Hannah Arendt would not qualify for the Hannah Arendt prize in Germany today | Samantha Hill
Hannah Arendt would not qualify for the Hannah Arendt prize in Germany today | Samantha Hill
More coverage:
Die Verleihung des Hannah-Arendt-Preises an Masha Gessen in Bremen musste im Hinterhof stattfinden (German language) https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=108755
The controversial Gessen quote is featured in Nachdenkseiten -> https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=108755
Masha Gessen schreibt [transl. writes]:
"For the last seventeen years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound where only a small fraction of the population had the right to leave for even a short amount of time – in other words, a ghetto. Not like the Jewish ghetto in Venice or an inner-city ghetto in America, but like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany. In the two months since Hamas attacked Israel, all Gazans have suffered from the barely interrupted onslaught of Israeli forces. Thousands have died. On average, a child is killed in Gaza every ten minutes. Israeli bombs have struck hospitals, maternity wards, and ambulances. Eight out of ten Gazans are now homeless, moving from one place to another, never able to get to safety.
The term ‚open-air prison‘ seems to have been coined in 2010 by David Cameron, the British Foreign Secretary who was then Prime Minister. Many human rights organizations that document conditions in Gaza have adopted the description. But as in the Jewish ghettoes of occupied Europe, there are no prison guards – Gaza is policed not by the occupiers but by a local force. Presumably, the more fitting term ‚ghetto’ would have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
This past weekend the prominent Russian-American journalist and writer Masha Gessen was awarded the prestigious Hannah Arendt prize for political thought under police protection in Germany.
But the event, which was to be a grand ceremony hosted by the Heinrich Böll Foundation in the city hall of Bremen in north-west Germany, almost did not happen at all after Gessen published an essay in the New Yorker comparing Gaza before 7 October to the Jewish ghettoes of Nazi-occupied Europe.
The Foundation, which is affiliated with the German Green party, founded the prize not to honor Arendt but to “honor individuals who identify critical and unseen aspects of current political events and who are not afraid to enter the public realm by representing their opinion in controversial political discussions”, withdrew its support, causing the city of Bremen to withdraw its support, leading to an initial cancellation of the event altogether.
The comparison from Gessen’s essay, which caused such uproar, closely echoes a passage from Arendt’s correspondence written from Jerusalem in 1955 to her husband Heinrich Blücher, which is far more damning:
Gessen’s comparison was more light-footed than Arendt’s, whose reflection appears eerily prescient, but their rhetorical tact wasn’t enough to stop the censors at the gate in Germany who police what one can and cannot say about Israel, cowing the Foundation into compliance.
But her position shifted after she escaped to America in 1941, after she attended the Biltmore Conference in 1942 in New York City where she condemned David Ben-Gurion’s call for a Jewish state in Palestine.
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No, the fact that Masha Gessen won the award and was consistently supported by the prize givers suggests otherwise.
edit: I think the reason I'm being downvoted is because the article unclearly refers to the "foundation" as pulling support. That Foundation was the venue for giving the award, not the org giving the award. The org giving the award steadfastly supported Gessen. My point is that, despite massive pressure from the venues hosting the award ceremony (which must be condemned), the good folks who give the Hannah Arendt prize would, in-fact quality Hannah Arendt for the Hannah Arendt prize in 2023 -- because they continue to stand-by her legacy and refuse to be pressured against her values.
Maybe read the article before posting. Then you would know that the headline is quite right.
Maybe watch an interview with Masha Gessen. Then you'd know the article is quite wrong.
Reading the article in Nachdenkseiten, it is my understanding that the local council cancelled the venue and wrote an open letter, followed by the local branch of the foundation pulling support. The Berlin branch of the foundation then took it upon themselves to still host an award-ceremony for Gessen in a secretive location for a small crowd. Hence the headline referring to a back-alley.