 Hello, and welcome to this special discussion here on DM25. Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, a date of enormous symbolic importance in Europe, marking one of the darkest chapters in human history. It's a day of particular significance in Germany, of course. The so-called remembrance culture, Germany's reckoning with the legacy of the Nazi periods and the industrial scale genocide perpetrated by the Nazi regime have been much lauded internationally. But today, parts of this culture are increasingly coming into question by many, with charges of anti-Semitism being used by German institutions to silence voices, speaking up for the rights of Palestinians in particular. The targets of these charges are disproportionately Palestinian themselves, Arabs more broadly, and Jews. On the international stage, meanwhile, Germany's long, steadfast support for the state of Israel, which remains unshaken, even as the civilian tolling Gaza continues to climb to ever more obscene numbers, has raised the ire of many. The support, of course, is again justified by the legacy of the Holocaust and the German state's resulting sense of responsibility towards the security of the Jewish state. What about Israel itself? How has the memory of the Holocaust helped shape Israeli society? And how does it influence the Israeli government's words and actions? To discuss all this, it's my pleasure to welcome Udi Ras. Udi is a doctoral fellow at the Berlin Graduate School for Muslim Cultures and Societies, and a board member of Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East in Germany. Udi, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Lukas. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. I kept my intro for you deliberately short. I know it doesn't do justice to everything that you do into your life history, so if you could just fill in the blanks that I left out for us. My name is Udi. I was born and raised in a beautiful port city named Haifa, a city which is located right between Tel Aviv and Beirut. I live in Berlin since 2010. Before that, I lived in Mecklenburg-Fochmann in north of Germany. Berlin is my home in the last 10 years, or even more. We're gonna get into your activities in Germany more in depth, especially since October, because you've been involved in a lot of different things, and a lot of things have happened since then. But before that, something that you did here in Germany for a little while was you worked at the Jewish Museum, right? And we're gonna get into the specifics of how you ended up leaving your position there in a minute, because it actually made headlines here in Germany, even outside of Germany. But before doing that, I just wanted to ask you, how did that experience help shape your perception of Jewish life in Germany and of the Holocaust in particular, and this remembrance culture that exists here? Yeah, I mean, the case of the Jewish Museum is very interesting when we talk about how knowledge about Jews and Judaism nowadays in Germany is being institutionalized. It's important to keep in mind that when we institutionalize knowledge, we actually exercise mechanism of power. We say what is belong within this institution and what doesn't belong there. So the case of the Jewish Museum is a particular case that shows us how in Germany knowledge about Jews and Judaism is being produced, institutionalized, designed and made, maintained in order to create an idea that Judaism can be even be explained through a specific singular institution. My first visit in the Jewish Museum was around the time when I first moved to Berlin more than a decade ago. And already back then as a visitor in the Jewish Museum, I felt this sense of awkwardness because I am myself Jewish. I self-identify as a Jewish person. My entire life is very much shaped by this particular identity. My grandparents survived the Holocaust here in Europe and made it to escape and to find rescue in a place called Palestine. Later on, we'll talk about it later, it led to a very tragic course of events. But before I come back to that, I just want to underline that the Holocaust, Judaism and Jews in general is very much what defines the sense of home but shaped my understanding of who I am in this world. Visiting the Jewish Museum for the first time was awkward because all of a sudden I saw that my life story or the life stories that I'm familiar with are put into exhibitions. My life becomes an exhibit. Stories of my grandparents, of my communities become stories that are not only mine, but all of a sudden are shared with other individuals and groups that I'm not even familiar with. I felt this sense of exposure, but I was also very much intrigued by the fact that many people find so much interest in trying to understand what Judaism mean or what Judaism could mean and how the Jewish Museum delivers this knowledge. You asked me specifically about the topic of Holocaust and I want to share with you my experience within a specific installation at the Jewish Museum. This installation is called Shalachet. Shalachet can be translated into fallen leaves, something like that. And this is an installation that is a cooperation between the architect who designed the structure of the Jewish Museum. His name is Daniel Liebeskind. And together with an artist, his name is Menashek Kaddishman. They created this installation. Menashek Kaddishman designed and created 10,000 metal pieces, face shaped, and he places them on the ground of this hall, of this room within the Jewish Museum. And visitors are invited to walk into the room and by doing so, they also walk on the faces that in turn create sound. As if those faces actually scream as you walk on them. And this room, this installation is very sensual. There are no words involved, right? You enter a room and it's up to you to perceive what you perceive through your senses. And I think that this is a very powerful statement by the architect and by the artist who in this case really give up on the attempts to conceptualize the Holocaust through words and insist that it's up to you to try to come to terms with what this attempt to define the Holocaust, this experience does to you, right? And I think this also is a powerful statement because the artist who created this installation, Menashek Kaddishman dedicates it to all victims of violence and wars, right? Kaddishman insists that the experience of the Holocaust is something that every human being can identify with. And this is a very powerful statement because war and violence define lives of many, many individuals, communities and nations, not only in historical context, but right now around us. So in a way, the screaming faces that we hear as we enter the room do not scream only from the past, but it kind of asks us to be more attentive to screamings that we should have heard happening now around us and what is our relationship with this human suffering? Do we have responsibility toward it? I mean, let's leave this question open, even though I see, I believe that many people who listen to the interview for them, the answer is clear. And for me too, I also understand my own responsibility, especially when it comes to atrocities being committed in the name of, so to say, protecting me as a Jewish person, not only as a Jewish person, but as a Jewish person whose family were affected directly by the atrocities of the Second World War conceptualized through the term Holocaust. One last thing that I want to say about it is precisely because human suffering is a human being experience. It's something every human being can identify with. It also challenges the narrative that we hear around us that one should not and cannot even compare the Holocaust with other manifestations of human suffering. Because I think precisely because everyone who enters this hall can identify with the attempt of conceptualizing the human suffering that Kaddishman and Libeskin try to conceptualize there, opens up the possibility to understand that empathy is what unites us. And if we can understand what the Holocaust meant for Kaddishman and for Libeskin in their attempts to define what it means, it means that the Holocaust is not a singular case per se. There are some singularities for sure like any historical event, but the claim that one cannot and should not compare the Holocaust to other manifestations of human suffering should raise the question of why? Who are those who claim, who make this claim? And for what end? It's extremely interesting that you mentioned that because this exhibit that you're talking about might be the most famous one that is part of this remembrance culture here in Germany. And to learn that the people who planned it, the artists who designed it, the message that they intended to send was a message that is taboo in this very remembrance culture in Germany. So this comparison, you know, comparing the Holocaust to other genocides, it's a good moment to sort of transition to what many people, including yourself see as a perversion of this remembrance culture and a failure to learn the lessons that should have been learned from this experience in Germany. And I think a great entry into that is to talk about how you came to not work anymore at the Jewish Museum. So if you could tell us how that happened, what your actions there ended up resulting in. And more broadly, what does that say about this failure in German society to really reckon with the legacy of the Holocaust? And, you know, it's interesting that in this exhibit, like you said, the visitor is supposed to experience it and draw their own conclusions as they're stepping on those faces, which is a very powerful experience. What are the conclusions that German society more broadly have drawn? Look, those are very interesting questions. Let me start by explaining just the course of events that led to the fact that I'm not allowed to work anymore at the Jewish Museum. Initially, I worked at the Jewish Museum as a guide. I would walk through the exhibitions to the building together with groups, mostly with high school students who as part of their school trip, they also come to Berlin and visit the Jewish Museum. The Jewish Museum is quite a big project and indeed one can spend there more than one day for sure because the museum is divided into different sections, into different topics. I was specialized in the topic of Jews in Germany after 1945, after the Second World War. There are many different topics we're dealing with, talking about commemoration, about demography, demography of Jews in Germany, about how Germany understands who Jews are, and so on and so on. But there is a specific room towards the end of this section that is framed as the Israel Room. In this room, the Jewish Museums or the Curators try to link the dots or narratives that link the categories Jews, Israel, and Germany. Jews, Israel, and Germany. In this room, you find different video installations that actually show documentaries in their essence that show, try to thematize those, these topics. So in this room, I talk with the people who visit my tours. We talk about the shifts from the end of the Second World War until nowadays, the shifts that characterize the relationship between the State of Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany, back then, West Germany. Nowadays, we refer to it as their Germany, right? The one United Germany. So we see in the beginning, in the 50s, it's written in Israeli passports that those passports were applicable to all states, but to the State of Germany. So we see that in the beginning, there are no any relationship between Israel and the State of Germany. Something changes then in the 60s for different reasons. I will not go into depth in it at the moment, but for different reasons, something changes in the 60s where the first German diplomat visits Israel for the first time, and Israel and West Germany establish diplomatic relationship for the first time. And then throughout the next few decades, the relationship remained relatively cold between the two states. There is this sense of ambivalence and then something remarkable happens in 2008 as Angela Merkel, back then, the Chancellor of the State of Germany, visits Israel for the first time and holds a very famous speech in front of the Israeli Parliament of the Knesset where she announces that Israel is Germany raison d'etat. Is Germany's Staatsräse, as they say in German? From this moment on, we see another shift in the relationship between Israel and Germany. Israel stands on the side of Israel without regard to what Israel is actually doing. And we all know that with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, this year also marks the beginning of the Nakba. The Nakba is the catastrophe in Arabic that narrates from Palestinian perspective, narrates the living realities, ongoing living realities that characterizes Palestinian life since then in our world around us. Palestinians, the indigenous people of the land were forced, most of them, to go into exile there until nowadays they are not allowed to go back into their homes that they left back then. Many of them live also here in Germany will come back to this later because it's important fact to keep in mind. But what I want to continue with is the fact that the ongoing Nakba means also Jewish supremacy in the land of Palestine or Israel depends on how you define this geographical area between the river to the sea because in order to maintain Jewish state by definition you have to create a sense that one population, namely Jews, have the power to decide how the living realities should be look like. When we talk about Israel, we talk about the Jewish state. By implication we talk about a democracy designed by Jews for Jews. The fact that also other Jews participate in decision making is not central to the goal of the state of Israel as a Jewish state. It's whether a byproduct to the fact that not only Jews live in the state of Israel or in Palestine. What we witness nowadays in Gaza is an extreme manifestation of Jewish supremacy and the fact that the state of Germany stands on the side of Israel, even when more than 11,000 children in Gaza have been killed so far by the Israeli military, even that the numbers of dead people exceeded 30,000 people. We're talking about mass murder in dimensions that we haven't seen before happening in the land of Palestine committed by the state of Israel. And the fact that Israel stands on the side of Israel also against this reality is quite telling. It's quite telling that for Germany, Palestinians are not matter. To stand on the side of Israel against these atrocities, this is quite telling. What I want to go with this story that I'm telling you is that what characterizes living realities of individual living between the river to the sea, according to human rights organizations, among them also MST International Human Rights Watch, but also Israeli human rights organization, they all come to the conclusion that this living reality is better described as an apartheid state. In my tools, I don't talk in general about the fact that the entire area is ruled by Jewish supremacy, but I use very carefully the term apartheid only when referring to the living realities of Jews and Palestinians who live in the West Bank. This is where we see the so-called settlements, for example. So Jews who live in settlements have Israeli citizenship. Accordingly, they are allowed to vote in the Israeli parliament. This is one example, but Palestinians who live in the exact same areas do not have the Israeli citizenship. They are not allowed to vote for the Israeli parliament. So this is only one example of why it's so important to point out to the injustice realities that characterizes the lives of Palestinians and Jews who live in this living area. It's important for me to note, to underline that whenever I speak, it's not my arguments, right? I base this knowledge on scientific knowledge productions produced by human rights organizations. Really, every human rights organization that researches about the living realities in this area comes to the same conclusion. Better described as apartheid system. For the Jewish Museum, it was too much. What does the Jewish Museum do in order to address such kind of injustice? They fire the only person who does speak about it. It's clear to me that not everyone is interested or affected by those living realities, but I am. And when the Jewish Museum hired me to walk for them, they insisted that I should bring in my own experience, my own voice as a Jewish person coming from Palestine, Israel to Germany and share it with the people who come with me to the tools. This was part of the deal. The fact that this was too much for the Jewish Museum is quite telling. It's telling that the Jewish Museum does not care about Jewish living realities or Jewish living experiences, but it cares about creating a sense of Jewishness that fits into a certain legacy that the Jewish Museum wishes to promote. My case there, the fact that they fired me, helped us to understand better what is this legacy, what is the agenda of the Jewish Museum. Namely, this is an agenda better described as Zionist ideology. We can come back to this topic later, but this is my experience within the Jewish Museum. How the Jewish Museum involves in not only shaping what Judaism means and who Jews are, but also actively excluding Jewish voices who do not fit into their own understanding of how the wish Jews would be, think and act. With that, I wanted to follow up and ask you a very simple question, really. Do you, as a Jewish person, feel respected living in Germany? I wish I could say yes. The answer is more complicated. On the one hand, I understand and I acknowledge that many Germans, especially those who are in power positions, wish to come to terms with the atrocities of the Second World War and specifically with the Holocaust, with the mass extermination of the Jewish population of Europe. How do you do this? To be honest, I don't know, but there are many different attempts. We can see it, for example, in restitutions, in compensations, financial attempts, we can say. There's also attempts in the forms of migration law. In the 90s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Jews were allowed to migrate to Germany. Also nowadays, Israeli, they have it much easier than other nations to simply migrate to Germany, to get visa and all that. But there is one specifically attempt that I find really painful and harmful and really tragic. And this attempts that says that Germany stands on the side of Israel doesn't matter what Israel is doing. For me, these signals that German policy makers do not care about Jews as such, but they care about Israel, the interest of a nation state, singling that Jewishness is not a category of a pluralistic society, but rather a singular voice, a voice that can be represented through a singular institution. And the fact that this institution, the state of Israel, committing atrocities in the name of Jews, in the name of Judaism. And the Germany not only remains silent against it, but actually supports the ongoing atrocities with weapons, with money, with diplomacy. This is really shocking for me, especially as a Jew living in Germany. I moved to Germany back then, I migrated here with the promise that I can live my life in a progressive, democratic, liberal state. Since the 7th of October, later than all the masks has fallen. It is clear that when we talk about Germany, we cannot any more talk about democracy, because let me come back for a moment to what I told you before about Palestinians being forced to leave their homes in 1948. Many Palestinians also come to Germany. In fact, Berlin has the biggest Palestinian community in Europe nowadays. The fact that since 2001, Palestinians are not allowed to commemorate in public their own catastrophe, the Nakba is a signal that Germany is a democracy that does not consider Palestinians and Palestinian voices or even Jews like me who orient themselves in relation to also to their living realities and historical narrative. It's quite telling that Germany is not a democratic designed for everyone. So the question that we need to ask ourselves is, who does have access to the democratic decision making here in Germany and who does not? And why is it this way? I also learned since the 7th of October that Jews like me, Jewish people like me who wish to show solidarity not only with our victims who are Israeli, but also with non-Jews who suffer under the living realities, especially those who live nowadays in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. We are not allowed to do so. So this democracy that some people refer to as Germany is not even designed for Jews as Jews. We had the pleasure of speaking with a colleague of yours here in our channel before. It is a fact also from Jewish voice or just peace in the Middle East here in Germany. And she put it very bluntly, as she usually does. She said, to be an Arab or a Palestinian or Muslim in Germany right now is horrible. They are the new Jews. Do you agree with that statement? And if yes or no, why? I agree with this statement because nowadays Arabs, especially Arabs, but I'm talking about Muslims in general, they are standing in the focus of political attempts to define the selfhood of Germany as a nation state. We saw it very clearly, for example, with Thomas de Miser, in 2017, published 10 key points for who are, by the way, Thomas de Miser was back then in 2017. He was the minister of inner affairs here in Germany in Merkel government. And he published 2017, a list of seven key characteristics of what Germany or what Germanness should mean or could mean refers to it as light culture, leading culture. What is the leading culture of Germany? And when you look at it, you see that more often than not, this attempt to define what is the leading culture of Germany is done by defining what Germany is not. And the headline of the article that Thomas de Miser published is called Wir sind nicht Buroka. We are not the Buroka. Which means Islam really stands in the center of German attempts to define what Germany is by saying what Germany is not. Interestingly enough, this term leading culture, light culture, according to de Miser, but not only according to de Miser. Many other individuals use the same term. They refer to it as a Judeo-Christian leading culture that characterizes the essence of German being. So, accordingly, to focus or to put the focus on Muslims as those who do not and even cannot be part of this Germanness signals that Muslims as such and Arab people specifically are excluded from this idea of being part of a leading society. This is very similar to what we see when we look historically on mechanism of political discourses that characterized Germany and Central Europe and Western Europe even before the 30s, when anti-Semitism emerges as a political ideology. All of a sudden, politicians try to make this claim. We understand ourselves by saying what we are not. Namely, we are not Jews. Jews become the problem or the question that characterizes their political discourse around European selfhood back then. And this is really similar to what we are witnessing nowadays in Germany. Later on, we witnessed how Jews are being excluded from political decision making, from the political realm. This is very similar to what we are witnessing nowadays in the case of Palestinians and Arabs. And I hope that from now on, things will get better. It's really a call for German policy makers to wake up because we also see how the ISD, the party alternative for Germany, is on the rise at the moment. And this party is an right extremist party in Israeli context. It's the party that governs nowadays the state of Israel. And we see to what extreme and how dangerous such a government can be specifically for Palestinians and Arabs. And with that, I wanted to shift the focus back to Palestine and to Israel. Our discussion here is centered around the Holocaust. And a question that comes to mind to me, especially opposed to you as someone who grew up in Israel, is how did the Holocaust and the legacy and the memory of the Holocaust, how did it affect and continues to affect the consciousness of Israeli society and also the words and actions of the Israeli government? Because, and I asked this question, not just because on the surface level, it's obviously a pertinent question, but also because Zionism, of course, precedes the Holocaust by a pretty long time, which is something that I think people are not entirely aware of. I know that I wasn't when I was in school. I basically learned that the Holocaust happened. And then as a result of the Holocaust happening, the state of Israel was established. So you don't really learn about anything that happened before that. You just sort of assume that this horrible thing happened. And then everyone all of a sudden sat together and decided that it would probably be best if the Jewish people had their own state. That is obviously not true at all. That's not what happened. Of course, the Holocaust was a factor, but Zionism was, again, a project that predates it by quite some time. So what is the relationship between Zionism, between Israel in general and Israeli society and the Holocaust? Lucas, thank you for the question. That's a very important one. And let me start answering it by reminding us that what we commemorate today is the international Holocaust Remembrance Day in an Israeli Zionist context, that what we refer to as the Holocaust Remembrance Day takes place in another date. Namely, exactly one week before the Independence Day of the State of Israel. And this is a symbolic narration of how you commemorate the Holocaust because it really links the emergence of the State of Israel with the Holocaust. Without the Holocaust, probably there would never be an Israeli Jewish state. And the Holocaust, so to say, signals us why such a state is a necessity growing up in Israel since kindergarten. I was exposed to terrible stories of when I was a kid, I was a kid. Also many Holocaust survivors were alive. Also my grandparents were alive. And they would talk to us very directly with as much empathy as they could. They told us why it's so important that Jews have not only in safe, in a safe place, but should also be in charge on designing their living realities because otherwise the alternative and the only alternative possible that one should recall in mind is the Holocaust. Commerating the Holocaust one week before the Independence Day of the Israel is a signal to the national, even nationalist usage of the Holocaust as a historical event, putting it into not only a historical context, but a historical and nationalist context. We can talk about nationalist narratives. And this is really essential to how people in Israel, I'm talking specifically about Zionists, understands the relationship between the Holocaust and the existence of the State of Israel. That kind of answers the question on an institutional level as far as the State of Israel is concerned, how that affects and sort of how they also weaponize it so to speak as well to justify all sorts of things. But in Israeli society in general, when we're talking just in terms of Israeli culture, et cetera, is it more or less the same thing that's playing out or is it a bit different? Because for instance, something that you read every once in a while is that, and I don't know if I've necessarily ever seen this from someone who grew up in Israel and Israeli saying this, but there is this argument that at least early on, Israeli society and Zionism in general actually frowned upon Holocaust survivors because there was this idea that they represented a certain type of weakness. It wasn't this heroic, self-assured, new Jew basically that Zionism was trying to create. That's the argument that's made. Do you agree with that? Do you perceive that as again, someone who grew up in Israel, that if it still is the reality or if it isn't, if it at least used to be? So nowadays it's not anymore the case, but it's true that in the early years, Holocaust survivors were looked very badly by those who were socialized and grew up in Palestine, in Israel. Because really, we need to keep in mind that Zionism, this is their leading ideology, the light culture leading culturally, if you will, that characterizes the hegemonic society that rules the area between the river to the sea in Israel, Palestine. It's important to mention that Zionism emerged in Europe around the time when Europe colonialism was in its peak. One decade before the first Zionist Congress, there was another Congress took place here in Berlin that it's called the Berliner Congress, where the European empires basically met in order to divide Africa into sections to decide which empire takes what area, so to say, in Africa. And one year before the first Zionist Congress took place in 1897, so one year before 1896, another interesting thing took place here in Berlin. It was the colonial Auschwitz, their colonial exhibition, which was a huge propaganda campaign or advertisement, we can say, of the German Reich to advertise why colonialism is so important, how we all, we in sense of everybody who lives in Germany, benefits from colonialism. So around this time, if you understood yourself as a nation, as a modern nation, as an advanced nation, you also understood that you should have a colony. And in fact, in nearly years, we see that within the Zionist Congress, the question was not whether Jews as a nation should colonize, but the question was whether, where and what Jews as a nation should colonize, right? So Palestine was one option, other options were Argentina, Uganda, and other areas in the world. Keeping this in mind, the Holocaust, or what happened after the Holocaust, was a tragic reminder to colonialist Jews, to Zionists, that Jews are not as strong as they wish to imagine themselves. All of a sudden, Jews were subjected to atrocities that humanity have never seen in such scales before. All of a sudden, Jews were excluded as European Jews from the idea of Europe and were murdered for that. So this put Zionism and Holocaust survivors in a clash, so to say, how you include the Holocaust within the narrative of Zionist, colonialist, modern nation. The thing is that throughout the years, now I can tell you nowadays, when I was a child even, we would look at Holocaust survivors as heroes. They were my heroes. I would look at my teachers and my grandparents and other people around me, and I thought of them as people who are, who have super power. How do you even survive what you also learn in history books, and you will see in TV, in films like Schindler's List and so on and so on. So for me, as a child growing up in the context, in the Zionist context of Israel, I understood Holocaust survivors as heroes. And I think it kind of signals to a shift that occurred throughout the years of how Holocaust survivors were indeed included within the historical narrative of Israel, of Zionism. And I think interestingly, it's also important to keep in mind that the full name of the Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel is Remembrance Day for the Holocaust and for heroism. Because what Zionists like to commemorate very much is the fact that Jews also being subjected to extreme repression could resist and calling it to mind Mordecai and Alevich, for example, who fought in Ghetto Varsha against all odds and indeed with very limited success, but they fought against the rule of the white supremacist power of the Nazis. Would you, one final question that I wanted to ask you. We've talked a lot about German Remembrance culture and how perhaps not really the right lessons were learned as a result of the experience with Holocaust, but obviously all of this, at least superficially, comes from this necessity in German society of combating anti-Semitism, this sort of preoccupation that, again, is very distorted and sometimes leads to very bizarre sort of expressions of that sort of mission that Germany has set for itself. There's also a lot of cynicism in it, a lot of very hypocritical things, but my question that I wanted to close with, since again, this is a Holocaust Remembrance Day and anti-Semitism is obviously a scourge that we must fight. I guess the question is what is it that we should call it really anti-Semitism and the fact that the Israeli state will claim that any sort of criticism to itself is constitutes anti-Semitism complicates matters hugely, right? So, and it's something that a narrative that has been bought by the West in general. So it's weaponized to silence voices like we said earlier. But my question now is in terms of real anti-Semitism because no one in the right mind will deny that anti-Semitism doesn't exist. The question that I'm left with is, how do you combat anti-Semitism? Really, like real existing anti-Semitism, how do you combat it effectively? Look, if this is such an important question, I'm happy that you asked me this. I think we have to come back to the question of how we define anti-Semitism because I think that in the general discourse nowadays, we are kind of lost. There are so many attempts to define anti-Semitism. We hear so many accusations of people being accused of anti-Semitic being subjected to boycott, the investment and other sanctions that this discourse around anti-Semitism is very much emotional. There is so much power flowing through such attempts to define what is anti-Semitism. One attempt is the so-called IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. This is also the definition that nowadays characterizes the way that Germany and really other every Western nation claims to combat anti-Semitism. When we look at the genealogy of the history of where this definition comes from, we go back to a meeting that took place in 2016 within the body of the IHRA. The IHRA is an acronym of International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. This is an intergovernmental alliance of mostly Western countries that came together in order to define what is anti-Semitism following the wish to effectively combating anti-Semitism. When you look at the definition offered by the IHRA of anti-Semitism, you find a definition that is very unclear. And indeed, I think it was also unclear for the framers of that definition. And this is why they found it necessary to attach examples for this definition in order to highlight what anti-Semitism means or what it could mean, perhaps even what it should mean. The thing is that we are talking about 11 examples. Seven examples out of this list address directly the state of Israel. So this definition or the examples, at least, they are focusing our understanding of anti-Semitism always in relation or mostly in relation to the state of Israel. So we say that we can say that the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism does not concern Jews as such, but concerns first and foremost the interests, the national interests of the state of Israel. I think it's quite telling. And it's also not surprising because those examples and the definition itself are outcome of a proposal by a US-based Jewish lobby organization for the state of Israel. So we can say that this definition and the examples reflect whether not only the national interest of the state of Israel, but also the US understanding of what are the national interests of the state of Israel are or should be. We are not talking about a scientific definition of anti-Semitism, and yet this definition has been adopted by all members of the IHRA, among them also Germany. So when we nowadays in Germany, we look how anti-Semitism is being discussed, we see more often than not that the ruling definition is the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. You can say that the ruling definition of anti-Semitism in Germany is anti-scientific. It is indeed pro-Israeli, or we can say it is not concerning Jews as such. To my understanding, this is anti-Semitic, and perhaps even important to note that the examples that are attached to the IHRA definition were not adopted by the plenary of the IHRA. They were just added there to the definition by the state of Israel. So we can say that this definition is even anti-democratic, anti-scientific, anti-Semitic, and anti-democratic. This is the definition that Germany privileges as the working definition of anti-Semitism. To my understanding, and from what I learned from my grandparents, anti-Semitism is simply racism towards Jews. And historically, we see that the arguments that anti-Semites used were very similar to the arguments that anti-Semites that were also colonialists used in order to justify colonialism. That is to say, they used similar logic, racist logic, to colonize not only population living outside of Europe, but also the population living inside of Europe, those who were marked as not European enough, namely Jews, Sinti, Romans, but also later on sexualized minorities, homosexuals, queer, and later on also disabled and the list goes on and on. It's quite remarkable that nowadays, by the virtue of the ayajari definition of anti-Semitism, Germany becomes once again a dangerous place for anyone who is not Aryan. Thank you, Udi. And I think these are some very pertinent food for thoughts that we finish on with those words. I want to thank you again for joining us. I want to thank all of you for watching this discussion with Udi Raz. We'll see you next time and take care, stay safe. Thank you, Udi. Thank you, Lukas.