Israeli Gov’t Cancels Philosopher Who’s a Grandson of a Holocaust Survivor
Omri Boehm, associate professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research, was scheduled to speak at the Buchenwald concentration camp liberation anniversary celebration this weekend.
And then Israeli officials intervened, reports Politico.
The dispute began after the head of a foundation overseeing the Buchenwald memorial near Weimar in the east of the country invited German-Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm — the grandson of a Holocaust survivor — to speak at Sunday’s anniversary ceremony.
Israeli officials objected to the commemoration speech by Boehm, a known critic of the Israeli government and its actions in Gaza, prompting organizers to withdraw the invitation…
The head of the German foundation overseeing the Buchenwald memorial [Jens-Christian Wagner] criticized the Israeli pressure… [However] He said he pulled the “emergency brake” to cancel Boehm’s speech in order to prevent the controversy from overshadowing an event intended to honor survivors.
In a statement at the Buchenwald Memorial website, Wagner said:
Prof. Dr Omri Boehm is an internationally recognised German-Israeli philosopher and grandson of a Holocaust survivor. We have invited him to speak on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora because we can expect him to provide a high level of ethically sound reflection on the relationship between history and remembrance, in particular on the value of universal human rights and their significance with regard to the Nazi crimes.
To our great regret, Omri Boehm’s invitation led to a conflict with representatives of the Israeli government, which unfortunately also involved the survivors of the camps. This threatened to jeopardise the 80th anniversary of the liberation. Worse still, the survivors, many of whom were emotionally wounded, were in danger of being instrumentalised and drawn even further into this conflict.
In order to protect the survivors and in the desire to ensure a commemorative event in memory of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps in which the survivors, rather than a debate initiated from outside, take centre stage, we decided in this situation – after a confidential discussion with Omri Boehm – to postpone his speech to a later date.
‘Understanding history – learning lessons for the future’ is the motto of our work. Omri Boehm’s internationally recognised and multi-award-winning academic work provides important impetus in this regard. As the winner of the Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding, Omri Boehm is an important international bridge builder.
Boehm is the author of Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israel (2021) and The Binding of Isaac: A Religious Model of Disobedience (2007), among other works, which you can learn about here.
(via Shen-yi Liao)
Never again.
Do I understand this correctly? An event is planned that is meant to commemorate the victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The event is not taking place in Israel. A speaker was invited to deliver a talk at that event. But that speaker had also, according to some Israeli officials, given reason to believe that he would be apt to repeat claims that would downplay the importance of the Holocaust by comparing it to the Nakba. The organizers of the conference decided that, given that the point of the event was meant to focus on the victims on the Nazi Holocaust, it wouldn’t be that great to have the controversy overshadow the purpose of the event. So, they decided to have the same speaker deliver his remarks at some later time. Meanwhile, the viewpoint the speaker was planning to represent, and will still represent later on, is apparently the mainstream viewpoint shared by most American progressives today, and not some viewpoint that nobody else dares to express in countless other venues. In fact, the speaker is hardly a marginalized or silenced writer: in fact, he has won several book prizes for his work, and is internationally recognized
What exactly is the locus of outrage here?
It seems you do not in fact understand. An important aspect of remembrance is to be able to draw lessons from past atrocities so that we may avoid repetition. Drawing parallels between the Holocaust and other atrocities, such as the Nakba, does not downplay its importance but rather highlights the importance of remembrance.
I’m not sure that the problem is that I don’t understand.
Look: there are always many lessons one can draw from any event. Also, Some of those lessons are more plausible than others, it seems, but those of a certain viewpoint will draw one lesson and think that the other lesson is ridiculous. Also, since everything that happens is similar in some respects to any other thing that happens, it will always be intuitive to draw parallels between those two events in some meaningful way.
For instance, a very different speaker could draw the lesson that global anti-Semitism can lead to the annihilation of the Jews worldwide if unchecked, and that we need to take more steps against anti-Semites worldwide, and in support of Israel. The speaker could draw a parallel to the October 7th attack, which is the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust (and a particularly brutal and cruel one).
If *that* talk had been planned and then cancelled by the organizers, I doubt that many people here would find it outrageous. But your same argument seems to suggest, equally, that it would be wrong to postpone that speaker.
A different speaker with a different worldview could stress the dangers of authoritarianism as illustrated by the Nazi Holocaust, and spend the talk drawing parallels with the authoritarianism of China as its power grows on the world stage. Nazi Germany’s takeover of other countries in Europe, and its assertion that it was merely taking back old parts of its territory, could be presented as eerie parallels with China’s actions today. One could imagine a dispute arising when Chinese officials express unhappiness with this, and when the controversy threatens to overshadow the main theme of the event, which is the commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust.
Would it really be outrageous for the organizers to decide not to include the speaker who seemed likely to use the occasion to focus on China, and not the Nazi Holocaust? I don’t see it.
Justin (Kalef),
You don’t know me at all, so I know it won’t mean much when I start this remark with ‘As someone who often sympathizes with your point of view’, but nevertheless: As someone who often sympathizes with your point of view, I’m surprised you don’t see a prima facie problem with political pressure from representatives of a particular government inducing an organization to rescind an invitation to a speaker. (Of course, my surprise is not an argument in itself.) For myself, I think cancel culture, of which this seems like a pretty reasonable example, is a baleful phenomenon no matter who deploys it. “There will be controversy if this person is allowed to speak” has always felt to me pretty underwhelming and more like a fig leaf than a serious concern, pretty much regardless of in what (political) context it is invoked.
In this connection, I think Scott Alexander’s essay, “Can Things Be Both Popular and Silenced?”, is useful food for thought.
Thanks, Simon.
If the speaker were, let’s say, barred from going to Israel to present his views, then I would consider that a big mark against the view that Israel is a free country. But that doesn’t seem to be what happened here at all. The officials, as far as I understand it, had no standing as officials to prevent the talk from being presented. They merely expressed their unhappiness with the event being used to host the sort of presentation they saw as likely. This led to a controversy about the event, and the organizers said that they didn’t want the controversy to overshadow the event, so they’re planning to have that speaker come and speak at a different event instead.
An academic conference, in order to be legitimate as such, should not exclude people on the basis of things they are likely to say. But this is not an academic conference, but a memorial. It makes sense to me that different rules apply, and that the speaker should be invited to talk at some other time.
For instance, if there were an event to commemorate a person I thought did not deserve to be remembered well, it would make perfect sense to me if the organizers of that memorial didn’t invite me to deliver some critical remarks. Those who attend the memorial might want to remember the good things about the person and it might not be the right time to raise question about that person’s legacy and reputation. For another instance, I wouldn’t find it outrageous that a local church doesn’t invite me to deliver critical remarks at the end of the pastor’s sermon.
I agree with you that cancel culture is a bad thing. But is this a ‘cancellation’? As far as I know, people are not being pressured into breaking ties with the speaker, or treating him as a non-person; his employer is not being pressured into firing him; his reputation and personal life are not being trashed in public; nobody is boycotting his classes; his publisher is not coming under pressure to denounce him or stop publishing his books; etc. If any of those things were happening, I would be against them.
Instead, what seems to have happened is that his talk, which was never intended to be presented in a forum where one would expect viewpoint diversity (like an academic conference) has been postponed to a time when it would not be as likely to overshadow the purpose of the event. That doesn’t sound like cancellation to me, but maybe I’m missing some details.
In a vacuum I think the redescription of events such that they appear benign would be fine, although in a vacuum this wouldn’t have merited a post on the Daily Nous in the first place. In the context of significant efforts to silence criticism of the Israeli government via means that include stuff anyone ought to have a problem with no matter where they stand, I think we have to have a more nuanced approach to cases like this, which are things we might not have a problem with in other contexts.
In general I think a lot of free speech discussion doesn’t go far enough if it just points out when people are or aren’t well within their rights to do something. We have to worry about the speech environment as a whole and about what it looks like if people exercise what are admittedly their rights in ways that would be benign if they were one-off cases but which have an aggregate effect that isn’t great. This could well be one of those cases.
(There’s some discussion of this general principle in JP Messina’s recent book Private Censorship and in my review of it here.)
I agree that we should give careful thought to the ways our actions limit discourse. In fact, I have long been appalled by how little care most people in the profession have given to those considerations.
But this case seems far from the top of the list of things one should be most worried about. The really terrible cases involve the exclusion or marginalization of viewpoints, arguments and objections that otherwise would go unheard. And yet, the argument that this speaker seemed apt to make is _very_ often heard, and the general viewpoint it supports (that Israel should be criticized for its actions in Gaza) is argued for extensively in many places. It’s also the mainstream view among progressives today.
Also, the egregious cases involve trying to shut the viewpoint out completely, from any venue, at any time — not merely postponing the argument to some future time.
Yet another factor here is that the occasion on which the remarks were to be given would not generally be understood as one that promotes free and open discussion and that has an obligation to provide room for all viewpoints to be explored, as a court of law, or a philosophy colloquium or classroom, or a philosophy blog, or a newspaper, would.
I could be missing some principle here that entails that there was an obligation to allow this talk to be presented at this particular event. If there is such a principle, I’d like to know what it is.
Again, my point is not that there was an obligation to allow this talk to be presented at this particular event. This situation is likely one where, as I put it, the relevant parties were “well within their rights” to do what they did. My point is that we can have reason to worry that something has occurred, reason to wish it had not occurred, reason to stop stuff like this from occurring in the future, etc. even if it is true that what occurred is something which did not require anyone to violate any obligation they had.
Okay. Then can you at least provide the principle you’re using (if there is such a principle) according to which what happened here belongs to the set of things we have reason to worry about?
People are affording the Israeli government undue weight with respect to dictating what is said by who and where and when, specifically in contexts where something might be construed as criticism of the Israeli government.
That’s not a principle: it’s a partisan claim.
Re Justin Kalef’s statement that “downplay[ing] the importance of the Holocaust by comparing it to the Nakba” is “apparently the mainstream viewpoint shared by most American progressives today….”
I’d suggest that genocide and the related (but not identical) phenomenon of ethnic cleansing can be seen as existing on a spectrum. The Holocaust stands at one end of the spectrum as an extreme and almost inconceivably evil “limit case,” for lack of a better phrase. I don’t think seeing things in this way “downplays the importance” of the Holocaust, and my guess is that a non-trivial number of “American progressives” would agree with this view. Acknowledging that there are many other events somewhere on the spectrum (e.g., Rwanda, Darfur, Belgian Congo under Leopold, the post-breakup of Yugoslavia, the Armenian genocide, and the list goes on) does not “downplay the importance” of the Holocaust but recognizes the existence of the category of which it is an extreme case.
I’m aware that there has been some disagreement among historians and others about how to approach this question, but, fwiw, that’s how I think about it.
I agree that bad things are on a continuum with one another. I didn’t mean to defend that reason for moving the speaker’s presentation to a different occasion. I just questioned why that decision was being treated as outrageous.
It was the right decision. No matter how entitled someone feels, and I don’t doubt for a moment that Omri Boehm’s sense of entitlement is real, he doesn’t get to hijack someone else’s event to promote his own agenda.
The image at the top—a speaker’s mouth taped shut, and a Star of David on the tape!—shows an unmistakable flare for drama.
The issue is simple. Someone wants to hijack someone else’s event to make it about himself. In this case, it’s a Holocaust event, and the speaker wants to connect it with—wait for it—the Palestinians. Then he feels canceled, silenced, as if his mouth were taped shut (with Star of David tape, no less!) when the main participants don’t want him hijacking their event to make it about himself.
For of course it really is about him, the author of prize-winning books, and so much the worse for the others if they can’t see that.
I think one should look at the two relevant paragraphs in his speech. Here they are:
The single reference to the Palestinians comes in the paragraph after that, and it is followed by many more examples of what is happening in the world indicating a tendency that the same thing can happen again. But nothing more on the Palestinians. Judge for yourself whether it is inappropriate.
Granted, it is a bit heavy for the particular event perhaps, and very likely easily misunderstood by people unwilling to separate themselves from their preconceptions and assumptions to allow them to hear what was said, ignore triggers, and think through what it was meant by the speaker. But is this a hijacking?
I may note that 15 to 95 million native American peoples died with onslaught of European settlers in North America leaving 300,000 at the beginning of the twentieth century. And I think a thousands years ago or so, it was something like 10 million Muslims who were slaughtered in China, many thrown over waterfalls, following an uprising in eastern China, something I was told was still in their historical memory. The Jewish experience wasn’t singular. Who does it and who suffered it wasn’t singular. Boehm’s point when he speaks of “radical universalism” is that what applies to us applies to everyone or else it is meaningless and there will then be nothing to stop it from happening again. Furthermore, as Boehm points out in the closing paragraphs, tendencies across the world are rising that opening the way for it to happen to many different peoples, and thus possibly to Jews again as well. He says that if we truly believe it should never happen, we must make sure it does not happen anywhere. How ridiculous it has become is an alliance between the Israeli right wing and the U.S. right wing, the latter of which expresses some of the greatest antisemitism of anyone in the United States, to silent voices they don’t want to hear with shouts of antisemitism. This is exceeding dangerous and stupid strategy. In my reading of philosophy, consistency and coherence are fundamental elements of truth.
I’m not sure what is the problem with someone who argues that universal values must apply to everyone rather than just our own group. But that tends to be the way of this world.
Hannah Arendt, a holocaust escapee, who in the 1950s like Boehm argued for a Palestinian state inclusive of both Arab and Jewish (both Semitic groups by the way), and moreover governed by popular councils, as opposed to a centralized bureaucratic Westphalian system of government in which sovereignty is concentrated in a relatively small group of people, probably would have been stopped from talking at such an event as well. Particularly given the response to her reporting of the Eichmann trial. A response for the most part by very smart people who seem not to have attempted to understand her writing, many of them giving indication that they never read it.
With regard to a multinational Palestinian state, Arendt said we don’t have to love each other, but we must learn to live and work together. It is unfortunate, as happens too much in this world, that the arming of both sides by various states with ulterior interests, particularly regarding control over petroleum in the region, contributed to both groups thinking they don’t have to try working things out.
I’m not sure whether actors in Israel appreciate the additional danger that the Israel government’s engagement in a war of annihilation of its perceived enemies has put its people into. Neither does it seem that they are are aware that their suppression of views that could open alternative paths will not help them — particularly when it’s coming to a point that the alternative paths are increasingly the only ones that leave any possibility of positive outcome.
From what I have been reading, it seems that Israeli leaders have talked their main benefactor, a heavily indebted United States government into into a prolonged war that is likely to contribute to its loss of credit and goodwill across the world, and is likely to end in a Soviet-style collapse. Such collapse would lead Israel to lose their main support for their current policies, leaving them to face alone a far more widespread and more hostile population than ever before.
What worked with Sodom and Gomorrah probably won’t work for an entire region with a population vastly greater than their own. I am heart-stricken because there was so much potential and so much to value in all the actors involved. And because there is such urgent need on this planet for all of us to learn to work together as the ecosystems supporting us collapse around us. Soon all our hatred towards each other will have become immaterial in comparison to the tsunami of larger problems that we’ve helped create and failed to avoid due to such short-sided and parochial obsessions.