Human Rights – Historian Per Leo: What should we say about the Gaza War?

PEN Berlin recently announced that it is now the “authors’ association with the largest number of members in the German-speaking region,” with 730 members. Now there are fewer again: After an extraordinary general meeting that took place online last Sunday, around 40 people left PEN Berlin because they did not agree with a resolution on the Gaza war in which the federal government was called on to “do everything in to do what they can to bring about a ceasefire.”

A total of three drafts of a resolution were put to the vote. To put it simply: one pro-Palestinian, one pro-Israeli and a third as a compromise. This draft defeated the pro-Palestinian resolution by a majority of just one vote, with 83 votes to 82. It says: “We are deeply concerned about how many writers, journalists and intellectuals have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war, and how many cultural institutions, educational institutions and universities have been destroyed.” Likewise, the murder of Israeli journalists by Hamas condemned and stated: “This war would not have started if Hamas had not attacked Israel on October 7th and committed a terrorist massacre.”

In particular, the supporters of the pro-Palestinian proposal considered the mention of Hamas to be unnecessary. On Deutschlandfunk Kultur on Wednesday, the writer and historian Per Leo called the ultimately adopted resolution a “soft compromise paper.” In the narrowly defeated draft, which he had submitted with 27 other PEN members, the federal government was asked in somewhat more political terms to “commit to compliance with international humanitarian law, compliance with the ICJ’s internationally binding decisions and an immediate ceasefire.” . The Hamas massacre of October 7th was not explicitly mentioned.

As Leo said on the radio, the 28 supporters of this draft were “a good two-thirds Jewish, Muslim, Arab, Palestinian and Israeli.” After losing the vote, they left the organization. As could be read in an open letter in the “Frankfurter Rundschau”, they called for the resignation of the two PEN speakers Deniz Yücel and Thea Dorn because they were politically overwhelmed. In addition to Per Leo, this declaration was signed by, among others, Fadi Abdelnour, Ramy al-Asheq, Mohammad Al Attar, Donat Blum, Marion Detjen, Diedrich Diederichsen, Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus, Deborah Feldman, and Stefan Weidner.

But there are also 24 members who supported the compromise resolution, but subsequently distanced themselves from it because it also names authors from the Hamas spectrum who were killed by Israel, “who incited hatred against Jews and/or as propagandists: “We were active in the terror of Hamas and Hezbollah,” according to another statement published on “Perlen Taucher.”

It was signed by Yevgeniy Breyger, Alexander Estis, Anne Lepper, Ronya Othmann and Stephan Wackwitz, among others, but they did not leave. The historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalzuk also resigned and announced this on X: He doesn’t believe in “useless political statements” that do not improve the world.

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