The Boy Who Cried Wolf
Translated by Julia Bosson
“This is what the German feuilleton1 will never understand: The debate over Omri Boehm is not about freedom of expression. It is not about whether it is acceptable to criticize the Israeli government (as if that were lacking, or even taboo). It’s about pure hatred of Israel, anti-Israeli annihilation fantasies, the intolerable political instrumentalization of the Holocaust, support for BDS — and all this during a memorial speech at Buchenwald.”
This post is typical of Philipp Peyman Engel, the editor-in-chief of the Jüdische Allgemeine newspaper, in whose defense nearly the entire feuilleton pages of this country spent a week standing on self-erected barricades frothing with indignation. Yes, that’s right, the same feuilleton pages that Engel lambasted have now come out in full force to preserve his honor.
It is worth taking a closer look at Engel’s post. The German “debate” could hardly operate in more extreme terms: “hatred of Israel,” “anti-Israeli annihilation fantasies,” “intolerable political instrumentalization of the Holocaust.” The question remains: Who do these phrases actually refer to? Is Engel truly speaking about Omri Boehm, the internationally renowned Israeli German philosopher who explores the big questions of universalism and human rights in complex texts?
Since it’s only Boehm’s name in this post, Engel deliberately implicates him in his bombastic battle cries. After all, it was Boehm who was supposed to deliver the commemorative speech in Buchenwald on the 80th anniversary of its liberation, until the Israeli ambassador to Germany prevented it through a scandalous intervention that was hardly perceived as actually scandalous by anyone. On a purely linguistic level, Engel’s phrases are vaguely aimed at “the debate,” yet they remain spuriously attached to Boehm.
This is how, until now, the black-and-white world of Philipp Peyman Engel has functioned. Engel, who is now being safely protected from the possibility that he too could fall victim to “online rumblings.” That’s really sweet.
Arm-in-arm with the Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor, an undiplomatic social media warrior of the highest order, Engel is one of the loudest digital rabble-rousers in a narrative as one-dimensional as it is consequential, in which the majority of the German feuilleton has been mired for years. In this narrative, virtually everyone is suspected of antisemitism and/or hatred of Israel, and anyone who doubts this truth proves it by doing so.
Engel, then: “There are statements that are unforgivable,” “dialogue ends with hatred of humanity” (what constitutes “hatred of humanity” in this case is, of course, determined by Engel himself), “ZDF2 is contributing to making hatred of Jews socially acceptable.” Everywhere he directs his grim X-ray vision, he finds, as expected, “pure antisemitism.” He is often at the forefront of calls for politicians to resign — such as the case of former Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media Claudia Roth or former Vice President of the Bundestag Aydan Özoğuz — and one particular quote from Engel has been shared repeatedly over the years: “It is Islamists, secular Muslims, and left-wing extremists who make our lives hell.” By “our,” he means Jews living in Germany, whom Engel presumes to speak for by virtue of his position.
Philipp Peyman Engel, who became editor-in-chief of the Jüdische Allgemeine shortly before October 7, 2023, has transformed the publication into a permanently accusatory, self-righteous mouthpiece — even more so than it already was. The JA irresponsibly fuels the fears of its readers, who must feel surrounded by antisemites and murderous enemies of Israel, be they Muslim neighbors or leftwing artists.
Perhaps it should also be remembered more often that Jews are normal people, with all the reasonable and unreasonable opinions, fears, and contradictions imaginable.
Much of this lacks any factual basis, but it is as cleverly worded as Engel’s tweet about Omri Boehm. The Canadian German sociologist Y. Michal Bodemann, who passed away recently, spent decades examining German-Jewish relations and coined the term “memory theater.” In his last published text, he turned his attention to the publication Engel is responsible for. Although its subtitle is “Weekly newspaper for politics, culture, religion, and Jewish life,” Bodemann pointedly remarked that the Jüdische Allgemeine “is more reminiscent of a travel magazine for tourism in Israel, with lots of archaeology, Israeli cuisine, the military, and Hezbollah, but not a word about discrimination against Jewish and non-Jewish minorities in Israel or corruption in Netanyahu’s circle or the land grabs by violent settlers in the occupied territories.”
A clear verdict. The Jüdische Allgemeine is published by the Central Council of Jews in Germany — a “political, not a moral institution,” as Meron Mendel, director of the Anne Frank Educational Center in Frankfurt, once said, a statement as apt as it was not understood. And the Central Council, whose journalistic organ is the JA, was itself once more liberal and less identitarian, to put it mildly.
Today, the JA no longer even pretends to represent the broad spectrum of German-Jewish opinion, which theoretically ranges from the far-left Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East to the Jews in the AfD. Perhaps it should also be remembered more often that Jews are normal people, with all the reasonable and unreasonable opinions, fears, and contradictions imaginable. Jewish intellectuals of international renown keep a safe distance from the JA and call it the German Breitbart News. Politically reliable non-Jews, on the other hand, such as Stefan Laurin, editor of the influential defamatory blog Ruhrbarone (which specializes in combing through old BDS petitions to publicly discredit “left-wing” artists), are welcome authors there. JA is free to do this, of course, but for Jews who think differently, ranging from those with liberal-progressive to left-wing views, there are other, more intellectually demanding publications, at least internationally. For political coverage, it is generally sufficient to read the English-language Haaretz, which publishes daily reports on the Gaza war that Engel would probably deem “pure hatred of Israel,” especially since he categorically considers all people in Gaza to be members of Hamas, i.e., terrorists.
While 90 years ago it was essential to erase all traces of Jewish blood from one’s family tree in order to survive, today it is imperative to demonstrate one or more Jewish ancestors in order to have a say in the discourse.
The editorial stance of the Jüdische Allgemeine becomes a problem because many non-Jewish German feuilleton writers (with the exception of the foreign correspondents and war reporters on the ground) neither read nor know of other Jewish opinions and publications beyond the JA — and consider the views of the Central Council and its Jüdische Allgemeine to be the Jewish position, set in stone and certified kosher, like the laws Moses brought down from the mountain. And because of this, their rather extreme editorial stance has become the moral compass of the German feuilleton.
There were times when debates about antisemitism, the conflict in the Middle East, and Israeli occupation policy were largely left to the Jews. They should fight among themselves — for post-Aryan Germans, it was better not to intervene. This changed as a result of the inherent escalations of the digital age, as well as increased immigration from Israel to Germany and the corresponding emergence of new voices critical of (Israeli) governmental policy. Eventually, German Jewish actors began to participate in delegitimizing Jews who thought differently. Just a few examples are sex columnist Mirna Funk and Anna Staroselski, spokesperson for the Jewish association WerteInitiative. Staroselski dismissed Susan Neiman, philosopher and director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, as being too American to accurately assess German antisemitism, even though Neiman has lived in Germany longer than Staroselski has been alive.
Finally, in recent years, all lines of decency around publicly questioning the Jewishness of others have been crossed. This is widely documented: for example, when the writer and professional polemicist Maxim Biller accused the author Max Czollek of being insufficiently Jewish (a precursor to the current farce surrounding Engel). Hopefully, someone will write a really funny novel about this all one day, although the question arises as to who in this country would be free enough to laugh at it.
In summary, the following banality can be noted: While 90 years ago it was essential to erase all traces of Jewish blood from one’s family tree in order to survive, today it is imperative to demonstrate one or more Jewish ancestors in order to have a say in the discourse. It is the same system, just turned upside down. As though the audience can’t distinguish between argument and polemic, between debate and defamation.
Anyone defending Philipp Peyman Engel against unfair rumors should consider the long list of people he has unfairly attacked. So far, no one has shown much interest in doing so. So far, Feldman’s alleged campaign has primarily been a counter-campaign undertaken by Engel’s supporters.
If one were to take just a single step back, one might come to the conclusion that, for the quality of German debate, an even-keeled editor-in-chief who does not rant and rave on social media and who not only respects but even promotes the fine old principle of speech and counter-speech would be preferable to a perfect Jew at any time. Even for the Jüdische Allgemeine. Wochenzeitung für Politik, Kultur, Religion und jüdisches Leben.
Up until now, it’s been the ones on Feldman’s side — those who, like many German Jews and Israelis living here, criticize Israeli government policy — who have been publicly denied their Jewishness and accused of “Jewish self-hatred” or a lack of knowledge about the German context.
Engel claims to be the victim of a “smear campaign;” because of his “political views,” he says, he is being “taken down.” So he has a weak spot exactly where he likes to strike others. There is no need to dwell on what his opponent, the author Deborah Feldman (Unorthodox), has written about him. Compared to all the fuss, it’s pretty ridiculous. Citing a family member who wishes to remain anonymous, Feldman recounts in her article that Engel’s mother, who is from Iran, may have discovered her Jewishness quite late in life, while the rest of the family continues to belong to the universalist Bahá’í religion. Under the constant threat of persecution, Iranian Jews fled to the Bahá’í religion in the 19th century, and later renounced it, which would not be particularly newsworthy. After all, the Bahá’í have been and continue to be brutally persecuted.
However, Feldman’s essay also argues that all Jews who participate in the German discourse, including Feldman herself, are abused and instrumentalized in one way or another. Even when they actively use their Jewish identity to make themselves heard or to make a stronger point. Feldman’s penultimate sentences are worth deeper consideration and certainly not wrong: “I fear that until we come to terms with the instrumentalization and exploitation of Jewish identity here and elsewhere, others will have much more control over our identities than we do ourselves. That is why I am prepared to struggle and fight for this reckoning.”
You don’t have to agree with Feldman’s move to recognize that she wanted to flip an existing script. Although she is certainly no less vocal than her counterpart on social media, unlike Engel, she only has her own readers and followers behind her, not the concentrated media and political power of the Central Council and the Jüdische Allgemeine. Up until now, it’s been the ones on Feldman’s side — those who, like many German Jews and Israelis living here, criticize Israeli government policy — who have been publicly denied their Jewishness and accused of “Jewish self-hatred” or a lack of knowledge about the German context.
Did Deborah Feldman foresee what she would set in motion with her text “Die deutsche Lebenslüge” (“The German Life Lie,” which is almost identical in title to Engels’ new book Deutsche Lebenslügen — Der Antisemitismus, wieder und immer noch (German Life Lies – Antisemitism, Still and Again))? The ensuing uproar in the feuilleton pages now makes her text seem almost like a paradoxical intervention, a medical contrast agent that clearly highlights the afflicted areas.
It is not a scandal in Germany that the Israeli ambassador was able to single-handedly cancel a speaker who had been specifically invited by a German memorial site. Nor that the foreign minister, who had already been voted out of office at the time and therefore had nothing left to lose, did not call in this ambassador to explain the principle of freedom of speech and expression in simple terms: First you speak, then you discuss. And you don’t denounce something as objectionable before you even know what it is.
Nor does it seem to be a scandal that only a few came to defend the disinvited scholar Boehm, especially not against Engel’s tweets. Although Boehm’s speech was printed in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, its content was hardly discussed — apart from a text by Thomas Assheuer in Die Zeit and a few ill-tempered comments by FAZ editor Jürgen Kaube, who once again had a lot to lecture on, even though, as he grumbled like a referee, the speech should have been allowed to be delivered. And then we had to watch a lightweight like FAZ theater critic Simon Strauss almost choke on the set pieces of the local preferred formulas of accusation: “The highly official instrumentalization of Germany’s Holocaust conscience as an argument against German solidarity with Israel constitutes a breach of taboo” — instrumentalization, Holocaust, Israel, breach of taboo, all there, just arranged in a way that’s kind of cringe-worthy.
And finally, in other countries, it would probably have led, at the very least, to a public debate that the German head of state (Steinmeier) visited the Israeli prime minister (Netanyahu) after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time this has happened in the history of the ICC. Has anyone addressed this? Are we missing something?
But never mind this. The only thing that can become a massive scandal in the German feuilleton section is the gentle questioning of an editor-in-chief’s Jewishness, an editor-in-chief who, for entirely different professional reasons, should have attracted attention long ago. Will the solidarity festival for Engel make the Jüdische Allgemeine an even more unassailable authority for German feuilleton pages? And will Engel continue to castigate the feuilleton pages?
But it’s not all bad news. The other voices in this debate haven’t simply disappeared; they’ve just emigrated. What the German feuilleton last achieved in its entirety in the days of Frank Schirrmacher, former publisher of the FAZ, (keywords: speech — counter-speech) continues to take place elsewhere. Important, serious, and intelligent analyses, or simply very different and unexpected ones, continue to be written, for example in the Berlin Review, the Verfassungsblog, the Kursbuch, and the good old Merkur, as well as its online blog. It is particularly important that profound texts such as “Infinite License” by Omer Bartov from the New York Review of Books are being translated into German (also appearing in the Berlin Review). The “smaller” feature pages of taz and FR are also still bravely upholding the requirement of plurality of opinion. The nd, formerly Neues Deutschland, contributes a great deal of enlightenment through its own research, not just its own opinions. And finally, anyone who wants to know what tone other Jewish publications are striking should read tachles from Switzerland, for example. Its editor-in-chief, Yves Kugelmann, recently wrote a column about the Gaza war that any major German newspaper would have been lucky to publish. Why a piece like Kugelmann’s is not possible here is something that the editors-in-chief and publishers in question, with the exception of the wolf-crying boy of the Jüdische Allgemeine, will hopefully be able to answer, at least in their own hearts. Unfortunately, those with closed worldviews are characterized by the fact that they know nothing about themselves.
- Editor’s note: The feuilleton is roughly equivalent to the arts and culture pages in German newspapers. In recent years, feuilleton sections have been home to national debates around politics, identity, and opinion. ↩︎
- ZDF is a public-service television broadcast, financed largely by public broadcasting fees. ↩︎