MESA Banner
Judge as German: The Politics of Judgement in the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Efforts in Germany
Abstract
“Je ne me considère pas du tout en procès en Allemagne.” (Achille Mbembe, 2020). This paper explores expressions and relationships of (moral, political, and legal) judgement in the context of the debate around the legitimacy of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement in Germany. Since its establishment in 2005, the BDS movement has based its demands and tactics within the discourse of anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and International Law, continuing with a much longer history of Palestinian rights-claims through international legal institutions and language (Erakat 2019, Allen 2020). The call for BDS has since been a mode of resistance that seeks to locate responsibility for the ongoing denial of full human rights at the hands of the Israeli state, with those states and institutions that financially enable and legitimise such practices. In Germany, such mobilisation has been read in light of the country’s own history of boycotts, namely the National-Socialists’ call for a boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933. Judgement of the BDS movement culminated in a controversial 2019 parliamentary resolution, which vowed to defund any BDS-related activities and actors in Germany. In this context, moral and legal judgements of BDS efforts mobilise a ‘German’ historic responsibility. The resistance of BDS allies to such judgement is indicative of the complex workings of power in Germany when it comes to rights and responsibilities (cf. Abu-Lughod 1990). The politics of judgement that I explore in this paper, uses Jacques Rancière’s understanding of politics as a struggle over speech, space, and the right to have rights (Rancière and Corcoran 2015). Whose historic past and present responsibilities are universalised, provincialized, or silenced are struggles that make up the field of judgement around BDS activism in Germany. Based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in Berlin and observation of the Humboldt 3 and Bundestags 3 for Palestine trials, I hope to highlight the way in which those coming under attack for their (alleged or real) alliance with the BDS movement experience judgement not merely as disagreement, but as a form of discrimination. In following my key ethnographic questions “Who gets to judge?” and “Who has the right to speak (back)?”, a picture of political and legal struggle animated by white racial anxieties emerges (Bruce-Jones 2017; Younes 2020).
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Europe
Sub Area
Ethnography