[The Holocaust serves, paradoxically, as an alibi for Europeans to
assume they are morally superior to others,]
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WHY GERMAN STATE RACISM IS NOW DIRECTED AT THE PALESTINIANS  
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Jonathan Cook
November 22, 2022
Middle East Eye
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_ The Holocaust serves, paradoxically, as an alibi for Europeans to
assume they are morally superior to others, _

A demonstrator displays a placard reading: "Palestinian Lives Matter"
during a pro-Palestinian protest in Berlin on 19 May 2021, (AFP)

 

There are troubling insights to be gained into modern European racism
from the German arts community’s decision to revoke
[[link removed]] a
lifetime achievement award to the respected British playwright Caryl
[[link removed]] Churchill
[[link removed]] over her trenchant
support for the Palestinians
[[link removed]].

On 31 October, Churchill was stripped of the European Drama Prize she
had been given in April in recognition of her life’s work. The
decision was backed by Petra Olschowski, the arts minister of the
state of Baden-Wurttemberg, who said
[[link removed]]:
“We as a country take a clear and non-negotiable stance against any
form of antisemitism. This is all the more reason why a prize funded
by the state cannot be awarded under the given circumstances.”

The jury - comprising eminent figures in German cultural life - said
they had had their attention drawn, since making the award, to two
problems. First, Churchill had backed BDS
[[link removed]], a Palestinian grassroots
movement calling for a boycott of Israeli institutions directly
involved in Israel
[[link removed]]’s decades-long
oppression of the Palestinians.

Back in 2019, an overwhelming majority of the German parliament
designated support for BDS as “antisemitic”
[[link removed]].

And second, the panel had been reminded of a short play called _Seven
Jewish Children
[[link removed]]_,
written 13 years ago in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s savage
and extended bombardment of Gaza
[[link removed]]’s besieged Palestinian
population in the winter of 2008-09. In a statement, the German
jury said
[[link removed]] the
play could "be regarded as being antisemitic".

In Churchill’s now largely forgotten play, Jewish parents articulate
their trauma generation by generation.

Palestinians are not present. They are shadows. They are the referred
pain of a wound from Europe. Instead, the play contextualises the
suffering in Gaza through a series of monologues as each generation of
Jewish parents struggles to decide what they should tell their
children and what realities they should hide - be it about the horrors
of Europe [[link removed]], the crimes
involved in the creation of Israel, or the bombardment of Gaza.

The play hints at uncomfortable truths: that the oppressed can turn
into oppressor; that traumas do not necessarily heal or enlighten; and
that their effects can be complex and paradoxical.

Friends to tormentors

One conclusion to draw from the revocation of Churchill’s award -
the latest episode in Europe’s endless “antisemitism rows” - is
that German elites, who control the public discourse, have signally
failed to internalise the Holocaust’s key lesson.

It is a universal one: that we should never tolerate the demonisation
of oppressed and marginalised groups, or those who stand in solidarity
with them, especially when the state itself or its representatives are
behind such demonisation. That way lies pogroms and gas chambers.

How has support for the Palestinian cause of BDS - for boycotts of
those directly involved in Israel’s decades-long oppression and
ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians - come to be reinterpreted as
racism against Jews?

This, of course, is not a uniquely German failing. Most western states
- including the US
[[link removed]], France
[[link removed]] and Britain
[[link removed]] -
have willingly conflated criticism of Israel over its oppression of
Palestinians with antisemitism, and sought to silence or criminalise
calls to punish Israel through boycotts.

But this failure ought to be all the more surprising given the
enormous efforts Germany has expended over many decades in Holocaust
education
[[link removed]],
supposedly to eradicate the susceptibility of Germans to
state-sponsored racism. How have they switched - so easily, it seems -
from one kind of state-sanctioned racism, antisemitism, to another
kind, anti-Palestinian racism?

But even more paradoxically, Germany has smeared not just Palestinians
and their supporters through its crackdown on BDS, but Jews too. It
treats them all as inherently responsible for the actions of Israel, a
state that no more represents all Jews than Saudi Arabia
[[link removed]] represents all
Muslims.

Germany’s ostentatious philo-semitism - expressed in its reflexive
support for Israel - is simply antisemitism-in-waiting. If Jews are
viewed as intrinsically tied to Israel’s actions, then their fate
depends on how Israel is viewed at any particular moment. Should
western elites support Israel, as they do now, then Jews are safe.
Should western elites turn against Israel, then Jews are not safe.

Crucially, what Caryl Churchill and the vast majority of Palestinians
and their supporters are highlighting is that Israel and “the
Jews” are not the same. Criticism of Israel is not criticism of
Jews. And those who claim it is are playing with fire. They are
providing the conditions for those they now regard as friends to later
become their tormentors.

‘Reeks of fascism’

So how has Germany reached the point where it can cancel an award to a
renowned playwright - and smear her as antisemitic - because she
supports the right of Palestinians to freedom and dignity and because
she wishes to speak out against their silencing in Europe? How has
Germany so casually, so unthinkingly, become racist towards
Palestinians and their supporters, and once again to Jews?

As Mike Leigh, a famous British film director who is Jewish, has
observed
[[link removed]] in
Churchill’s defence, the decision to revoke the prize “reeks of
the very fascism it affects to oppose”. There is a wider context to
Germany’s repurposing of its racism.

The same elites who were attracted to a worldview that blamed the
Jews, and others, for the subversion of a supposed “Aryan
civilisation” are now attracted to a worldview that blames Muslims -
including Palestinians (not all of whom are Muslim, it is too often
forgotten) - for the subversion of European civilisation.

This monochrome worldview is appealing because it sweeps aside
complexity and offers simple solutions that turn the world upside down
and place the oppressor, western elites, on the side of Good and those
they oppress on the side of Evil. Back in the 1930s and 1940s those
solutions propelled Germany towards the horrors of the death camps.

The same racism that fuelled the Holocaust does not, of course, have
to lead precisely to another industrial-scale genocide. That supreme
crime has nephews and nieces, some of whom ostensibly look less ugly
than their older relative. It can lead to exclusion, demonisation and
McCarthyism, all of which serve as a prelude to worse crimes.

In our supposedly more enlightened age, the same Manichean impulse
divides the world into camps of good and evil. Into “white”
European natives versus Muslim and Arab invaders. Into moderates
versus extremists. And somehow, conflated with these other categories,
it pits supporters of Israel against “antisemites”. 

To the dark side

This is no accident. Israel has helped to cultivate this divide, while
its supporters have richly exploited it. Israel has provided the cover
story for western elites to engineer a supposedly civilisational
confrontation between West and East, between the Judaeo-Christian
world and the Muslim world, between humanism and barbarism, between
good and evil.

This morality tale, paradoxically with the Holocaust serving as its
prequel, has been written to reassure western publics of their
leaders’ benevolence. It suggests that through its repentance,
Germany - the epicentre of the genocide of the Jews - cleansed itself
and the rest of Europe of its sins.

Perversely, the industrialised crime of the Holocaust serves as the
alibi for an enlightened Europe. The barometer of German and European
atonement and redemption is their reflexive support for Israel. To
back Israel uncritically is supposedly proof that today’s Europe is
morally superior to a global south in which many condemn Israel.

Through Israel’s creation, according to this morality tale, Europe
did not perpetuate its racism - by relocating its victims to another
region and turning them into the tormentors
[[link removed]] of
the native population. No, Europe turned over a new leaf. It made
amends. Its better nature triumphed.

To bolster this improbable story, to breathe life into it, a yardstick
of difference was needed. Just as “the Jews” once served that
purpose by contrasting a pure Aryan race from a supposedly degenerate
Jewish one, now the Muslim world is presented as the antithesis of an
advanced white European civilisation.

And anyone who sides with those oppressed by Israel - and by a
colonial West that inserted a self-declared Jewish state into the
Middle East by destroying the Palestinians’ homeland - must be cast
out, as Churchill has been by Germany. Such people are no longer part
of an enlightened Europe. They have gone over to the dark side. They
are traitors, they are antisemites.

‘Confected outrage’

This story, absurd as it sounds, carries great weight outside Germany
too. One need only remember that a very short time ago a British
political leader, Jeremy Corbyn
[[link removed]], came within
sight of power before he was crushed by the same antisemitism smears
[[link removed]] faced
by Churchill.

But there is a notable difference.

In the case of Churchill, it has been harder to contain the backlash -
at least outside Germany. Prominent artists, including Jewish actors,
directors and writers, have rushed to her defence
[[link removed]].

Perhaps more surprising still, so have liberal media outlets in
Britain, such as the Guardian, which, according to research, was
as deeply invested 
[[link removed]]as
the rest of the establishment media in undermining Corbyn and the
anti-racist, anti-imperialist left he briefly led.

Take, for example, this comment from Dominic Cooke, an associate
director at the National Theatre, defending Churchill’s play _Seven
Jewish Children_, which he directed at the Royal Court.

He is quoted sympathetically
[[link removed]] by
the Guardian: “The confected outrage about Caryl’s play was
designed to divert attention away from this fact [the large
Palestinian death toll caused by Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in
2009] and scare possible critics of it into silence.”

He is right. But the “confected outrage” directed at Churchill is
exactly the same confected outrage that was directed at Corbyn - a
confected outrage designed in Corbyn’s case both to divert attention
from the former Labour leader’s anti-imperial opposition to
Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and to scare leftwing
critics of Israel into silence.

In Labour’s case, simply noting that the outrage had
been “confected” – or weaponised – was sufficient grounds
to suspend  [[link removed]]or expel
party members for antisemitism. In fact, it was precisely Corbyn’s
comment about the problem of antisemitism
being “dramatically overstated" for political reasons that
ultimately served as the pretext to oust him from the Labour
parliamentary party.

Timid cultural world

There are reasons why prominent artists and establishment media
outlets such as the Guardian are coming to the defence of Churchill in
a way, and using a forthrightness, they avoided with Corbyn.

In a very real sense, the fight to stand up for Palestinians
culturally and artistically is now largely a lost cause. Who can
imagine _Seven Jewish Children_ being produced in the West End now,
as it was 13 years ago? Or Peter Kosminsky, another Jewish signatory
of the letter defending Churchill, being allowed to make _The
Promise_
[[link removed]],
as he was 11 years ago by Channel 4, a drama series that revealed the
full panorama of violence associated with Israel’s creation and its
occupation?

Our cultural world is once again far more timid, more intimidated, in
exploring and representing the realities of Palestinian suffering,
paradoxically even as those realities are better understood than ever
before because of social media.

The other reason Churchill is receiving the kind of support denied to
Corbyn is that the cancellation of her award is really a skirmish on
the margins of the fight to give voice to Palestinian oppression - the
reason the Guardian can afford to indulge it. Defending a respected,
elderly playwright from the accusation of antisemitism for a play that
was quickly erased from memory incurs no real cost.

Far more was at stake in the battle to defend Corbyn. He had the
potential power - had he become prime minister - to make real amends
for European colonialism, to really atone, by denying British support
and arms for Israel to perpetuate that colonialism in the Middle East
and continue its oppression of the Palestinians.

More likely, however, had Corbyn been able to form a government, and
been in a position to challenge Europe’s collusion
[[link removed]] in
Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, he would have faced even
more savage resistance than he endured as Labour leader - and not just
from the British establishment but from a wider western one.

That would have risked exposing as a myth the morality tale Europeans
have been encouraged to tell about themselves. It would have risked
highlighting the absurdity of the Holocaust alibi for European moral
superiority.

Caryl Churchill has been stripped of her award because state-sponsored
racism still lies at the heart of the European project. Europe’s
racism was never cleansed. The seeds of fascism did not go away. They
simply need a new time and purpose to flourish once more.

_The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye._

_Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for
Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net
[[link removed]]._

_Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and
analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more
about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill
out this form [[link removed]]. More
about MEE can be found here
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* Germany
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* Fascism
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* Israel
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* Holocaust
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* Palestinians
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