“Smoking might be banned at book fairs, while one doesn’t expect books to be banned from book fairs. Even if a character in one of the books exhibited at a fair is smoking, this wouldn’t lead to a ban on characters smoking in books. The simple, obvious reason is: literature does not equal reality.”

The main argument against a boycott of Israeli universities is that it harms the wrong people, hitting civil society and weakening opposition to Netanyahu. But this rests on false assumptions, philosophically and practically. Protests and acts of “speaking up” can be complicit in criminal politics.

Neither Trump’s nor Putin’s pet came out as president from the elections, but there is little doubt that one day Romania will follow its neighbors into the lure of mobster governance. Until then, investors, ideologues, and influencers are prepping up for one more round of selling out their country.

When Antonio Scurati’s voluminous Mussolini novel first appeared, Trump had just taken office and the “crisis of democracy” was on everyone’s lips. Things have only gotten darker since—yet today’s Scurati imitators treat fascism as little more than a backdrop for romance or coming-of-age.

When the Berlin mayor cancels UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese and Scholz and Merz openly oppose the proceedings of international courts regarding Israel, it becomes clear: German staatsräson is no longer driven by concern about antisemitism, but by fear of international law.

Few countries speak of the “international rules-based order” as lyrically as Germany—yet deals with problematic governments in China, Saudi-Arabia and Russia have long been routine. Were the arms deliveries to Israel throughout the erasure of Gaza a glaring double standard, or business as usual?

«Which comes first – writing or translation? The answer seems obvious; you can’t translate something that’s not yet written – although I have often wished this were possible. My translators and I have joked about this, with me telling them: ‹you go ahead and translate, I’ll write it afterwards.›»

In 1972, Paul Celan wrote to Yehuda Amichai that he couldn’t imagine a world without Israel—a notion that continues to shape the Middle East conflict to this day. Shortly after the Israeli beeper attack in September, a group of scholars gathered in Tel Aviv to discuss Celan’s statement.

Most current research on antisemitism in Germany is based on the concept of «eliminatory antisemitism» as practiced by the Nazis. It fails to comprehend a complex social reality where large parts of the population have family ties to the Middle East, not Nazi Germany.

As dining out has turned into an extreme sport—with chefs as idolized celebrities and customers as eager to perform—food lovers with a sense for sustainability keep asking one question: Is there a way ahead for culinary excellence that does not equate good food with bad labour practices?

When Gaza student protestors were evicted from Berlin universities, the few scholars who stood up for them were smeared by the right-wing press and threatened with public funding cuts. Can universities be a place for radical politics? Adorno and Marcuse fell out over this question as early as 1969.

German-Israeli reconciliation started as early as the 1950s under Adenauer and Ben-Gurion. They acted out of calculation, and not forgiveness or remorse. Germany’s reason of state today is based on a simple trade off: absolution for Germany; support and reconstruction aid for Israel.

Before 7 October, the military strategists Edward Luttwak and Eitan Shamir published a sugarcoated account of the Israel Defence Forces’ «innovative» practice and spirit. They gloss over what the IDF actually does, and how various doctrinal elements play out in the near total destruction of Gaza.

The Dutch and other «small» book markets are in trouble because either people do not read at all, or they read in English. Who is going to withstand the forces of Americanization? A relentless, cheeky poetic scene in the Low Countries might not have the answer, but it asks the right questions.

The war in Gaza has produced numbing levels of violence and massive Palestinian casualties. A profoundly unequal assessment of the worth of lives, built over decades of oppression, provides the genealogy of the extreme violence unfolding in Israel and Palestine since 7 October 2023.

The post-war political order was based on a dialectics of the singular and the universal. «Never again», a slogan specifically owned by German and Israeli governments, contractualized it. Nowhere is the demise of the liberal order now more apparent than in Germany’s identity crisis after Oct 7.