Globally renowned Australian intellectual Ghassan Hage has devoted his career to unpicking the nature of racism in multicultural Australia and elsewhere – with the kind of bravura and theoretical flair that either attracts or repels readers, according to type.
His work led him to being offered a stint at Germany’s prestigious Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.
On February 7 2024, however, after an article in the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag accused him of “hatred of Israel”, the Max Planck Society issued a terse statement ending its “working relationship” with Hage.
This came less than two months after the Max Planck Foundation, with war in Gaza raging, had announced “additional funding for German-Israeli collaborations”.
The Melbourne-based academic was accused by the Institute of having “abused his civil liberties” and his “fundamental right to freedom of opinion”. The organisation insisted that “racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, discrimination, hatred and agitation have no place in the Max Planck Society”.
The implication was clear – Hage’s trenchant criticism of Israel’s war, particularly on social media, had seen him fired. As he wrote in his statement:
What to me is a fair, intellectual critique of Israel, for them is “antisemitism according to the law in Germany”.
A political ideal
So what is Hage’s position on Israel? As he succinctly writes:
I have a political ideal that I have always struggled for regarding Israel/Palestine. It is the ideal of a multi-religious society made from Christians, Muslims and Jews living together on that land.
His criticism of current Israeli policy, he insists, stems from the Netanyahu government’s determination to “work against such a goal”. But it is also a critique he extends to Palestinian organisations that similarly rule out co-existence.
In this, Hage’s position is not unlike other anti-racist visions of a multicultural Israel/Palestine, either as a single state or as a confederation of two states with freedom of movement between them.
Read more: Explainer: what is the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
This is not the first time a prestigious German organisation has severed ties with a respected intellectual for asking serious questions about Israel’s conduct in the war or its broader track record of relations with the Palestinians.
Masha Gessen’s evocative New Yorker essay In the Shadow of the Holocaust caused a newspaper scandal in Germany for comparing the war in Gaza to the Nazi liquidation of a Jewish ghetto. The Russian-American (and Jewish) writer was to be honoured at an award ceremony that was subsequently suspended, after an initial withdrawal of support by the Green Party affiliated think tank that sponsors the prize.
The suspended award was, ironically, named after Hannah Arendt, whose caustic comments on Israel, many appreciated, would probably have seen her deemed ineligible too.
Elsewhere in Germany, the musician and artist Laurie Anderson withdrew from a guest professorship in Essen after her signature on a 2021 “Letter Against Apartheid” targeting Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians was unearthed and the university “engaged in talks” with her as a result.
Before that, in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks on October 7, the Frankfurt Book Fair postponed the ceremony for its literary award for Palestinian writer Adania Shibli. If this had been an attempt to avoid controversy, it failed. Not only did it cause an international furore, another of the book fair’s honoured guests, Slavoj Žižek, used the occasion to offer a blistering assessment of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
Perhaps most famously, well before the October 7 attacks, Germany’s first Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight against Anti-Semitism (a position created in 2018) demanded the African thinker Achille Mbembe be barred from giving the opening speech at a major cultural festival in Bochum in 2020 (ultimately cancelled due to COVID). Mbembe was accused of antisemitism and relativising the Holocaust for comparing the state of Israel with the apartheid system in South Africa.
These are just the most prominent examples. Other smaller incidents have slipped past the notice of many. Anti-Zionist Jews in Germany, such as Deborah Feldman, have faced condemnation for their refusal to fall into line.
There have been a number of unlawful dismissals of Arab journalists, such as Maram Salem and Farah Maraqa, on false charges of antisemitism. Dismissals for criticism of Israel are not isolated incidents.
Self-imposed red lines
Why is this happening in Germany?
It is worth pointing out that it is not just happening in Germany. Versions of this are playing out elsewhere. Universities in the United States are under siege from students and community groups variously accusing them of both antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Largely, however, what’s happening in Germany is a result of some self-imposed red lines the German press, the German courts and the German parliament have imposed on public debate.
Comparing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to South African apartheid will not be tolerated. Calling for sanctions against Israel will not be tolerated. (The German parliament officially condemned the international Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, or BDS, movement as antisemitic in 2019.) Comparing Israel’s violence to Nazi violence will not be tolerated.
Anti-Zionism will be interpreted as antisemitism. Pro-Palestinian migrants may be rejected for citizenship. (In the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, prospective citizens must commit in writing to “the right of the State of Israel to exist”.)
Importantly, this is not necessarily an automatic result of Germany’s genocidal, antisemitic Nazi past. Rather, it is a result of Germany’s current belief that its genocidal, antisemitic Nazi past implies future unwavering support for Israel.
As Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Bundestag:
At this moment, there is only one place for Germany. That is the side of Israel.
This is not merely moral support. German arms shipments to Israel have increased tenfold to support the current war.
It is worth noting, however, that a different understanding of the moral burden of the Holocaust is possible. It might equally be said that Germany has a special responsibility to stridently oppose ethnic cleansing, war crimes and genocide wherever they occur.
Relatedly, when Germany supported the NATO war against Serbia in the late 1990s, the German Green leader Joschka Fischer cited his generation’s lessons from World War II to explain why it was important to stand against Milosevic’s willingness “to fight a war against the existence of a whole people”.
Enough?
If Germany continues to use the Gaza war as an opportunity for a domestic culture war against academics and artists who cross the self-imposed red lines of German debate, unwarranted sackings like that of Ghassan Hage will continue.
If, however, Germany takes the view it is obliged to denounce ethnic cleansing and genocidal violence without fear or favour, it might find cause to listen and learn from those who have warned Israel’s war against the Palestinians of Gaza bears the hallmarks of previous crimes against humanity.
Sharp words from German government officials about the renewed Israeli campaign in Rafah suggest this might be possible. The German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned recently “the people of Gaza cannot vanish into thin air”.
After, at last count, “at least” 28,000 dead in the streets of Gaza, perhaps some in Germany might be starting to think enough is enough.