The Semiotic War
Freedom of assembly and extremism in play
For the past few days I have been watching friends, and friends of friends posting on social media about unfair arrests happening by the police in Berlin, under the grounds of “inciting antisemitic hatred” after peacefully protesting against the violent occupation of Palestine by the Israeli state. A quick Google search can demonstrate how the slogan “Free Palestine” has been garnering more negative connotations due to the recent events in Gaza, such as in the article The Savage Nihilism of ‘Free Palestine’ written by Egyptian researcher of Jewish and Middle Eastern history and Hebrew literature Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, in German news articles, such as this one by the Tagesspiegel, or in this video report by the Deutsche Welle.
While I do not condone unjustified violence, and do not support any acts of terrorism such as the ones recently perpetrated by the Islamic Resistance Movement, popularly known as Hamas, I cannot stop but wonder how the current dangerous political climate at the Gaza Strip is being nurtured by a global semiotic war. This concomitant war is currently being fueled by seemingly disparate groups in society, such as Hollywood celebrities, world politicians, and unintentional actors, who have been willingly or unwillingly spreading misinformation globally.
I could cite, for example, how Academy Award winner Jamie Lee Curtis posted to her Instagram profile a photo by photographer Samar Abu Elouf for the New York Times along with the caption “TERROR FROM THE SKIES” followed by an Israeli flag. After being alerted by users of that same social media platform that the picture depicted Palestinian children, Curtis deleted her original post and followed it with a picture of generic children, and wrote an all-encompassing caption on the protection of all children during war.
Image Description: In this since-deleted post, Curtis shared a picture of Palestinian children looking distressed, gazing at the sky and running, seemingly scared of an imminent bombing. However, she did not seem to fact-check her post beforehand by associating the picture with the suffering of Israeli children targeted by Hamas.
Canadian singer Justin Bieber committed a similar mistake, when he shared on his Instagram stories a post, the cover image of which featured an aerial view of a bombing site in Gaza with the text “Praying for Israel” superimposed on the image. Bieber’s 293 million Instagram followers were exposed to that misleading content, and that might have been enough to overshadow his much more careful stance shared earlier in the week: "Truly hurting for both my Israeli and Palestinian friends. I’m pretty sure we all instinctively know evil when we see it. To villainize all Palestinians or all Israeli people to me seems wrong. I’m not interested in choosing sides, but I am interested in standing with the families who have been brutally taken from us”.
Followed by a green-and-blue background image-less Instagram story, Bieber reinforced his support for the suffering in Israel by adding a new post with only the words “Praying for Israel” succeeded by a broken heart emoji, as seen below:
Palestine’s Hamas launched its biggest assault on Israel in years early on Saturday, firing a barrage of rockets from Gaza and sending fighters across the border. While some groups in the United States, such as members of the Democratic Socialists of America, for example, initially rallied on Sunday at Times Square, in New York City, in support of Palestine, using language such as “resistance is justified”, “globalize the intifada”, and “smash the settler Zionist state”, by Tuesday the New York City Democratic Socialists had backtracked on its earlier stance, recognizing its problematic association with values that could be seen as validating those of Hamas’ violent attack.
Perhaps one of the most significant reverberations of this semiotic war happened in North American societies when Chicago-based law firm Winston & Strawn LLP rescinded a law student’s offer of employment, after this student had sent, as then president of New York University’s Student Bar Association, a message to that group which stated that “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life”. Public statements like this on the war with Hamas that has killed at least 1.300 people in Israel and more than 1.350 people in Gaza, according to estimates by Al Jazeera and other news outlets, have brought consequences to a number of people, including journalists such as the former sports reporter of the PhillyVoice.com Jackson Frank, fired for his pro-Palestine views, or to other influential people such as the German former professional footballer Mesut Özil, who posted his support for the end of the war whilst also endorsing the “Free Palestine” movement. These consequences have even extended to the prominent former sex worker Mia Khalifa.
The latter, a Lebanese American adult-content influencer, for instance, was fired from a partnership with Playboy’s Centerfold platform and had her channel on the website permanently deleted, after posting messages on X, formerly Twitter, showing support for Hamas and Palestine. Khalifa, no stranger to controversy, had risen to prominence in October 2014 after mixing religion with pornography, something that led to her even receiving death threats for performing sexual acts on film whilst wearing a hijab—the veil worn by many Muslim women.
Image Description: one of Mia Khalifa’s controversial tweets on X, formerly Twitter, reads: “I can’t believe the Zionist apartheid regime is being brought down by guerrilla fighters in fake Gucci shirts - the biopics of these moments better reflect that”.
In another unrelated, but still connected pro-Palestine viewpoint, the Hadid’s, namely Gigi and Bella, the famous Palestinian-American sisters, models and influencers who have never held back on advocating for Palestine through social media and beyond, previously have both been vocal about the censorship they have faced because of their political stance. The younger sister, Bella Hadid, has claimed before to have been shadow banned by Instagram when posting on Palestine, a much debated practice by that social media platform which has been rumored to remove engagement from a user’s account by changing the usual reach of someone’s posts to a lower level of engagement—in Bella’s case, that means millions of followers being prevented from seeing her posts on Palestine. Her older sister Gigi Hadid, on a similar manner, was the target of a publicized censored version of her pledge to donate her Fall 2022 fashion show earnings (to both Ukrainians and Palestinians suffering from the wars in their territories) by the US Edition of Vogue Magazine, which edited out Palestine from a post about Gigi’s commitment on its official social media page on Instagram. Vogue’s original post had written initially only Ukraine as the recipient of Hadid’s support, but added ‘Palestine’ back to the post, after heavy backlash ensued.
In fact, this semiotic war has affected the public praise of even the former US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who visited Berlin recently for the launch of his new book It’s Okay to Be Angry About Capitalism (Crown Publishing Group, 2023, published in German by Tropen Verlag on October 14th, 2023). In an event at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in cooperation with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the American Academy in Berlin, on October 12th, Sanders’ first statement was in repudiation of the Hamas attack in no uncertain terms, but his earlier statement on the war, also published in the short message service X, formerly Twitter, as seen below, showed a nuanced position also calling for accountability on Israel’s part. This had already caused a reprisal in the form of a boycott from the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Saskia Esken, who distanced herself from Sanders by canceling her presence at one of the reception events from his book launch. Esken wrote in the Bluesky social platform: "He would now have had the chance to give up his earlier relativizations and clearly stand on the side of Israel and against the terror of Hamas and others. But he doesn't do that. Still not. Incomprehensible. I cancel" (translation by Bastian Brauns).
As you have noticed, this semiotic war has ramifications far more complex than meets the eye. Whether criticisms are levied in the direction of models such as Gigi and Bella Hadid for their support for Palestine, or at Bernie Sanders’ critical views on Israel, there is no easy way to solve a conflict which has been festered with ethnocentrism and political issues for decades. I do stop and wonder about some things that have been bugging me for the past week, as there seems to be indeed a biased outlook on either side of the spectrum: Does criticizing Zionism necessarily have to equal supporting Hamas? Is it truly an “anti-Semite” stance to be critical of Israel’s role in the violent occupation of Palestine? And is there an effective way to renounce Hamas’ horrific actions, whilst supporting the "Free Palestine” movement without falling into a nihilist trap, that writers like Hussein Aboubakr Mansour denounce? Why are so many people reporting police violence in Berlin for showing support to Palestinians, if German society abides by the Freedom of assembly as a fundamental civil liberty right, enshrined in Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in Article 12 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union?
These are complicated questions which Germany seems to be eager to answer at the moment, especially when waves of information and misinformation have been swinging through the public sphere, either supporting how the Palestinian’s plight has observed biased coverage in the media to the point that some Arab immigrants and refugees would rather follow WhatApp groups than the German mass media, or in making evident how some protests affiliated to the Palestinian cause have indeed incited violent and antisemitic actions toward the police, as well as the press. Either way, it might be too soon to predict an outcome, or to find a quick resolution. We might be looking at a few weeks, or months ahead, of further turmoil.
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As I fell asleep during the first draft writing of this text, I woke up to an Instagram notification on Sara Mardini’s feed, which read: “I can’t believe I’m writing this: to my Arab friends and followers. In case the news hasn’t reached you yet, please avoid Alexanderplatz, Hermannplatz and Sonnenallee. There is extremely heavy police presence and Arabs and PoCs are being randomly stopped, searched, and arrested. Including children. Stay safe 🤎”.
Photo credit: © Jörg Meier