Am I a Berliner?

"A climate of fear reigns in the German cultural sector. Censorship and self-censorship have become the new normal. Arab and Jewish artists and intellectuals who express solidarity with Palestine are largely excluded and muzzled," commented Pascale Fakhry in her opening speech at the 15th ALFILM Festival, the Arab film festival staged in Berlin in April. Similar views are to be heard along a broad front of Palestinian and Arab intellectuals, artists, academics and journalists. Until recently, Berlin was a place where they thought they were safe and protected. As recently as 2019, the Egyptian academic Amro Ali described the city as the "capital of Arab exile", expressing hope for a renaissance of those artistic and intellectual forces that fuelled the Arab uprisings and had been driven into exile. But this hope has probably been utterly suffocated in the last seven months, the months since 7 October 2023.

Many of those affected by censorship and marginalisation are leftists and secularists who have long been pointedly critical of Hamas. Because of their personal and collective memories, their political sensibilities and sometimes their personal experiences, however, they are inclined to support the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and statehood, and even, unflinchingly and proudly, the ALFILM people. This support, however, has made them a target for censorship and marginalisation in Germany. "I have moderated in difficult places, in Beirut, Cairo, Amman, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. This year I have also been to Saudi Arabia. People think there is too much censorship there. But no one there has ever told me how to introduce my guests, what to say, what to watch out for and whether there are any terms that are problematic or not allowed to be said," says Rabih el-Khouri, head of the festival's selection committee.

The examples to which such statements refer are so numerous that the international media have been interested in them for months. "A climate of fear and recrimination has jeopardised Berlin's status as an international centre of culture more than at any time since 1989," proclaims a New York Times report on the "beacon of artistic freedom" that Berlin used to be. Palestinian activist Fidaa al-Zaanin expressed similar sentiments in a report published in the newspaper taz: "The climate in Germany is frightening."

The politics of remembrance monologue

One can go one step further and ask to what extent the German approach to the Palestinian cause also constitutes a violation of the freedom of expression. The Israeli +972 Magazine reports extensively on the sometimes fanatical measures taken in Germany to thwart solidarity with the Palestinians. These measures, which the report describes as "draconian", are said to have the effect of an "othering machine". This othering machine has turned many people with a history of migration and exile into "the others"; some of them have since left Germany.

If one considers that the figure of the intellectual is in some way "European" - as at least I myself used to think, guided by notions of plurality, freedom of opinion, rule of law and cosmopolitanism - then the message of this machine comes across as the very opposite: it conveys to all non-German intellectuals the message: "No! You don't belong here! You don't have the right to express yourself freely here! You are not our equal! You are subaltern!" I have followed Hannah Arendt in claiming elsewhere that as refugees in Germany we may enjoy some rights, but never the right to have rights. The seven months since 7 October have demonstrated this all too well.

The logic of otherness contradicts the concept of the city as a space of diversity, freedom and dialogue, or rather "polylogue". It even contradicts the soul of Berlin as a cultural capital in which many languages, memories and world views come together. In fact, it even contradicts the principle of democratic integration, instead revealing a very repressive version of its realisation. Proposals are circulating in the country on how individuals could be forced to recognise Israel, suggesting a viewpoint that is not only disinterested in other perspectives. Such intentions violate the freedom of conscience.

The machine aims at a monologue under the banner of the German politics of remembrance. If one posits that Germany forms part of a "moral triangle", which Sa'ed Atshan and Katharina Galor have made the title of their book on Palestinians and Israelis in Berlin (definitely worth reading), a triangle that connects Germany not only with Israel, but also with Palestine,  German memory can only be "healthy" if it becomes part of a multidirectional memory, which is to say: a memory that also recalls the history of colonialism. This is Michael Rothberg's thesis in his book, which is considered controversial by many people here in Germany.

On the other hand, Palestinians and others are expected to shed their own memory the moment they arrive here and replace their memory with a German one. They are expected to commit "memory suicide", so to speak. The culture of democracy itself is thus being undermined, says Enzo Traverso, who claims - rightly, in my opinion - that the German raison d'état alludes to a "state of exception", to the "immoral side of a state that transgresses its own laws" in the name of am "overarching imperative of state security". This is the nationalist logic of sovereignty and abrogation of law. It is also divisive and has already wrought tremendous damage.

Dark memories

People from Palestine or Syria (like me) are refugees. Quite a few also fled because a logic that censors people and prevents them from expressing themselves freely, severely eroded the fabric of our cities and societies. As one of them, I have sometimes felt marginalised and silenced in Berlin over the last seven months, similarly to how I felt back in Syria, where I had never been able to express myself publicly. A Berlin newspaper had nothing against me writing about my country for them, but they only wanted to publish my articles if the content suited them. I could also have written for the Assad newspapers if I had written sympathetic articles for them. Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently, said Rosa Luxemburg in 1918, a year before she was assassinated in Berlin.

Spaces become smaller, narrower, shallower and more exclusive when people are forced to conform to an ideology or nationalist dogma. In contrast, they become deeper, more spacious and more inclusive when they are revitalised with plurality and freedom. Berlin as a German, European and global space is not any exception to this. Spaces in Syrian cities have also become smaller and more oppressive since the 1970s. As far as freedom of expression in relation to the Palestinian issue is concerned, the situation in Germany and to a lesser extent in many Western countries is similar to our situation in most Arab countries, which are ruled by harsh or draconian dictatorships. When it comes to Palestine, Western governments are increasingly starting to resemble "Arab regimes".

Suleiman Abdallah, a Syrian journalist to whom I owe the two quotes at the outset of this article, recently reported that many Syrian artists are afraid of renewed traumas reminiscent of life under dictatorship. Their strategy in this new reality of "democratic dictatorship" is self-censorship. One of the three artists interviewed in the report, Khaled Barakeh, is planning to leave the country; another, Kefah Ali Deeb, said that she dreamed of leaving. Both have been in Berlin for almost ten years and are very active in Berlin's cultural landscape.

Germany has invested a lot in its cultural landscape, especially in Berlin, which boasts an extensive cultural infrastructure. The city is very human, modest, multi-centred, cosmopolitan. Hardly any imperialist symbols are to be seen and, unlike Paris and London, life is cheap. It is these advantages above all that have made Berlin so attractive to intellectuals and artists from many parts of the world. And it is this attractiveness that has been energetically squandered over the last seven months. As a result, many people, not just Palestinians and Arabs, now feel confined, constricted and marginalised. In a disturbing way, intellectual and cultural actors have adopted a logic of raison d'état. This reality has prompted Carola Lentz, President of the Goethe Institute, to forward the demand: "Cultural work must remain independent!"

But the battle is not yet completely lost. The ALFILM festival took place over a period of six days at several Berlin cinemas. The heart of the city is not yet completely closed to the Palestinian issue. But the situation is fragile, and one cannot be certain at the moment whether an event like the ALFILM festival may turn out to be one of the last vestiges of a pluralistic Berlin - or one of many to come.