“Even the mention of the word “Palestine” in Germany risks getting you accused of antisemitism. Any attempt at providing context and sharing facts on the historical background to the conflict is seen as crude justification of Hamas’s terror. Not only have pro-Palestinian rallies been stopped or broken up by police…”

And yet there are thousands on the streets protesting with free-palestine banners. And then another few thousands who shouldn’t be because they mix the same message with anti-semitism.

Sometimes I feel really bad living in a country so rotten that it can at the very same have massive pro-palestinian protests (international voices gloating about those idiot Germans not doing anything against those obvious (and suspiciously German looking) muslim immigrants destroying their country included…) while also suppressing every pro-palestinian voice soemhow… and then I realize that I live in reality and not in that fantasy Germany everyone uses to make stories about to express how Germans are always wrong and stupid.

“Well-meaning people have advised me that voicing this opinion could lead to being disinvited from literary events and festivals, and that my career in Germany – the source of my livelihood for the last two years – might be over.”

That’s okay… you just need to tell your story about those idiot Germans loud enough and you will get a lot of new work opportunities in most of Europe as there is always demand for the latest episode of “Give us this day our daily ‘Germany-bad’”.

Me, German:

🔥 This is fine 🔥

The notion that you could be cancelled for mere pro-Palestinian opinions (unless they are clear-cut Islamist and antismitic, which is often the case) in Germany is so laughable.

Very well written. Conveys a strong message.

This is what wrong think looks like, this is what chilling effects are.

Either you are against fascism in all its forms, or you’re a hypocrite. You condemn a terrorist organisation as well as the terrorism committed by a government.

Couldn’t agree more

This is the best summary I could come up with:

When I moved to Berlin, I developed a habit of stopping by the Stolpersteine (“stumbling stones” memorials) and reading about Jewish people who were taken from their homes and transported to the concentration camps.

My family comes from Croatia, and as non-Croats we left the country during the nationalist frenzy of the early 1990s, which the late Dubravka Ugrešić described in her work as the fight for “pure Croatian air”.

Having been persecuted in Croatia since the early 1940s – my grandpa managed to leave the Jasenovac concentration camp alive at the age of 11 – we found ourselves in the north of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

People who lived by our side, sent their children to the same schools, spoke the same language, were now portrayed as non-human, as jihadists who would kill us while we slept, as animals that would pull our teeth out and rape our women.

Yet while artists and writers are cancelled for their alleged antisemitism, real neo-Nazism is on the rise, with the far-right party AfD, Alternative for Germany, winning local elections and mainstream politicians float the idea of doing deals with them.

The same book fair that shut down Shibli’s award ceremony faced criticism previously for including a hard-right publishing house, Antaios, in its programme, with AfD members in attendance.

The original article contains 1,420 words, the summary contains 216 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

I am from Bosnia, take me to America

Germany killed millions of Jews and made Palestinians pay the price.