https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21338/germany-cultural-elites-israel
Fringe activists and their “positions of moral outrage” continue to be funded by the German government, with high visibility platforms to promote their blatant anti-Israel and antisemitic campaigns.
In the face of poisonous propaganda, the Bundestag resolutions calling for an end to German government funding to “organizations or projects that spread antisemitism [or] question Israel’s right to exist” are important. Implementing them and stopping the support via cultural and academic institutions will not “silence” the voices of hate, but at least the German state will no longer be providing them with resources or legitimacy.
On November 22, 2024, at the National Gallery of Berlin, the American photographer and political activist Nan Goldin asked, “Why can’t I speak, Germany?” With apparently no sense of irony, she spoke at a lectern in front of a large audience, with numerous phones pointing at her, at the opening of her retrospective, titled “This will not end well.” The subject of her talk was not her artistic portfolio but rather her political agenda on Israel.
An enthusiastic audience applauded her outrage and indignation over the “genocide” in Gaza and Lebanon, and her immoral equivalence between the Palestinian population after the October 7 atrocities with pogroms against Jews under the Russian Empire. Goldin’s false claim that “antizionism has nothing to do with antisemitism” was followed by loud chants of appreciation and applause.
The one person who could not speak was the National Gallery’s Director, Klaus Biesenbach, who was shouted down when he attempted to distance himself from her statement, while adding the obligatory and obvious defense of Goldin’s right to express herself.
The “Nan Goldin incident” was widely covered in prominent media platforms, including the New York Times and German press, as well as in social media, almost everywhere repeating her false accusations regarding the ostensible silencing of Israel’s critics. Goldin is one of a number of examples (another is Judith Butler) in which Jewish anti-Israel activists are used by Germans as fig-leaves to claim that their agendas should not be labeled as antisemitic.