In March 2003, the German Foreign Ministry created an online platform, called Qantara (meaning “bridge” in classical Arabic), in response to the September 11 attacks in the United States and the hostility they unleashed in the West against Muslims. The stated aim of the independent portal, run by German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, was to “bridge” cultural differences between the West and the Islamic world and to offer a neutral platform for interfaith dialogue.
The portal, which publishes content in English, German and Arabic, operated successfully for more than 20 years, apparently without any editorial guidance from the German government. However, this changed when it began publishing content critical of German debates on antisemitism in the context of the Gaza genocide. Earlier this year, it was announced that Qantara would be restructured and its management transferred from Deutsche Welle to the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (Institut fur Auslandsbeziehungen – IFA), affiliated with and funded by the Federal Foreign Office.
The ministry said the move was “purely” structural and not related to the site’s editorial direction or production. However, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock contradicted this claim, suggesting in an interview that concerns about content published by Qantara, particularly content about anti-Semitism, were a factor in the decision.
Following the announcement, 35 members of Qantara’s editorial team published an open letter to Baerbock, expressing their doubts about whether the IFA possessed the editorial capabilities necessary for the successful continuation of this complex project, which had been painstakingly built up over many years and had proven to be a great source of information for those interested in the Middle East and Europe’s relationship with it. The letter had no effect and the entire editorial team resigned in protest.
On 1 July, the management of Qantara, which no longer included any editorial staff, was transferred from Deutsche Welle to IFA. IFA said the portal will remain under its editorial control until the new editor-in-chief, Jannis Hagmann, forms a new editorial board and officially starts work in the coming weeks.
This transition period at Qantara represents a unique opportunity to observe and assess the German government’s true views on the Middle East and its people, given that state officials are now openly editing a platform billed as Germany’s “bridge” to the Islamic world.
Before the change of direction, Qantara was respected for its objective, informative and in-depth reporting and analysis on the Middle East and the Islamic world in general, both in Germany and in the region itself.
This is no longer the case. At the moment, under the editorial direction of the IFA, affiliated with the Foreign Office, Qantara appears focused not on initiating intercultural and interfaith dialogue and debate, but on confirming the German government's prejudices about Muslims, particularly Palestinians, through poorly researched and edited opinion pieces.
Perhaps the best example of Qantara’s new editorial stance – and by extension the German government’s true view of the Middle East and its people – is an op-ed titled “Crisis Communication and the Middle East: Like and Share,” published on July 25.
The op-ed, purportedly analyzing media coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza and written by Moroccan-German author Sineb El Masrar, portrays Palestinians as an inherently violent and anti-Semitic people who lie about their suffering, history, culture and political motivations to defame Israel and destabilize Western democracies.
He claims authoritatively, without evidence or anything resembling a supporting argument, that Palestinian journalists reporting on the genocide are Hamas agents in disguise, that images of death and suffering in Gaza are “staged,” that Palestinians hate the Zionist occupiers on their land solely because of “Islamic anti-Semitism,” that there is actually no famine in Gaza, and that international media intentionally fail to publish photos of “crowded market stalls and barbecue stands” in the Strip.
The author claims, for example, that famine in the Gaza Strip, “according to the recently published Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Report, did not and does not exist.” Of course, the report referred to in the article clearly states: “While the entire territory [of the Gaza Strip] is classified as Emergency (IPC Phase 4), more than 495,000 people (22 percent of the population) still face catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 5).” The IPC defines Phase 5 in its fact sheet as “famine” and says this classification is only attributed to an area when it “has at least 20 percent of households facing extreme food insecurity, at least 30 percent of children suffering from acute malnutrition, and two people per 10,000 dying every day due to total starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease.”
According to Qantara and the government officials currently monitoring it, it appears that even the CPI-confirmed famine is not really a famine when it affects Palestinians and is facilitated by Israel.
The article’s blatant distortions of facts do not end there. The author also claims that “Islamic anti-Semitism” was the reason why Muslims in Palestine resisted the Zionist takeover of their land. She adds: “Unlike Germany, the Middle East has never come to terms with its Nazi past.”
This is, of course, an Orwellian lie that has no place in any serious journalism. What is to suggest that the Middle East actually has a “Nazi past” that it must deal with? Of course, nothing. Nazism is an exclusively Western – and specifically German – ideology that has no basis in or connection with the Middle East and the Muslim populations living there.
Muslims in the region are prejudiced not against Jews and Judaism – which was born and codified in the Middle East and thrived under Muslim rule in several countries in the region for centuries – but against the Zionists who rule Israel, who have been killing their loved ones, stealing their land and confining them to heavily policed ghettos for decades.
“The Palestinian issue has been exploited to destabilize Western democracies,” the article adds.
It seems that the author, like the German government, is upset that people around the world, including Germany, are opposed to Israel's attempt to exterminate an entire people.
Is it really the instrumentalisation of the “Palestinian question”, whatever that means, that is destabilising Western democracies? Or could it be that facilitating and defending the genocide of Palestinians is what is destabilising them? After all, killing innocents en masse – or providing financial, legal and diplomatic cover for the carnage – is not in line with the self-proclaimed values of Western democracies, such as respect for human rights and international law. Perhaps that is why the article attempts to argue that the devastation we are all seeing in real time in Gaza is somehow “staged” – the German government needs it staged in order to keep telling people that it has the moral high ground.
With this article, published under the editorial control of an institute affiliated with the Foreign Ministry, the German government burned its “bridge” with the Islamic world. The fact that the article is still published on Qantara, without any correction or clarification – not even to correct the most blatant lie that “there is no famine” – after a significant reaction from its supposed target audience, suggests that Germany has lost all interest in starting a dialogue with the Islamic world. It wants the platform to basically abandon all journalistic integrity and publish content that supports – at any cost – the government’s foreign policy.
Why is this?
It seems that since the Israeli genocide in Gaza began ten months ago, the opinions, thoughts and aspirations of the Muslim world and the global South in general have not mattered to the German government. It is not interested in any dialogue or discussion, it only wants to continue its current foreign policy towards the region, which cares about one thing and one thing only: clearing itself of the burden of the Holocaust in the eyes of Western nations, defending Israel unconditionally and accusing those who resist Israeli abuses as modern-day Nazis. Thus, it brands the Palestinians, and by extension all Muslims who defend them, as “Nazis.”
Qantara’s new editor Jannis Hagmann said in a recent interview that he and his team, once they officially start working, will not allow “either the IFA or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to interfere with them in terms of content.”
He said he was “upset” by El Masrar's offer and that “the article would not have appeared in this form under the new Qantara team”.
Perhaps he is right, and once the new team takes over, we will see a return to the old Qantara, where articles like El Masrar’s had no place on the homepage. However, once a bridge is burned, it takes time and significant effort to rebuild it. The platform now faces an uphill battle to prove it is more than just a government propaganda outlet.
Whatever the future holds, this transitional period at Qantara and the El Masrar article have already taught us a lot about the German government and its approach to the Middle East. They have shown us that the German government sees Israel as a just and moral entity even when it commits genocide, and Muslims as simple-minded but manipulative anti-Semitic hordes bent on destabilizing Western democracies.
And this, as disturbing as it may seem, is certainly valuable information if we are to understand and counter the German response to the genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
