In March 2003, the German International Workplace established a web based platform, named Qantara, which implies “bridge” in classical Arabic, in response to the 9/11 assaults in the US and the hostility they triggered within the West towards Muslims. The declared intention of the unbiased portal, run by German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, was to “bridge” cultural variations between the West and the Islamic world and supply a impartial platform for interreligious dialogue.
The portal, which publishes content material in English, German and Arabic, operated efficiently for greater than 20 years, seemingly with no editorial steerage from the German authorities. This modified, nonetheless, when it started publishing content material crucial of German debates on anti-Semitism within the context of the Gaza genocide. Earlier this 12 months, it was introduced that Qantara can be restructured, and its administration can be transferred from Deutsche Welle to the Institute for International Cultural Relations (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen – IFA), which is affiliated to and funded by the Federal International Workplace.
The ministry claimed the transfer was “purely” structural and unrelated to the editorial path and output of the location. German International Minister Annalena Baerbock, nonetheless, contradicted this declare, suggesting in an interview that considerations about content material revealed by Qantara, notably content material on anti-Semitism, had been an element within the resolution.
Following the announcement, 35 members of Qantara’s editorial employees revealed an open letter addressed to Baerbock, expressing doubt that the IFA possessed the editorial capacities wanted for the profitable continuation of this advanced mission, which had been painstakingly constructed over a few years and has proved to be an important supply for these within the Center East and Europe’s relationship with it. The letter had no impact, and all editorial employees resigned in protest.
On July 1, the administration of Qantara, which now not had any editorial employees members, was transferred from Deutsche Welle to IFA. IFA stated the portal will stay below its editorial management till the brand new editor-in-chief, Jannis Hagmann, kinds a brand new editorial board and formally begins work someday within the coming weeks.
This transitional interval at Qantara represents a novel alternative to look at and assess the true views of the German authorities concerning the Center East and its peoples, on condition that state officers at the moment are overtly modifying a platform marketed as Germany’s “bridge” to the Islamic world.
Earlier than the change in administration, Qantara was revered for its goal, informative, in-depth reporting and evaluation on the Center East and the broader Islamic world, each in Germany and the area itself.
That is now not the case. Proper now, below the editorial path of the International Workplace-affiliated IFA, Qantara seems centered not on initiating intercultural and interreligious dialogue and dialogue, however on confirming the German authorities’s biases and prejudices about Muslims, particularly Palestinians, by means of poorly researched and edited opinion articles.
Maybe the perfect instance of Qantara’s new editorial stance – and by extension the German authorities’s true views on the Center East and its peoples – is an opinion piece, titled “Disaster Communication and the Center East: Like and Share”, revealed on July 25.
The op-ed, supposedly analysing the media protection of Israel’s conflict on Gaza, by Moroccan-German writer Sineb El Masrar, frames Palestinians as an inherently violent and anti-Semitic people who find themselves mendacity about their struggling, their historical past, their tradition and their political motivations to malign Israel and destabilise Western democracies.
It authoritatively states, with out proof or something that resembles a supporting argument, that Palestinian journalists reporting on genocide are Hamas operatives in disguise, that pictures of loss of life and affected by Gaza are “staged”, that Palestinians hate Zionist occupiers on their land solely due to “Islamic anti-Semitism”, that there’s truly no famine in Gaza and the worldwide media are deliberately not publishing images of “full market stalls and barbecue stations” within the Strip.
The writer claims, for instance, famine within the Gaza Strip, “in accordance with the just lately revealed Built-in Meals Safety Part Classification (IPC) Report, didn’t and doesn’t exist.” After all, the report linked within the article clearly states: “Whereas the entire territory [of the Gaza Strip] is assessed in Emergency (IPC Part 4), over 495,000 folks (22 % of the inhabitants) are nonetheless going through catastrophic ranges of acute meals insecurity (IPC Part 5).” The IPC defines Part 5 in its truth sheet as “famine” and says this rating is just attributed to an space when it “has a minimum of 20 % of households going through an excessive lack of meals, a minimum of 30 % of youngsters affected by acute malnutrition, and two folks for each 10,000 dying every day as a consequence of outright hunger or to the interplay of malnutrition and illness”.
It appears, in accordance with Qantara and the federal government officers at the moment controlling it, even famine as confirmed by the IPC is just not actually famine when it’s taking place to Palestinians and is facilitated by Israel.
The blatant distortions of truth within the article don’t finish there. The writer additionally argues that “Islamic anti-Semitism” was the explanation why Muslims in Palestine resisted the Zionist takeover of their lands. She provides, “In contrast to Germany, the Center East itself has by no means come to phrases with its Nazi previous.”
That is, clearly, an Orwellian lie that has no place being repeated in any severe journalistic publication. What means that the Center East truly has a “Nazi previous” that it wants to come back to phrases with? After all, nothing. Nazism is an completely Western – and particularly German – ideology with no foundation in or connection to the Center East and Muslim populations dwelling there.
Muslims within the area are prejudiced towards not Jews and Judaism – which was itself born and codified within the Center East and prospered below Muslim rule in varied international locations throughout the area for hundreds of years – however the Zionists ruling Israel, who’ve been killing their family members, stealing their land and confining them in closely policed ghettos for many years.
“The Palestinian problem has been instrumentalised to destabilise Western democracies,” the article additional says.
It appears the writer, very like the German authorities, is aggravated that folks internationally, together with in Germany, are objecting to Israel’s try at exterminating a complete folks.
So is it actually the instrumentalisation of the “Palestinian problem”, no matter meaning, that’s destabilising Western democracies? Or might or not it’s that facilitating and defending the genocide of the Palestinians is what destabilises them? In any case, killing innocents en masse – or offering monetary, authorized and diplomatic cowl for the carnage – is just not in step with self-declared values of Western democracies, akin to respect for human rights and worldwide regulation. That is maybe why the article tries to argue the devastation we’re all watching in actual time in Gaza is in some way “staged” – the German authorities wants it to be staged to maintain telling the folks that it has the ethical excessive floor.
With this one article, revealed below the editorial management of a International Workplace-affiliated institute, the German authorities burned its “bridge” to the Islamic world. That the article remains to be up on Qantara, with none correction or clarification – even to appropriate essentially the most blatant “no famine” lie – after important backlash from its supposed audience, suggests Germany has misplaced all curiosity in initiating dialogue with the Islamic world. It needs the platform to principally abandon all journalistic integrity, and publish content material that helps – at any value – the federal government’s overseas coverage.
Why is that this?
It appears for the reason that starting of Israel’s genocide in Gaza 10 months in the past, the opinions, ideas and aspirations of the Muslim world, and the broader World South, don’t matter to the German authorities. It’s not keen on any dialogue or dialogue, it solely needs to proceed with its present overseas coverage in direction of the area, which cares about one factor and one factor alone: cleaning itself of the burden of the Holocaust within the eyes of fellow Western nations by means of defending Israel unconditionally and framing these resisting Israeli abuse as modern-day Nazis. Thus, it labels Palestinians, and by extension all Muslims defending them, as “Nazis”.
Qantara’s incoming editor, Jannis Hagmann, stated in a current interview that he and his workforce, as soon as they formally begin work, won’t permit themselves to be “interfered with by way of content material, neither by the IFA nor by the International Workplace”.
He stated he was “aggravated” by El Masrar’s providing and that “the article wouldn’t have appeared on this type below the brand new Qantara workforce”.
Maybe he might be confirmed proper, and as soon as the brand new workforce takes management, we’ll see a return to previous Qantara, the place articles like El Masrar’s wouldn’t discover themselves a spot on the homepage. But, as soon as a bridge is burned, it takes time and important effort to rebuild it. The platform is now going through an uphill battle to show it’s greater than a authorities propaganda outlet.
Regardless of the future brings, nonetheless, this transitional interval in Qantara, and El Masrar’s article, already taught us quite a bit concerning the German authorities and its method to the Center East. They confirmed us that the German authorities sees Israel as a righteous and ethical entity even when it commits genocide, and the Muslims as anti-Semitic, easy however manipulative hordes hell-bent on destabilising Western democracies.
And this, nonetheless upsetting, is certainly precious data if we’re to grasp and counter the German response to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.