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Masha Gessen will receive Hannah Arendt Prize after all, following controversy over Gaza essay
(JTA) – The writer Masha Gessen will still receive a prestigious award named for Hannah Arendt, after the German foundation that administers the prize had initially said it would pull its support due to Gessen’s recent writing on Gaza.
Gessen, a Jewish writer for The New Yorker magazine, published an essay last week comparing the Gaza Strip to Nazi-era Jewish ghettos, sparking backlash from Jewish and pro-Israel activists in Germany. That led the Heinrich Böll Foundation to say that it would no longer support a ceremony for Gessen receiving the award named for Arendt, a 20th-century German Jewish thinker and author.
But on Friday, the foundation told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Gessen will still get the award, including 10,000 euros in prize money, and that the author should still be honored.
“We want to make it very clear that we do not want to strip Masha Gessen of the award, or deny them the prize, and that we honor the relevance of their work,” the foundation said in a statement. “Gessen deserves great merit for their unconditional commitment to democracy and to debating uncomfortable issues. We greatly appreciate Gessen’s critical work, their demonstrated passion for freedom and commitment to defy any autocratic tendencies.”
The award is given annually to political theorists who continue the philosophical tradition of Arendt. Gessen is a refugee from the former Soviet Union and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. They have been widely acclaimed for their writing on the Russia-Ukraine war and LGBTQ issues.
The foundation’s initial objections, and those of the German city of Bremen that co-administers the prize, stemmed from a Dec. 9 New Yorker essay by Gessen entitled “In The Shadow Of The Holocaust.” In the piece, Gessen critiqued modern German, Polish and Ukrainian approaches to Holocaust memory, and also castigated Israeli policy toward Gaza.
“For the last seventeen years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound where only a small fraction of the population had the right to leave for even a short amount of time—in other words, a ghetto,” Gessen wrote. “Not like the Jewish ghetto in Venice or an inner-city ghetto in America but like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany.”
They added: “The ghetto is being liquidated.”
Following the essay’s publication, the German-Israeli Society’s Bremen chapter criticized Gessen’s comparison of Gaza to Jewish ghettos, which society chair Hermann Kuhn wrote could have “only one explanation: a deep-seated and fundamental negative prejudice against the Jewish state.” Kuhn also took issue with Gessen’s stance on Germany’s approach to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel, which the German government has defined as antisemitic.
In an open letter calling on the prize’s administrators to refrain from honoring Gessen, the society wrote that giving them the award “would honor a person whose thinking is in clear contrast to Hannah Arendt’s.” Founding members of the prize also campaigned against Gessen receiving it due to their “statements about the Middle East conflict,” in a letter quoted by the German newspaper Die Zeit.
Subsequently, Bremen’s Senate announced it would be pulling out of a planned ceremony for the award, and the foundation said it would no longer sponsor it. But then it backtracked and attributed its decision to a lack of a venue for the ceremony. Later, on Friday, it said that it objected to Gessen’s characterization of Gaza but that they should not be stripped of the award.
“We disagree with this statement, and fully reject it,” the foundation said regarding Gessen’s comparison of Gaza to a Nazi-era ghetto. “The award ceremony would not have been an appropriate place for an earnest dialogue on the culture of remembrance, which is why we are trying to find another format with Masha Gessen in which a more substantive discussion can be had.”
The awards ceremony, originally scheduled for Friday, has been postponed to Saturday in light of the foundation’s departure, but will reportedly still be presented on a smaller scale. According to Gessen, it will also lack many of the trappings usually associated with the award, including a promised lecture at Bremen University.
Gessen did not respond to multiple JTA requests for comment, including about the foundation’s statement on Friday. They told Middle East Eye in an article published earlier Friday that the New Yorker essay, which quoted Arendt, accorded with Arendt’s writing and thought.
“Hannah Arendt wouldn’t have gotten the Hannah Arendt prize if you applied those kinds of criteria to it,” Gessen said. “She was very insistent on comparing the Israeli policies and Israeli ideologies to the Nazis. And her project was very much what I’m building on, which is you have to compare in order to identify dangerous similarities.”
In an interview prior to the prize controversy, Gessen told the same German paper that Arendt was a major inspiration for them. Gessen was also recently placed on a wanted list in Russia and accused by the Kremlin of spreading false information about the Russian Army, accusations which American journalism institutions have said are meritless.
The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, where Gessen teaches, said in a statement Monday, “We categorically reject the criminal investigation of Professor Gessen,” adding that Russia’s “persecution is part of the broader effort to stifle independent journalism.”
Controversy over responses to the Israel-Gaza war has caused turmoil across the world of arts and letters. Last month, a Jewish sponsor pulled out of the National Book Awards after learning that nominees planned to issue a statement criticizing Israel and calling for a ceasefire during the ceremony. The incident followed a controversy at the New York City Jewish cultural center 92NY in which it canceled a planned talk by an author who had signed a letter critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza, leading to resignations at the center; a similar sequence of events unfolded at the magazine Artforum.
Gessen’s Holocaust essay also criticizes Germany’s formal policy of considering the BDS movement antisemitic. They report that German officials have frequently gone after intellectuals and activists who invoke the campaign. Gessen also criticizes Israel’s own alliances with far-right factions in Germany and Poland and its refusal to overtly align with Ukraine in that country’s war against Russia.
At one point, the essay quotes Arendt’s own 1940s-era writings that compared future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s political party to the Nazis. Germany’s policies combating antisemitism have been criticized by some left-leaning intellectuals for being overly harsh toward critics of Israel.
The Heinrich Böll Foundation is allied with Germany’s Green Party and has offices in Tel Aviv, Ramallah, Washington, D.C., and other locations. On its Israel website, the foundation backs a two-state solution, condemns the Hamas attacks and notes “the disastrous humanitarian situation in Gaza” and “the suffering and pain of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”
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The post Masha Gessen will receive Hannah Arendt Prize after all, following controversy over Gaza essay appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump Proposes Resettlement of Gazans as Netanyahu Visits White House
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries, calling the enclave a “demolition site” and saying residents have “no alternative” as he held critical talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
“[The Palestinians] have no alternative right now” but to leave Gaza, Trump told reporters before Netanyahu arrived. “I mean, they’re there because they have no alternative. What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now.”
Trump repeated his call for Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states in the region to take in Palestinians from Gaza after nearly 16 months of war there between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which ruled the enclave before the war and remains the dominant faction.
Arab leaders have adamantly rejected Trump’s proposal. However, Trump argued on Tuesday that Palestinians would benefit from leaving Gaza and expressed astonishment at the notion that they would want to remain.
“Look, the Gaza thing has not worked. It’s never worked. And I feel very differently about Gaza than a lot of people. I think they should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land. We’ll get some people to put up the money to build it and make it nice and make it habitable and enjoyable,” Trump said.
Referring to Gaza as a “pure demolition site,” the president said he doesn’t “know how they [Palestinians] could want to stay” when asked about the reaction of Palestinian and Arab leaders to his proposal.
“If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places, there’s plenty of money in the area, that’s for sure,” Trump continued. “I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza, which has had decades and decades of death.”
However, Trump clarified that he does “not necessarily” support Israel permanently annexing and resettling Gaza.
Trump later made similar remarks with Netanyahu at his side in the Oval Office, suggesting that Palestinians should leave Gaza for good “in nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed.”
“They are not going to want to go back to Gaza,” he said.
Trump did not offer any specifics about how a resettlement process could be implemented.
The post-war future of Palestinians in Gaza has loomed as a major point of contention within both the United States and Israel. The former Biden administration emphatically rejected the notion of relocating Gaza civilians, demanding a humanitarian aid “surge” into the beleaguered enclave.
Trump has previously hinted at support for relocating Gaza civilians. Last month, the president said he would like to “just clean out” Gaza and resettle residents in Jordan or Egypt.
Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East, defended Trump’s comments in a Tuesday press conference, arguing that Gaza will remain uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.
“When the president talks about ‘cleaning it out,’ he talks about making it habitable,” Witkoff said. “It is unfair to have explained to Palestinians that they might be back in five years. That’s just preposterous.
Trump’s comments were immediately met with backlash, with some observers accusing him of supporting an ethnic cleansing plan. However, proponents of the proposal argue that it could offer Palestinians a better future and would mitigate the threat posed by Hamas.
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the Gaza war on Oct. 7, 2023, when they invaded southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped 251 hostages back to Gaza while perpetrating widespread sexual violence in what was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Last month, both sides reached a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar.
Under phase one of the agreement, Hamas will, over six weeks, free a total of 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, and in exchange, Israel will release over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are serving multiple life sentences for terrorist activity. Meanwhile, fighting in Gaza will stop as negotiators work on agreeing to a second phase of the agreement, which is expected to include Hamas releasing all remaining hostages held in Gaza and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the enclave.
The ceasefire and the future of Gaza were expected to be key topics of conversation between Trump and Netanyahu, along with the possibility of Israel and Saudi Arabia normalizing relations and Iran’s nuclear program.
Riyadh has indicated that any normalization agreement with Israel would need to include an end to the Gaza war and the pathway to the formation of a Palestinian state.
However, perhaps the most strategically important subject will be Iran, particularly how to contain its nuclear program and combat its support for terrorist proxies across the Middle East. In recent weeks, many analysts have raised questions over whether Trump would support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which both Washington and Jerusalem fear are meant to ultimately develop nuclear weapons.
Netanyahu on Tuesday was the first foreign leader to visit the White House since Trump’s inauguration last month.
The post Trump Proposes Resettlement of Gazans as Netanyahu Visits White House first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Reimposes ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran, Aims to Drive Oil Exports to Zero
US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House, in Washington, DC, Feb. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday restored his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran that includes efforts to drive its oil exports down to zero in order to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Ahead of his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump signed the presidential memorandum reimposing Washington’s tough policy on Iran that was practiced throughout his first term.
As he signed the memo, Trump described it as very tough and said he was torn on whether to make the move. He said he was open to a deal with Iran and expressed a willingness to talk to the Iranian leader.
“With me, it’s very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. Asked how close Tehran is to a weapon, Trump said: “They’re too close.”
Iran‘s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has accused former President Joe Biden of failing to rigorously enforce oil-export sanctions, which Trump says emboldened Tehran by allowing it to sell oil to fund a nuclear weapons program and armed militias in the Middle East.
Iran is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the UN nuclear watchdog chief told Reuters in December. Iran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon.
Trump‘s memo, among other things, orders the US Treasury secretary to impose “maximum economic pressure” on Iran, including sanctions and enforcement mechanisms on those violating existing sanctions.
It also directs the Treasury and State Department to implement a campaign aimed at “driving Iran‘s oil exports to zero.” US oil prices pared losses on Tuesday on the news that Trump planned to sign the memo, which offset some weakness from the tariff drama between Washington and Beijing.
Tehran’s oil exports brought in $53 billion in 2023 and $54 billion a year earlier, according to US Energy Information Administration estimates. Output during 2024 was running at its highest level since 2018, based on OPEC data.
Trump had driven Iran‘s oil exports to near-zero during part of his first term after re-imposing sanctions. They rose under Biden’s tenure as Iran succeeded in evading sanctions.
The Paris-based International Energy Agency believes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other OPEC members have spare capacity to make up for any lost exports from Iran, also an OPEC member.
PUSH FOR SANCTIONS SNAPBACK
China does not recognize US sanctions and Chinese firms buy the most Iranian oil. China and Iran have also built a trading system that uses mostly Chinese yuan and a network of middlemen, avoiding the dollar and exposure to US regulators.
Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy, said the Trump administration could enforce the 2024 Stop Harboring Iranian Petroleum (SHIP) law to curtail some Iranian barrels.
SHIP, which the Biden administration did not enforce strictly, allows measures on foreign ports and refineries that process petroleum exported from Iran in violation of sanctions. Book said a move last month by the Shandong Port Group to ban US-sanctioned tankers from calling into its ports in the eastern Chinese province signals the impact SHIP could have.
Trump also directed his UN ambassador to work with allies to “complete the snapback of international sanctions and restrictions on Iran,” under a 2015 deal between Iran and key world powers that lifted sanctions on Tehran in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.
The US quit the agreement in 2018, during Trump‘s first term, and Iran began moving away from its nuclear-related commitments under the deal. The Trump administration had also tried to trigger a snapback of sanctions under the deal in 2020, but the move was dismissed by the UN Security Council.
Britain, France, and Germany told the United Nations Security Council in December that they are ready — if necessary — to trigger a snapback of all international sanctions on Iran to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
They will lose the ability to take such action on Oct. 18 when a 2015 UN resolution expires. The resolution enshrines Iran‘s deal with Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Russia, and China that lifted sanctions on Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Iran‘s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, has said that invoking the “snap-back” of sanctions on Tehran would be “unlawful and counterproductive.”
European and Iranian diplomats met in November and January to discuss if they could work to defuse regional tensions, including over Tehran’s nuclear program, before Trump returned.
The post Trump Reimposes ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran, Aims to Drive Oil Exports to Zero first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Stops US Involvement With UN Rights Body, Extends UNRWA Funding Halt
An UNRWA aid truck at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to US engagement with the United Nations Human Rights Council and continued a halt to funding for the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA.
The move coincides with a visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long been critical of UNRWA, accusing it of anti-Israel incitement and its staff of being “involved in terrorist activities against Israel.”
During Trump‘s first term in office, from 2017-2021, he also cut off funding for UNRWA, questioning its value, saying that Palestinians needed to agree to renew peace talks with Israel, and calling for unspecified reforms.
The first Trump administration also quit the 47-member Human Rights Council halfway through a three-year term over what it called chronic bias against Israel and a lack of reform. The US is not currently a member of the Geneva-based body. Under former President Joe Biden, the US served a 2022-2024 term.
A council working group is due to review the US human rights record later this year, a process all countries undergo every few years. While the council has no legally binding power, its debates carry political weight and criticism can raise global pressure on governments to change course.
Since taking office for a second term on Jan. 20, Trump has ordered that the US withdraw from the World Health Organization and from the Paris climate agreement — also steps he took during his first term in office.
The US was UNRWA’s biggest donor — providing $300 million-$400 million a year — but Biden paused funding in January 2024 after Israel accused about a dozen UNRWA staff of taking part in the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Palestinian terrorist group Hamas that triggered the war in Gaza.
The US Congress then formally suspended contributions to UNRWA until at least March 2025.
The United Nations has said that nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack and were fired. A Hamas commander in Lebanon — killed in September by Israel — was also found to have had a UNRWA job.
An Israeli ban went into effect on Jan. 30 that prohibits UNRWA from operating on its territory or communicating with Israeli authorities. UNRWA has said operations in Gaza and West Bank will also suffer.
The post Trump Stops US Involvement With UN Rights Body, Extends UNRWA Funding Halt first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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