When a journalist’s personal opinion on BDS shapes an entire report and leads to our demonstration in Bochum against BDS being ridiculed while its supporters are treated leniently, that is reason enough for us to write to the director of Deutschlandradio.Dear Mr Raue,
on 18 August 2018 our association took part in the demonstration at the Ruhrtriennale directed against Ms Carp. You will find my address as chairman here: https://youtu.be/dySl6onKGwI
Furthermore, two board members of our association were later also in the Turbinenhalle and attended the discussion which your colleague Ms Dorothea Marcus reported on under the title “Booing and a few demonstrators”:
The discrepancy between reality and the report is so striking that we do not wish to leave it without comment.
On Deutschlandfunk she reported:
“Malca Goldstein-Wolf, a Jewish activist from Cologne, had called for a demonstration, but it was not a proper demonstration. There were a few small groups of people with little Israeli flags, who then also eagerly streamed into the audience. And then there were other activists who were against this demonstration by the Jewish activists. Malca Goldstein-Wolf and her entourage demanded the head of Stefanie Carp. The others were against that. And you could see the roughly eighty supporters streaming into the hall, into the auditorium filled with five hundred people, and they thoroughly discredited themselves with kindergarten-like hate-speech interjections that were simply incredibly embarrassing.”
The demonstration was registered by Ms Goldstein-Wolf. Our association joined the call to demonstrate. According to police figures there were around 250 participants on site and not – as claimed by Ms Marcus – eighty.
We did not demand the head of Stefanie Carp, but her resignation. The image she chose was evidently intended to discredit our demonstration, at which speeches were given and songs were even sung, as hate-filled and aggressive.
During the panel discussion there were indeed people in the audience who heckled from time to time, quite loudly and vehemently. It should be noted that the moderator of the event, Norbert Lammert, expressly permitted these interjections, since they were not intended to disrupt the event and could therefore be tolerated.
In her reporting, Dorothea Marcus omitted to mention the reasons for the interjections. On the panel it had been claimed, among other things, that the State of Israel was a major reason why hatred of Jews exists today, and that the Star of David was, after the swastika, the new symbol of those without empathy.
On stage, a great deal of room was given to the BDS position, which tends to hold that Jews themselves are to blame for hatred of Jews and are the new Nazis, and that one should therefore not buy from Jews. That some people in the audience protested in the face of so much hatred on stage should come as no surprise. What must astonish far more is that, with so much hatred on stage, the event still proceeded so decorously – especially since, alongside the two BDSsupporters represented on stage, a third was then also brought in: Udi Aloni. It was he who a few days earlier had blown up a discussion in Berlin and had shouted wild insults at the Berlin senator for culture, Klaus Lederer, at the Berlin festival Pop-Kultur . In Bochum too he insulted parts of the audience and declared that the whole of Israel had fallen for racial doctrine and that all Jews there were racists. Germans, he said, had nothing whatsoever to tell him. He had to be physically prevented from going for a visitor in the Turbinenhalle.
Dorothea Marcus did not mention a single one of these outbursts. Instead she disparaged the people in the audience who commented on these outrages with interjections. As a live quote she gave the floor to a supporter of the BDScampaign, who was allowed to explain that the BDScampaign was quite wonderful. She introduced the supporter with these words: “And she explained a little about why BDS originally came into being – founded in the year 2000 against the South African apartheid regime and at the time quite successful – and for her (…) BDS is still a legitimate instrument.”
That is no longer disinformation, it is simply false. BDS was founded on 9 July 2005 and from the outset called exclusively for a boycott of Israel. Apartheid in South Africa, for its part, ended in 1994. It therefore no longer existed in the year 2000, and the BDScampaign had nothing to do with it.
The federal government, the Bundestag, state and city parliaments as well as a great many experts on antisemitism all agree that BDS has an antisemitic background. To act as though some political question were being discussed here in the spirit of a plurality of opinion can only be explained by the wish to impress an opinion upon listeners. To sympathise with only certain parts of the statements made within BDS and to define these as legitimate criticism of Israel within the scope of freedom of expression, while knowingly or ignorantly disregarding the remaining, acknowledged antisemitic aims of the BDS campaign against “civilians”, is not legitimate.
Dorothea Marcus is spreading disinformation and untruths on Deutschlandfunk .
We sharply criticise the fact that your colleague, Ms Dorothea Marcus, evidently allowed her private convictions to dominate her reporting in a dishonest manner. Even if she is bothered by people who defend themselves verbally – we will not fall silent. In view of this we ask for your statement.
We point out that we will communicate your reply publicly, unless you require otherwise. Personal contact details and signatures would be redacted.
