Behzad Karim Khani on Germany's role in Gaza: "Guilt deafens and kills meaning"

The footage depicts a middle-aged man waking up in the morning, stretching, and stepping onto the terrace. He goes into the garden, picks some herbs, makes a peach tart, and shares it with someone. He pets the dogs on the sofa, puts out food for birds or squirrels in the garden, gazes at a blossom with a cup of tea in his hand, and strolls among the trees on his property. The whole thing is set to Norah Jones' "Sunrise."

My girlfriend sent it to me. And underneath she wrote: You, someday...

I repost it under my stories. My caption: "Me, the morning I learned that Bild newspaper had launched a campaign against me." And underneath, I write: "Life goals."

When a friend asks me if that happened, I answer: No. I'm not famous enough.

The question is nevertheless somewhat justified, because Bild has just attacked two hundred “cultural workers” in a typically nonsensical article, calling them unprofessional because they have spoken out against the deaths in Gaza in a petition and demanded an end to the supply of weapons to Israel .

Bild fulfills its in-house Israel duty

Of course, I also signed, I write to my friend. But only after I heard that Bild had done what Bild had to do. Because, many people don't know this: Springer's employment contracts contain a so-called Israel clause. In short, this means that the publisher's employees are obligated to report unbiasedly on the Middle East, and the Middle East encompasses everything from Afghanistan to Neukölln. In times of war, the clause also means uncritically and obediently copying the propaganda of the right-wing radical and fascist government. By signing, each employee thus surrenders a piece of their journalistic dignity.

Accordingly, it's not even clear whether the author of the text means what she writes or whether she's simply happy to have a job and would like to keep it. The article is... what can I say... an article from the Bild newspaper. I'm only reading it today to have fulfilled my duty of care. And I realize: the author's fear for her job would at least be justified. It's a filler text and a gap-filler text that, with a few varying variables, appears in the Bild newspaper twice a week it seems. One of the gaps to be filled is the place where the author's name appears. Apart from that, ChatGPT could actually do a better job. For example, you could play with the tone of voice or do a fact check, which - as I said, Bild newspaper - is missing here.

The scandal the author is attempting here is so trivial that I would react to it exactly like the man in the reel. Go feed the squirrels. The real scandal is much bigger. The elephant in the editorial office is: Why were there only two hundred? And why only now?

An American writer colleague who also signed the petition writes to me: Too little and much too late. Today, it costs little to represent this position. And Bild can't do anything about it either. All the signatories will continue to live as before and will continue to receive their assignments. No one will be canceled.

“One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” is the name of the book by Omar El Akkad. I answer my colleague: “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” is now!

A cemetery of days

Then I write to a poet from Gaza, Raed. I exchange ideas with him from time to time, and sometimes I even manage to send him some money. He and his family also receive the royalties for this article. As I do this, there's a second round of signatures. There are now about 360 signatories. I write:

“Dear Raed,

my fellow writer!

After everything you've had to go through in the last few months, everything you're going through in these hours, and everything you'll have to go through, and everything the Germans, as a society and as individuals, share responsibility for, just 360 people have signed a letter in the last few days protesting against the genocide against you, against the starvation of your children. A large portion of them said absolutely nothing about it until last week. I know your situation. Your family's situation. I know it's a matter of days. If there was something you had to say, and I could publish it, what would it be?

His answer is:

“Dear Behzad,

These days, a heaviness weighs on my heart that I can barely bear. I only dream of being safe, of being fed, of seeing my daughters laugh every morning—not crying because I can't give them bread.

I'm tired, deeply tired, haunted by fears that steal my sleep. I live as if in a graveyard of days, and I don't know how much longer my strength will last.

I want to wake up to the sound of laughter, not to the empty tears of my daughters counting the hours until bread.

I long for a morning where hunger is not at the table, where security is not a borrowed dream that only sleep can grant me.

Here every night is a coffin, every morning a question: Will we see the next day?

Fear consumes the last remnants of my sleep. I drown in darkness, bearing the gaze of my children—as empty as their plates.

I can no longer breathe in this cemetery. The world must open up—so that we can live, so that they can grow, so that they can laugh without asking for bread.

Raed"

He doesn't write a single line about the signatures, about the signatories, about Germany.

I answer him:

“We don’t wake up hungry, Raed.

Our pillow is called guilt. And I don't know which is better.

Our night is not a coffin,

It's a tub. And everyone thinks they filled it with something else.

Indifference. Cynicism. Idiocy. Ignorance. Banality.

But it's always your fault, Raed.

It's always guilt.

I don't know what hunger does to you.

Guilt, in any case, deafens. It kills the senses and the mind.

I wake up and scroll through the dead children's bodies.

It's my ritual. My morning prayer.

My son is fourteen and I've seen him dead a thousand times.

I know what his body would look like if there was no life left.

What his limbs would look like, his face.

I have a frown between my eyebrows, Raed.

I call it Gaza.”

Yesterday, as if Merz had only waited for the request of the prominent cultural figures, Germany stopped arms exports to Israel .

Someone sends me another reel. It shows Ursula von der Leyen giving a speech. She's interrupted by the heckles of a pro-Palestinian or peace activist. And as two police officers twist his arm behind his back and arrest him, she calls after him that he's lucky to live in a country where there's a right to freedom of expression. In Russia, he would have been arrested by now.

And I think to myself that my lines, "Guilt, in any case, makes one deaf. Kills the senses and the mind," are perhaps meant more literally than I intended.