The documenta art exhibition, which opens in June, will be a platform for anti-Israel propaganda, despite protests. By Krisztina Koenen.
It is well known that Germany is at the forefront of the fight against Nazism when it comes to those who oppose the climate and gender war, migration and, more recently, the war in Ukraine. There is, however, a certain lack of fervor when it comes to antisemitism, or classical Nazism. It is not only in terms of the antisemitism amongst migrants that the state is showing a conspicuous laxity, as shown most recently in Berlin during the rampage by an anti-Israel mob.
In the case of artists, who are supported in princely fashion by taxpayers, the state not only tolerates but also explicitly supports antisemitic, anti-Israel propaganda.
Here is just one event among many, documenta, the month-long international showcase of modern art in June. Documenta, which takes place every five years in Kassel, is, by its own admission, „the largest international series of exhibitions of contemporary art.” Financed exclusively by taxpayers via the city of Kassel, the state of Hesse and the Federal Cultural Foundation, it is a fully public event.
The documenta advisory board has entrusted the artistic direction of this year’s exhibition to the Indonesian art collective ruangrupa. Ruangrupa is a communist collective of mainly Muslims, an ardent supporter of the fight against post-colonialism, funded by well-known international progressive organizations, whose names the collective does not disclose. It considers Israel to be a “settler-colonial state” and accordingly finds nothing wrong with terrorism in Gaza. No Israeli artists have been invited to this year’s event, which was planned by ruangrupa, but several invited participants are militant supporters and propagandists of the BDS movement.
For example, the Khalil al-Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah, which has repeatedly called for the BDS movement to be followed in recent years. This is not particularly surprising, given that the eponymous al-Sakakini was an admirer of Hitler and a follower of the Jewish conspiracy theory in the 1930s and 1940s. Yazan Khalili, a member of the center’s advisory board, is also a BDS supporter who is not content with liberating “Palestinians” but calls outright for the liberation of Israeli Jews, who have allegedly been forced into a false identity.
But documenta’s own advisory board also includes BDS supporters.
For example, Indian filmmaker Amar Kanwar, a signatory to an extremist anti-Israel petition claiming that Israel „continuously and despicably tramples on” what he calls „Palestinian” freedoms and has called on the state of Gujarat, where the director was born, to boycott Israel. Another member of the panel, Charles Esche, director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, is a BDS supporter and a signatory to a call criticizing the Bundestag’s anti-BDS resolution.
But National Socialist ideology also plays a significant role in the genesis of documenta. Werner Haftmann, one of the founding members of documenta in 1955, has from the outset prevented artists of Jewish origin from participating in the exhibitions.
Haftmann was a member of the SA and was also involved in the torture of Italian partisans. This tradition seems to continue unbroken to this day.
Several German and international Jewish organizations, including the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, have drawn the attention of political leaders to the anti-Israel campaign being waged here. This central committee is supposed to represent Jewish interests to the political leadership of the day. The organization, however, has long since become a supporter of left-wing, often antisemitic tendencies, but the direction of documenta now seems to have become too much even for this opportunistic leadership. Schuster wrote a letter to the Green state minister for culture, Claudia Roth, in which he cautiously protested against the planned exhibition and the apparently antisemitic composition of the forums: „The circumstances of documenta confirm the impression that the BDS call for a boycott of Israeli art and culture has already been successful,” Schuster wrote.
Documenta’s management then decided not to hold the debate forums, to which no Jewish or Israeli participants were invited, but supporters of extremist Muslim groups will remain among the exhibitors.
Claudia Roth’s reaction to the criticism of the Jewish organization was extremely revealing. First, she uttered the clichéd phrase that is due in such cases: “Antisemitism has no place in our society, anywhere, including at the documenta.” She then added that it is the duty of state institutions to protect artistic freedom, to protect the free space necessary for artists to work. „This leads to different interpretations, which will certainly not please everyone.” The cynicism of this statement is breathtaking:
According to Roth, antisemitism and demands for the destruction of Israel are part of artistic freedom, while criticism of the current green policy is, as we know, a national socialist conviction.
Remko Leemhuis, head of the Berlin chapter of the American Jewish Committee, reacted to the state minister’s response legitimizing antisemitism. He told a reporter from Die Welt: „While BDS — the modern version of the classic ‘don’t shop with the Jews’ — is barely present in the German public sphere, the boycott of Israel is a consensus among participants in the almost exclusively tax-funded arts and culture scene.” Let’s not be misled by terms like „openness,” „multi-perspective” or „diversity,” he continued. „Behind these terms lies nothing but vulgar anti-Israel antisemitism.” Then, referring to Roth’s eloquent use of artistic freedom, he pointed out, „It is certainly not in the German constitution that it is a legal right to finance antisemitic positions with public funds.”
Photo: Wikimedia commons
