Susan Neiman, a philosopher hailing from Atlanta who mastered her craft at Harvard, views her cottage near Cahirsiveen in Ireland as an oasis of sanity in the current world climate. She spent the earlier part of her career working as a professor in esteemed institutions like Yale and Tel Aviv, embarking on a move to Berlin in the year 2000. Neiman’s primary research contributions focus on the aftermath of human-inflicted atrocities and the consequences of disregarding them.
Fifteen years ago, Neiman discovered a hitherto unknown fondness for Ireland and continually visited the country over the years until she became a cottage owner five years prior, deepening her attachment to the place. She admires the pragmatic response of the Irish in recognising their country’s flaws, balanced intelligently with appreciating its merits.
After studying in Germany during the 1980s, Neiman returned to the country a quarter-century later to take up the mantle of leading the Potsdam’s Einstein Forum, a research institute. In spite of the complicated national discourse, her unique perspective as a secular, leftist, Jewish intellectual was valued. However, post the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7th, she has expressed uncertainty about her place in German society, feeling an undercurrent of disapproval for reviving Jewish intellectual life in the country.
Since the recent events, Neiman has been unmistakably told, by Germans across the board, that she doesn’t fit the acceptable Jew mould. Her consistent criticism of Israel’s longstanding occupation isn’t a shift from her previous standpoint, just as the concern she’s publicly expressed for the humanitarian repercussions of Israel’s offensive in Gaza isn’t breaking normative perspectives in Ireland or the US. However, Germany—being the setting of the Holocaust—does not share the same latitude. Following the events of October 7th, Neiman has observed a hardened, oppressive atmosphere wherein anyone against Israel’s extremist governmental actions must assert that they aren’t and haven’t been anti-Semitic, a situation that brings to mind the Red Scare paranoia that gripped America in the 1950s.
The notion that Jews such as Neiman are being accused of anti-Semitism by Germans may sound like black comedy, but in her upside-down contemporary reality, it’s not a light-hearted affair. In our discussion, Professor Neiman voices her dissent against extreme perspectives on every side of the Middle East dispute and initially, she is eager to veer away from labels including pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli.
“It turns the entire quarrel into something akin to football where it’s my side versus yours”, she asserts. “I’m an advocate for human rights and I’ll voice my concern when these rights are infringed.” When did this viewpoint start being contentious?
Since commuting between Germany and Israel from the 80s onwards, Neiman has been witnessing tectonic shifts in their respective societal narratives, which have now reached a crisis point post-October 7th.
While residing in Tel Aviv, she detected attempts to shape an Israeli identity responsive to escalating international condemnation of their strategies in the Palestinian territories.
“Israel’s inception wasn’t meant to portray Israelis as victims, quite the contrary”, she dispels. “The strategy of leveraging victimhood began surfacing in the 1980s following some mild criticism of its occupancy – which we didn’t anticipate would prevail for so long.”
Concurrently, in West Germany, she was actively observing a fiery discourse on acknowledging moral accountability for Nazi atrocities, and the political and historical discussion surrounding the magnitude and uniqueness of the Holocaust.
This narrative, according to Neiman, was watered down and turned simplistic in the unified Germany, coupling up with a rising sensitivity in Israel towards criticisms of their occupation.
In recent times, she contends, it has become challenging, or even unfeasible, to talk about the Nazi genocide in its historical and political backdrop without being reprimanded for trying to downplay German responsibility for the slaughter.
“The prevailing perspective post-German reunification,” she points out, “was that ‘we have oppresed the Jews, we are to blame, it was the hugest atrocity ever perpetrated, thereby we constantly need to support ‘the Jews”.
Who “the Jews” really are in Germany, whether this approach is sensible, and who represents them, are all subjects of contention. With the progression of the preceding few months, the tussles for solutions to these queries have gained a heightened sense of emergency – and emotional gravity.
She ends by negating the new-age conjecture that Israelis are the whites and Palestians constitute the people of colour, branding it preposterous.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany, founded in 1950, is the formal representative organisation. It is aligned with Israel and receives €22 million from the state, a figure that increased by 69% last year. However, detractors express that the council mainly caters to conservative and orthodox Jews in Germany, thereby only representing a fraction of the Jewish population.
Neiman, an individual with both German and Israeli citizenship, argues that those regarded as genuine Jewish voices in Germany are people whose lives are significantly influenced by the Holocaust. In contrast, Jews who do not live focusing on victimhood are dramatised as not genuine. However, prominent Jews Germany misses, such as Moses Mendelssohn, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, were universalists and not nationalists according to her.
She acknowledges an analysis by Muriel Asseburg, a German Middle East expert, which points out that German criticism of Israel and its ongoing occupation has lessened as Jerusalem’s governments have taken an extreme path. Neiman emphasises that the Israeli embassy exercises considerable pressure on the German government, and effectively uses the German guilt sentiment to influence policy decisions.
Alleged personal attacks including defamation and harassment have targeted her instead of addressing her viewpoints. The apparent defamation claims she is not genuinely Jewish among other things. Notably, she mentions a trend of Jewish women being targeted rather than men.
Ironically, critics associate her with the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) protest against Israel, despite her rejecting such boycotts. In fact, she actively opposed a Bundestag resolution to label the BDS as anti-Semitic out of concern for discouraging critics like her.
Regarding prevalent views that frame the Middle East conflict in a colonial context, she feels it exhibits intellectual laziness. She believes in these challenging times, people find solace in tribalism and this absolves them from forming independent views. According to her, these individuals are often unfamiliar with the intricacies of the Middle East conflict.
The assertion that Israelis are largely white while Palestinians are people of colour, is preposterous as over 50% of Israel’s population is of Arab descent and, physically, there’s no obvious difference between them and the Palestinians, she states. Indeed, she acknowledges that there’s a real threat of true anti-Semites posing as advocates for Palestinians causing physical harm to individuals. Her own children have experienced such prejudiced anti-Semitism since October 7th. Such occurrences seem to provide ample content for an updated version of her 2023 book ‘Left is Not Woke’.
However, she feels a touch of unease about her earlier work – ‘Learning from the Germans’ published in 2019 – which upheld Germany’s engagement with its complex and heavy history as a model for other nations to emulate. Neiman now feels that Germany’s process of reconciliation with its past was “far more facile and lacked the depth I envisioned in that book”.
Comfortingly, she isn’t alone in changing her perceptions. German approval for Israel seems to be dwindling, a recent survey showed only 23% of respondents were in favor of the Gaza offensive if it resulted in civilian deaths. In discussion, Neiman refers to notable German figures who, allegedly, privately hold conflicting views on Israel and Gaza. Reservations are mounting within government sectors regarding Germany’s official stance on Israel. Neiman foresees an imminent public backlash in Germany, which she believes will “worsen over time”.
The shift in sentiment is significant, she emphasises, given Jerusalem’s heavy reliance on Berlin’s backing within the EU where, not long ago, the approach was to allow Germans to make decisions on Israel. She observes that “differences of opinion have started to emerge recently,” particularly in Ireland, which she identifies as “the most vocal”. With a year remaining at the Einstein Forum, her Kerry cottage appeals greatly to her.
She confides that her attraction to Ireland has evolved into a place of intellectual and cultural engagement rather than just a retreat from the world.