"What is a Jew in Germany Permitted to Say against Israel?" Thus ran the headline to a commentary that ran in the Arts and Letters section of Germany's influential Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) last week. And -- though perfectly reflecting the tenor of the article by Patrick Bahners, the editor of the section -- a very odd headline it is. For while the subject of the piece is a court case in which freedom of speech is indeed clearly at stake, as so happens the case involves not an attempt to silence a Jewish critic of Israel, but rather the attempt of a Jewish critic of Israel to silence one of her own critics.
The Jewish critic of Israel is Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, self-identified on a recent episode of the German radio program "Hallo Ü-Wagen" (roughly "Hello from the Sound Truck!") as "an independent critic of Jewish and Israeli human rights violations" (more literally, "of Jewish and Israeli policies that violate human rights"). Hecht-Galinski is also a member of a group known as "European Jews for a Just Peace." But her real claim to fame or, at any rate, notoriety in Germany is that Ms. Hecht-Galinski is the daughter of the late Heinz Galinski. For several decades and until his death in 1992, Heinz Galinski was the president of the Jewish Community of Berlin. He also twice served as president of the semi-official Central Council of Jews in Germany. During his lifetime, Galinski was something of the bête noir of German anti-Semites and neo-Nazis. He retained this status even after his death, as witness by the repeated attempts in 1998 to blow up his gravestone in the Jewish cemetery in the Charlottenburg neighborhood of Berlin. The second attempt destroyed the monument.
In May, Hecht-Galinski appeared on an episode of "Hallo Ü-Wagen" specially organized to mark the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding. The theme: "Extremely Difficult: Talking about Israel." "Hallo Ü-Wagen" host Julitta Münch introduced Hecht-Galinski as an "author" [Publizist]. During the show, Hecht-Galinski complained that initially unidentified forces were trying to "muzzle" her and in general to prevent Germans from criticizing "Israel's criminal actions." She even brought a muzzle along to illustrate the point. As the show progressed, moreover, she became somewhat more concrete about the identity of the "muzzlers." "I know how the Israeli-Jewish lobby operates," Hecht-Galinski said, adding: "There is one [an Israeli-Jewish lobby] and there's nothing to say to the contrary. In the meanwhile, they describe themselves this way." She also referred to the Israeli security barrier as an "annexation barrier," dismissively observed that Angela Merkel's speech before the Israeli Knesset could have been written by the "Israeli propaganda ministry," and accused Israel of "playing politics with the victims of the Holocaust." (The audio file of the show is available here and a German transcript here.)
The critic of the Jewish critic of Israel is Henryk Broder: the famously caustic German political commentator and author of numerous books on German politics and anti-Semitism. Broder happens himself to be Jewish and his name was repeatedly brought up by Hecht-Galinski on "Hallo Ü-Wagen" as a seemingly key member of the supposed "Israeli-Jewish lobby" that wants to "muzzle" criticism of Israel. Contrary to the impression created by the title to Bahners's FAZ article, no one has questioned the right of Hecht-Galinski to say whatever she wants about or "against" Israel. But in a letter to Monika Piel, the director of the Cologne-based Western German Broadcasting Corporation (WDR), Broder questioned the wisdom of inviting specifically Hecht-Galinski to speak on the subject of the "Hallo Ü-Wagen" episode and the accuracy of the show's description of Hecht-Galinski as an "author." Here a translation of the Broder letter:
Dear Ms. Piel,
I know that the WDR is a big organization and that you cannot be responsible for doing everything. Nonetheless, it would perhaps be possible for you to find out what inspired the editorial board of "Hallo Ü-Wagen" to have Ms. Evelyn Hecht-Galinski on the program and to describe her as an "author"?
The only claim to fame [in English in the original] of Evelyn Hecht-Galinski (who first adopted her father's name after the latter's death) is the fact that she is "the daughter of Heinz Galinski," as she introduces herself at each of her appearances. There is no justification for describing her as an "author," since apart from letters-to-the-editor she has written nothing and published nothing. Even any drunken reveler at carnival in Cologne could recognize that Ms. EHG is a hysterical housewife in need of affirmation, who speaks for no one and only talks nonsense. Her specialty is intellectually vapid anti-Semitic anti-Zionist phrases [antisemitische-antizionistische gedankenlosigkeiten] -- such as are currently in fashion.
What led the WDR to give the "daughter" a platform?
Best Regards from the Spree [River in Berlin] to the Rhine,
B.
Following the publication of the letter (along with Piel's response) on the popular collective blog Die Achsen des Guten [The Axis of Good], Hecht-Galinski took legal action against Broder. It was not the description of her as a "hysterical housewife in search of affirmation" to which she objected, but rather the description of her discourse as "anti-Semitic anti-Zionist." Indeed, Hecht-Galinski accepted the anti-Zionist label, but she obtained a temporary court order forbidding Broder from describing her statements as "anti-Semitic." The letter currently appears on Die Achsen des Guten site with the word "anti-Semitic" replaced by "xxxxxxxxxxxxx".
Next Page: Indirect anti-Semitism and comparing Israel to Nazi Germany . . .
|