00:01:19.320That is to be in community with the people and to learn the history, to understand and accompany and find a place of shared experience, shared life, shared grief.
00:01:49.320So since October 7, we've witnessed unbearable, unspeakable violence and really too many lives lost in Palestine, Israel and Gaza.
00:02:11.540And we've seen communities around the world polarize and fragment over profound questions.
00:02:19.320about whose lives are grievable and whose are not, and who is able to speak up and who is not
00:02:26.620able to speak up. So in the following panel, turning towards each other and not against each
00:02:31.880other, bridging in times of crisis, we really hope to open a space where we can honor each other's
00:02:39.200pain, where we find ways of bridging, despite that groups are pitted against one another right now,
00:02:46.240and explore generative forms of allyship and collaboration.
00:02:50.960So with that, I'd love to welcome the moderator of this panel,
00:02:54.800Cecily Saraski, who's the communications director at OBI
00:02:58.140and who's been working on a range of justice and equity issues
00:06:08.320Folks may also be surprised to know that Berlin has one of the largest Palestinian communities outside of the Middle East.
00:06:17.480Something like 30,000 to 40,000 people.
00:06:20.520Significantly larger even than the Jewish and Israeli community that's here.
00:06:25.360And while there are individuals who are in deep pain and grieving all throughout our communities, there is an incredible asymmetry in power and in who can demonstrate publicly their sympathy for Palestinians versus the state.
00:06:52.480and how it connects to an idea of grief with Israelis.
00:06:59.600One of the things we're going to complicate,0.57
00:07:20.820And it's so interesting to me. And, you know, in Western culture, we think in terms of these profound dualities, you know, black and white and male and female and tall and short.
00:07:36.760And the foundational duality that we all often refer to without even thinking about it, the unreconcilable opposition is often Israeli-Palestinian.
00:07:47.820Palestinian. And I hear people talk about it all the time. And in my own life as a Jewish person,
00:07:57.040I had to make a decision about the person and the people who I was told by the culture at large
00:08:07.560and by these narratives was my other. And we know that when you project onto another,
00:08:14.400you feel fear when you encounter them, even in the mind, especially in the mind, maybe only in the
00:08:20.680mind. You feel it in your solar plexus. You feel anxiety. You feel all of these things that we're
00:08:30.200all feeling right now, especially when we're co-created by Twitter and the news and the way
00:10:29.700We would go, I remember going to a restaurant, like a family restaurant where they're, and those of you who are Palestinian know this, like almost like a Jeopardy game every night and everybody comes out and people are playing games and their contests.
00:10:44.620And I just, I was so enlivened by the humans that I met.
00:10:49.240As I was leaving, I was going through the checkpoint back to Jerusalem.
00:10:54.080And there was a young soldier named Yosef.
00:12:53.740The political circumstances, what it means to not only be humans together, but to have a thriving democracy requires that we all be able to grieve, that we all be able to show up.
00:13:06.000But there are people both from the United States and definitely Germany who have asked that I not mention their names and who who I would love to have on the on the stage with us and they can't.
00:13:19.420So I want us to hold that in our hearts. I'm going to bring on our our our incredible folks.
00:15:17.500Yasmin, Yasmin Dakhir, is a feminist activist and a writer.
00:15:22.560She holds a doctorate degree from the Department of Philosophy, University of Montreal, with a focus on ethics and political philosophy.
00:15:31.340She has taught previously in different institutions, including Birzeit University in Palestine, and Simone de Beauvoir Institute in Canada.
00:15:40.220She is currently the co-director and editorial director of Febre, a network for independent Arab media organizations based in Berlin.
00:15:51.020Udi is a doctoral fellow at the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies.
00:15:58.220There, she investigates the contemporary self-understanding of Germany as a nation-state,
00:16:04.540as it emerges through public attempts to regulate encounters between Muslims and Jews.
00:16:12.260Muslims and Jews. You can talk about that.
00:16:15.740She grew up in Haifa between Tel Aviv and Beirut.
00:16:18.860Her work is shaped by local and global, anti- and decolonial, as well as queer liberation
00:17:52.900especially in the media and amongst international actors.
00:17:59.240And here I would also reiterate the differentiation
00:18:02.760you made between the people and governments.
00:18:07.180So the amount, the discourse in the media
00:18:12.180The discourse in the media against the Palestinians, it's scary.0.99
00:18:18.460And there is a genocidal talk, human animals, human shields, kill them all, etc.0.74
00:18:29.760And I've been, I mean, I am Palestinian myself, and I've been active several years.
00:18:35.160And I don't think I ever felt that this is beyond the normal.
00:18:43.520There is, we're becoming at, this is a point where our lives are disposable and there is no value.
00:18:53.560And we feel like we need to tell people, human beings, we need to live in freedom, in dignity.
00:18:58.900And, yeah, I mean, of course, we feel the solidarity also of populations, of communities.
00:19:10.620But living in Berlin is difficult recently.
00:19:17.960But maybe we talk about this as we continue the conversation.
00:19:25.440yeah well i i share the same experience the dimension and the resolution uh by which we are
00:19:32.840now uh facing repression and oppression and oppression by by the german state as such
00:19:38.720is uh scary and it's frustrating but in the same time i must say in an on an optimistic note
00:19:45.760that it also brings us together and the fact that we are allowed to speak here today with you and
00:19:51.560to share with you our perspective it's became in a way kind of quite almost a miracle in the
00:19:58.720democratic state which is mind-blowing to my understanding I also want to share with you
00:20:04.760shortly why why I'm here actually because maybe it's important to say I was born and raised in
00:20:11.100Haifa does anybody know what is Haifa yeah could you drop a name of the area how would you name it
00:20:19.120Haifa right some people would name it Israel some people name it Palestine I grew up in Haifa
00:20:26.220Haifa is famous is known as a city where Palestinians and Jews live together so as a
00:20:34.000young boy it was already clear to me that the place where I'm living in has more than one name
00:20:39.560and it was absolutely fine about me it's still absolutely fine about me but I also grew up to
00:20:45.480understand that my positionality as a Jewish person within this geographical area also prescribes
00:20:52.600a certain hegemonic positionality towards all other people who live in the same area who cannot
00:20:58.620claim Jewish identification. It was important for me, and it's still very much important for me0.92
00:21:06.100nowadays, to raise a voice against such a system that prescribes injustice by its very essence.
00:21:15.480But there are also people who are willing, through resistance against such an oppressing system, to sacrifice their life and to kill other people.
00:21:26.620And it's true also to those who wish to maintain the current state of injustice on both sides, as people like to try to understand the situation there.
00:21:41.920And to me, it was in a certain time in my life, it was enough.
00:27:29.020And I actually left to do my PhD in Canada.
00:27:38.380And I think in the whole geography of Palestine-Israel, Palestine-48, whatever you want to name it, from the river to the sea, okay?
00:27:53.660There is one entity that rules, and that is Israel.
00:27:59.020So the details of the kind of treatment you are getting, it obviously varies between being a citizen of the state, but not getting your civic rights.
00:28:19.480or being living in an open-air prison like in Gaza
00:28:28.960or being used as a cheap laborer in Bonnistans and the West Bank.
00:28:35.100So it varies, but it all maybe falls within the category
00:28:39.820that Hannah Arendt calls the right to have rights.
00:28:44.760So we don't have the right to have rights.
00:28:47.580none of us in this whole area between the river and the sea as Palestinians living under the
00:28:54.080apartheid or the settler colonialism that Israel is enacting upon us for 75 years.
00:29:00.100Um, so I, I moved to, to Germany, Berlin, um, in a, a, a year after many, uh, thousands
00:29:15.600of Syrians fled, uh, Syria, uh, because of the, uh, regime's, uh, repression and, uh,
00:29:23.720crimes, because I was writing my PhD dissertation on the question of how do we live together.
00:29:33.540So I was thinking about all those political movements and instances where we come together
00:29:43.220and try to bring up something new, to liberate ourselves and those around us.
00:29:49.100And I thought, okay, I wanted to be closer to this community and I wanted to belong also. I wanted to feel geographically closer to the area I grew up in, which is the Middle East. So Berlin felt way closer than Canada, but also there is emerging big Arab community.
00:30:12.900and anyway, Berlin, as you mentioned, it hosts a lot of Palestinians. To my dismay, I was surprised
00:30:20.740also, although I knew a little bit, how much you do not have the right to speak as a Palestinian
00:30:32.620in the German context about any pain, grieving, suffering, occupation,
00:30:47.560People get extremely uncomfortable about it.
00:30:52.220But also different institutions shut down from this discourse.
00:30:59.520They don't want this brought up. And I think recently it's playing out also in some extreme and horrific instances where police is brutalizing people in the streets.
00:31:20.000demonstrations are banned. Any public speaking will have repercussions. People are
00:31:27.660thrown out of their jobs, losing funding for their projects, defunded, canceled,
00:31:36.480smear campaigns, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a moment where, I mean,
00:31:46.420yeah maybe i'll let you ask more questions because i'm i can't just continue no that's
00:31:54.360i think we're gonna keep circling in and spiraling in into these and and i have to say
00:32:00.580part of me thought cynically oh it sounds like the united states um in certain in certain ways
00:32:08.780but it's also very different and we shouldn't conflate the two as the same experience and so
00:32:15.040So I want to, Uri, if you can talk about, I had a conversation with someone, my new friend Pam, who is one of the attendees here, who said, you know, one of the reasons I'm here, I came from the United States, is we, as we know, have a deep and profound history of genocide and slavery in the United States.
00:32:40.540And to put it mildly, have not done a good job. In fact, right now, there's a political, very active political pressure opposing sort of educational recognition of our history.
00:32:56.000uh and from her perspective she was like well you know germany has this profound history of
00:33:05.100genocide but they have done things they have a commitment to a kind of collective memory that
00:33:13.780from our perspective seems extraordinary and i have to say that as you know as a jewish person
00:33:18.600when i walk down the street and i see stumbling stones that tell me about actual human beings who
00:33:24.800lived in those homes. It's incredibly Jewish human beings who are taken from their homes and0.99
00:33:29.920put into camps and so forth. It moves me deeply. And so I'm, but this, so I don't want to,
00:33:38.600I want to hear a little bit about that history of how that happened and how it's also not a neutral
00:33:47.180political process. That what Yasmin, you're talking about is deeply related to this
00:33:53.880decision around what collective history Germany can hold, and in fact, German identity itself.
00:34:02.060So if you could kind of explain that, we have people from all over who may not understand
00:34:28.040If you can just briefly, I know that, for instance, there's a word, a very long, yet another very long German word that I can't pronounce, that names the process of coming to terms with the past.
00:34:40.840That has become a linchpin of German national identity.
00:34:43.920Can you pronounce that word and then explain that?
00:34:59.060I want to go, maybe if we talk about antisemitism and how Germany try nowadays to combat this,0.53
00:35:06.200I think this is one aspect of how Germans would feel coming to terms properly with the phenomenon of having Nazi history here.
00:35:14.780So if we look exactly at how Germany identifies what antisemitism is, is what has been passed by a so-called international alliance that understands itself as IHRA, International Remembrance Holocaust Alliance,
00:35:35.560which is a coalition of Western, European, North American, Christian countries and the state of Israel.
00:35:46.040And this coalition published or passed 2015 what they call a walking definition of antisemitism.
00:35:56.760According to this walking definition of antisemitism, which is accompanied by 11 examples,
00:36:01.560examples. One of the examples says that if you talk about the state of Israel as a racist project,
00:36:08.480you are an anti-Semitic, which is a fair argument. But in fact, Israel is a racist0.91
00:36:16.260state. So you cannot name reality by its name. And once you do this, you are becoming part of0.94
00:36:25.960the problem, actually. 2017, the German government adopts this definition as a working definition
00:36:37.040of antisemitism and even extends it to specify the special relationship between the German
00:36:43.360state and the Israeli state and how this bond should not be questionable. And since then,
00:36:51.400to my understanding things become really terrible not only for Palestinians for Muslims in general0.85
00:36:57.700but also for Jews and namely Jews who do not understand the necessity of having a racist
00:37:06.840state as their own representative Jews like myself who wish to understand or to explore
00:37:14.200possibilities of actually living together. And every time we do this, literally every time we
00:37:21.820do this, Germany or its representatives, either German politicians, representative of institutions
00:37:30.420of the state, you name it, they come to us, cut off our budgets, put sanctions on us,
00:37:38.460excludes us from whatever institution we're at
00:37:42.660and reminds us that what we are doing is unacceptable.
00:37:47.820Literally, Germany is not only not allowing space for such encounters,
00:37:53.280but it's fighting against such encounters.
00:38:03.020I think that it seems that there is something very threatening to the German state or maybe the modern German state in this type of communities coming together.0.94
00:38:18.260And namely here, I'm talking about Muslim Jews, Arabs who are coming in solidarity for Palestine and against state repression here or in Israel or the Israeli government.0.68
00:38:33.460I mean, there is something threatening because it's the raison d'etre of the German state was to, we can make peace with you only in terms of separation.0.86
00:38:50.480So we separate the Jews and then we're fine with the state of Israel.0.81
00:38:54.020But maybe this community reminds them, again, this group, and again, this group which is in power, which is the elite, which is the politicians or political parties, not necessarily a sentiment that's shared with all Germans, for sure not.0.90
00:39:23.460So of tragedies that, as all tragedies, could have been avoided.
00:39:28.560And maybe it shakes the grounds of the future and of the present.
00:39:36.880It shows that there is a possibility of something different that they are not interested in having.
00:39:43.760They are not interested in this community being empowered, having a voice and showing that we can come together and show our own way of togetherness, of living together, of creating open space for us.
00:39:59.780so um it's not i don't know if to call it if it's cynicism or it's paradoxical i i'm looking
00:40:10.980for the word where like a german would come to a jew telling him you are anti-semite or telling
00:40:17.140uh us that this is um this is racist when we what we are fighting against is actually uh uh racism
00:40:27.460And then in the recent week, we have been hearing the government clearly talking about expelling or revoking the citizenship of immigrants.
00:40:49.800if they do not agree to this line of understanding both of how they define
00:41:00.360Semitism and anti-Semitism, how they relate to the state of Israel
00:41:05.260and its importance to the resultat of the German state.
00:41:13.240There's so much in what you just said and shared.
00:41:17.040And one thought is that there is an, I'd imagine there's a narrative of German identity of repair with the Jews, like kind of reparations and repair.0.97
00:41:33.620And so Palestinians don't fit into that narrative. In fact, the experience of Palestinians is deeply unsettling to a narrative of this sort of settled, we moved Jews to this other place.0.66
00:41:52.140I mean, and we know this, that early European support for, you know, Zionist colonization was, Balfour was anti-Semitic, right? Like there was this desire to move Jews elsewhere.
00:42:05.560um and so palestinians are can uh counter to that sense of self is that part of what
00:42:16.460this dynamic is that that sense of we've we've done our work and um do you want to answer
00:42:25.900um the how can palestinianness can be imagined as part of germany if i may take it in this
00:42:35.880direction it's a brilliant question i will even complicate this understanding or the the difficulty
00:42:42.800of this uh idea even more because the problem has never been palestinianness the problem is
00:42:49.260Germany. It's that Germany that needs us to be in a state of enmity in order to justify0.92
00:42:56.420its existence. But who is excluded from within body of national project? Thank you.0.77
00:43:09.660Who is else excluded from this understanding of this national self, surprisingly, are a lot of0.98
00:43:16.420Jews. Think about it, that half of the population, half of the Jewish population nowadays in
00:43:23.440Palestine, Israel, are Jews originated from Muslim Arab countries, right? So what is their role
00:43:30.180in the justification process of Germany of itself, right? They are completely neglected.
00:43:38.280If you look in historic school books, there is no mentioning for Jews living in Iraq, in Egypt, in Morocco.
00:43:49.720Jewish experience is located in Europe.
00:43:54.640And this is one of the problems that characterizes the idea of Germany.
00:44:00.360It excludes anything that cannot reassure the legitimacy of Europe
00:44:40.920um so the for for this to actually for us as people who live in in berlin in germany to believe
00:44:56.880that there has been real coming to terms with history
00:45:07.940and with memory and learning anything.
00:45:15.580This does not show up in our realities, in our experiences.
00:45:21.720I'm speaking here both as a Palestinian,
00:45:24.040but also as an activist and part of these communities.
00:45:29.180And again, especially the communities that brings together Palestinians and Jews and Muslims and Arabs.
00:45:36.440Because for us, it's like no more killing or no more racism, no more exclusion.
00:45:45.280But it's not the, which we do not see it happening in our lives.
00:45:55.300We see Germany trying to protect one kind of people.0.67
00:46:01.240So it's what they think is grievable and matters.
00:46:06.880But also, as Udi said, they have a very flattened idea of what a Jewish identity is
00:46:19.140and how it should act and how it should belong and where it should belong
00:46:24.940and to whom it should, or with whom it should live.0.96
00:46:28.800And it's not with the Palestinians.0.58
00:46:31.100And now, looking at the political discourse that you hear from Schulz and other personas in the government, where they back Israel, the current fascist government in Israel,0.57
00:46:50.520The far-right government that has settlers who, you know, disseminate weapons to individuals in settlements, this is their activity.
00:47:07.940So they are backed, like Germany is backing this kind of government and allowing it to do whatever it wants now in Gaza.
00:47:16.700And it's not asking for the bare minimum that if you are watching the news, we'd say, oh, I would expect the German government to say ceasefire. No, peace. It's not in the discourse. It's really weird, awkward, scary that you look at these governments, Germany, France, United States, the United Kingdom, and there is no talk about ceasefire.
00:47:40.560So you would think that actually Germany is backing the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and from the northern of Gaza to the south, maybe Sinai or Egypt.0.62
00:47:54.840And it's as if they cannot imagine, they cannot fathom a future where the two people can live together.
00:48:03.300And the same thing that happens there is brought up here, maybe obviously in different scale and in different methods.
00:48:14.460But there is a suspicion towards this community and crushing to this community that actually shows if we believe in liberty and if we work towards liberty and freedom, then, yeah, we can live together.
00:50:54.680as as change agents and you may call yourself an activist you're you may be a teacher you may be a
00:51:05.040neighbor doesn't matter we're all change agents in this work we're all feeling it in our bodies
00:51:10.460So, not to ask you the answer to everything, but, Yasmin, if you could answer that, and then Uri, I would be deeply, I think we'd all be deeply grateful to hear your thoughts.
00:51:25.380Hmm. I'm thinking about the terminology or the word you used, radical. And so my son, who's eight years old, and he, I mean, we got together to Palestine, but he never lived there, but he speaks Arabic and German.
00:51:48.400um so um so he asked me so what what what do the people in gaza want
00:51:55.480um and uh for for a moment i was like caught unprepared it's like obvious no
00:52:05.380uh so i think radicalism at this moment means for me uh for someone who's not supported by
00:52:16.980the algorithm at all, that our story actually is crushed in the algorithm and everywhere.0.59
00:52:25.220It's to really deeply, honestly, fully believe that Palestinians do have the right to exist.
00:52:35.040And exist in freedom, total, full freedom, without confinement, without living somewhere far, without barriers, without the Israelis looking and surveilling our lives and our bodies and our breath.
00:52:58.640and really believing that we deserve this fully
00:53:26.940So everyone who can imagine this world or can maybe start from understanding that Palestinians have the right to exist as human beings who are free without any constraints from the state of Israel, who, again, as I said in the beginning, the only power that controls that piece of land from the river to the sea,
00:53:54.300then we understand why palestinians are calling for freedom and that's for me this is the radical
00:54:01.160stance so believing in the palestinians right to exist in that land and again believing that all of
00:54:09.160the people who live on that land both jews and palestinians can and should live together and0.55
00:54:15.460that's what everybody should push for and not more uh violence or more uh control and oppression
00:54:22.820i totally second you i would like to add to that one one personal wish i really wish that my1.00
00:54:36.000parents will live long enough to experience a state where non-jews are in power where1.00
00:54:43.420palestinians are in power and to realize that palestinians don't treat them the way that0.95
00:54:49.660their own government now treats Palestinians.0.72
00:54:54.860And on a macro level, perhaps a theoretical level, I would say, what is radical for me,
00:55:02.220from what my life story taught me, is queerness.
00:55:06.260It's queerness not only in the sense of gender constraints, but also of national constraints,
00:55:11.300of how you describe the reality that unfolds in front of you, not by being dependent on
00:55:17.460categories that are already given to you in order to group you into us and them, but to
00:55:25.840understand how you create a community, a safe space that can start with a group of people
00:55:33.680and grow bigger and include eventually us all.
00:55:37.760Because I think in the base of all of it, we're all human beings and this must be always
00:55:43.840the starting point for each conversation.
00:55:47.460the the sense i get in hearing you talk about relationships that you have here
00:56:00.980in berlin um and this vision is is is resonates with me very deeply we talk about
00:56:09.360the illusions, the illusion of the other. And I would invite everyone who, for whom some of
00:56:18.980this conversation might be new or even challenging to you, to both talk to us and go on a journey
00:56:28.260of learning and encounter and learning and seeing with your own eyes and encountering human beings
00:56:38.020and understanding histories, and how many times I think those of us, again, who were told as Jews
00:56:46.840that this thing is for you, it really wasn't, right? This thing that will make you safe,
00:56:56.760actually, for many of us, hasn't, as we know, from these terrible, terrible weeks. This thing that
00:57:08.020will make you more human? Hasn't. And this is something, we can exceptionalize this, but I do
00:57:15.700want to note that so many of the dynamics we've been discussing have come up over and over again
00:57:22.420over the last two days. This is not exceptional. There are many people who have had experiences,
00:57:30.000every experience is distinct, but having governments promise us safety at the price