Palestine Is a Fundamental Moral and Political Compass
France Insoumise legislator Emma Fourreau was recently scheduled to speak about the Gaza aid flotillas at Die Linke’s Berlin headquarters, but her talk was canceled. She writes in Jacobin about why speaking up for Palestine is a duty for the Left.
Emma Fourreau is a member of the European Parliament for France Insoumise who was illegally detained by Israel for her role in the aid flotilla to Gaza. Yet when she was scheduled to speak about it in Berlin, fellow left-wingers canceled the event, capitulating to pro-Israel pressure groups. (Anne-Christine Poujoulat / AFP via Getty Images)
On Tuesday, November 18, I was meant to address a meeting at Berlin’s Karl Liebknecht Haus, headquarters of left-wing party Die Linke. There I was supposed to speak about the flotillas in solidarity with Gaza, in which I have myself participated. Yet the event was canceled a few hours before it was due to begin.
The reason was clear: some people found the subject of the talk, namely Palestine, too unsettling. In this case, the building’s owners bowed to pressure from an Islamophobic think tank and invented the risk of a protest in front of the venue as grounds to call off the event. An appeal from a Die Linke member of parliament was to no avail: the talk was banned.
This episode tells us a lot. In Germany, even within the Left, the possibility of talking about the genocide in Palestine can’t be taken for granted.
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