Berlin is home to Europe’s largest Palestinian diaspora community and one of the world’s largest Israeli diaspora communities.Germany’s guilt about the Nazi Holocaust has led to a public disavowal of anti-Semitism and strong support for the Israeli state. Meanwhile, Palestinians in Berlin report experiencing increasing levels of racism and Islamophobia. In their new book, “The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians” (Duke University Press), Sa’ed Atshan and Katharina Galor draw on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with Israelis, Palestinians, and Germans in Berlin to explore these asymmetric relationships in the context of official German policies, public discourse, and the private sphere. They show how these relationships stem from narratives surrounding moral responsibility, the Holocaust, the Israel–Palestine conflict as well as Germany’s recent welcoming of Middle Eastern refugees.
Moderated by Gökçe Yurdakul, Georg Simmel Professor of Diversity and Social Conflict, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin