How DW is Germany's Voice of Pro-Zionism?
The general public could not have imagined that Europe, with its traits as a land of rights and freedoms, could be agitated by a post written by a journalist on Facebook or a tweet on Twitter, reflecting something of his own feeling, about human issues in the world.
But fiction turned into reality after the state-owned Voice of Germany website Deutsche Welle fired a number of journalists and ended their work, under the pretext of anti-Semitism.
However, these justifications were not legal, as the German Labor Court ruled on September 5, 2022, in the case of Farah Maraqa.
The latter posted a post on her Facebook page saying that the court had ruled that the Deutsche Welle Foundation's termination of its work was unlawful.
Maraqa has previously called on the Human Rights Council to exert all possible efforts to stop the arbitrary measures to which Arab journalists are subjected and to protect the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
Fabricated Charge
In a speech to the UN Human Rights Council at its 49th session, delivered on behalf of the Euro-Mediterranean Monitor, March 29, 2022, Maraqa said that the smear campaign carried out by the German press had no aim other than to tarnish the image of Arab journalists and stigmatize them on charges including hatred and anti-Semitism.
On the same charge, Deutsche Welle fired Palestinian journalist Maram Salem after a German journalist published a report accusing her of "anti-Semitism" and "Israel" over posts on her Facebook account.
The decision to dismiss did not stop at Salem, but also included three other journalists on charges of "anti-Semitism": Bassel Aridi, Daoud Ibrahim, and Morhaf Mahmoud.
Salem said in a post on her Facebook account, "The private post she posted earlier did not contain any anti-Semitic expression, nor did he mention Israel, in which she spoke only about freedom of expression in Europe.
Salem presented the text of her previous post, which read: "Freedom of expression and expression of opinion in Europe is an illusion, many red lines if we decide to talk about the [Palestinian] issue."
"The encryption we usually do is not intended to hide posts from Facebook, but to prevent automatic translation from revealing the meaning of our words to observers here, who are ready to send a request to dismiss us, or to deport us."
Salem stressed that the procedures for investigating her were not impartial, as an Israeli was appointed to the Foreign Commission of Inquiry.
Overall, however, the questions were racist. "I found myself in the crosshairs of accusation just because I was Palestinian," she said.
She said she thought that "working for an international media outlet, which has long been enriched by freedoms, would be different, but [Deutsche Welle] proved that the media is not really free, and the journalist will be tried in public simply for saying 'there is no freedom of expression.'"
With regard to journalist Bassel Aridi, he filed a complaint before the Labor Arbitration Council in the Lebanese capital Beirut against the German network Deutsche Welle for compensation for his arbitrary dismissal and for the allowance of warning, malfunction and damage.
According to the website The New Arab on March 2, 2022, Aridi announced the lawsuit at a press conference he held with Daoud Ibrahim, with whom Deutsche Welle also terminated its cooperation contract, at the headquarters of the Lebanese Press Editors' Syndicate, and they talked about the reasons for the dismissal, its background, and their action before the judiciary.
"We don't know the real charge on which we were dismissed, as we did not violate the rules of conduct associated with our institution, neither within it, nor through social media, rather we were receiving congratulations on our work," Aridi said.
He noted that the content of his tweets "does not affect any belief, religion or minority."
He pointed out that during the investigation conducted by the committee, he was not asked any questions related to his professional work, but questions about reports he prepared for the channel Al-Jadeed, where he worked before moving to Deutsche Welle as director of the Beirut office.
"The contract is subject to the Lebanese labor law, and there is an explicit and clear provision in it that through my work with the institution it is my professional duty to cover all events in the Middle East, except Israel," he said.
"The problem lies in the charge of anti-Semitism; two words that would affect a career that is more than twenty years old and has made sure to be crowned with professionalism away from bias, racism and hatred. Because of the defamation and defamation of this charge, my demand for moral compensation came,” he added.
Daoud Ibrahim, who worked for Deutsche Welle, announced that he was considering filing a lawsuit with his lawyer to collect his personal rights because of the damage the charges had caused to his reputation.
The German network's decision came after an investigation that lasted nearly two months, led by former German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger and psychologist Ahmed Mansoor, who identifies himself as an "Israeli Arab" and uses his social media accounts to defend the occupation.
Ibrahim stressed that the employment contract with Deutsche Welle is governed by Lebanese laws, and Israel in the eyes of Lebanese law is an enemy.
"This is well known, and it must be clear and understandable for every institution that wants to work in Lebanon, especially since any complacency with the Israeli issue would entail a great responsibility on the Lebanese employee working in the institution and expose him to sanctions," he said.
"We will follow up on this issue, and we are interested in making our voices heard, as we reject the charge of anti-Semitism according to the new Western and German classification on which it is being dealt with," he said.
During the conference, the head of the Lebanese Press Editors' Syndicate, Joseph al-Qusaifi, stressed that "what happened with the two colleagues is rejected and condemned by an institution that claims to train people in democracy, freedom, acceptance of the other and integration into societies.
Anti-Semitism
To understand the nature of the accusation, Tijani Boulaouali, a researcher and lecturer at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Leuven in Belgium, says the term anti-Semitism has an ideological rather than a scientific load.
In a statement to Al-Estiklal, Boulaouali stressed that the term takes on a gelatinous and loose character, and can attach to its denunciation of every problem or negative treatment of what Jewish is, and is construed as racism, hatred or hostility directed at Jews.
Boulaouali, the author of 36 books, covering several issues, including the status of Islam and Muslims in the West, stated that since the mid-nineteenth century the term anti-Semitism has surfaced.
By this it originally meant the hostility that Jews received from Christians in various European countries from the Middle Ages to the mid-twentieth century.
This means that historically neither Muslims nor Arabs have anything to do with anti-Semitism and anti-Jewishness, noting that "there has been a hybrid shift in the load of this term from anti-European-Jewishness, which was real to anti-Muslims in the present era, which is mostly delusional and uninstitutionalized."
Perhaps the reference to this, Boulaouali says, goes back to the Palestinian cause and the Zionist-Palestinian/Arab conflict, and this has nothing to do with the concept of anti-Semitism.
This conflict is not so much about what is Jewish religious, but about a political character in which a people demand their rights usurped by an outside party.
He also stated that many intellectuals, writers, and media professionals in Europe and the West have become victims of the ideological use of the concept of anti-Semitism (including journalist Farah Maraqa and many others), although this is in total contravention of human rights charters, laws on public freedoms and freedom of opinion and expression.
On December 22, 2021, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor expressed grave concern about the escalation of targeting and maiming of Arab and Palestinian journalists working for German media.
The Geneva-based Euro-Med Monitor said in a press release that the situation had escalated since the German parliament passed a resolution calling the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel anti-Semitism.
Germany had witnessed a bid aimed at confusing anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, and criminalizing criticism of Israeli violations against Palestinians.
The Euro-Med Monitor said that this not only poses a serious threat to freedom of expression, but also involves the use of accusations of anti-Semitism as a weapon against minority public figures.
The same monitor highlighted that shortly before this announcement, West German Radio had suspended the scientific program QUARK presented by Neamah al-Hassan, a German journalist of Palestinian origin, because of similar allegations of anti-Israelism.
Euro-Med Monitor pointed out that newspapers, organizations and members of far-right pro-"Israel" groups target Arab or Palestinian journalists in German media.
