Jewish artists, writers, and scholars living in Germany – ‘Distraction from the greatest danger’

28 August 2024

We, the undersigned Jewish artists, writers, and scholars living in Germany, are writing to express our deep concerns about the Bundestag resolution „Nie wieder ist jetzt: Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland schützen, bewahren und starken“—„Never again is now: Protecting, preserving, and strengthening Jewish life in Germany“—as it is currently being drafted by the SPD, CDU/CSU, FDP and Greens. This resolution claims to protect Jewish life in Germany. It promises instead to endanger it.

The current resolution draft is dangerous. It will chill free expression, isolate Germany from the rest of the democratic world, and further imperil ethnic and religious minorities, particularly our Arab and Muslim neighbors who have already become the targets of brutal police violence. Even if these consequences were somehow mitigated, the resolution does not achieve its own stated goals. It will weaken, rather than strengthen, the diversity of Jewish life in Germany by associating all Jews with the actions of the Israeli government, a notorious antisemitic trope. It will silence Jewish voices and put Jewish scholars, writers and artists working inside and outside Germany at risk.

Our concerns join a growing chorus in the German and international public spheres. Legal scholars have voiced doubts about the draft’s constitutionality. Respected public figures such as Jerzy Montag and Michael Barenboim have criticized it for conflating Jewish life within Germany with the interests of Israel. This conflation, and its misuse by authorities to restrict freedoms of expression and assembly, forecloses the very diversity of Jewish life it claims to preserve and jeopardizes the rights it purports to champion.

The current resolution draft calls for Germany’s federal government and states to draw up new regulations to restrict public funds for art projects deemed antisemitic, and to create new disciplinary posts to impose new penalties within universities for antisemitism in the classroom and on campus. Among our concerns, the draft directs authorities to refer exclusively to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of antisemitism as the means of making this determination. The IHRA WD has been widely criticized for conflating valid critiques of the Israeli government with antisemitism. Liberal Zionists, and even the definition’s own author, have decried how it has been misused to silence criticism of the Israeli government. The use of the IHRA WD in a previous resolution, the BDS resolution of 2019, is currently being challenged in the Federal Constitutional Court. With a bonafide alternative definition, the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, available since 2021, there is no justification for its exclusive use.

The problems with the resolution do not end with its definitions. The draft is fixated on artists, students, and migrants as the country’s most dangerous perpetrators of antisemitism, suggesting that the most urgent threat to Jews comes from people associated with leftist politics and those who come from outside of Germany. This is a malicious distortion of reality, one that relies on the false conflation of antisemitism and any critique of the Israeli government. As Jews, we particularly reject the resolution’s suggestion that antisemitism has been imported by migrants into Germany, the birthplace of Nazism.

It is clear that the overwhelming majority of antisemitic crimes originate in the German far-right, a fact long confirmed by federal statistics. We do not fear our Muslim neighbors, nor do we fear our fellow artists, writers, and academics. We fear the growing right-wing as evidenced by mass gatherings of neo-Nazis emboldened by a national climate of xenophobic fear. We fear Alternative für Deutschland, the country’s second-most popular political party, whose leaders knowingly traffic in Nazi rhetoric. This threat is barely mentioned in the resolution, which instead focuses on foreigners and minorities, a shameful distraction from the largest danger to Jews in Germany. It is evidence that Germany has yet to overcome its past.

The drafting of the resolution took place in closed rooms, with no public conversation and without seeking the input from a variety of Jewish groups. The resulting text does not reflect a democratic process, nor does it reflect the diversity of mainstream Jewish perspectives. If passed, it will place thousands of Israeli and other Jewish academics and artists under suspicion by the German state.

If German leaders are truly committed to a pluralistic and open society inclusive of Jews, they must confront their own authoritarian tendencies. They should concern themselves with ideologues like former Green MP Volker Beck, who has urged the group drafting the resolution to ignore all public outcry about the damage that this resolution could do to the arts and academic world—as well as to Germany’s democracy. This resolution promotes the idea that Germany can only be made safe for Jews through repressive anti-democratic measures. But it is always a mistake to abandon democratic principles for short-term political gain. Germany’s leaders, in particular, should know better.

We demand that a variety of Jewish perspectives, and not only those that flatter German feelings, be invited to participate in any resolution passed in our name. We insist that the German state cannot safeguard Jewish life solely through repressive measures. We write in the belief that the only way of „protecting, preserving, and strengthening“ Jewish life in Germany is to protect, preserve, and strengthen the rights of all minorities. If there is a lesson from the catastrophe of the Holocaust, it is this: „Never again“ means „never again for everyone.“

SignedKaren Adler, historian

Alma Albert, art conservator

Aviad Albert, linguist

Udi Aloni, filmmaker

Tamar Amar-Dahl, Historikerin

Hila Amit, writer

Daniel Antoszyk

Ido Arad, conductor

Josh Axelrod, journalist

Prof. Dr. Kurt Bader, Professor Emeritus

Michael Baers, artist and researcher

Roii Ball, Historiker

Michael Barenboim, violinist

Joram Bejarano, Musiker

Eliana Ben-David, music radio DJ and curator

Avi Berg, artist

Judith Bernstein

Sanders Isaac Bernstein, writer

Adam Berry, journalist

Candice Breitz, artist

Adam Broomberg, artist

Cora Browner

Jevgeniy Bluwstein, social scientist

Alexander Theodore Moshe Cocotas, writer and photographer

Zoe Cooper, writer

Dror Dayan, filmmaker and academic

Anita Di Bianco, artist

Esther Dischereit, writer

Tamar Ilana Dolezal,

Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus, author and translator

Michael Dunajevsky

Asaf Dvori, poet

Deborah Feldman, author

Sylvia Finzi, visual artist

Erica Fischer, writer

Jonathan Fridman

Ruth Fruchtman, writer

Tom Givol

Harry Glass

William Noah Glucroft, journalist

Ofir Raul Graizer, director, writer, and screenwriter

Paul Grossman, psychologist

Julia Gyemant, curator

Iris Hefets, psychoanalyst

Wieland Hoban, composer and translator

Michal Kaiser-Livne, psychoanalytikerin

Aurelia Kalisky

Liad Hussein Kantorowicz, Künstlerin und Musikerin

Barrie Kosky, theatre and opera director

Quill Kukla, philosopher, author

Matt Lambert, filmmaker and artist

Elad Lapidot, Professor of Jewish Studies

Jacob Wolf Lefton, actor, writer and peacebuilder

Hadas Leonov, software developer

Lindsay Lerman, author

Rachel Levine, researcher and educator

Eliza Levinson, writer and editor

Clément Lévy, Lehrer

Ruth Lewis, Freiberuflicher Illustrator

Rapha Linden, writer

Adi Liraz, Künstlerin und Pädagogin

Ruth Luschnat, Heilpraktikerin – Einzelfallhilfe

Liav Keren, data scientist

Ben Mauk, writer and journalist

Ben Miller, writer and historian

Yonatan Miller, trade unionist

Liron Milstein, writer

Peaches Nisker, musician

Jason Oberman, musician and scholar

Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, historian

Rachel Pafe, writer and researcher

Lucy Park, artist

Mark Peranson, curator and writer

Neta Polturak, musician

Siena Powers, artist and writer

Tamar Raphael, writer

Udi Raz, doctoral fellow

Dr. Fanny-Michaela Reisin, Professor Emeritus

Emilia Roig, writer

Liz Rosenfeld, artist

Tomer Rosenthal, artist

Ryan Ruby, author

Rebecca Rukeyser, writer

Lottie Sebes, artist

Zoe Schattenburg

Oded Schechter, scholar, Jewish studies and philosophy

Adam Schorin, writer and filmmaker

Anton Sefkow, scholar

Todd Sekuler, curator and anthropologist

Mati Shemoelof, writer and curator

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Marc Siegel, Professor für Filmwissenschaft

Lili Sommerfeld, musician and writer

Shaked Spier, academic researcher and activist

Maya Steinberg, filmmaker

Shelly Steinberg

virgil b/g taylor, artist

Aria Tilove, scientific researcher

Katharina Verleger, Wissenschaftlerin

Daphna Westerman, artist and PhD student, Visual Cultures

Albert Wiederspiel, Ehemaliger Leiter

Roland Wiegel, Azubi

Adam Stanley Wilkins, writer, scholar, and biologist

Lily Zlotover, artist

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