The case of Nemi El-Hassan shows how little it takes to become a non-person in German class society.
In the case of the television journalist, an Al-Quds demonstration in 2014 and a few pro-Palestinian Facebook likes were enough to bring her career to stumble. After a storm of media outrage, she is now not allowed to present the science magazine Quarks on state television. She had humbly distanced herself from her participation in the demonstration and called it a mistake.
It is interesting that in this case right-wing and left-wing indignation go hand in hand. In the end, left-liberal "wokeness" is also just another moral interpretation of the imperialist reason of state. In their sense, Israel is a useful splitting wedge in the West Asia. For the Federal Republic Germany, moreover, the equation of Jews and Israel is an instrument of foreign policy rehabilitation after the Shoa. Weapons deliveries to Israel are supposed to redeem the oath of Buchenwald "Never again war, never again fascism" as a perversion. In this sense, the commitment to Israel is also an attempt to legitimize new world power ambitions.
In circles where one's own consternation is otherwise above any argument, in this case El-Hassan's origins count for nothing. Not even the fact that her family was expelled from Nablus justifies political activism against Israel's occupation policy. Instead, some media even frame her as an Islamist. This fuzzy, chauvinistic term exposes all the abysses of this issue: Muslim woman doing something political, aha, Islamism! In order to serve such resentment, she was also shown in the articles with headscarf, although she does not wear this for some years any more.
This case is not mainly about El-Hassan, but about the fact that the rulers have been successful in recent years in shifting the discourse against the Palestinians and other oppressed peoples. The cues for this have often been the anti-Germans, who come from the leftist scene. Against this deeply reactionary trend, we need unwavering solidarity with the struggles of all oppressed peoples.
