zentralinstitut für Weiterbildung (ZIW), together with the UdK’s Studium Generale and the Berliner Landeszentrale für politische Bildung – already cooperated in the winter semester 2019/20 on four events on the subject of antisemitism. The events were planned and carried out as student projects. They arose out of a course on “Antisemitism and the Middle East conflict in German reporting”, at the explicit request of the students, who wished to continue engaging with the topic, which we consider highly welcome.
This cooperation is now being extended into the summer semester with three events on the Middle East. The first event took place purely online on 20 July under the title “Kulturelle Kollaborationen im Nahen Osten”. Taking part in the discussion were Adnan Jaber and Uri Rosenberg, members of the initiative Tech2Peace, and the journalist and photographer Ahmad Al-Bazz, member of the collective ActiveStills.
The subject of this event was the opportunities and the limits of Jewish-Israeli/Palestinian cooperation in the cultural sphere. The topic was proposed by the students, who had come across several such cooperations in their research and asked whether, under what conditions and in what way they work. The starting point was therefore a strong desire for understanding on the part of the students. As students of cultural journalism, their approach was a journalistic one: interested, non-judgemental and without reservations. For this reason they chose two very different initiatives in order to hear different voices and standpoints on this question. No evaluation was made in the course of the conversations.
We greatly welcome the fact that young people, and young journalists in particular, are setting out to engage with this enormously complex subject and are choosing their own approach in doing so. Therein lies the opportunity to enrich a debate that is becoming increasingly entrenched, especially in Germany, with new voices and perspectives, and in this way perhaps also to create new forms of dialogue.
The series will be continued in the course of the semester with two further events: on 7 August with an evening of short films illuminating the important question of representation, and on 17 September with a literary evening to which, among others, the initiative “Jews and Arabs Writing in Berlin” has been invited. We would be delighted to welcome you at these events and to be able to dispel some of your concerns.
Yours sincerely
Thomas Gill
____________________ ____________________
Thomas Gill
Berliner Landeszentrale für politische Bildung
HeadDear Governing Mayor Müller,
with reference to our email of 23 July 2020, we feel compelled to write to you again. Mr Gill, head of the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, replied to us and, although this is not apparent from his email, we assume that his reply is known to you.
Our concern appears to have been borne out: contrary to the announcement by the head of the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, the second event in the UdK series “Stimmen aus Nahost” was also, in terms of the images it conveyed, highly tendentious and – as was to be expected and as the attached report shows – anything but balanced.
We had pointed this out to you in advance, Governing Mayor, and Mr Gill had rejected our fears so unequivocally and invited us to attend that the course of the second event described below irritates us all the more.
For your information and further action, we enclose a statement by the organisations and individuals signing it, updated after the second event in the series. We expressly do not adopt the title of the statement as our own. The concerns expressed in it, however, we do expressly share.
Yours sincerely
Dr Elio Adler
Chairman of the BoardDear Sir or Madam,
thank you very much for your message and your feedback on our event “Kurzfilmperspektiven auf den Nahost-Konflikt” on 7 August 2020 at the Kulturfabrik Moabit, the second event in our series “Stimmen aus Nahost. Künstlerische Positionen und kulturelle Perspektiven”.
We too regret the course the event took, and in particular the noisy departure from it by some (all?) of the signatories.
We cannot follow your assessment of an “anti-Zionist basic ideology of the initiators”; we firmly reject it.
Since you engaged with the programme, if not during the evening then, as you state, beforehand, you will have noticed that it is very diverse in design and gives a hearing to very different voices and perspectives, which is precisely in keeping with our intention for this series.
Both students, like all the students involved in devising and running the series, attended at least one of two seminars in the cultural journalism programme in which they were introduced to the subjects of antisemitism (seminar 1) and the Middle East conflict (seminar 2) and in particular to the reporting on them. It was their own and explicit wish to continue examining these complex topics in the form of a series of events, since as trainee and for the most part already practising journalists they see it as their responsibility to contribute to the public debate on them. In devising the events we give the students largely a free hand, because it is precisely their approach and their focus that matter; we do, however, accompany and support them and intervene when we consider it necessary.
The selection of the film by Dani Gal was made by the two curators just as carefully as the design of the overall programme. Dani Gal is a highly renowned Israeli artist whom we had already wanted to invite to the first short film evening last year with one of his works on antisemitism. As this was not possible for various reasons, the students contacted him again for the second short film evening and he himself proposed the film “White City”. The students accepted his proposal, in particular because of his artistic approach to the question of the production of ideology through the representation of historical narratives, which they found very fitting for the thematic focus of the event in order to examine the role of the means of representation in the context of Israeli-Palestinian history. The film was, incidentally, supported by the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, among others.
Of course one may hold differing views about the composition of the programme as well as about individual films; that is what makes debate about it necessary and indeed possible in the first place. The basic precondition for such a debate, however, is respectful interaction. This we found lacking on your side. As you yourself note, there were strong (and unanimous) reactions, particularly from the audience, not only to the content of your remarks but above all to the manner in which they were made. These initially and primarily took the form of heckling; contributions from the floor (two of them) came only later. Loud remarks such as “Speak up, if you stand by what you are saying there”, made right at the beginning of the conversation with the filmmaker Dany Gal, we do not regard as a constructive contribution to the discussion, nor were they perceived as such by the audience. Accordingly, there were repeated calls from the audience for the group to put what it had to say in the form of a contribution from the floor and to formulate it respectfully, or else not to disrupt the course of the event any further. A woman from the audience who spoke in this vein was then abused as an antisemite, even after she had identified herself as Jewish. Dany Gal, himself Jewish, was also abused as antisemitic. His attempt to answer the two contributions from the floor unfortunately went unheard by you, as you had decided to leave the event early.
Like most of the events held so far, this one too was very well attended; interested people even had to be turned away because it had sold out before it began. In this respect too we regard it as an unqualified success. The closing discussion with the audience also showed that there is a serious interest in dialogue and understanding on these topics, particularly among the younger generation, which we very much welcome.
We can therefore only reaffirm our position here that we as organisers, like the students involved, seek and desire constructive dialogue, whether within the event or, in a separate form, outside it as well.
As regards the second contribution from the floor, which called for the situation of the Mizrahim to be addressed but whose speaker did not wait for Dani Gal’s very detailed answer, we refer to the forthcoming third event on 17 September, at which several Mizrahim are invited as guests. We would be very pleased if you were to take this opportunity to enter into a respectful and constructive conversation with all those present.
Yours sincerely
Thomas Gill
