The European Cultural Foundation has awared the “ECF Princes Margriet award”, which comes with 25.000 euro, to the British-Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif. She was explicitly awarded for her “activism”, but as an activist she is primarily know for her fanatic anti-Israel stance.
So why did she get a European culture award?
This is a translation of an article which appeared in the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, and which I find important enough to translate for non-German speakers to read. In other words: this is a translation, my translation, and not an original article of myself. I hope you will nevertheless read it!
Ahdaf Soueif has concerned herself with Arab gender issues. But as an activist she is best know for her fanatic anti-Israel stance. So why did she get a European culture award?
The European Cultural Foundation, located in Amsterdam, has revealed on the 9th of May who won the “ECF Princes Margriet award”, which comes with 25.000 euro.
The first of two winners is the British-Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif, who was explicitly awarded for her “activism”. A.S. has dedicated some of her fictional texts to the Arab gender relations. She also publicized about the short democratic spring in Egypt. As an activist, however, she is primarily known for her fanatic anti-Israel stance.
That S. is honored by the ECF, which is private but connected to the Dutch state and its royal family, as an arbiter between Occident and orient, without even mentioning her unforgiving “anti-Zionism”, is shocking. Meanwhile one only had to look at her Twitter feed on the day of the award to get an impression of what she stands for.
Egypt lives under a repressive military dictatorship since 2013, which brought down a president of the Muslim brotherhood, who wanted to establish an Islamic regime. So one should think than an Egyptian activist for democracy does not primarily agitate against Israel, the only democracy in the middle east. A.S. already introduced her articles in the Guardian newspaper around the turn of the century about a journey to the occupied areas with the surprising thesis that her life “like that of all Egyptians” of her generation stood “under the shadow of Israel”. Not under the shadow of the dictator Mubarak, who by that time already reigned over Egypt for two decades. Not under the Islamists, who had killed his predecessor Sadat.
No, under the shadow of Israel,
A.S. is a fanatical opponent of the only Jewish state in the world. In her articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict she repeats, without research, stories which shimmer between anti-Semitic cliches and conspiracy-theory paranoia; like that Israeli soldiers urinate into Palestinian water tanks. – or that Israel wants to tear down the Al-Aqsa mosque to build a Jewish temple.
Jews all over the world are under the pressure of a new antisemitism which rears its head in a dangerous way. The far-right, Islamists, and not only radical but also increasingly un-radical leftists, agree on one common enemy: Jews, even if they sometimes call them Zionists, globalists or Israelis. Among the western left, Antisemitism is made acceptable again under the cover of anti-Zionism, even beyond the fringes of the radical left. At the time all forms of antisemitism are increasing to such an extent that the European Jewish Congress warned a few days ago that “the future of Jewish life in Europe” is threatened.
The organisation BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) has done nothing to improve the life of Palestinians. On the other hand, no organisation has contributed to the mainstreaming of antisemitism than BDS, whose defender is A.S. Even just a nearly comparable effort of her and her comrades against the war crimes of the Saudis in Yemen or that of the Assad-regime and it’s allies in Syria, or against the erasure of the Islamic Uyghur culture in China is hitherto unknown.
These days, when Europe is thinking about the end of the war and the murder of six million Jewish Europeans by the Nazi-regime, one should think about who is rewarded with prizes. And also about how to build the dialogue with the Arabic-Islamic world and where to draw the line. Looking back at the German crimes in the Nazi era, but also the general European history of antisemitism, shouldn’t liberal Europeans evidently defend the Jewish right for a state ?
What signal is a European Cultural Foundation sending when it gives a prize to somebody like A.S. without mentioning her aversion against Israel? Do we really want to call this acceptable as a “European recognition” ?