{"id":8228,"date":"2020-01-25T13:42:57","date_gmt":"2020-01-25T13:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/starke-meinungen.de\/blog\/?p=8228"},"modified":"2020-01-25T14:11:31","modified_gmt":"2020-01-25T14:11:31","slug":"ofri-ilany-haaretz-and-the-antideutsche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starke-meinungen.de\/blog\/2020\/01\/25\/ofri-ilany-haaretz-and-the-antideutsche\/","title":{"rendered":"Ofri Ilany, Haaretz and the „Antideutsche“"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What are the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory? A shadowy group of anonymous people who are said to wield enormous influence behind the scenes. By this token, the left-wing Israeli academic Ofri Ilany has just added a new conspiracy theory to the list. According to a piece<\/a> Ilany wrote for \u201cHaaretz\u201d, a group calling themselves \u201cAntideutsche\u201d has hijacked German public opinion on Israel. Listen:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe atmosphere now pervading Berlin, once the capital of the Third Reich, is particularly instructive when pondering the state of discourse about anti-Semitism (\u2026) According to the new version of the Holocaust, Hitler was merely the precursor of Ali Khamenei, and Benjamin Netanyahu is the contemporary personification of Anne Frank.\u201d Indeed, \u201cintellectual and academic discourse in Germany today is consistently skewed toward the Israeli right. When the subject is Israel, the most distinguished media and academic platforms publish items that look like they could have been culled from the Israeli right-wing site Mida.\u201d This is because the \u201cAntideutsche want everything having to do with anti-Semitism to be subjected to their uniform and dogmatic line. Paradoxically, ideas and opinions that can be voiced in Israeli academia with no special problem, foment a huge ruckus in Berlin. Incensed Germans, some of them descendants of Nazis, don\u2019t hesitate to attack Jewish and Israeli left-wingers. Scholars who have devoted their lives to Jewish studies tread carefully for fear they will say something that is not consistent with this absurd conception of reality.\u201d (\u2026) But it\u2019s not just Berlin and Germany: \u201cIt looks like no one is able to stop the madness of the Antideutsche. (\u2026) Because the Nazi past and the Holocaust constitute the foundation of postwar German identity, they are intent on projecting their selfhood onto the whole world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, dear reader, you have read correctly: The ultimate goal of the mad Antideutsche, who already control public opinion in Germany, is to dominate the world, ideologically at least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who are these powerful people?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But who are\nthese dangerous people? Do they have banks at their disposal? Or do they at\nleast control media outlets? Do they have professorships, seats on academic\nboards? Ties to the political parties and the government?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, Ofri Ilany names just two people: One \u201cThomas\u201d, whom he met ten years ago as a raving Leftist at a pro-Israel demonstration, and who \u201chas since become an academic and an editor of an influential cultural column in a German paper\u201d; and Thomas Thiel, who recently wrote an article critical of the Jewish Museum Berlin in the \u201cFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung\u201d. It\u2019s not clear whether the two Thomases are one and the same person. But it is to be suspected, as Thiel is the only Thomas I know who might be accused of belonging to or sympathizing with the sect and who is at the same time \u2013 as the editor of the paper\u2019s University section \u2013 in any way \u201cinfluential\u201d. As far as I know, however, Thiel doesn\u2019t have an \u201cinfluential column\u201d. OK, so that\u2019s one or two possible \u201cinfluencers\u201d. How could they (or he) possibly create the pro-Israel atmosphere \u201ccurrently pervading Berlin\u201d, how could they \u201cconsistently skew academic discourse to the right\u201d and hope to \u201cproject their selfhood onto the whole world\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ah, there\u2019s the rub. But a good conspiracy theorist doesn\u2019t bother with details. \u201cIndeed, the Antideutsche number a few thousand activists at most. But in the current global political climate, the marginal becomes central and the central, marginal.\u201d Yeah, right. That figures. So the fact that there are at most \u201ca few thousand activists\u201d (more like a few hundred I\u2019d say, most of them students) actually becomes proof of their incredible influence. Because of the \u201ccurrent global climate\u201d (and he\u2019s not talking about temperatures). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And once again the Jewish Museum …<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, without\nany proof, without naming any names, without describing any institutions or\nconnections, this academic \u2013 who should be subject if not to the strictures of\nacademic proof, at least to the rules of serious journalism, part of which is providing\nevidence for what you say) \u2013 goes on to claim that  \u201cAntideutsche sympathizers are now the driving\nforce behind journalistic and social-media attacks on institutions in Berlin,\nnotably those dealing with Jewish history and even anti-Semitism research.\nThus, the Jewish Museum Berlin became the object of a particularly ugly\noffensive. The institution\u2019s director, Peter Schaefer, a Jewish studies\nscholar, was vilified by pro-Israel activists to the point where he was compelled\nto resign last June. (\u2026) Subsequently, the denunciations focused on another\nsenior official of the institution, Yasemin Shooman, who was accused of having\ndared to compare anti-Semitic attacks to attacks on Muslim migrants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now as one\nof the journalists who were critical of Schaefer\u2019s directorship and thus kept\ntabs on what was published about him, I do not recall Schaefer being \u201cvilified\u201d\nanywhere.  If Ilany has any proof of\nvilification, let him come forward and present it. I also do not recall \u201cpro-Israel\nactivists\u201d being at the forefront of the criticism, although Schaefer did claim\non public TV that his many critics belonged to \u201ccircles close to the Israeli government\u201d\n\u2013 a vilification for which he was unable to induce a shred of evidence, because\nit was a blatant lie. If Ilany knows of any \u201cpro-Israel activists\u201d who brought\nSchaefer down, let him name names and present them here. In fact, Schaefer\nresigned not because he was vilified by \u201cpro-Israel activists\u201d but after criticism\nfrom the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland, the body representing the Jews in\nGermany, which had tried to stay studiously neutral for years, before the\nZentralrat\u2019s President Josef Schuster finally had enough and said publicly that\none had to ask oneself whether the Jewish Museum was in fact Jewish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But facts don\u2019t bother a true conspiracy theorist. Ilany goes on to claim: \u201cSubsequently, the denunciations focused on another senior official of the institution, Yasemin Shooman, who was accused of having dared to compare anti-Semitic attacks to attacks on Muslim migrants.\u201d Actually, there were no \u201cdenunciations\u201d of Ms. Shooman. Criticism focussed not on the fact that \u201cshe dared to compare anti-Semitic attacks to attacks on Muslim migrants\u201d. Criticism of the Museum\u2019s Academy, which Shooman ran, focussed on the fact that she had repeatedly invited very vocal critics of Israel \u2013 including people credibly described as sympathizers if not members of the Muslim Brotherhood \u2013 as speakers and panel members at events staged by the Academy, whereas she had never invited anyone who defended the Jewish State and its policies. So much for the assertion that in Berlin today \u201cintellectual and academic discourse in Germany today is consistently skewed toward the Israeli right\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shooman was also criticized for allegedly denying or playing down the fact that every Jew living in Berlin can, if she so wants, experience every day: that there is an Antisemitism problem within the Muslim community in Berlin. (She denies this accusation.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, the criticism of Ms. Shooman did not follow on the resignation of Schaefer, as the adverb \u201csubsequently\u201d implies. By the time Schaefer resigned, Shooman had already accepted an academic post at the Technical University in Berlin. Indeed, in a statement published by her new employer, Shooman herself denies that she left the Jewish Museum because of the criticism of her work there. And, on a more personal note: As Ms. Shooman was in a very difficult personal situation when the criticism of the Museum\u2019s policies came to a head, I for one did my best not to mention her at all. The one time I did \u2013 citing an academic article she had written, in which she denied that there could be such a thing as anti-German (!) racism among Muslim immigrants, because they lacked positions of power, and inferring from this position that Shooman would by the same logic deny the existence of Antisemitism within the Muslim community \u2013 she immediately took me to court. She lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

„Jews in the crosshairs“? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One more thing. \u201cHaaretz\u201d titled: \u201cGermany\u2019s pro-Israel Left Has a New Target in the Crosshairs: Jews\u201d. Now I know as an author that authors do not always control what headline editors choose to use. So I am not blaming Ilany for the fact that whoever wrote that headline didn\u2019t notice that the article does not name a single Jew who has been \u201cin the crosshairs\u201d of the \u201cAntideutsche\u201d or any other \u201cpro-Israel Left\u201d. Whereas Jews in Halle were recently literally in the crosshairs of a right-wing terrorist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Ilany writes: \u201cIncensed Germans, some of them descendants of Nazis, don\u2019t hesitate to attack Jewish and Israeli left-wingers.\u201d This is true, though the verb \u201cattack\u201d implies violence; I\u2019m sure that \u201cAntideutsche\u201d publications (which as it happens I don\u2019t read) are critical of elements of the Israeli and especially Jewish Left. Think Noam Chomsky for instance. But is Ilany implying that \u201cdescendants of Nazis\u201d do not have the right to support the Israeli Government and criticize its critics? If taken seriously, this would amount to muzzling the freedom of expression in Germany in exactly the way Ilany claims is happening now: Whereas now (counter to what he claims) people on the Right and the Left constantly complain that \u201cYou aren\u2019t allowed to criticize Israel\u201d, it would seem that Ilany would welcome a situation in which you wouldn\u2019t be allowed not to criticize Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I have\nbeen consistently critical of the \u201cAntideutsche\u201d who have crossed my path in\nthe past 20 years, and anybody who wants to can google my articles. As a\nresult, some of them have indeed \u201cvilified\u201d me, though strangely enough I haven\u2019t\nbeen forced into silence by this immensely powerful shadow group. I agree with\nIlany\u2019s description \u2013 and criticism \u2013 of their one-dimensional ideology. But\nwhen he claims that \u201cAntideutsche sympathizers are now the driving force behind\njournalistic and social-media attacks on institutions in Berlin, notably those\ndealing with Jewish history and even anti-Semitism research\u201d, I take issue. This\nis guilt by association. \u201cAntideutsche\u201d criticize certain institutions; I and\nothers do, too, thus we are either \u201csympathizers\u201d (a catch-all phrase from the\nMcCarthy era) of the \u201cAntideutsche\u201d or useful idiots (Lenin) being \u201cdriven\u201d by\nthese ideologues with their fantasies of world domination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is\nbullshit. Ilany \u2013 and Haaretz \u2013 should apologize for the sheer stupidity \u2013 let alone\nperniciousness \u2013 of this article.  <\/p>\n