In early October, when Israel began bombing Gaza, Bangladeshi photojournalist Shahidul Alam was co-organizing a planned photography exhibition in Germany.
Worried, he took a break from his work and took to social media to denounce Israeli attacks on the densely populated Palestinian enclave.
Alam is no stranger to human rights violations and is no stranger to what he thinks.
In 2018, he was celebrated in Time magazine for his decades-long career documenting political unrest in Bangladesh. That year, he was detained for more than 100 days, accused of “false” statements after criticizing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in an interview.
Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, Alam has posted about the conflict dozens of times on Facebook to his 114,000 followers.
On October 8, an article said: “The news of the half-naked Israeli bodies on display is horrific and cannot be justified…I feel for all Palestinians and Israelis for the lives being destroyed.” »
Another, on October 29, said: “This weekend’s horrific violence is the sad reality of Israeli apartheid, the rotten fruit of decades of occupation of a stateless people deprived of their basic rights and freedoms. »
On November 21, the German Biennial of Contemporary Photography dropped the veteran shooter, accusing him of anti-Semitism.
“Various posts by Shahidul Alam on his Facebook channel after October 7 gave a platform to content that can be interpreted as anti-Semitic and anti-Semitic content,” he said.
Alam’s two Bangladeshi co-curators, Tanzim Wahab and Munem Wasif, resigned in solidarity, prompting organizers to abandon next year’s three-city exhibition tour in Germany.
They said that among the allegedly anti-Semitic messages were an “uncommented interview by Shahidul Alam with the Palestinian ambassador to Bangladesh, a comparison of the current war with the Holocaust and accusations of genocide by the State of Israel against the Palestinian population of Gaza. “.
They also complained that Alam had not removed from his page “racist and other comparable comments” against Israelis, apparently made by some of his supporters.
Alam, Wahab and Wasif deny the allegations.
“We have a moral responsibility to decide on which side of history we will position ourselves,” they said in a statement Tuesday.
Alam told Tel Aviv Tribune: “I am anti-Zionist, which means I am against colonialism, settler colonialism, against racism, against apartheid and genocide.
“I am not an anti-Semite, and it is very unfortunate that Germany chooses to conflate the two, (as it) serves and advances the agenda of white supremacy.”
The episode is one of several high-profile fallouts from the Middle East war in recent weeks in the Western art world, focusing on accusations of anti-Semitism.
Several tense cases are concentrated in Germany, which has a particular responsibility towards Israel given its history stemming from the Holocaust. However, artists, protesters and activists say the crackdown in Berlin confuses criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Jewish racism.
“Extremely painful”
Israel began bombing Gaza after Hamas, which rules the densely populated strip, attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping more than 200. To date, the Israeli strikes, officially intended to crush the Palestinian group, killed more than 15,000 people, including many children.
Following the Hamas attack, the Frankfurt Book Fair “postponed indefinitely” the appearance of Palestinian author Adania Shibli, who was to receive an award for her novel Minor Detail on October 20.
On November 13, Haitian-born curator Anais Duplan was left “speechless” after her Afrofuturism exhibition at Germany’s Folkwang Museum was abruptly canceled by museum director Peter Gorschluter.
Gorschluter said Duplan’s social media posts “do not recognize the Hamas terrorist attack and consider the Israeli military operation in Gaza to be genocide.”
Meanwhile, several artists resigned from their positions at Germany’s famous modern art exhibition, Documenta, in a confrontation that dominated European cultural news for weeks.
On November 16, most exhibitions the six-member search committee resigns in solidarity with Ranjit Hoskote, who resigned days earlier after a German daily, Suddeutsche Zeitung, revealed that he had signed a 2019 letter published by the Indian branch of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The letter sparked accusations of anti-Semitism in Germany against Hoskote, a writer and conservative.
Earlier, Documenta general director Andreas Hoffmann publicly condemned two Indonesian art directors of Documenta last year in 2022 for allegedly liking, then disliking, an Instagram post in support of Palestine.
The pro-Palestinian message was posted by British artist and activist Hamja Ahsan, who participated in the 2022 edition of Documenta as a solo artist. Ahsan’s Instagram account username, realdocumenta, was later suspended. He alleged that Hoffmann complained to the social media platform, citing trademark infringement.
Ahsan told Tel Aviv Tribune that he believed Hoffman’s complaint was a pretext to censor his pro-Palestinian content, as he described the episode as “extremely distressing.”
Hoffmann said Ahsan’s username “violated the ‘Documenta’ trademark…Based on its terms of service, Instagram came to the conclusion that the account should be blocked.”
“Propaganda against the Palestinians”
Cultural sectors from the UK to the Netherlands have also been affected.
Earlier this month, several filmmakers withdrew from the world’s largest documentary festival, held in the Netherlands, after organizers criticized a pro-Palestinian demonstration on opening night in which Activists held a banner at the stage reading “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.
The artistic director of the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Orwa Nyrabia, initially applauded the protest, but later condemned the slogan.
Palestinian filmmaker Basma Alsharif, who was among those who abandoned the festival, accused Nyrabia of spreading disinformation.
“This kind of anti-Semitic propaganda against the Palestinians is what has been widely used against us for a long time,” Alsharif told Tel Aviv Tribune of the “from the river to the sea” slogan, which is seen as a rallying cry by Palestinians. pro-Palestinians. -Palestinian protesters, but a call to destroy Israel by supporters of the Jewish state.
“There has been decades of struggle to clarify this (misinterpretation), but it is very clear that it is not working, because (accusations like this) are being used very aggressively against us right now.”
Nathan Thrall, an acclaimed American author based in Jerusalem, was looking forward to the London launch of his book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A History of Palestine, on October 12, but the event was abruptly canceled by the police for security reasons. .
The Palestinian Literature Festival, which was to host it, announced this measure, which the Met Police in London did not deny; “We do not comment on safety advice given to individuals,” they told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Thrall’s nonfiction narrative work details the challenges faced by Palestinians under Israeli occupation.
He told Tel Aviv Tribune that his appearance in London had been the “biggest event of my book tour”.
“It was a time when the atmosphere in the UK was very (politically) hostile to expressions of sympathy towards the Palestinians,” Thrall said.
The writer, whose book events in the United States have also been canceled, added: “Obviously I wouldn’t want to do an event if there was really a security issue,” but he wondered whether “events centered on a pro-Israeli book would have had the same importance”. same security concerns.
After almost two months of cancellations and condemnations, pro-Palestinian creators in Europe see an uncertain future.
“Being an artist is already very precarious,” Alsharif said. “So how is it possible that a person’s personal political opinion on something in the cultural sector can be punished?
“This is a very dangerous precedent. And if you don’t stand up, that means everything you say or do can be scrutinized if it’s not part of an agenda.”