Description
The German state’s crackdown on pro-Palestine speech and protest since the beginning of the Israeli genocide in Gaza has often been attributed to that country’s complicated post-Holocaust memory culture. Missing from such interpretations is the German attitude towards critical Jewish voices in the country, whether German, Israeli or other, who have denounced the weaponisation of antisemitism (Jewish Currents 2022) to justify or downplay the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the German state’s public commitment to Israel as its “staatsräson,” what the genocide scholar A. Dirk Moses has called “German catechism” (2022). Prominent critical Jewish figures (Feldman 2023) have been censored, fired and even accused of antisemitism by a predominently non-Jewish German establishment, which led George Prochnik, Eyal Weizman & Emily Dische-Becker, all of whom are Jewish, to declare that “once again, Germany defines who is a Jew” (2023).
This paper proposes to explore these Jewish reactions to Germany’s weaponisation of antisemitism through an analysis from the periphery. In other words, it will seek to ask the question: what happens when those who are spoken about rather than spoken or listened to speak back? It will also critically re-assess German pro-Israel politics as an attempt to rewrite German history itself (DW 2025), including by downplaying far right and neo-Nazi antisemitism (Mashiach 2025).
Moses, A. D. (2021) The German Catechism, https://geschichtedergegenwart.ch/the-german-catechism/
Feldman, D. (2023), Germany is a good place to be Jewish. Unless, like me, you’re a Jew who criticises Israel, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/13/germany-jewish-criticise-israel-tv-debate
Prochnik, G., E. Weizman, E. Dische-Becker (2023). Once Again, Germany Defines Who Is a Jew, https://granta.com/once-again-germany-defines-who-is-a-jew-part-i/
Jewish Currents (2022), The Trouble with Germany, https://jewishcurrents.org/the-trouble-with-germany-part-1
DW (2025), Merz blames antisemitism in Germany on migration. https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-merz-extremely-satisfied-with-trump-talks/live-72794062#liveblog-post-72810114
Mashiach, I. (2025), An Incident of Bias: Antisemitism-Monitoring in Germany under Scrutiny: A Report on the Department for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS), https://diasporaalliance.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/RIAS_English-final.pdf
