The Left Berlin News & Comment

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News from Berlin and Germany: 10th July 2021

News from Berlin compiled by Ana Ferreira


09/07/2021

Berlin Interior Senator sued for assault

The eviction of the squatters from Habersaathstraße 46 in last October is taking an unusual legal aftermath. Two of the squatters announced they would file charges against Interior Senator Geisel for assault and coercion in office. The accusation is that Geisel, by evicting the squatters shortly before the second lockdown, deliberately risked a Corona infection of the formerly homeless squatters. Other squatters who lived in camps in Rummelsburg or Frankfurter Allee have also been evicted and now face nothing again with the end of the cold aid programmes. “A society cannot treat people like this,” said Valentina Hauser from “Leerstand Hab-ich-Saath.” Source: taz

Neukölln United against displacement

It is Tuesday afternoon, they are about to start the demonstration against the sell-out of their district in front of the apartment building Hermannstraße 48. “Neukölln against displacement” is the motto of several housing projects. Tenants, activists and politicians make it clear in their speeches: they will not give up the fight against luxury renovations, rent increases and the sale to unknown parties. They demand socialisation, expropriation of profit-oriented landlords, protection against dismissal and “affordable and liveable housing” for all. Many housing communities want the district to exercise its right of first refusal. For this, they need partners oriented towards cooperatives, for instance. Source: nd

Turkish journalist attacked in Berlin

Erk Acarer, a Turkish journalist accused of publishing secret information on state security and intelligence activities from Turkey, was injured by several attackers in the Rudow district of Neukölln in Berlin on Wednesday evening. He suffered a wound to the head and received medical treatment. Acarer tweeted a photo of himself as late as Wednesday evening. He said he was not in danger of dying, had some swelling on his head and was in hospital. “I know the perpetrators. I will never surrender to fascism.” He said he and his family were under police protection. Source: DW

NEWS FROM GERMANY

Deportations to Afghanistan continue

The German government is planning further deportations to Afghanistan, even though the worst fighting in a long time is raging between the Taliban and government troops. All official NATO contingents are to withdraw on 11 September. This must be read as an admission of the failure of 20 years of failed NATO policy in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, a deportation from Hanover to Kabul is planned for Monday. In a press release, the domestic policy spokesperson of the Left Party in the Bundestag, Ulla Jelpke, strongly condemns the continued deportations “to the most dangerous country in the world”: “Deportation to Afghanistan means deportation to war, terror and misery.” Source: jW

EU refugee policy: activists occupy Euro sign

Activists symbolically occupied the Euro sign in Frankfurt’s banking district on Saturday afternoon to protest against the EU’s refugee policy. Climbers abseiled down and attached a banner with the inscription “EU kills” and a symbolic barbed wire installation. The action was intended to challenge the symbolism of “the EU as a place of free movement and a guardian of humanitarian values”. For refugees, the EU is far too often not a place of openness, freedom of movement and liberty. The demonstrators demanded an end to legal proceedings against sea rescue workers who save migrants from the Mediterranean. Source: süddeutsche

German company sued for illegal arms exports to Colombia

The arms company SIG Sauer must pay around eleven million euros for illegal exports to Colombia. This was the decision of the Federal Supreme Court in Karlsruhe. The court considered it proven the former managing directors of the Eckernförde site delivered more than 47,000 SP 2022 pistols to a sister company in the USA, of which more than 38,000 were resold to Colombia. In a press release, the advertisers “Aktion Aufschrei – Stoppt den Waffenhandel!” state the “conviction for this historic sum is a huge success”. “This is the highest sum ever recovered from a small arms manufacturer,” comments Holger Rothbauer, the campaign’s lawyer. Source: amerika21

East Germany remains left behind

On Wednesday, the “Federal Government Commissioner for the New Länder”, Marco Wanderwitz (CDU), who is housed in the Federal Ministry of Economics, presented his annual report for 2021. The conclusion: despite the economic crisis and pandemic, things are always looking up between the Elbe and Oder rivers, but the population is ungrateful. Before his appearance at the Federal Press Conference, the parliamentary state secretary revealed many East Germans harbour a “deepened fundamental scepticism” towards politics and democracy. This is “admittedly a minority, but the minority is larger than in the old federal states”, said Wanderwitz. His verdict: “This is dangerous for democracy.” Source: jW

Can Proportional Representation save Labour? And would that be a good thing?

Proportional Representation (PR) should not be the Left’s main demand; a “Progressive Alliance” would be terrible. But a new voting system could help the Left


28/06/2021

The discussion around Proportional Representation (PR) is gathering steam among part of the Labour Left. The Independent reports that three-quarters of Labour members now support PR. 228 Constituency Labour Parties have signed a call for electoral reform. The call for PR has even been taken up by the left-wing faction Momentum. The current discussion has been provoked by two recent incidents.

First is the leadership election for the UNITE trade union, following the retirement of left-wing general secretary Len McCluskey. After leftist Howard Beckett withdrew, there are now two candidates from the left of the union – Steve Turner and Sharon Graham. This leads people to worry that the right-winger Gerard Coyne will slip through and win the election on a minority vote.

This is not the place to discuss the intricacies of the UNITE elections, but the election shows the danger of the First Past the Post (FPTP) system. The person with the most votes takes all, even if they are disliked by a majority of the voters. This is why many UNITE activists are calling for a Single Transferable Vote (a form of PR) in future elections.

Slump of Labour vote under Starmer

But the main reason for all the PR chatter is in reaction to “Sir” Keir Starmer continuing to lead the Labour Party into political oblivion. Two years ago, under Jeremy Corbyn, the party suffered unprecendented attacks from the press and sabotage from many people working for the party. Starmer supporters followed Tony Blair in sneering that “with any other leader, Labour would be 20 points ahead”. The results since Starmer took over have been derisory.

Just last month, there was the Hartlepool by-election, caused by the resignation of sitting Labour MP Mike Hill following allegations of sexual harassment and intimidation. Hartlepool is a working-class seat which has had a Labour MP since 1964. Any Labour candidate should have won easily – even Starmer’s choice, the Saudi-loving sexist Paul Williams.

It is very unusual for a ruling party to win a by election in a constituency that it lost in the previous general election. By elections tend to show protest votes against the incumbent government. Before Hartlepool, the government party had only ever retaken a seat in a by election 17 times – and only 5 times since the Second World War. Yet Labour still managed to lose Hartlepool to the ruling Tories.

Hartlepool was followed by Chesham and Amersham. Starmer’s apologists had said that Labour could not possibly have won Hartlepool, because prime minister Boris Johnson was benefiting from a “Covid bounce”. Yet the Liberal Democrats won Amersham with a 25% swing. Labour won only 622 votes – reportedly 2 more than the number of Labour party members in the constituency. It may be worth noting that in 2017, under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour won 11,374 votes.

Since the election debacles, a number of people who should know better have been gleefully welcoming the defection of former Tory MP John Bercow to Labour. It should be pointed out that while Bercow has criticised Boris Johnson, he has not issued a single statement to say that his own politics have changed.

At the same time, these same people wilfully ignore the facts that: some Labour activists are leaving the party; others are staying in for the while but are withdrawing from activity; while other socialists are still being expelled on trumped-up charges. Even Jeremy Corbyn is still not allowed to sit as a Labour MP.

Time for a “Progressive Alliance”?

This is the background to a swath of articles in the left-leaning media, calling for a “Progressive Alliance”. This is where Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens and maybe the SNP agree to stand down in elections, to enable a single anti-Tory candidate. Neal Lawson from Compass wrote in this week’s Guardian “there is no other way to stop a record fifth straight Conservative election victory, and the slide into a one-party state, than through a progressive alliance.”

Lawson’s example of a successful Progressive Alliance is the “remarkable relationship” (his words) between Tony Blair and former LibDem leader Paddy Ashdown. He also argues that “the societal challenges we face – of climate, culture, care, technology, ageing and inequality – simply can no longer be met by any single party.”

The campaigns for a Progressive Alliance and for PR are closely connected. In an editorial supporting a Progressive Alliance, the Guardian argued “Proportional representation is a way of redistributing power more fairly and encouraging consensus to be built across party lines.” Similarly, the organisation Reboot GB argues that PR “is an anchor for any Progressive Alliance”

A Progressive Alliance seems to have two main types of supporter on the Left. First there are the deluded, who believe that Lib Dems will break with the habit of a lifetime and support a full socialist platform. There is absolutely no reason to believe this. Remember that as recently as 2010-2015 the thoroughly neo-liberal Liberal Democrats were eagerly propping up a Tory government. And yet they would have the power of veto over any Progressive Alliance.

As for the social democratic nationalist parties, it is not long since Labour joined the Conservatives in the Better Together campaign aimed at preserving the Union and blocking Scottish independence. There is little evidence that Labour has moved from this position. Why on earth would the SNP or Plaid Cymru sign up to that?

Wouldn’t anything be better than Boris Johnson?

Then there are the desperate, who believe that Boris Johnson’s Tories are so qualitatively bad that anything must be better than this, even neo-liberalism lite. This view has the advantage that it acknowledges the reality of who the Lib Dems represent, and what they stand for. Note that it is no coincidence that Amersham is the 531st least deprived of England’s 533 parliamentary constituencies.

How things have changed since the heady days of Jeremy Corbyn. Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 election manifesto was both radical and popular. Labour Party membership tripled to 550,000 and between 73% and 83% of voters supported his plans to nationalise water, electricity, gas and the railways.

Even this manifesto was only possible in the face of opposition and even sabotage by a large number of Labour Party workers and a majority of Labour MPs. The idea that the Lib Dems would campaign for such a manifesto, or even allow it to come into being is a fantasy. Any Progressive Alliance depends on Labour having a programme which promises no fundamental change.

So what we are left with is a set of bland statements promising nothing more than “at least we’re not Boris Johnson”. In other words, the unsuccessful policies that Starmer has been following since he became party leader. This has not just led to a haemorrhaging of support for Labour. It also means that the many activists who were keen to campaign in 2017 will not be inspired next time round.

A “Progressive Alliance”, which handed power to the Tory enablers in the Lib Dems would reproduce the worst experiences of Starmerism, without offering voters any positive reasons to vote Labour or even giving party members a good reason why they should campaign. This will damage Labour’s vote even further.

Why now?

The current obsession with PR and “Progressive Alliances” is, at least in part, a hangover from old discussions about Brexit. A large part of the liberal-Left believed Brexit to be the most important political idea of the day. That meant that their conversation shifted away from the progressive demands in Corbyn’s manifesto.

It also caused many Labour members to seek alliances with a Liberal Democratic party, whose leader was not sure whether Gay sex was a sin, and whose 2019 election manifesto was described by the BBC as being more austere than the Tories’. This may have gone down well in the middle class clubs attended by Labour’s movers and shakers, but appalled working class voters, particularly in the North of England.

Allying with the Lib Dems was always a mistake. When Brexit was being pushed by the media as the only story that mattered, it was at least understandable. Now that Brexit no longer dominates political discussion, Labour has a chance to return to the class-based politics which caused people to enthusiastically campaign for a Corbyn government. Or, on the other hand, it can continue to cozy up to the Lib Dems.

Notwithstanding any criticism we may have of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn, tens of thousands of people were enthused to go out on doorsteps to campaign for a manifesto which promised to change the world. Could we seriously expect similar excitement for an election campaign which has been approved by the Lib Dem’s hapless leader Ed Davey?

Does this mean that PR is a bad idea?

I used to be a fervent supporter of the FPTP system. We were living in slightly different times then. The Conservatives were clearly the party of Capital and bigotry. Labour – in part through its links with the trade unions, and often despite its political practice – was the party of the working class. The other parties didn’t stand for much at all, and rarely had any serious link with progressive politics, let alone class struggle.

This meant that it was generally a ‘Good Thing’ that elections were contested by the parties which represented – however vaguely – the two sides of class struggle. Even though Labour rarely implemented serious change (and when they did it was more likely to be restricting immigration than fighting racism), a Labour victory was seen as a win for ‘Our Side’. This was something which positively affected workers’ confidence to fight back.

Then a number of things happened. Perhaps most important is what has been called the Pasokification of European Social Democratic parties. This was most noticeable in Greece, but was a trend in most European countries. “Pasokification” involved social democratic parties like Labour shifting to the right as a reaction to falling votes.

In Britain and Germany we saw the Blair-Schröder paper attacking the rights of workers and the unemployed. Britain also experienced Tony Blair’s enthusiasm for the Gulf war. That led to a decreasing number of working class people identifying Labour as being “their” party. Even my mother – a lifelong Labour member – asked me who she should vote for now.

Partly as a result of this, some nationalist parties – like the SNP and Plaid Cymru – which had traditionally had fairly right wing programmes, started positioning themselves as social democrats. They overtook Labour on the Left. Other parties – like Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party or Respect – emerged, leading to the hope for a serious left-wing challenge to Labour. A main reason for their lack of success was FPTP.

Will PR save Labour? I hope not

The main argument currently used for PR seems to be that it is necessary to revive the Labour Party. Only under PR, the argument goes, will we have a chance of a Labour government – albeit in coalition with the Lib Dems. Without PR, Labour will never govern again. As Polly Toynbee argued in the Guardian, “If Labour doesn’t fight our broken electoral system, it could be out of power for ever.”

My argument for PR is quite the reverse. I want PR because I want to destroy Labour and replace it with something better. The last year under Starmer has proved the party to be unfit for purpose. Even under Corbyn, there were too many unelected functionaries who were able to block progress. Even the great 2017 manifesto was seriously flawed, with promises like 10,000 extra police.

I want a party that is more democratic, more anchored in social movements, more socialist. The problem is that, because of the electoral system, it has proved impossible to create such a party from scratch. The closest we have come to this was with the formation of the Respect party, and the election of the first MP left of Labour since 1950.

There were 2 problems with these developments. First, that MP was George Galloway, whose politics can be politely described as inconsistent. He made some great speeches against the war, but has more recently been seen palling up with Nigel Farage and urging Scottish voters to vote Tory to preserve the Union. His defence of Julian Assange against rape charges was that “not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion”.

Second, there was no serious break from Labour. Galloway was the only leading figure who moved from Labour to Respect. Most other people who opposed the war either stayed in Labour or moved into inactivity (often both). Respect aspired to be more than an electoral party. And yet its inability to win elections (with one exception) meant that it lacked the basis to become a mass party.

PR alone is insufficient

Under PR this could be different and we might see the basis for the emergence of a British SYRIZA, Podemos, or even die LINKE. We must attach several caveats to this statement. Firstly, the recent experience of all these parties shows that the formation of a new Left party is not a cure-all. Radical formations can still quickly descend into parliamentary cretinism and compromise.

Secondly: PR will not automatically benefit the Left. There is a reasonable argument that one reason that the next French President may be an outright fascist is the PR system. And in Britain, Ell Foran from Stats for Lefties estimated that UKIP, which won just one seat in the 2015 general election, would have won 79 seats under PR.

So, it would be a great mistake to advocate PR as a way of solving all our problems. PR opens an arena in which the Left can gain exposure and support. But it opens the same arena to more pernicious and dangerous forces. Merely changing the voting system is insufficient without political change at the basis.

A new party which unites the people who joined Corbyn’s Labour with the radical Left outside the party would be a massive step forward inside British politics. Yet, while I believe that parties are important for bringing activists together, without activity at the basis of society, Left parties are impotent. This means that any campaign for a different voting system must be secondary to action from below.

How can we change society?

The key thing lies in understanding how we can change society. Only this week, we have seen the unprecedented conviction of policemen responsible for the racist murders of George Floyd and Dalian Atkinson. This is testament to the ability of movements like Black Lives Matter to effect change. Similarly, the fact that the environment is on the political agenda is the result of the international mobilisations by Fridays for Future.

Even parliamentary reform is dependent on extra-parliamentary struggle. In 1974, Tory prime minister Ted Heath called a general election under the sloganWho governs Britain – the unions or the government?” Striking miners and other social movements showed Heath that it wasn’t him. The reason that Starmer’s Labour is in decline is to a large extent because it no longer has any organic link to movements outside parliament.

So, a campaign for progressive politics should not start with a demand for PR. This is not least because the implementation of PR would depend on the votes of a Tory government which is perfectly happy to profit from the current system. The best way to challenge the Tories is not by moral outrage but by building social movements which challenge everything they stand for.

If we build up these movements, other changes will follow.

Thanks to Hari Kumar, Carol McGuigan and Anna Southern for comments on an earlier version of this article.

News from Berlin and Germany: 26th June 2021

Weekly news roundup from Berlin and Germany


25/06/2021

Compiled by Phil Butland

NEWS FROM BERLIN

Another occupied house threatened with an eviction notice

The owner of Rigaer Straße 94 wants to issue eviction orders against 3 or 4 tenants. This follows previous evictions from the same building. The house has been occupied since 1990 and is a symbol for the autonomous scene. Last Wednesday, activists erected barricades and police deployed water cannons and armoured recovery vehicles before breaking into the house. Berlin interior senator Andreas Geisel (SPD) expressed his support for the eviction. Source: Zeit

Axel-Springer group tells supporters of Palestine to find new jobs

The CEO of the Axel Springer group, which owns Bild. Die Welt and other newspapers, has said that workers who have problems with the Israel flag should find a job elsewhere. Mathias Döpfner made the statement in an international video conference with his employees. During the bombing of Gaza, the Springer press has flown an Israel flag in front of its headquarters, next to flags of Europe, Germany and Berlin. Döpfner called this “a sign of our solidarity”. Source: tacheles

Court rules that Airbnb must hand over landlord data

Airbnb must hand over data about landlords to the authorities if there is suspicion of a fake registration number. LINKE senator Sebastian Scheel celebrated the ruling, saying that “we can only differentiate between legal and illegal holiday homes if there is transparency and data requests are possible.” The case will probably now go to the higher court, and the Berlin Senate is planning new legislation to contain “touristification” of well-loved districts. Source: rbb

Nearly 350,000 votes for Expropriation

Nearly one tenth of Berliners have signed the petition for the Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen referendum. Nearly 350,000 signatures agree that private housing corporations which own more than 3,000 homes should be socialized. The campaign, which was supported by way over 1,000 active collectors has been collecting signatures for four months. The necessary quorum in Berlin is 7% of people eligible to vote – about 175,000 people. Even accounting for invalid signatures, this target has been reached despite pandemic and lockdown. Source: taz

NEWS FROM GERMANY

We are talking about organised Nazis in the police”

The German police contains networks of right wing extremists and racists, including in the heavily armed special command troops. Philosopher Daniel Loick says that this is no surprize. Victims have been reporting such cases for decades. Right wing men are attracted to the claim that the special command troops are last battalion protecting Germany from extreme danger. Despite the attempt to recruit migrants to the Berlin police, the police is still carrying out racial profiling. Source: fr

Hamas flag to be banned in Germany

The CDU-SPD government fractions are united in the desire to ban Hamas flags from Germany. “We don’t want flags from terror organisations to be waved on German soil”, said the deputy CDU leader Thomas Frei. There are problems that Hamas does not have an official flag. Germany-based Israeli journalist Yossi Bartal also notes that even the Israeli politician Mansour Abbas has been photographed in front of the so-called Hamas flag. Abbas is a member of the coalition just elected to rule Israel. Source: taz

Rail union prepares strikes

The train drivers’ union, the GDL, announced that it will be balloting its members for strike action. Results are due on 9 August, and union leader Claus Weselsky is expecting more than 90% voting for strike action. Rail bosses have declared that drivers will receive no pay rise in 2021, and a 1.4% rise starting in October 2022. They also want to increase the number of shift changes made at short notice by up to 40%. Although the union has already lowered its demands, Deutsche Bahn is not budging. Source: nd

Corporations and politicians support LGBTIQ rights – but only when it costs nothing

UEFA banned Munich football stadium’s rainbow protest against homophobic Hungarian president Victor Orban. Rainbow flags were still flown from the town hall and posted in social media by politicians and corporations like BMW, Siemens and Sparkasse. But the CDU-SPD government is still opposing laws which will help LGBT people. Volkswagen is continuing to work with FIFA for next year’s World Cup in Qatar, despite the countries many human rights – including for LGBT people. Source: nd

News from Berlin and Germany: 19th June 2021

Weekly news roundup from Berlin and Germany


18/06/2021

Compiled by Ana Ferreira

 

NEWS FROM BERLIN

Court case about racism in Aldi and use of the N* word

An Aldi branch manager was dismissed for pushing a German-Ghanaian man out the door in April. Prince Ofori (member of an artist collective) felt insulted by a customer who allegedly held a packet of “chocolate kisses” in his hands. The customer then allegedly turned towards the dark-skinned Prince Ofori and said, “Today, let’s treat ourselves to a pack of n… kisses!” And Prince Ofori filmed that. After he uploaded the video to Youtube, it was clicked four million times within hours! In the video, he was not wearing the mandatory FFP-2 mask at the moment of the recording. Source: bz

Berlin police clash with squatters and their supporters

Police and firefighters in Berlin were caught in a street battle last Wednesday. The explanation for this has with the apartment complex located at Rigaer Strasse 94 to do. On Tuesday, the Berlin Administrative Court rejected a last-minute attempt to block a Thursday fire safety inspection of the building complex. The authorities then claimed that the situation inside the buildings posed an urgent danger to public safety and order. The complex comprises three houses. Ahead of the inspection, police arrived Wednesday morning with tactical vehicles and a water cannon. Police declared the zone restricted for vehicle parking until Friday evening and banned demonstrations in the area. Source: dw

NEWS FROM GERMANY

No exit for peace activists

Politicians and activists from Germany wanted to travel from Düsseldorf to the Kurdish autonomous regions in Iraq on Saturday. One of their goals: to mediate between the Kurdish autonomous government in Erbil and the PKK. But the peace delegation’s journey ended in a windowless corridor at Düsseldorf airport. Upon arrival at the airport, Cansu Özdemir, leader of the Left Party (“die Linke”) in Hamburg, noticed a “very conspicuous” man. He walked around the meeting delegation, photographed them and followed them. Özdemir suspects the man works for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Source: nd

AfD representatives possibly threatened with expulsion

Three leading AfD representatives in Lower Saxony are facing expulsion from the party following reports of a revival of the “wing”, which is classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. According to information from participant circles, the party executive of the AfD has spoken out in favour of applying for the expulsion of the three from the party. AfD leader Jörg Meuthen said on last Friday before a meeting of the party leadership in Berlin: “As far as there is an attempt to build parallel structures, that is definitely unacceptable and damaging to the party.” Source: süddeutsche

Wimp hats must pay

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution must pay Christiane Meusel 10,000 euros in damages. The lawyer won a bullying lawsuit against her ex-employer. Among other things, she worked in the reporting and public relations unit from 2013 to 2019. Her tasks at times included monitoring Islamist propaganda on social networks. But soon most of her tasks were taken away and she was advised by the therapist to change jobs for health reasons. Meusel’s claim for compensation for pain and suffering was rejected at first instance. She currently works in Berlin as a lawyer specialising in labour law and mobbing cases. Source: nd

On Queer Palestine and the Intersectional Critique

Discussing Queer Palestine in the Global North: two books reviewed


17/06/2021

Author’s notes, January 20, 2025
Since the escalated genocide on the people of Palestine by the genocidal settler colonial apartheid state, my politics have progressed very rapidly. I have been wanting to add this note for at least a year. Although I would still recommend both books, my observations about them would be very different now. I did not center the plight of the Palestinian people as much as I should have. I was too focused on settler feelings, as is often the default from the so-called “West.”

This article was first published by Dweller on June 9, 2021.

I have been wanting for a while now to dedicate one of my instagram-book-posts to Sarah Schulman’s Israel/ Palestine and the Queer International and one to Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique by Dr. Sa’ed Atshan. With selected passages from each book, as I usually do, because there is so much in both books that I know a lot of people can learn from. But with everything that is happening at the moment, I wanted to prioritise making people, especially those in Europe and North America, aware of these books as soon as possible and to not only limit this to an instagram post. I am sure there are many books that you can read / listen to, to inform yourself, but I wanted to highlight these two books that I’ve learned a lot from and have spoken to me the most.

Sarah Schulman is a Jewish queer activist, educator, novelist, with novels and non-fiction work that span over three decades. She has been an active member of ACT UP since 1987 and has co-founded the ACT UP Oral History Project. In Israel / Palestine and the Queer International, she describes her dawning consciousness of the Palestinian liberation struggle and expands on what she has learned along the way and the importance of queer solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Dr. Sa’ed Atshan is a Palestinian academic who is Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, USA. In Queer Palestine and the Empire of Crtique he focuses on the rise of the Palestinian LGBTQ movement, the impact it had and still has both locally and internationally, as well as the global queer solidarity movement with the Palestinian liberation struggle.

With the global uprising of June 2020, it seemed as if a lot white folks, white institutions and so on, might finally make a massive shift towards truly valuing Black lives and putting forward material change. But seeing how things are going back to the way they were in the ‘underground’ dance music scene’ which I’m a part of, made me realize that most white folks are still not willing to push for material change. And when it comes to the lives of Palestinian people, most white people who consider themselves progressive, refuse to even do the bare minimum of speaking out in solidarity with the Palestinian people. With many of them using ‘not being well informed’ as an excuse. First of all, you don’t need to be ‘well informed’ to be against the oppression and killing of the Palestinian people by the Israeli state. Secondly, I do understand the insecurities in discussions around supporting the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, especially in Europe and North America, because most of our governments, if not all, are unapologetically pro Israel. Of course, the stance of our government heavily influences public discourse and vice versa and although things are changing, publicly expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people can still have a lot of negative consequences for some people, especially folks on the margins. But this is not the case for most people, especially those in a privileged position, and even if it does have consequences to stand for what’s right, isn’t it worth it?

When you stay silent, because you are not ‘well informed’ and you don’t put effort into educating yourself, then you have chosen the side of the oppressor. Lest we forget, white silence is violence. In Israel / Palestine and the Queer International Sarah Schulman discusses her own journey towards understanding and supporting the BDS movement and she is very honest about her own process.

“One of the strangest things about wilful ignorance regarding Israel and Palestine is how often “progressive” people, like myself, with histories of community activism and awareness, engage in it. In this way it somewhat parallels the history of homophobia, in that there are emotional blocks that keep many straight people from applying their general value systems to human rights for all. The irony, in my case, of being a lifelong activist and not doing the work to “get it” about Israel is deep and hard to both understand and convey. But I have come to learn that this insistent blindness is pervasive, and I want to use the opportunity of this book to confront and expose my own denial in a way that I hope will be helpful to others.”

There are those of us for whom support for Palestine was a given, because of the environment we grew up in or the friends we had early on. To them I’d like to say, and I want to emphasise that I am specifically speaking to folks in Europe and North America, some of us also need to educate ourselves to make sure that our solidarity is more in depth and not just on a reactionary level, which can sometimes reproduce anti-Semitic tropes. A mistake that is still made very often in Europe and North America that causes a lot of harm is, holding Jewish people all over the world accountable for the actions of the fascist Israeli state. Stop demanding from US-American Jews, Dutch Jews and so on, to speak on Israel. The right-wing, especially fundamental Christians and the Israeli government, push the narrative of equating Jewish people across the world with the state of Israel, even though there are Jewish led organisations in almost every country, including Israel, that stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation. So, as progressives we need to reject the equating of Jewish people with the Israeli state.

Dr. Sa’ed Atshan points out in ‘Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique’

“Although there can be overlap between anti-Semitism and opposition to Zionism, distinguishing between them is essential, and acknowledging that distinction is necessary in order to recognize when anti-Semitism has actually become manifest. From the Palestinian vantage point, what matters is not how Zionism is romanticized but how it is practiced.“

Big part of both books is the BDS movement and Brand Israel.

Dr. Sa’ed Atshan:

“In 2005 the Israeli government launched its Brand Israel campaign, and Palestinian civil society launched its Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The BDS movement demands boycotts against institutions complicit in Israel’s system of oppression and has motivated queer Palestinian activists to cultivate transnational solidarity networks. Its genesis marked a turning point for queer Palestinian activists, connecting their activism not only to Palestinian and Israeli audiences but also to people around the world.”

Sarah Schulman:

“What makes BDS difficult is that it requires a critical mass of people to take the time to understand why it is necessary and how it works. And it is dependent on people outside of Palestine and Israel to carry it out. We have to be the ones to impose sanctions, or else there are no sanctions. It is a strategy devised by the oppressed, but dependent on allies. And as far as I can see, it is the strategy with the most potential for success.”

It is very important that we listen to the will of the Palestinian people and if you are on board with the BDS movement you respect and advocate for what the movement’s demands are. Remember, it is not about you, it is about the will of the Palestinian people. The 3 demands of the BDS movement are; 1. Ending Israeli occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall, 2. Recognising the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality, 3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194

Dr. Sa’ed Atshan:

“Boycotts have become the major tool and mode for engaging with Palestine solidarity globally, including in many LGBTQ communities. The formal endorsement of BDS by the queer Palestinian movement has provided LGBTQ Palestinians with a seat at the Palestinian civil society table, thereby challenging Palestinian homophobia and altering perceptions of queer Palestinians within Palestinian society.”

There is the narrative that being critical of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic, which in Germany, combined with their collective public guilt for sins of the past, is deep embedded. So much so that BDS movement is compared to the Nazi boycott of Jewish people. And this narrative is so widely spread that even nightclubs organise a solidarity march for Israeli and release statements defining Palestinians is terrorists and Israelis is the sole victims. When Susan Slymovics, an established anthropologist and the daughter of a survivor of Shoah, was scheduled to speak at the Free University in Berlin in 2018, there were calls to cancel her appearance. And because of her support for the BDS movement, she was even labeled as Anti-Semitic.

Sarah Schulman:

Portraying BDS as “pro-Palestine and anti-Israel” makes it sound like a football game, with false assumptions of equality of positions and equal playing fields. What will be justice for the Jews will also be justice for the Palestinians.

It is important to understand that speaking up is not enough and we need to be fully on board with the BDS movement. This is especially important for those of us in Europe and North America, because most of our governments directly support the oppression and killing of Palestinian citizens, either financially and / or with arms deals. So if our country is standing with the state of Israel, it is our responsibility to write, call, e-mail, the elected officials we voted for.

In countries like the Netherlands where there is a multiparty-system, some parties are less clear about their support for the state of Israel, but Bij1 is a party that unapologetically stands with the Palestinian people. So it is your responsibility to address this with the party you voted for and specifically the candidate who received your vote. I am specifically addressing white people more than BPoC here, because white voices still carry more weight with those (white people) in power, and solidarity demands engagement and support across differences.

Sarah Schulman:

“I have been in antiwar demonstrations with Catholics who actively fight against abortion rights, which I consider to be essential to female autonomy. So the only reason that sharing a common outrage with Hamas at the killings in Gaza disturbed me more than all the other religious fundamentalists I had had some moment of common ground with in the past was my own prejudice. Once that conceptual gap was faced, I examined the specifics. Hamas was democratically elected. It doesn’t matter what I think about Hamas. What matters is that my country, the United States of America, is providing military aid to Israel, who in my name is committing war crimes. So, consistent with my lifetime of work for justice, my responsibility regarding Israel is to speak out against what is being done in my name with my tax money. Period. It’s not always so clean, these decisions, but they still need to be faced.”

Both books obviously also focus on the LGBTQ section of Brand Israel.

Sarah Schulman:

“At this point I sat down and with help from the anti-occupation global activist community, amassed a year-by-year documentary guide to pink- washing so that the history and context of this emerging paradigm could be more easily understood and confronted. And the first thing that became clear, while doing this work, was that pink-washing was a direct product of Israel’s remarketing campaign: Brand Israel.”

Dr. Sa’ed Atshan:

“As Palestinians and as queer people, they name Zionism and homophobia, respectively, as the two primary reasons for their marginalization. Yet pro-Israel queer advocates such as Jayson Littman relegate Zionism to an “other issue” from LGBTQ rights. For queer Palestinians, Zionism and homophobia are fundamentally connected through ethnoheteronormativity. Queer Palestinian activists also experience the Zionist demand not to “single out Israel” as a lack of ability to even articulate the source of their oppression.”

An argument that is used often in discussions by those who want to defend the oppressive Israeli state is, that “Israel is being singled out” and that “Singling out Israel is inherently anti-Semitic.”

Sarah Schulman:

“This is the weakest argument in this entire debate, and the one repeated the most. People never claim that Israel’s action does not violate international law. That’s a given. They simply argue that to do so is all right because others do it as well. It is disheartening to see members of the opposition be so careless and knee-jerk. I want them to have good reasons for their positions.”

There is also this idea, especially among white liberals, of being afraid of being labeled anti-Semitic and that excuse is used to not stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Instead they choose to be ‘neutral’ and think that Jewish people are the only people who can critique Israel without being labeled anti-Semitic, although, as shown above, even Jewish people are labeled anti-Semitic for being critical of Israel.

Sarah Schulman:

“I cannot overstate how much I hate and disagree with this statement. And even as I write this a year and a half later, I am sick of hearing it. As far as I am concerned, most non-Jews are anti-Semitic, and this simple assertion of the secret threat of the all-powerful Jew to brand some innocent Christian with the label “anti-Semite” is a good example. They don’t seem to be afraid of being anti-Semitic on a wide range of other planes. Only when it comes to criticizing Israel are they suddenly controlled by the thought.”

Sarah Schulman also addresses how some institutions who receive funding refuse to work with or de-platform those who are critical of Israel, because they fear that they will lose their funding, even when there is no proof that they will. This is mainly based on the anti-Semitic trope that Jewish people control everything, especially finance.

Sarah Schulman:

“I started to realize that there was a strange new configuration at play. The leaders of the LGBT Center, most of whom were not Jews, appeared to believe, without evidence, that there was a contingent of rich, vengeful, punitive gay Jews—whose names no one seemed to know—that were funding all our LGBT institutions. That, if we continued to have free speech and open debate in our community, these unnamed punitive rich Jews would take their Jew money and shut down the community.”

By now I hope it is clear how important reading / listening to these two books is. They show that ignorance is a choice; that evidence-based opposition to specific present-day Israeli actions is not anti-Semitic prejudice; that some anxiety around criticising Israel is itself rooted in anti-Semitism; that solidarity around basic human rights doesn’t require agreement on all contentious issues; and that LGBTQ+ rights and Palestinian rights are not in opposition. Both books obviously discuss more than these topics. In Dr. Atshan’s book there is an entire chapter dedicated to LGBTQ+ Palestinians and their resistance, Sarah Schulman talks in detail about her part in the first LGBTQ+ delegation from the United States to Palestine organised by Al-Qaws and Aswa, which took place in 2011 (which was co-led by Dr. Atshan). Schulman also talks about the anti-occupation queer Israelis she met and Dr. Atshan about how queer Jewish Israelis are one of the most vigourous and vocal supporters of Palestinian queers. The usage of the term apartheid to describe Israel is also discussed in both books, alongside the boycott movement against South Africa’s apartheid regime, and the role that news media and films play, to name a few.

I’d like to end with this passage from Sarah Schulman’s book:

How did the Europeans, who caused the pain in the first place, get off scot-free, while the Palestinians, who had nothing to do with it, ended up paying the price?

Here are things you can and in my opinion should do and tell your family and friends to do:

Buy both books through your local bookshop or get them directly from the publisher. I’d recommend reading / listening to Sarah Schulman’s book first.

Israel/ Palestine and the Queer International by Sarah Schulman, Duke University Press (2012)

Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique by Dr. Sa’ed Atshan, Stanford University Press (2020)