Solidarity: Palestinians, the West German Left, and the Making of a Global Movement

14 décembre | 10h00

Dynamiken und Erfahrungen der Globalisierung

Abstract:
From discussions about the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement to disputes concerning the spread of a new Antisemitism, solidarity movements with Palestinians are at the center of controversial debates today. The historical stakes of solidarity with Palestinians have been particularly high in Germany. In addition to the legacy of the Holocaust and a long history of Antisemitism, radical shifts in attitudes towards Israel have rendered a stance on Palestinian politics there highly divisive. While the West German left had for a long time been a staunch supporter of the Jewish state, a new, radical left declared its solidarity with Palestinians after the Six‑Day War of 1967. By the 1980s, leftist enthusiasm for Palestinian politics had largely waned. How can we explain this shifting trajectory?
This talk shows how a global leftist imaginary developed in Western Europe through migration from and events in the Middle East. Based on newly discovered Palestinian sources, it will provide a vista on the shifting fate of pro-Palestinian activism between the 1950s and the 1980s. The talk draws on oral history interviews and archival research in Lebanon and Germany to challenge the widely accepted assumption that the trajectory of the solidarity movement in West Germany was driven by the changing preferences of the left. Instead, it will argue that it was the strategies of transnational Palestinian groups together with the emergence of a worldwide Palestinian diaspora that underpinned the spread of pro‑Palestinian activism.

Avec Joseph Ben Prestel (FU Berlin)

Bio
Joseph Ben Prestel is Assistant Professor (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) of History at Freie Universität Berlin. His first book Emotional Cities: Debates on Urban Change in Berlin and Cairo, 1860-1910 was published in 2017 with Oxford University Press and won the Urban History Association’s Best Book in Non-North American History Award, 2017-18. His current research project analyzes the networks that connected Palestinians and the West German radical left between the late 1950s and early 1980s. An article that stems from this research was recently published in The American Historical Review (September 2022 issue) under the title A Diaspora Moment: Writing Global History Through Palestinian-West German Ties.  

Contact

Nazan Maksudyan
maksudyan  ( at )  cmb.hu-berlin.de

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