It Could Happen Here - The Weaponizing of Anti-Semitism with Adam Broomberg

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

Shereen, James, and Robert are joined by visual artist and Anti-Zionist activist Adam Broomberg to talk about his experience growing up in apartheid South Africa, attending Zionist schools, and how German society is weaponizing antisemitism at an institutional level. https://www.instagram.com/adambroomberg See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Hello, everybody, and welcome to It Could Happen Here. It's Shereen, and today I'm joined by James and Robert to welcome our guest. In this episode, we are joined by Adam Broomberg. He is an artist, an activist, and an educator. He was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. His parents and his entire extended family are Holocaust survivors, and he had a very Zionist upbringing. We talked to him about how he grew up in apartheid South Africa, how he broke free from Zionism as a teenager, and how he's come to be a very vocal Jewish anti-Zionist. He currently lives and works in Berlin and he's exhibited his art all over the

world. He's also regularly on the ground in Palestine and uses his work to raise awareness about the crimes committed daily by the IDF. Members of the German government have accused him and labeled him as being anti-Semitic because of his criticism of Israel. And we're going to get into all of it. I want to, so let's just go back into your background a little bit. Your family on both sides are Holocaust survivors and your ancestors like fled to South Africa and that's where you grew up with your parents. And I read that you went to a Zionist school starting from age six can you tell us about your family background and your experience going to a Zionist school as a Jewish person

so you remember the podcast you did about Lithuania and that that that particular character who was from the pale, who had to flee from the pogroms and all that stuff. So basically, this is part three. What he's talking about here is the Spanish Civil War, specifically about an episode we did more than a year ago. As many as 30% of the fallen volunteers who fought in some units in Spain were Jewish. Some of them, like Al-Cheikin, who I've written about a lot, had fled persecution in the Pair of Settlements at a very young age and arrived in the USA to relative safety.

But after a few years in the USA, they began to see the menace of anti-Semitism spreading back towards them through Nazi Germany and later through fascist Italy. And they decided to take up arms and stop it when it threatened to overwhelm democratic Spain. Imagine that kid gets on a boat and that kid is my grandfather. My grandfather's name is Joshua, right? And he's like a towering six foot three beautiful man. He's studying medicine. like a towering six foot three beautiful man. He's studying medicine. He's fleeing his mother.

His family's not wealthy. The pogroms are going on. He's studying medicine. You know, very bright guy. But every cell in his body says, you've got to get out of here also the also he gets this opportunity he meets a woman called dora klatschko a grandmother who's like four foot two right um but comes from a very wealthy family in lithuania And it's kind of an arranged set up. And I think Joshua's paid. Anyway, they get on a boat bound for South Africa.

Some landed up in Scotland, oddly, because the boat bound for America, they would disembark most of the, all of the people on board and tell them they were in America and then take a whole lot of other people and then carry on to America so they could double the fee, by the way.

But anyway, so Joshua and Dora land up on the boat and they land in the port of Durban. It's around 1933. Oh, wow. Okay. And they speak mostly Yiddish. They've never seen a black person in their life. They land up, you know know on these foreign shores my grandmother

i think headed towards johannesburg and this i got from my mother on her deathbed my mom passed away december 17th last year so it's like six seven months ago and she you know she'd like she did it magnificently and she she managed to like tell those last little bits of stories and one of those was that her mother Dora had um had a child who died at nine months old and she was unknown in Johannesburg when the child died, and Joshua, her husband, was still in Durban. So you can imagine the kind of weirdness of that, right? I mean, imagine the father of your child not coming to be with you when you lose your child, coupled with the fact that they had both lost.

I think Dora, my grandmother, was one of eight or nine children. I think only three survived the Holocaust, and her parents were killed, and the same with Joshua. and her parents were killed and the same with Joshua. So they lost all their family and there they were at the bottom tip of Africa, right? Without any kind of orientation, really. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about,

you mentioned how you described them as bottom feeders. I listened to another podcast you were on, and you said that your family suddenly really enjoyed and appreciated the change in status they had in society. Can you talk about that a little bit? Well, yeah. So, you know, they got on the boat and their identity were they were Jews. So they were expelled from Europe as Jews. The minute their toes touched the land in Africa, their identity transformed from being Jewish to being white.

Right. Right? Yeah. Suddenly they were identified as white people. Like the word Jew almost like just fell off, you know, that yellow star that they had to wear, it just fell off. So suddenly they were like, oh, my God. They were like utterly privileged, powerful, and in control, right?

And with all of the corruption that apartheid provided for the elite, apartheid provided for the elite, for the white supremacists, for the white people, the Jews who arrived were able to plug into that privilege. And there was about 250,000, 300,000 Jews who fled and arrived in South Africa so it was quite a big community and they did very fucking well let me tell you and I can tell you why I can tell you because my father who I just saw about three days ago what's left of him when he was active and like potent he was he was the the top tax lawyer in South Africa which means that his clients and those clients are people who walked through my house came through my house in the 70s and the 80s were probably the most hideous characters in history. You know, we're talking Sol Kersner.

Sol Kersner started something called Sun City. And he exploited the Bantustan, the homeland system that apartheid built. And he built this casino hotel resort called Sun City. At this point in our conversation with Adam, we wanted to ask about his personal journey into anti-Zionism and where all began. all began so i think an interesting way to approach this then would be like obviously they found themselves and your parents have found themselves in this country which is systematically discriminating against people right it's this apartheid south africa and jewish people were at once active in the anti-apartheid movement and as you're saying also active in the apartheid government in the apartheid regime and you found yourself i guess going to this school um which which was explicitly zionist and i'm

wondering at what point and i suppose this this involves seeing what's happening where you are as well as what's happening in palest. At what point did you make that connection and be like, ha, this, this, like, what, what? Because you're very explicitly anti-Zionist, right? Like, is, is, was it something you read, something you saw? Like, what caused you to make that leap? And how was that received in South Africa?

So I think it's a mixture of things. I think I've got three older siblings. So I'm the last born by seven years. I've got a brother, Paul, seven years older, sister Mandy, who's nine years older, who lives in Israel. And my oldest brother, Jonathan, is 10 years older than me. Jonathan and Paul, Paul specifically was very politically active. So he started an organization.

Unlike Israel, in South Africa, the universities were like the bastions of the anti-apartheid movement, right? were like the bastions of the anti-apartheid movement, right? And he was in NUSAS, National Union of South African Students, and he started a thing called the End Conscription Campaign, which was to fight against forced conscription of white men who were compulsory called up into the army at the age of 18 and so given the fact that he was seven years older when I hit about 14 or 15 at 15 I went on a thing called opan which is kind of you've heard of birthright right yeah yeah or pun is something so i went to the zionist jewish day school so every day i'd go i'd have to pray like going to the synagogue pretend to pray

for about an hour right and i was looking at my school like my sister is like a gorgeous archivist and she made this little book called adam's life And I was looking at the school grades at the age of six, and it was like Jewish studies. And we know what those Jewish studies were, right? So you walked into the Jewish studies room, and there was a little blue tin, which was the Jewish National Fund, and you would put your spare change in there, and that money would go towards making the desert bloom,

I say, in like quote marks, right? So that money would go to planting like 240 million pine trees, which are not indigenous in Israel. But just to swing back, so at about 14 or 15, what happened is in parallel, I was being told on a daily basis two things. I was being told, now you've got to remember, this was the heights of also the Cold War. So there were these proxy wars that were being fought all around South Africa, in Angola, in Mozambique. So in Mozambique, you had Frelimo, who were backed up by Cuba, Russia, right? You had Renamo that were backed up by America and South Africa.

And they were running these kind of guerrilla bush wars, right? And many of my friends who were called up in the military would be flown into Angola or into Mozambique, be dropped there. And, you know, they were told, look, if something happens, you weren't here. You're not there. You know, we're not going to come and find you. What I'm referring to here are the proxy conflicts throughout africa that saw national liberation movements often supported by cuba in the ussr fighting against various last class colonial regimes and african anti-communist groups these groups are often supported by the us under the guise of anti-communism these wars include the civil war in angola the namibian war of independence the mozambican war

of independence and the zimbabwe war of Independence. You might know the last one as the Rhodesian Bush War, but Rhodesia doesn't exist anymore. Living in the United States, it's easy to use the phrase Cold War as a conflict-free standoff mediated by nuclear powers, just something, without acknowledging that, in many parts of the world, proxy wars in these post-colonial states and the conflicts of decolonialization throughout the late 20th century made that period anything but cold. The point is, is that, so at the age of 14, I'm going to these schools and I'm being told every day that if apartheid ended, that would mean the end of the white people in South Africa, right? Because we were by far the minority.

White people were by far the minority. I don't know what it was, 10%, 12%. And there was this kind of, you could see the fear because the walls started getting higher. The security gates were built, the razor wire, the electric fences, you know, it became more increasingly visible in the 80s, the fear, like keeping apartheid, keeping people apart. So I was told all the time, like, if apartheid ended, that would mean the end of white people at the

same time i was told given that my community was like second generation holocaust surviving you know the notion of israel as a place of salvation a place of when the shit hits the fan, that's where we can go, right? And that, we were always told that. And we were also told daily, this is a land without people, or a people without land, that became a kind of mantra. Honestly, it was like, it was said to me over and over again, right? So, but when, and what started happening is, I think that I became an activist at the age of 16. There's an amazing, she's now a dear friend of mine. We've reconnected. She's a theatre director called Yael Faba.

And we started an organisation called Links at the age of 16, which was to educate white kids about apartheid. And what we started to do was to literally kind of break the apartheid war. We'd start doing visits into Soweto we'd start doing visits into Alexandria Township and we started forming friendships and you know most most kids just didn't go out of the suburbs. And suddenly we'd go away on these weekends, like led by kind of older activists. And we'd all hang in the same, you know,

we'd all sleep in the same dormitories and we'd start chatting and smoking cigarettes together. And so like genuine, just basic childhood friendships started forming. And when that stuff, that profound, very successful othering that the propaganda of apartheid succeeded in creating, you know, the black person as the other, as the enemy, which it does in Israel, right? On the other side of the apartheid war is the worst enemy your imagination could possibly conjure up, right? And it's exactly the same process. And suddenly, when I kind of pierced that wall, and that started falling apart, then the kind of ideology around Israel and the notion that Palestinians didn't exist.

Suddenly they started to exist for me somehow. And so it was around the age of 16, I'd say. And it's interesting that it was like through your experience of living in an apartheid state that you were able to, I think, like that what was happening to the palestinian people was was like another form of settler colonialism i mean i think yeah like none of this none of this is intellectual so i think like everything that came to me or has driven to me is like is through lived experience it really is so I think it's like through these friendships that I realized and you know like touching touching skin and this is one of this is the difference between apartheid South Africa and apartheid Israel Palestine is that

we were segregated by law you know I, mixed marriages were prohibited by law. Sex was prohibited between races. But the thing is that we were mixed together because the labor force was needed, right? So like the 1916 Tax Act forced a lot of black migrant male workers into the cities to work on the gold mines, which meant that there was the presence of the other amongst us. And because there was the presence of the other, there was also the desire, and it is a sexual desire or a sensual desire

and the smells and we would touch each other and we would walk through the city and kind of rub up against each other now my nieces and nephews having grown up under the intifada and because of the apartheid war they've been deprived of that sensual experience of the other. In Palestine, Israel, you mean? In Palestine, Israel, yeah. So that, you know, they've built this 12 foot, this 12 foot 700 kilometer long concrete tsunami of a wall that divides people, which means that, you know, until recently,

nobody uttered the word Palestinian because they didn't exist. Right. And so for my nieces and nephews, what was on the other side of that wall was, like I said, their worst, the worst enemy that their imagination could conjure up. And children's imaginations are amazing, right? And I did say this a while back where, you know how Foucault spoke about, he spoke about the structures that were built um around the plague and after the plague ended you were still left with these structures right now let's think about the apartheid wall you've got the 700 kilometer long

massive like concrete thing it goes like five meters underground yeah now unlike Foucault's hypothesis that wall has created the plague that wall has created the enemy because what's on the other side of that wall that's only that's only accessible through these little checkpoints that are manned by these poor teenage little foot soldiers of the state. That's the only way to penetrate that wall. So on the other side of that wall is whatever you tell the people is there. And that's the horror of that situation. Actually, I'm kind of glad you brought up the plague idea because you mentioned that on a different podcast.

And I thought it was very poetic to illustrate that a plague can be constructed by the structure versus actually the plague yeah and it's it's also kind of worth noting you know as you were talking about the the restrictions on interracial marriage in south africa versions of that very much still exist to this day in in israel including heavy restrictions on intermarriage between Israeli and Palestinian people. That's a bigger topic than I want to just kind of casually get into. There's a number of restrictions that exist into the present day because civil marriage is not really a thing there as it is in a lot of other countries.

Yeah. So I wonder, like you said, that Palestinian people existed in your childhood only as this sort of construct, right? This other construct. And your experience of black people in South Africa has shown you that those other constructs were false and misleading and served perhaps an agenda.

When you decided that your stance was anti-Zionism and then you said to your, I'm guessing to your friends, your family, to your fellow children at the school, like, uh, Hey, this is fucked up here and this is fucked up there too. How was the response? Well, it's like, you know, one doesn't come to these decisions overnight and, like, announce it, right?

Yeah. So there's vague memories I have. Like I said, I was on that Opun trip, which is, like, this three-week or three-month trip. I mean, they send, like, 115-year-old kids. You live in a building in Jerusalem and it's basically like this three-month propaganda tour right you you're given a bible and and you're told that that's your guidebook literally you like you traverse you traverse this this place and following the

stories of the bible and that's meant to be like your holy land. But I did have one of the, it's called a madrach, I think a teacher. He must've been 18 or 19. He happened to be kind of like a vaguely liberal Zionist. And I remember clearly him taking me to an anti-Kahani protest. So there was still like Mayor Kahani was alive. And we know that Mayor Kahani, you know, the Kahani movement, as you know, was a kind of, you know, they spawned the Ben-Gavirs and these fascists who are in power now. But at the time, they were deemed a terrorist organization by America. And I remember going to an anti-Kahani protest. So somehow that planted a little seed in me. And I guess, you know, I think the anti-Zionism came afterwards because I was so focused on the anti-apartheid struggle because that's where I was and that's what I was doing.

And my university was either spent like running battles with riot police or smoking weed. I literally went to about three classes, honestly. I was definitely the odd one out in my school. I mean, you know, being a Zionist Jewish day school, I'm still, you know, I'm still probably perceived as like an absolute fucking aboriginal, you know? Yeah, you did describe your mother in one podcast as a diehard Zionist.

And so I can only imagine. And you mentioned your nephew and her husband both were in the IDF. So I can only imagine. I think it's good to bring up that despite all of that, you were able to like think deeply about it and work your way out of that brainwashing, essentially. Before I get too carried away, let's take our first break. We'll be right back. BRB. Welcome.

I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

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iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

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Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. I want to talk now about your experience in Germany and how you experienced like state level accusations of being an anti-Semitic person, even though you're just a vocal Jewish anti-Zionist. Can you talk about what led this person? I didn't even know this person existed. Stefan Hensel, who is the anti-Semitism commissioner of the city of Hamburg. That's a position someone has. anti-Semitism commissioner of the city of Hamburg.

That's a position someone has. But what led him to call you these really atrocious things in so many newspapers and basically just libelous stuff? Okay, so check it out. So my mom dies the 17th of December. I go away to a yoga retreat where there's like there's no like coverage i'm like i'm offline i get back to to berlin and there's emails from like people i really trust and you know and and and and like serious people in my life saying you know dude you've got to respond to these allegations that are in like Die Zeit, Berlin und Zeitung, Taz, you know, basically every major newspaper in Germany and social media all over the place.

There's this character, like you said, Stefan Hensel, who is the commissioner of anti-Semitism for the state of Berlin. who is the Commissioner of Antisemitism for the State of Berlin. Now, eight of the states of Germany have commissioners of antisemitism, right? None of whom are Jewish. None of whom were elected. They kind of semi, it's super weird. They are, it's semi-legal. I mean, like nobody knows they exist.

Nobody knows, like nobody elects them. This character, Stefan Hensel, and I don't want to pay too much attention to him because he's just like a nebulous, Islamophobic, pro-Zionist, you know, bureaucrat. But anyway, he does a series of interviews. And to summarize the numerous interviews and his social media posts, I am called, quote, literally, a hateful anti-Semite who advocates for terrorism against Jews. Now, this is two weeks after burying my Jewish mother, who was a second-generation Holocaust survivor.

Now, that is that definition of gaslighting. Right? Now, as a white man, it's testimony to my privilege that I haven't experienced gaslighting on a daily basis as most women do. Certainly every Palestinian friend I have, they experience that every minute of their lives because their very essence is illegal, being Palestinian. You know, the blood that runs through their veins is illegal. They don't exist because they're Palestinian, right? But so I stand accused of these things, and I'm like, I'm gobsmacked. I'm like, and the reason is, is because I've been vocal about my support and solidarity for Palestinian rights.

And it was particularly about your support for the BDS movement, right? Exactly. So BDS, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, has become a kind of, it's like one of these terms that emerges in the world. It's like terrorism or war on drugs or what other terms can we come up with? You know, it's like, it's one of these catchphrases and it's like BDS. Yeah. And it's like it's just like people don't even associate it with boycott divestment sanctions. If you break it down, you know, what ended apartheid in South Africa? There was no there was no sudden moral awakening. Basically, the Cold War ended. Reagan and Thatcher, who were total supporters of apartheid South Africa, suddenly the Cold War ended, South Africa wasn't that important an asset, and there was international

pressure, and more and more people started to see what the atrocities that were going on and sanctions and divestment started to happen right so polaroid the company polaroid i did a project about this was one of the first companies that colluded with the south african government but also divested when they were exposed. And that led to a number of banks divesting from South Africa. So sanctions and divestments, and essentially the South African government in the late 80s was financially broke. So they were forced to the negotiation table because they were broke.

Not because they woke up one morning and said, oh, my God, we're oppressing the majority of black people in this country. And, you know, so it's just like they were forced to. So it's just like they were forced to. And so BDS, which is a peaceful, nonviolent means of resistance that started during the Second Intifada, has become one of these catchphrases. And I'll tell you a story. And this all came to a head around last year's Documenta, which happens in the city of Kassel in Germany. Now, Documenta is a really interesting art event in the art world calendar. And last year, Documenta it was was a very very interesting

little theater play so what happened during documenta last year is that um there was a group of palestinian artists who were invited to show work and their space was invaded and there was graffiti was sprayed in in on the walls there were two things were sprayed one was the number 187 and then the word Peralta can you just explain what those both mean I'm exactly sure, but 187 I can tell you. Okay. And the reason I can tell you is because 187 was spray painted outside my front door, inside my apartment building. And 187, as any gang member in california will tell you is the californian penal code for murder and when you spray 187 it's a death threat oh my god and so really intense and so And so what the media did in Germany is said, oh, no, no, no, hang on. There's a hip hop band in Hamburg called 187.

I wonder where that came from. Wow. Yeah, I was going to mention that Sublime also has a few songs with 187. Oh, they were just Sublime fans, that graffiti pop song. Yeah, they liked that one Sublime song about the 92 riots. The radical branch of the Sublime fan club came for you. I mean, I'd love to hear this music. Buddy, I think you don't want any Sublime.

No, no, I really do. After this, I'm going to actually listen to it. So on the morning, so back to Documenta, so they spray painted the stuff, and then there was a furor because there was an Indonesian collective who did a giant mural. And one of the pieces, one of the characters in this mural depicted an IDF soldier, an Israeli Defense Force soldier or an Israeli occupying force soldier as a pig. Right. Policeman soldier as a pig. I? Policeman, soldier as a pig.

I mean, that's an old trope. We've all done it, right? You know, they're the pigs. Police are the pigs. But there was an IDF as a pig, and so it was deemed anti-Semitic. And fair enough. And so it was deemed anti-Semitic. And fair enough. It's like it's Germany.

It's an Israeli person in a uniform depicted as a pig. It's tasteless. You know, it's tacky. Immediately they kind of covered the miroir, right? But bang, the troops came in. The Israel lobby, the Jewish lobby came in boom right they seized the opportunity and they hit and and suddenly the word bds came in right and so the two curators from gurang rupa who were amongst the collective

who were curating that year's documenta, were visiting professors at the art school in Hamburg, where I had been a professor for the previous six years. Okay? the previous six years. Okay. And Stefan Hansel, like a little kind of surgeon, he pinpointed these three little pernicious kind of pro-Palestinian people that were inside a German university, and he wanted to remove them with his little tweezers

and and so he grouped us together and he slammed the word anti-semitism he accused us of being anti-Semitic. And so he weaponized this word. And this word, like, it's such an interesting word, right? Anti-Semitism. It's like, so here you've got a guy. Now, he's never declared, and not that it's of any interest to me, whether he's Jewish or not. I mean, I don't think he has the right to buy into my lineage of trauma. He doesn't have that right.

But he married a Jew. He named his son, I think, David or something, right? So there's all these kind of like gestures. Like a loophole to make him seem like he has the ability to say these things. Not a loophole as much as a kind of dress code. Right, yeah. They're ticking the boxes. My son's yeah they're taking my son's called yeah my son's called david i'm married to a jewish person i've lived in israel for six years i ran the yudisha

uh gym the israelisha germanisha organization you know israel organization, which is like, you know, an Islamophobic kind of weird old weird-ass think tank. I don't know what they do, right? But the point is, here's this guy, and I bet you I would lay money on it, that his parents or his grandparents were perpetrators during the Holocaust. or his grandparents were perpetrators during the Holocaust. And this is the way, this is the psychological twist. This is like the beautiful little whoo that the mind does to get oneself out of like feeling shit about yourself yeah i mean even attempting to remove those people from their posts it's like that's a great example of of germany using anti-semitism

like weaponizing it at an institutional level like that's uh that's really unfortunate. I do want to mention this really quick. In 2019, Germany tried to make BDS a hate crime. And even though it was challenged and then it was found to be unconstitutional, the fact that that attempt was made, from what I understand, there's still an attitude in Germany about BDS being this illegal-ish thing. Is that fair to say? Exactly. So it's like, you know, my father was a lawyer, as I said.

So I know the difference between law and justice. And I know what a test case means. So you bring something to trial means it enters into the language of society, right? And when you say, is BDS anti-Semitic and you test this thing, suddenly there's this presumption and there is a presumption that BDS is anti-Semitic. that PDS is anti-Semitic. And I can give you concrete examples of how it's happened, how it's played out over the last couple of years. Oh, wait, I want James to mention,

you looked up that word, right, James? Isabel Peralta, yeah. I'm familiar with her, unfortunately. And I think this kind of lines up with the sort of, she came came on the scene in 2021 i had been around doing anti-semitism for a long time she is a self uh self-described fascist in spain she's part of a group uh or at the time was leading a group called juventud patriotic which is patriotic youth and like the speech that she's most famous for was delivered uh at a commemoration for the division a fool which is a blue division.

They're the Francoist volunteers who fought for Nazi Germany, which, you know, if you're commemorating that, you're kind of a piece of shit. And then she went on to be a further piece of shit, I suppose, by, like, she's very explicit in her anti-Semitism, right? She doesn't do what a lot of these people do and kind of veil it. She talks about Jewish people as the eternal enemy. And it's worth pointing out that in Spain,

Spain has had what's largely called anti-Semitism without Jews or sometimes called that because Spain conducted an ethnic cleansing or it conducted a, literally they'll call it an Olympiatha, like a cleansing and a removal of Jewish people. And Spanish Jewish population is still very small. And so this sort of virulent anti-semitism that we're seeing on her behalf it had impacts all around europe and she was kind of the uh the most prominent and outspoken anti-semite for a little while there so that was the name they graffitied along with 187 yeah i guess trying to tie this document to her

disgusting anti-semitic uh which is entirely distinct things right like i think as you were saying adam like that by by putting the two in the same phrase we conflate them when when they are entirely distinct things and she i think all of us would agree is a terrible person they are as we're sensible views but but if we dig a little deeper we get to the core which is why did the nazis and the zionists collaborate in the 1930s because they had the same desire. They wanted the same outcome. They wanted the Jews out of Europe. They wanted them to move to Palestine, right? Zionism was a European project

started in the early 20th century in Vienna. They wanted the Jews out of Europe and into Palestine. The Zionists did. So they collaborated. And I think, really, truly, I think that we do face a real threat of real anti-Semitism in Germany. And I have two children. My daughter is 13. Her name is Lani. My little boy is 10. His name is Marlo. And if you look at the police report of 2022

that was released in Berlin, of 2022 that was released in Berlin, there are multiple, numerous incidents of visual and quite violent incidents of real antisemitism, right? Yeah. And why are we not addressing that? Because my kids are in danger. And instead, we have the Minister of Culture,

whose name is Claudia Roth, stand up a couple of weeks ago on a Friday night at the opening of Haka Weh, you know, a huge institution that my dear friend Bonaventure, who comes from Cameroon, he's been made the head of this institution. And it's a Friday night and the hall is full of people. And it's glorious.

It's a beautiful night. And when you have diversity like you've never seen, this is like queer, diverse, blackness, indigenous thought. It's queer thought it's like fucking peaches is there everyone's there you know what i mean and claudia roth takes the stage she takes the microphone and what does she say she says in the silence in the room and she says bds is anti-semitic like what the fuck yeah bds is anti-semitic and i'll tell you i love bonner now let me tell you about bono ventura bono Bonap came from Cameroon 13 years ago. He has a PhD. His PhD is in biotechnology.

He worked all day building pacemakers while he set up a cultural institution called Savvy Contemporary. And Savvy represented the BIPOC community in Berlin and in Germany, right? Bonner is a genius. He deals with post-colonialism like, I mean, he's a maestro. He's amazing. What he has done, he's changed the landscape of this country he's brought colonialism into the into the discourse of the country into the culture right but my fear is is they've used him as a trojan horse and they've got the German states have got their fist up his fucking ass

and that night when he it was Bonner's night it was it was the night of diversity there comes this pernicious Minister of Culture she stands up and out of the blue she says BDS is anti-Semitic. Bonner, because he's such a graceful, smart man and because he knows that we are fighting intersectional struggles that happen at different velocities and happen at different speeds and come at different angles. He came up on stage and he said, we come in peace. It scares me. No, I can only imagine what it was like to be there in person. I mean, it sounds mortifying, especially if you're Palestinian or Arab or just an anti-Zionist in general. Welcome.

I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

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Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez.

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I brought up a story here that I heard Adam talk about on a different show, but future me is recording this now because I wanted you to have some more context to the story so you can really grasp the irony of it all. It's a great example of the divide and intensity that happens or that can happen with anti-Zionists and Zionists within the Jewish community itself. Adam said that some of the people who he had assumed were friends and allies have disappeared, which is one of the prices you pay for criticizing Israel. Adam had been spending more time in Hebron, what he described as a wasteland. He said in a previous interview that you spend 10 minutes in Hebron and you get the notion of apartheid, occupation, and Jewish supremacy. You get it, and no one has to utter the words. Adam has documented violence in places like maximum security jails, Afghanistan in 2003, Iraq in 2005, but he's said that two

times he's felt the most existentially and physically a threat of death. One of those times was last year, when he was in Hebron, and him and his team went to take photos of olive trees. when he was in Hebron and him and his team went to take photos of olive trees. Olive trees in that area can be 2,000 to 4,000 years old, and since 1967, Israeli settlers have destroyed 1 million of these trees. I have an episode about this and the significance of the Palestinian olive tree, about how it's not only an immensely important crop, but also a symbol of Palestinian culture and resistance. I talk about this in that episode as well, but it bears repeating that destroying

olive trees is one of the most clear examples that Zionism isn't about wanting to return to a sacred land that is destined to you. Instead, Zionism is hateful and inexcusable. Adam shares this sentiment, which I appreciate, and I really loved learning about his work with olive trees. I just don't think Zionists have any kind of rebuttal or reasoning to support why the hell they keep destroying olive trees decade after decade. Like, in what universe can you say and believe that you have a genuine attachment to that land, a biblical right to that land? Like, how could you say that you love that land as a sacred space, but then also go and destroy what Adam describes as its, quote, oldest indigenous citizens, aka the olive trees?

That's not a person who loves that land. That is a person who is driven by hate. a person who loves that land, that it's a person who is driven by hate. So Adam is working to preserve and protect these trees. Settlers pour gasoline down the center of the tree trunk so by the time you see smoke, the tree is already dead. He was there in Hebron with a camera taking photos of the trees, and then Jewish settlers sent these packs of kids that he said were ages 5 to 17, dressed in full religious garb, accompanied by the Israeli military. Adam and his crew kept getting attacked by these kids as the military stood by, but he explained that you can't lift a finger to defend yourself because these kids are minors. Adam talked about this and said, if I was Palestinian and I pushed back, I would be shot on the spot. The fact

that I'm Jewish, I would just be removed and the work would simply be over. So he got beaten pretty badly several times, and apparently there's footage of it somewhere. And his experience in Hebron again is one of those two times that he's felt the most existentially and physically at the threat of death. The second time happened a few days later, which is the story I briefly mentioned to him in the recording that we did, that I want to talk about more here. So a few days after that incident, Adam returned to Berlin, and it happened to be the anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, which is widely known as the beginning of the Holocaust. It's also called

the November Pogrom, and it was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi party with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany on the 9th and 10th of November in 1938. The German authorities looked on as this happened without intervening. The German authorities looked on as this happened without intervening. The name Kristallnacht is literally translated to Crystal Night, and this name comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed. So back to Adam's story. A memorial for Kristallnacht is held at the site of the two oldest synagogues that had been burned down in Germany. Adam arrived there with a crew holding signs that said, Jews against fascism everywhere. He's surrounded by fellow Jewish people. And this big guy comes

up to Adam and Adam describes this guy as being much bigger and much taller than him. And so this big guy looks down at Adam and he says, get rid of those signs. Who gave you the right to be here? Adam responded, quote, the death of 90% of my family. What troubles you about the sign? Are you anti-Semitic? Are you fascist? Are you bothered by the word everywhere?

Have you got this weird synesthesia thing where you see the word everywhere and you see Israel? Do you think I'm implying that there's a possibility that Israel could have fascist traits? In response to this, this big guy starts attacking Adam. So Adam ran, absolutely terrified. He ran and sought protection from the German police. The irony of a Jewish person feeling his life threatened by another Jewish person and then seeking refuge from the German police, Adam says this was the most surreal moment of his life. So, so ironic, But let me flip that story on its head, right? And now, okay, so it's 1988, and I am on the front page of a newspaper, and I get home to my mother, and she's furious. She's fucking furious.

Because there I am on the front page of the newspaper, and my face is there, and i'm holding up a flower and in front of me is a is an is a south african riot policeman right and it was one of the demonstrations i was at at the age of 18 on the campus at vits university all right and i got into shit from my mother who said what the fuck are you doing standing in front of the riot police i got into shit from the black student society because we as white students took orders from the black student society he said what are you doing holding a flower to the fucking pig dude it's like this is not the 1960s we're fighting a struggle so i've gotten shit from

both sides right yeah now cut to may a few months ago i'm in oranian plats there is a commemoration organized for the ongoing nakba all right we know what the Nakba is, the catastrophe. Right. So in 19, we don't have to explain that. But all for two, the year before that, all commemorations for the Nakba were banned. And in May, the commemorations for the Nakba organized by Palestinian groups were banned. So Yudish Estima, means Jewish voices the organization they organized a commemoration and we gathered together on a beautiful Sunday morning and you know it was really lovely and there were kids there there were old people it was great and we were all all gathered together there and we gave the platform to some Palestinian voices who were just speaking about freedom from the river to the sea, you know.

And suddenly the riot police came. Boom, boom, boom. You know, lines of them intersected us. And I was faced again at the age of 52, not 18. was faced again at the age of 52 not 18 so flip from 1988 to 2023 and I'm facing eye to eye with a fucking white riot policeman and it was the same riot policeman and you know what I said to him I said to him where was your grandmother during the war and he didn't answer me what I said to him? I said to him, where was your grandmother during the war? And he didn't answer me. And I said, do you know where my grandmother was? And he said, I don't care. At which point I turned around and two or three, and there's

footage of this from every single angle, two or three of these riot policemen jumped on top of me, brutally beat me and arrested me, handcuffed me. They handcuffed me so tightly that they had to call the fucking fire brigade to cut the handcuffs off me. And hang on, it gets worse. Then an hour later, I'm on the front page of the Berlin Zeitung. There I am being marched off by German police, riot police.

And you know what the headline says? 100 anti-Semitic Palestinian protesters disrupt Jewish memorial. Check it out. Check it out. And you know what? I think it's still up there. Yeah. Okay.

This is where we're at. This is where we're at in this country. Like, forget fact checking. This is not a Palestinian. I'm a fucking Jew. You've arrested a fucking third-generation Holocaust-surviving Jew, you motherfucking Nazi. And they tell me denazification never happened in this country.

There's no such thing as neo-Nazis. They're Nazis, man. And this Stefan Hensel, he wants the Jews out of Germany. That's what's underneath all of this shit, right? Because if they were worried about antisemitism, let's talk about antisemitism, okay? Because I've got kids and they need to be safe. Yeah. I mean, I was reading the other day a news article from, I think, 51 or 52, that was about one of the, God, now I'm spacing out his name, but he was a Wehrmacht general who was, you know, commanded troops on the Ost front, survived the war,

and later got into German politics. And it was just a, it was an article about one of his political rallies where protesters were like broken up and beaten up by German police officers. And it's kind of this, this same like, yeah, what were your, what was your family doing during those 12 years?

You know, like it's, it's rare, it's a question you can ask, but it's rarely really a question, right? Right. Yeah. Like there was never any, that's such an important point, you know,

particularly when we talk about, like, why there is, you know, such what you can call technically support for Israel that's rooted, as you noted often, in just getting Jewish people out of Germany. Like, there was never any kind of real denazification. No, yeah, not on a systemic level. This is all about white supremacy, man man because i'll tell you what and this goes deeper um on the 15th of july they made a law

in in bolin uh that all public swimming pools they they they claimed that there was a rise in violence in public swimming pools in Berlin, okay? Particularly in Neukölln and Kreuzberg, which, as we know, are the areas of black migrants, particularly Palestinian, Middle Eastern migrants, right? In fact, if you look at the statistics, from 2019 to 2022, violence has gone down by 21 or 23 percent. I can't remember correctly. So that's incorrect. a position where at the entrance of every swimming pool, there is a police van and they are ethnically and racially profiling people who come into swimming pools. Right. And there is basically a law that says that there shall not be more than three

men, read three men of color in a public swimming pool okay and this is where we're heading Felix Klein who's the federal commissioner of anti-semitism Stefan Hensel who's the Hamburg one these people the the mayor of Berlin on Pentecost night, he tweeted, check out, check out his tweet. He tweeted something. It went like this. It said, we wish everybody a happy Pentecost and we wish our guests a lovely time. Our guests. This is like, dude, I mean,

you know, it's grim. It's grim. It's fucking grim, man. And you know, these people want a white, they want a white Aryan Christian fucking country.

They want the dark people out. I mean, that's a huge part that people don't realize is that Zionism is mostly white supremacy and mostly very anti-Jewish because it advocates for just like the expulsion of the Jews again. Well, it's a fucking mental illness is what it is. I don't disagree with you. I just wanted to reflect like maybe as we end up on how far the needle has swung, when we talk about anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, because they do overlap, yeah,

but they are not the same thing. And I think about how there's this letter that the New York Times published. It was in the late 1940s, 48, 49. It co-signed by a lot of prominent jewish intellectuals including hannah rent albert einstein talking about the uh the settler policies in israel at that time and by zionist groups at that time as fascist which is something that would now be considered to be like anti-semitic like that's calling israel

fascist was what got you chased at him by that guy. It's considered to be anti-Semitic in Germany, right? Like, these are people who, you know, that had lost family members, you know, like in their nuclear family to the Holocaust, like prominent Jewish intellectuals who would now be considered, I guess, anti-Semitic under this,

like by saying shit, the New York Times would publish and the Times wouldn't publish that now. Yeah. You know, a few of us got together in Oranienplatz in the place where we were arrested in May. A few like Jewish friends of mine, like some from Brooklyn, some from Israel,

some from here. And, you know, five nights ago, a young Palestinian man was arrested by 12 Israeli policemen and they branded a, they cut with a knife, the Star of David into his cheek. Oh my God. Yeah. And there's footage of this.

And they literally cut the Star of David into his cheek. And we wore red Stars of David at this vigil tonight. And it just strikes me as ironic, you know, like 80 years ago, my ancestors were forced to wear a yellow star as a lapel on their armband or stuck to their jackets to shame them, to declare them as Jews, as dirty Jews in public. And now I feel like I've got to wear this red star because of our collective shame, because of what's being done in our name by the state of Israel

and by Zionism. And this is not allowed to be done in my name. Really. Sorry to be so grim. Fuck. No, I mean, if there was ever an ending. It's a grim story, yeah. Yeah, it's a grim story but i think

it's a great place to to end there's still so much i want to ask you i would love to know your thoughts about like liberal zionism but that's gonna have to wait for next time uh thank you for giving us your time in the middle or the early mornings thank you so much of course yeah adam where can people find you online and help support the advocacy you're doing? Mostly, I'm a bit of a geriatric, so I'm just on Instagram, Adam Brunberg. Great, good stuff. I'll put it in the description for anyone that is curious.

Thank you for doing your work. Everyone go follow Adam. Make sure everyone doesn't... Let's protect Adam. Let's protect Adam and his family out there. But thank you again. Thank you, guys. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Adam. Really appreciate it, mate. And that's the episode. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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