the horror won't go away, the nightmare won't end

about antisemitism, terror and death

I
since the islamist terrorist group hamas attacked the israeli population from the gaza strip on saturday morning with unimaginable cruelty, murdering - according to the current death toll - over 1200 people, the great majority of them jews, and abducting over 150 more to gaza as hostages, we have been holding our breath. as the first antisemitic pogrom within their own country, jews describe in shock, agony and despair what no one thought possible, except those who for decades have pursued precisely this goal: to murder as many jews as possible. the islamists of hamas have demonstrated to the world in a monstrous way what they are: mortal enemies of freedom, of emancipation, of life.
many who work, dj, host or dance at ://about blank are affected: because they have friends, relatives, acquaintances in israel and gaza, who are traumatized, missing, kidnapped or killed, or have lost or fear for people close to them. we would like to express our solidarity, our sympathy, our concern to all of them. with them are our thoughts, our grief, our shock.

II
we are stunned to see how individuals, artists and groups from the club scene and the left interpret, justify or even celebrate this antisemitic terror of hamas as "decolonialism", as a "palestinian struggle for freedom" or as "resistance against israeli oppression". when the left cannot distinguish one from the other, we no longer have hope. br> we are also baffled how established mouthpieces of club culture manage to express mourning and regret about the massacre of over 260 attendees of the trance festival supernova without recognizing this campaign of extermination as eliminatory antisemitism and naming it as the biggest mass murder of jews since the end of the nazi extermination camps in 1945. by doing so, murdered jews are made invisible.

III
we suspect that even germans' showy solidarity with israel is finite, that the outrage over hamas cheers on sonnenallee and the anti-israel tirades at palestine solidarity demos are being instrumentalized primarily by right-wing and far-right extremists to frame antisemitism as an immigration problem that can be "deported". and we know that the virulent antisemitism of the afd and aiwanger cannot be drowned out by any commitment to israel. it is the bloody deeds of halle and hanau, the murder spree of the nsu and threats sent by nsu 2.0, the far-right police chats from hesse and the neo-nazi networks in the bundeswehr that make clear the link between jew-hatred and racism in a germany that is moving further and further to the right.

IV
nothing that lies ahead offers cause for celebration or the prospect of improvement. new victims are still being discovered every hour, over a hundred hostages are still in captivity. rockets are still flying to and from gaza. palestinians are still dying in israeli military operations against hamas, israelis are still living in mortal fear of rockets. an end of the suffering is not in sight. our thoughts are with all those who are grieving and fear what is to come. it remains a nightmare without end.

://about blank collective + booking, october 12, 2023