Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network rejects and denounces the racist campaign of intimidation and criminalization being waged in Switzerland against Samidoun, our Europe coordinator Mohammed Khatib and the Palestinian resistance and liberation movement as a whole. This racist campaign of intimidation is taking place while the Zionist regime in occupied Palestine is carrying out a genocide in the Gaza Strip that has already taken the lives of approximately 30,000 Palestinians and targeted all of the basic aspects of life, including schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, core infrastructure and residential buildings. To be clear, the campaign to prevent Mohammed Khatib and Samidoun from speaking in Basel on Friday, 2 December, is a campaign intended to support, justify, aid and abet the genocide currently being conducted by the Israeli regime in occupied Palestine. 

This campaign is being carried out in order to prevent the public in Basel, and especially the left and social movements, from hearing a clear, revolutionary left perspective on Palestinian liberation, the resistance in Palestine and throughout the region, and the role of Western imperialist powers in propping up the genocide. Mohammed Khatib, the Europe coordinator of Samidoun and a member of the Executive Committee of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, will be speaking at an event on Palestinian revolutionary struggle on Friday, 2 December. Much of this defamatory campaign is directly inspired by the fascist German campaign against Samidoun, the Palestinian community in Germany and the Palestinian people as a whole. Since the Palestinian resistance operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the launch of the Israeli genocide, the German state has increased its arms exports to the occupation regime tenfold, providing weaponry, bombs and bullets to slaughter an occupied and colonized population. In this context, we also note that Switzerland, despite its professed role of international neutrality, has “paused” UNRWA funding, a sharp divergence from its position in 2002-2004, when it halted arms sales to the Israeli regime.  

This has come hand in hand with the extreme German campaign of repression against the Palestinian population in Germany. Demonstrations for Palestine and against the genocide are routinely banned and attacked physically by police throughout the country. Palestinian refugees are being stripped of their residency and status because of their words about Palestine. Palestinian activists, solidarity activists and organizations have been subjected to early-morning raids by hundreds of armed police, and over 54 homes, mosques and community centres were raided by police in an attack on the Hamburg Islamic Centre. In this context of a campaign of state terror against the Palestinian and Arab communities in Germany in order to suppress the demonstrations of tens of thousands of people taking the streets in every major German city in support of Palestine, the German interior minister banned Samidoun. This is not an attack on an organisation alone, but part and parcel of a broad racist campaign, supported by the state alongside an array of fascist and Zionist groups, intended to marginalize and suppress the Palestinian people as a whole and deny their right to self-defense. 

Let us be clear — while we are outraged by Germany’s action, which tramples upon the rights of freedom of expression and association and other basic human rights of the population and especially those of Palestinians in Germany — we are not surprised. As when the Zionist regime labeled us a “terrorist organisation” in 2021, it is a badge of honour when the regimes engaged in a wholesale assault on Palestinian existence, resistance, and indeed, lives, target our work. We are pursuing a legal case in Germany to protect our rights and the rights of Palestinians and all peoples involved in struggle to organize, demonstrate and express their positions. Further, we note that the targeting of Samidoun is intended to serve two primary goals: to suppress support for the Palestinian prisoners, at a time when the 7,000 Palestinians held behind occupation bars (and an undisclosed number from Gaza more held in secret military prison camps) are suffering from severe torture and isolation and while the Palestinian resistance is seeking to liberate them in an exchange; and to silence the narrative and revolutionary position on the Palestinian people and, in particular, their resistance, including and centrally, the armed resistance. 

The German state and the Zionist movement have long instrumentalised the fight against anti-Semitism as a repressive tool against all who stand with the Palestinian struggle, and to shift the blame from Germany and its fellow European fascist powers, now imperialist states that are part of the U.S./NATO alliance, for their Nazi crimes upon the Palestinians and Arabs in Germany. It is the Palestinian liberation movement, an anti-racist, anti-colonial movement, that rejects the equation between Zionism and Jewishness. And it is, therefore, the Palestinian liberation movement that is fighting against anti-Semitism, fascism and all forms of racism. Zionism is a racist ideology and movement in the service of imperialism and colonization in the region, and all left forces must clearly and firmly reject it. Of course, this smear campaign is taking place in Basel, where in 1897, the launch of the Zionist movement was officially proclaimed. Let this event in Basel be clear – the reign of this form of racism, colonialism and imperialism has come to an end. 

In addition to the media campaign attempting to smear Samidoun, Mohammed Khatib, and our comrades in Basel hosting the event, Lotta and the Palästina Komitee Basel, venues hosting the event have been subjected to extreme pressure, physical threats and visits by the Basel police in an attempt to force the event to be cancelled. This event will take place. We will not allow our movement to be silenced and criminalized. Despite all smear campaigns and attempts at intimidation, we will come together to plan, strategize and speak out in support of the Palestinian people and their liberation struggle. We invite you to join us, and we encourage you to contact our comrades in Basel for the location and details of the event:

• https://www.instagram.com/lotta_basel/
• https://www.instagram.com/pkbasel/

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! 

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network stands in solidarity with Dar al Janub, the Austrian association dedicated to anti-imperialist, anti-racist organizing and Palestinian and global liberation. Dar al Janub is a principled voice in Austria that has consistently elevated the voices and analysis of the Black liberation movement, the Palestinian liberation movement, and clear international solidarity. Recently, Dar al Janub has come under attack in an effort to decertify the association, label it as “terrorist” and subject it to a political, media and official smear campaign.

This builds upon the ongoing attacks on Palestinian organizing in Austria, including the ludicrous legal attack on boycott movement activists in BDS Austria seeking a 40,000 EUR penalty for making a satirical poster about Vienna’s collaboration with the Zionist regime and “Operation Luxor,” the series of raids in 2020 that targeted the homes of 70 Arab and Muslim individuals and associations, including a number of associations working in support of Palestine. While the raids were later declared unlawful and no one was convicted, the massive attack involving nearly 1,000 police was clearly designed to produce terror in the community. This is in addition to the extreme repression in neighbouring Germany, where police have arrested hundreds of people at demonstrations, raided the homes of Palestinian activists and offices of solidarity groups, attacked protests, banned slogans like, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and even banned Samidoun as an organization.

In this context, we urge all to support Dar al Janub. To add your support as an organization or individual, add your name to the statement Dar al Janub released here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfiIvZn9BnZc0oYGaHgGcxQV4_0V6aYnXAHDaPFaiITtqP_CQ/viewform

We have republished Dar al Janub’s text below. 

Sign on here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfiIvZn9BnZc0oYGaHgGcxQV4_0V6aYnXAHDaPFaiITtqP_CQ/viewform

Stop the Zionist, Islamophobic and State Attacks Against Dar al Janub!

Dar al Janub needs your support, sign the letter of solidarity at the end of the call!

After 20 years of its existence the Austrian association Dar al Janub (House of the South) – Union for Anti-Racism and Peace Policy – faces the threat of ultimately being prohibited. Dar al Janub[i] (DaJ) was founded in 2003 in the context of protests against the US-led Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While anti-imperial voices were more and more marginalized within Austrian universities and mass media, Dar al Janub has always been a place where people of different political, ideological and national backgrounds could gather in order to practice international solidarity by challenging the hegemonic discourses on the Global South. We were doing this by establishing a stage for marginalized voices. In 2004 we organized our first “big” event: the exhibition “Aidun – we will return” in remembrance of the Palestinian Nakba. Dar al Janub has been publishing political statements and organizing protests, information events, fact finding missios to Palestine and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and international conferences. We tried to support Muslim and migrant women by organizing German language classes, Arabic language classes, anti-racism workshops, festivals and sport events by providing also childcare for women with migration background. Our main focus was always the rethinking of racist structures and the enhancement of international solidarity with the people of the South.

The methods of silencing, isolating and encapsulating  

It is a well-known fact that doing solidarity work with Palestine is especially difficult in countries such as Austria, who have been directly involved into the genocide of marginalized peoples and communities in Europe. Therefore, the attacks on Dar al Janub weren’t surprising. Our association’s critique of the European settler-state of Israel and the solidarity with the Palestinian people raised the anger of persons and institutions sympathizing with and profiting from the Zionist project. After 1990, on the cultural level, in the majority of cases, people with a leftist/progressive attitude turned their “anti-fascism” in a direction toward compatibility with Zionism. Members of DaJ have been repeatedly labeled as antisemitic and well renowned guests of conferences have been publicly shamed by defaming articles in newspapers. These kinds of defamations accompany us for 20 years – but not only us.

A quite common method to silence the voices of the South in Vienna was the withdrawal of public spaces or university spaces, labeling the events as antisemitic and/or a potential threat and denying them the spaces for public speech within or outside Universities. In 2018 the University of Vienna banned a public event with the veteran of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army Dhoruba Bin Wahad[ii] and continued to do so in 2022[iii]. The same treatment happened to Ronnie Kasrils[iv], one of Nelson Mandela’s companions in the fight against South African apartheid. A new concerning measure nowadays, is the filing of SLAPP-suits (“Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation”) against activists. A member of BDS-Austria for example is currently facing such a lawsuit[v]. For the use of the logo of the City of Vienna, 40.000 € compensation claims are demanded. To quote anti-colonial professor Ward Churchill, it seems that a lot of “little Eichmanns”[vi] do their work to cover unjust politics with a construct of defamations. This is a development that can be witnessed all over the globe nowadays, but regarding Austria’s incomplete reappraisal of its Nazi past, these defamatory tactics are quite effective. They dominate the discourse and push it further into the direction of criminalization.

The preparation of criminalization and bans  

“Next level is now!” – In 2021 the University of Vienna and Austria’s Documentation Centre of Political Islam (DPI) published a so called “Islam map”[vii], which shows over 600 Muslim or Islam-affiliated locations in Austria. Since 2022 DaJ is also mentioned in this stigmatizing “map”.

This project and the DPI itself are a construct of the Christian-democratic party (ÖVP) and the Green Party. Long before the implementation of the “Islam map”, the Social-democratic Party (SPÖ) brought forward special laws against Muslims in 2017. It seems that the unconditional political support of Israel, combined with the stigmatization of Muslims, are part of the political agenda of all parties in Austria.

Recently, in December 2023, a dubious and unscientific study[viii] of the foundation DPI (“Documentation Center for Political Islam”, German: “Dokumentationsstelle Politischer Islam”), funded by the current government, described Dar al Janub as an “extremist leftist and antisemitic group” that supports “different groups being classified as terrorist organizations”[ix]. The “study” does not explicitly name what specific groups should be supported by Dar al Janub, neither does it explain why Dar al Janub’s activities should be regarded as antisemitic and actively leaves out our years-long cooperation with Jewish groups like Women in Black[x] or Jewish Voices for a Just peace in Vienna[xi], as well as our contact to Neturei Karta[xii] representatives in Austria, until they were excluded and expelled from all mainstream Jewish Institutions in Austria, which forced them to leave Austria.

After DPI released its study, public and private newspapers and television broadcasters adopted its condemnation willingly and uncritically. DaJ was labeled as some sort of antisemitic and conspiratorial group of terror sympathizers. Media outlets[xiii] and politicians[xiv][xv] from all ends of the political spectrum are publicly demanding the city government to cancel the rental contract for the rooms of our social center[xvi]. The walls, doors and windows of our center have repeatedly been smeared with racist slogans or attacked with acid. Moreover, some members of DaJ have been intimidated and even received death threats after being denounced and displayed with their face uncensored and full name in the national public television broadcast ORF.

The Toxic History of Austria

One cannot understand these dynamics without taking a look into the contemporary history of Austria and how the last 100 years shaped Austria’s dealing, not only with so called “other” people, but also with “other” opinions. The Austrian state considers its unconditional support for Israel as a “reason of state” and justifies it with its “historical responsibility” because of Austria’s involvement in the genocide against Jews. At the same time, other minorities who have been victims of the genocide, like Roma and Sinti, are facing structural and individual racism without being defended. Austria is making the distinctions between worthy and unworthy victims and therefore its policies to fight “Political Islam” and “Antisemitism” usually come with a quite reactionary touch aiming to criminalize critical Muslim individuals and associations alike. These policies are creating an intimidating atmosphere, especially for the Muslims who are classified into good, i.e. non-political, and bad, i.e. undemocratic political Muslims.

 Another example for this policy was “Operation Luxor”, one of the largest police actions in the Austrian post-fascist history.  After 21.000 hours of observation, 960 police officers carried out raids in about 60 flats, businesses and association rooms in different cities all over Austria and 30 persons have been immediately arrested and interrogated. However, the results of this gigantic undertaking have been quite minimal. In the end, there was not even one person legally convicted. One of the most influential Austrian news magazines, Profil[xvii], described the Operation as a “political and public authorities scandal” and concluded in an article “today, two and a half years later, there is not much left of the condemnations.” However, much remained of the accusations: traumatized small children who were torn from their beds at night during this police action, brought out into the cold at gunpoint, character assassination that led to job losses and an intimidated community that for years no longer dared to exercise the constitutionally guaranteed right of assembly, academics who left the country because the political climate in Austria had been poisoned. A political climate that is now becoming even more repressive with Israel’s war against the people in the Gaza Strip.

One might ask, why did the right-wing government of ÖVP and Green Party spend/waste so many resources with practicably no outcome? – Maybe the time was right:

Indeed, Operation Luxor happened only because, on the one hand, the social and political climate was ripe – Muslims and migrants were established as the oriental “others”. And on the other hand, the Austrian state and its government wanted to proof internationally that they are willing to execute measures under the so-called “War on Terror” to make Austria fully prepared for the next decades of war and crisis.

The Viennese police enacted strict measures against the long constructed political enemy “Political Islam”[xviii]. It seems that these measures have been quite welcome in order to further intimidate, cut citizen rights and divide the Austrian Muslims into the good and quiet Muslim and the bad “political Muslims”. Sebastian Kurz, the former Austrian Chancellor, wanted to get votes by the huge reservoir of far-right voters (approx. 30%) and Operation Luxor was staged in a media-effective manner as a huge strike against terror and “Political Islam”.

The construction of Political Islam and Operation Luxor have not been the only measures to gain political power for racist anti-Muslim agendas: compulsory and racist value-courses for migrants; restrictive amendments in Austrian Islam Law, the shutdown of mosques and the ban of headscarves for school and kindergarten teachers, … all of these measures were accompanied by racist media coverage that led to a significant rise of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism within the last 10 years. According to the Documentation Centre of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism (Dokustelle Islamfeindlichkeit & antimuslimischer Rassismus)[xix] the government’s crusade against so-called “political Islam” is an attempt to silence critical voices within the Muslim communities and other critical voices opposing racist, restrictive and exploitative government measures.[xx]

How Dar al Janub is portrayed

“Behind the façade”, the defaming newspaper article[xxi] states, Dar al Janub “hides a world view that attributes all good to the global South and all bad to the ‘West’”. In order to demonstrate how dangerous the “hidden agenda” of DaJ is, the media showed the picture of one of our members meeting Hamas political office member Ismail Haniyah in the Gaza Strip. DPI and the media are neglecting the fact that the picture was taken in 2011, when Dar al Janub participated in an international delegation[xxii] bringing humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip. Following this logic, DPI should also condemn former British parliament member Claire Short for joining this delegation and the British newspaper “The Guardian” should be put on the terror list, for publishing a whole article[xxiii] with Ismail Haniyah in 2012.

In Austria, the coalition of Politics, Media and contract research is trying to label Dar al Janub as a terrorist organization that works together with Hamas. Lisa Fellhofer, Director of the DPI further insinuates: “Social engagement and freedom of speech were used by Dar al Janub members to devaluate other people, this is the basis for radicalization”. Lisa Fellhofer and her government-funded institute are trying to convince us that all efforts Dar al Janub was taking during its 20 years of existence – organizing galleries in remembrance of the Nakba, organizing fact finding missions to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, organizing a two-year social project in Nablus supporting a local social charitable society, etc. – only had one single goal, which is to “devaluate other people”. In other words: a bunch of radical, antisemitic terrorist supporters were putting in all this effort only in order to cultivate and exercise their antisemitic worldview. As Dhoruba bin Wahad describes, in the age of social media, “perception becomes reality.” One picture is enough to stigmatize 20 years of political and social work as illegal.[xxiv]

Dar al Janub, as it is in reality

In fact, Dar al Janub practiced something that is not so familiar to many politicians, journalists, NGO staff, and contract “scientists” like Fellhofer: We have worked and continue to work without payment for a cause that we believe in. Moreover, we put together our own money and that of our friends and families to guarantee that the costs of the locality and everything else we organized (conferences, etc.) are covered. In fact, this made us free to become independent from state funding and only through this process we got an understanding of what free speech really is and how it could be. We only received funding in the early phase of our association[xxv], which we have made totally transparent; everything was given to those in need. Everyone who is interested what happened with the received money can check out our homepage, where all our projects and external funding are archived.

Concerning the accusation of devaluating people, we would like to know what people should have been devaluated by our work. Criminal political leaders? Greedy CEOs? Ruthless Journalists? Honestly, we do not understand why profiteers of exploitation and war always take it so personally when they are criticized for the crimes and genocides they are committing or supporting. We might have criticized their actions, but they did devaluate themselves by doing so.

It was not Dar al Janub who divided the world, enslaved millions of people, colonized more than 90 percent of the world and still continues these wars and crimes, always claiming to act for the greater cause (“Faith, Civilization, Trade, Security, Justice, Democracy”, …). They are using these respected terms to justify their crimes and they are those who devaluate and sacrificing our common ethic values and the well-being of further generations for their own profit.

Dar al Janub has always opposed all forms of racism because racism is one of the root causes for the division of our world into oppressor and oppressed. Dar al Janub is trying to rethink history, present and future in order to find peace and equality for all, not just for a privileged few.

Michel Trouillot states in his article “an unthinkable history”[xxvi] on the Revolution in Haiti in (1791-1804) that “[t]he literature on slavery in the Americas and on the Holocaust suggests that there may be structural similarities in global silences […] erasure and banalization are not unique to the Haitian Revolution”.[xxvii]Actually, the Haitian Revolution poses a good reference point to the current situation in Palestine/Gaza. Back in the 18th century, nobody in the Western world could even think of the possibility that the Haitian slaves could organize, revolt and establish a society without slaves, just like nobody believed that the Palestinians would reorganize and resist after these decades of fragmentation and colonization. After 100 years of occupation, ethnic cleansing, brutal mass killing and Apartheid, Palestinians fight for a freedom the so-called “West” does not even think as being applicable to them. The concept of freedom and the right to resist, also militarily, against an occupying power, seems to be perfectly clear in the context of (white) Ukraine, whilst (black, brown and Arab) Palestinians are being denied the same rights. In respect to these double standards, Palestinians are the ones who are devaluated these days, especially in Austria.

However, this ambiguity goes back to the days when human rights were “firstly” being declared in the so-called American and French Revolutions. According to Trouillot, “this was an age of change and inconsistency. Few thinkers had the politics of their philosophy”.[xxviii] In the age of “big revolutions” (French and American Revolutions), the biggest revolution these days have witnessed was the first revolution through which slaves were able to free themselves and declare their own state in Haiti in 1804. Yet it could not be seen as such because slaves were not perceived as equal human beings having the same human rights as white people. In respect to this background, we see Dar al Janub – indeed – as a memorial to Europe’s colonial past and present, a place to remind us that the construction and imperial realization of the “West” and the so-called “rest” (of the World) through the colonial conquest of “America” destroyed individual freedoms and heterogeneity within Europe itself: Muslims (with Jews) were expelled from Southern Europe, so called heretics were burned and women were brutally murdered and burnt by constructing them as dangerous witches. Dar al Janub regarded itself always as a constructive corrective in a post-fascist society that finds it at times uncanny to deal with its own past and present. “We all need histories that no history book can tell, but they are not in the classroom – not in the history classrooms, anyway. They are in the lessons we learn at home, in poetry and in childhood games, in what is left when we close the history books with their verifiable facts.”[xxix]

Counter-revolution, fake radicals and real terrorists

If we dare to look back at the history of revolutions in Europe, we should ask ourselves which humanism was achieved, enforced or defended by these “revolutions”. Some forty years after the French Revolution, France occupied Arab Algeria and remained there until 1962. During these 130 years, 50% of the Algerian population was killed in the name of civilization and the French state did not leave Algeria voluntarily. Many of the German revolutionaries who escaped the suppression of the 1848 revolution were involved in the establishment and colonization of the “whites only” state of Texas. And this involvement meant the expulsion and extermination of the indigenous population and the establishment of a slave-owning society. In this context, the historian Gerald Horne speaks of counterrevolution and thus sheds a different light on this “civilization project”[xxx].

Since Dar al Janub was founded in 2003, the West started and continued numerous wars all over the globe: in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc., and supported numerous proxy wars in the so-called “Middle East”, Africa and the Americas. While think-tanks like the DPI denounces our activities as a “devaluation of other people” and even as antisemitic, in fact it is the opposite. Criticizing Israel, America and Europe for their human rights violations is not a “devaluation” of individuals, it is our democratic right of free speech, and it is based on the assumption that all people should have the same “value”. Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)[xxxi] guarantees freedom of opinion and freedom of expression, which are the “foundation stone for every free and democratic society”.

It also has to be said that the mentioned attacks on Dar al Janub, BDS and its supporters are a clear violation against the freedom of speech. In their report on the situation of human rights defenders in Austria, the UN Special Rapporteurs say: “The professed goal of the BDS call for boycott is not to advocate for an arbitrary discrimination of Israeli citizens, but to target a deliberate State policy and to promote compliance with public international law.”[xxxii]

While international Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International clearly condemn Israel’s Violations of International Law by committing the crime of Apartheid, their local Austrian national committee always remained silent when Palästina Solidarität Österreich, BDS, Dar al Janub or other pro Palestine activists were being publicly shamed, criminalized or faced lawsuits. The fact that they indeed showed solidarity with climate activists who had to face similar state repression is raising the question whether they are regarding Palestinians and those being in solidarity with them as equally valuable?

The instrumentalization of the “Never again” slogan

Since 1999, when former left activist and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called for war against ex-Yugoslavia[xxxiii], the antifascist slogan “Never again” has been reframed and instrumentalized. Nowadays, “never again” means “always again”! “Again” against the people of the Global South – with or without international law. People with a conscience who grew up in this country, know that the slogan “never again” poses a deep and troubling challenge to everyone who is trying to elaborate, understand and practice it in a historical place such as Austria. From the very beginning, the founding members of Dar al Janub interpreted their historical responsibility within the scope of a global history. A global history of powers of injustices and a global history of people who resisted and are still resisting these crimes. In February 1945, three months before the liberation from the Nazi regime, 500 detainees of the Austrian concentration camp Mauthausen managed to break out of the camp. Most of them were Soviet officers. Under the slogan “No man may be brought back to the camp alive”, SS, local police units, units of the Wehrmacht, SA, Hitler youth, Volkssturm and local inhabitants started a human-chase that went down in Austrian history as the “Mühlviertler hare hunt”[xxxiv]. Only eleven people survived this unprecedented act of human barbarism. To hunt people as if they were animals in the upper Austrian woods in February, at eight degrees Celsius below zero, resonates in Austrian history until today, when starved and tortured people who managed to escape the most inhumane place in human history (a concentration camp) did not find any (!) safe place outside of the death camp, except those eleven (!) people who could hide in the stalls and homes of some brave members of civil society. As Dar al Janub we salute the few brave Austrian people who hid those who escaped the camps, and they will always have a special place in our hearts. As Dar al Janub we feel connected with all the brave people in the world who fought and continue to fight against these wars of injustice – and in the end to fight against their and our fears.

We salute those who try to speak up against the different systems of oppression despite the censorship attempts by the City of Vienna and the Austrian government, who have a long tradition in cancelling events even with internationally renowned persons. In 2001 for example, Edward Said was invited to Vienna by the Freud society (named after Sigmund Freud) which later denied him the right to speak because of his political advocacy for Palestinian rights. His comment was: “Freud was hounded out of Vienna because he was a Jew. Now I am hounded out because I’m a Palestinian.”[xxxv]  In 2011 we organized a big conference with Joseph Massad, Ilan Pappe and Salman Abu Sitta. The title was “Remapping Palestine”. Weeks before the event, the Wiener Zeitung, a Vienna based Austrian newspaper wrote “Dissatisfaction about ‘Remapping Palestine’/’untrustworthy’ scholar stirs up the minds”[xxxvi]. In the article Ilan Pappe had been described as a “difficult person”. The secretary general of the Austrian Israeli society Susi Shaked even denied him his Israeli identity as they quoted her: “Remapping Palestine is a totally unnecessary and totally one-sided symposium. Not a single Israeli statement is tolerated.” She further stated that “Remapping Palestine” actually means the re-besiegement of Israel/Palestine. Without shame or further ethical reflection, Austrian newspapers and politicians denounced an Israeli scholar by the backing of Jewish/Israeli representatives without asking themselves if Austria is in a position to denounce Jewish people regardless of their political opinion, or even more so to censor critique of the colonization and systemic murder of a colonized people. By describing a world-renowned scholar like Ilan Pappe in such a manner, they have crossed all lines of personal integrity.

In 2016, the Austrian Parliament first invited and afterwards canceled the invitation of Hedy Epstein, a survivor of the Holocaust who lost both of her parents in Auschwitz. Her human rights activism including Palestine made her a “not classical Holocaust survivor”, as Efraim Zuffrom (Wiesenthal Center) said[xxxvii]. Even antifascist activist and composer Mikis Theodorakis experienced the same disrespectful treatment[xxxviii]. A single critique by a pro-Israeli organization seems to give Austrian media the right to treat critical voices in such a disrespectful manner. Until today, Austria seems to have a very clear conception in what is “good” and what is “evil”. In this tradition, the state and its institutions also distinguish between good and bad Jews. Three generations ago, Nazi technocrats like Adolf Eichmann where also taking such decision in Vienna, deciding which “good” Jewish families would be allowed to emigrate to Palestine and which ones are sent to the extermination camps.  No wonder that other critical Jewish voices are considering twice if they are willing to give a speech in countries like Austria or Germany. In Germany for example, US scholar Judith Butler already stated that she has been repeatedly treated disrespectfully and caricatured in a rude manner”, calling the reports about her “aggressive” and even “antisemitic”.[xxxix]

Let us raise a hypothetical question: if any Palestinian were able to flee through a tunnel in Gaza, under the Mediterranean to Austria, would they then find refuge in an Austrian apartment? It is hypothetical because Palestinians do not flee today, they resist. Not hypothetically, but in the real brutality of post-fascist Austria, the functionaries and (mass) murderers not only lived unaffected in this country but also made stellar careers. The euthanasia doctor Heinrich Gross died of natural causes in 2005, as a well-respected and wealthy member of society. In the decades after 1945, he continued to work as a doctor and sued those who escaped his torture experiments.[xl] The de-nazification of Austria was never completed – or rather never begun. In fact, there have been so many members of the NSDAP in Austria, that political parties from left to right competed for their votes and nobody wanted to talk about the past. “Never again” was established as a lip service with no intention to deal with the root causes of the genocide, which are racism, greed and imperialist competition. And the parties who paved the way to re-integrate the Nazis into society are the same political parties that want to criminalize Dar al Janub nowadays.

We will not distance ourselves one millimeter

During the last 20 years we were able to cooperate with some of the greatest human rights defenders, activists and historians. They have (or had) different backgrounds, are from different associations and institutions such as Salman Abu Sitta, Peter Melvin (RIP), Paula Abrams Hourani (RIP), Joseph Massad, Ali Huwaidi, Ronnie Kasrils, Farid Esack, Ilan Pappe, Dhoruba al-Mujahid Bin Wahad, Karam Khella (RIP), Rolf Becker, Helga Baumgarten, Silvia Baraldini, Gerald Horne, Ward Churchill, Gerry Maclochlainn, Andrea Komlosy, …

All these people took a decent amount of risks, some survived Nazi-Fascist Austria, some survived the brutal US prison system, some survived Israeli bombs in Lebanon, some brought white-racist South Africa to an end. And all of them never gave up raising their voices against injustice, white supremacy, as well as academic laziness and superficiality.

Those people had to risk a lot, some of them everything, and they did it because of their love towards humanity, because of their feeling that we all are connected in some way being the children of one family: humankind!

No, we will not distance ourselves from a single person we met, group we cooperated with, or political history we worked on.

Yes, we oppose the commitment of war crimes, justified by the instrumentalization of the slogan “Never again!”, as we demand that a genocide is never carried out again to anybody and nowhere in the world.

Yes, we distance ourselves from injustice war policies and racist measures of the Austrian government and the EU and the USA and the “extreme center”[xli].

Yes, we are in solidarity with the resisting people in Palestine and all groups and people in the EU and the U.S. who are facing state repression because of their solidarity work.

We demand:

– the immediate discontinuation of the racist monitoring site “Islam Map”[xlii] by the University of Vienna

– the call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza by the Austrian Government, as it is Austria’s obligation according to Article III of the Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide[xliii]

– the Austrian government to stop violating the right of freedom of speech by attacking groups like Dar al Janub and BDS, as demanded by the UN special rapporteurs[xliv]

If you think the work of Dar al Janub has a positive impact and should continue without facing legal repression and attacks from Zionists and Austrian media, please sign and share this letter!

Sign on here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfiIvZn9BnZc0oYGaHgGcxQV4_0V6aYnXAHDaPFaiITtqP_CQ/viewform

**

[i]     https://dar-al-janub.net/ueber-uns/