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The debate about the “right” side in the Middle East is once again heated – also in the cultural sector. What is tolerable and what is anti-Semitic? Right in the middle: the BDS movement.
What is behind the BDS movement: BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. The movement has existed for around 20 years and is a radical reaction to the Middle East conflict. Essentially, it is about isolating the Israeli state politically, culturally and economically through boycotts. The movement is described as anti-Zionist and sometimes anti-Semitic. Several European state governments have officially classified BDS as anti-Semitic, including Austria and Germany, where BDS has been banned since 2019.
Why cultural workers are repeatedly confronted with the accusation that they are close to the BDS: The basic questions are always the same, sums up SRF literary editor Simon Leuthold. How much political stance can be expected from cultural workers? What attitude can that be? And how should we deal with those who deviate from this attitude? The allegations are currently piling up again. There is the endless debate about the musician Roger Waters, who aggressively supports BDS. Recently, the search committee for the next art show “Documenta” failed – because of a member’s proximity to the BDS. And now there are rumblings about this at the writers’ association PEN Berlin.
The incidents at PEN Berlin: The Austrian author Eva Menasse – spokesperson for PEN Berlin and herself the daughter of a Jewish father – was recently accused of “high-handed contempt for Israel” by the German publisher Ernst Piper. The journalist Paul Jandl criticized her sharply in the NZZ because she too easily excused solidarity with BDS.
How Eva Menasse reacts to the allegations: She explains that one cannot conclude from a signature someone put on a BDS petition years ago that that person is now anti-Semitic. For Menasse, freedom of speech and expression should be given greater weight and differing opinions must be allowed.
What their critics say: They advocate boycotting people close to BDS: not inviting them to discussion panels, not nominating them for awards, and so on. For Eva Menasse, this falls short. In a reply that appeared in the “NZZ am Sonntag”, she explains: These hasty rejections would make things too easy for yourself – and would only do so so that you can be certain that you are on the side of the good guys. This misses the real problem and only leads to more polarization, writes Menasse.
A tricky situation with no easy solutions: Associations like PEN Berlin should endure and discuss such uncertainties, says literary editor Simon Leuthold. “Literature and the entire cultural world in particular have the task of looking at where it hurts and starting and continuing discourses instead of polemically categorizing them and blocking them.” The example of PEN Berlin, on the other hand, shows once again why the cultural sector is finding it so difficult to take statements in the current situation.