In mid-February, the United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was scheduled to give a talk together with Forensic Architecture founder Eyal Weizman at Berlin’s Free University. Yet, the school soon faced political pressure from Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor and Berlin’s conservative mayor Kai Wegner, who demanded that its leadership “cancel the event immediately and send a clear message against antisemitism.” The university then did call off the talk, vaguely citing “security concerns.” The left-wing newspaper Junge Welt eventually offered its editorial spaces as an alternative venue.
The event went ahead under huge police intimidation: two hundred armed and riot-clad officers surrounded the building, with an additional police presence in the newspaper’s offices to ensure that no thought-crime be committed. In the days before and after, German legacy media tried not to emphasize that government officials’ intervention in the university’s affairs might threaten academic freedom. The focus was all on not platforming antisemitism: implicitly accusing Albanese and Weizman of this very offense.
These open attacks on the Palestinian diaspora, their supporters, UN representatives, and NGOs are not unique to Germany. Both US and British media often cite the claims of civic bodies like the Anti-Defamation League, the Board of Deputies, the Community Security Trust, and other anti-antisemitism organizations. The German media landscape, especially public broadcasters, more often refer to antisemitism “experts” in the form of academic scholars or government-appointed antisemitism commissioners. They are habitually presented as independent witnesses standing outside political discourse or even academic debate. Instead, their assessments — or rather, their accusations of antisemitism — are presented as objective scientific fact, not to be challenged.
A prime example of this is an interview by the Berlin newspaper…
Auteur: Daniel G. B. Weissmann
