opinion
Fabricating Antisemitism:
The Case of Gil Ofarim
BY BEN COHEN
B ack in October, I wrote about
the strange case of Gil Ofarim,
a popular German Jewish singer
who leveled a charge of antisemitic
discrimination against an employee
of the Westin Hotel in Leipzig,
Germany. The case drew forensic
interest from the German media
and much soul-searching among
German politicians about the levels
of antisemitism in their country.

As it turns out — and as many
feared at the time — Ofarim’s alle-
gations were entirely false. Last
Thursday, the public prosecutor in
Leipzig announced that not only
were charges being dropped against
the hotel clerk accused of antisemi-
tism, but Ofarim was himself being
indicted on charges of libel and def-
amations — charges that could result
in a jail sentence if he is convicted.

The conclusion was reached after
months of painstaking investiga-
tion that included a close review of
CCTV footage from the hotel recep-
tion, several police interviews with
Ofarim and even a reconstruction of
the fateful encounter that the singer
alleged had taken place.

The Ofarim saga began on Oct. 5
last year when the singer attempted
to check into the Westin following
a performance in Leipzig. An emo-
tional Instagram video that quickly
went viral showed the singer sitting
on the steps outside the hotel, nurs-
ing the Star of David necklace he
said he always wore on his chest.

As he told it, he had been stuck in
the line at the check-in, becoming
frustrated when, he claimed, other
guests were receiving their room
cards ahead of him. When Ofarim
asked why he was being ignored,
a clerk allegedly told him, “pack up
your star and you can check in.”
As ugly an incident as this would
have been had it actually occurred,
it would by no means have been the
worst example of antisemitism in
Germany, which frequently involves
18 APRIL 7, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
violent assaults and anti-Jewish
invective far cruder than that quoted
by Ofarim. Nevertheless, perhaps
because of Ofarim’s local celebrity,
and the fact that he is the son of
Israeli pop singer Abi Ofarim, the
case set the German media alight.

Politicians and community lead-
ers were almost falling over them-
selves to condemn the incident. The
then federal Interior Minister, Heiko
Maas, said that Ofarim’s supposed
ordeal demonstrated the need for all
Germans to stand “shoulder to shoul-
der” against antisemitism. Felix Klein,
Germany’s federal commissioner
tasked with combating antisemitism,
declared himself “appalled that a
person is discriminated against and
hardly fair play, though). Ofarim’s alle-
gations also increased attention on
the very real problem of antisemitism
in Germany. However, within a fort-
night of the alleged incident, cracks
in his story began to appear.

CCTV footage from the hotel lobby
published in German news outlets
showed that Ofarim wasn’t wearing,
at least visibly, the Star of David
necklace he claimed had sparked
the clerk’s antisemitic comment. It
also emerged that the hotel clerk
accused of antisemitism had fi led a
defamation suit against Ofarim the
very day after the alleged incident.

In media interviews, Ofarim became
worryingly vague on detail, on one
occasion answering the question of
Awareness of the urgent need to
fi ght back against antisemitism in
Germany shouldn’t blind us to the
sheer injustice of accusing an innocent
person of such vile prejudice.

attacked in an anti-Semitic fashion
in public in a busy hotel lobby.” The
head of Germany’s Jewish commu-
nity, Josef Schuster, remarked that
Ofarim had encountered “the every-
day antisemitism to which Jews are
repeatedly exposed” in Germany.

Some politicians even went as far
as to call for the hotel employee
identifi ed by Ofarim to be fi red.

Karin Prien (CDU), the Minister of
Education in the state of Schleswig-
Holstein, urged that the accused
clerk be terminated immediately,
while Katja Meier, the Minister of
Justice in Saxony, where Leipzig is
located, wrote: “This open antisem-
itism in the Hotel Westin in Leipzig
is unspeakable and unbearable. It
must have consequences — and an
apology is not enough.”
These sentiments were, mostly,
noble and welcome (calling for some-
one to be fi red without due process is
whether he had been wearing the
necklace in the hotel with the breezy
response, “Anyone who knows me
knows that I always wear the Star of
David.” Moreover, several interviews
with the police reportedly revealed
inconsistencies in Ofarim’s account
of what happened — or didn’t.

In a carefully worded statement
once the probe was concluded, the
Leipzig prosecutor said it was plain
that the incident described by Ofarim
“did not actually happen.” Instead, it
is Ofarim himself who now stands
accused of the serious off ense of
fabricating an act of discrimination.

There is an unjust absurdity about
this situation. Last year, there was
a 30% increase in antisemitic out-
rages in Germany, with more than
3,000 incidents reported — likely
only a fraction of the total number,
given that successive studies have
shown that many victims of antise-
mitic harassment in Germany don’t
fi le a report with the authorities.

Some of those incidents were
related to the COVID-19 conspir-
acy theories that have been lapped
up in Germany, while many more
occurred last May when the 11-day
confl ict between Israel and Hamas
in Gaza was accompanied by a
wave of antisemitic agitation and
violence. Moreover, during the last
decade, antisemitic incidents have
risen year on year, demonstrating
beyond doubt that the land of the
Holocaust has failed to excise the
oldest hatred.

None of that excuses Ofarim’s
appalling act. Awareness of the urgent
need to fi ght back against antisem-
itism in Germany shouldn’t blind us
to the sheer injustice of accusing an
innocent person of such vile prejudice,
as Ofarim has apparently done. And in
a world driven by social-media chat-
ter, Ofarim has provided an import-
ant boost for the narrative that Jews
exaggerate about antisemitism today,
just as they talk too much about the
Holocaust of 80 years ago.

Ofarim has made the job of those
in Germany working diligently to com-
bat antisemitism that much harder.

But there is also an important lesson
here in caution, for with hindsight,
no German politician should have
spoken out so defi nitively without a
proper investigation of Ofarim’s alle-
gations. Not to mention that the next
time someone reports such an inci-
dent — particularly one that involves
service workers in a hotel or a restau-
rant or an airport — Ofarim’s example
could well encourage the too-hasty
dismissal of such a complaint.

We can only hope that the twists
and turns of the news cycle will
speedily move on from this sorry
aff air. As for Ofarim, he would be
well-advised not to open his mouth
in public again, unless he’s singing. JE
Ben Cohen is a New York City-based
journalist and author who writes a
weekly column on Jewish and inter-
national aff airs for JNS.




opinion
For a Polish Jew Like Me,
the War on Ukraine Is About
Our Shared Futures
BY KONSTANTY GEBERT
A s a Jew growing up in Poland,
I participated in the Polish
democratic opposition of the 1970s,
then the pro-democracy Solidarity
movement and finally the anti-
Communist underground of the 1980s.

I was very painfully aware that
some of my fellow militants were
antisemitic, and that at times this
antisemitism, not a love of freedom,
could be the main motivation of their
actions. Yet I had no doubt that if we won
and secured freedom for all, antisem-
ites included, it would have been
well worth it. Thirty years of an inde-
pendent and free Poland have given
me no reasons to question that com-
mitment, even though antisemitism
remains a visible presence, occasion-
ally threatening and always obscene.

When Russia first invaded our
eastern neighbor one month ago,
some around the world were puz-
zled about how Jews could so easily
support Ukraine, given what Jews
suffered there during the Shoah.

Neither have Poles forgotten about
the fierce Ukrainian-led massacres of
World War II, which claimed the lives
of 120,000 Poles, and even if they
remember the Russian occupation up
to World War I and after World War II.

But here in Poland, and in neigh-
boring countries in Central Europe,
there was no question about sup-
porting Ukraine. Figures and institu-
tions like the chief rabbi, the Union
of Jewish Religious Communities,
the Polin Museum and local Jewish
community centers, as well as other
Jewish institutions and organiza-
tions, immediately expressed soli-
darity with Ukraine.

To understand this, you need to
consider the value of freedom.

Freedom is something many out-
side observers take for granted, hav-
ing, like their parents, enjoyed it
all their lives. Even I, though I have
spent more than the first half of
my life deprived of its blessings,
no longer think twice about writing
and publishing what I think, under
my own name, and without fear of
repression. Similarly, the Ukrainians, despite
the dysfunctional, heavy-handed
and corrupt state that emerged after
independence, eventually won their
freedom at the price of blood, during
the Maidan Revolution of 2013–14.

This is the freedom Russia would
now take away from them.

The yearning for freedom is why
I publicly endorsed the Ukrainian
Orange Revolution of 2004. Some
other Jewish observers, no less
knowledgeable about East Central
Europe, criticized me by stressing
that “Ukraine is not Poland.” In other
words, they reasoned, the Polish
experiment in democracy could not
be expected to succeed in its east-
ern neighbor — and, given the heavy
legacy of Ukrainian antisemitism, did
not deserve to be supported there.

Their fear was legitimate, but has
proven unsubstantiated: There is
less antisemitism in Ukraine today
than in Poland, even if the orga-
nized presence of extreme national-
ists there gives grounds for serious
concern. Set aside the fact that Jews and
Poles taking a common position on
anything since World War II — or
1989, to be more generous — is in
itself a stunning development. Those
who do not understand our support
for Ukraine overlook another funda-
mental thing: This is not about the
past. It is about the future.

As Marta Kubica, executive director
of the Poland office of the European
Leadership Network, an NGO ded-
icated to strengthening European-
Israeli relations, has said: “Political
quarrels have been set aside, and
we’re finally looking in the same
direction: the future. It’s regrettable
that it took a war for this to happen,
but hopefully we can remember this
feeling and use it to strengthen our
future relationship.”
To be sure, Ukrainians have not
yet fully owned up to the unspeak-
able suffering they inflicted on Jews
and Poles alike, if not equally, during
World War II. But Poles, too, have yet
to fully acknowledge their own role
in the violence against Ukrainians
and Jews before, during and after
the Second World War. Ukrainians,
Poles and Jews who lived under
the former Soviet Union will, like the
Russians, have to make a reckoning
of their roles as both victims and ser-
vants of the bloody Soviet system.

This is not to say that history is just
a cruel mess, full of unacknowledged
and unpunished crimes everybody
is guilty of. We can make sense of
history, and different crimes are not
equal to each other. But in order for
this reckoning to take place at all, we
need freedom.

And freedom is what the war is all
about. You might have seen the brief
scenes, bravely recorded on smart-
phones in occupied territory, of a
Ukrainian woman in Sumy explaining
to the Russians manning a military
checkpoint that, under the Ukrainian
constitution and the country’s pri-
vacy laws, she is not obligated to
show them her ID. Or unarmed civil-
ians in Melitopol blocking the way
of a Russian army convoy, chanting
“Go home! Go home!” — and not
stopping or scattering even as a
nervous infantryman starts firing into
the air. Or elderly ladies singing the
Ukrainian national anthem in front
of the Russian-occupied city hall in
Berdyansk. Only after denying Russians their
freedom could Putin send his army
into Ukraine to deny Ukrainians
the same. Poles and Jews support
Ukrainians under the old Polish
revolutionary slogan, “For our free-
dom and yours.” The Russian army
could adopt a counter-slogan: “For
your oppression and ours.” Russia
had become a corrupt and lawless
dictatorship just as Ukraine was
ceasing to be one. Their smaller
Western neighbor was becoming,
to Russians, an alternative to their
dictatorial present. The only way to
protect that present was to destroy
the alternative. Hence the missiles
against Kyiv.

The Polish Jewish community
has prepared reception centers for
Ukrainian refugees near the bor-
der, and in Lublin, Łódź and near
Warsaw. Thousands of people have
already been assisted. “How many
of them are Jewish?” a journalist
from a haredi publication asked in a
phone interview with Poland’s Chief
Rabbi, Michael Schudrich. “I don’t
have the faintest idea,” answered
Schudrich, “but I know they were all
God’s children.” The journalist hung
up, and a minute later called again
– not to apologize, but to angrily
comment that he “doesn’t need to
be preached at.” “Oh, but he does,”
Schudrich told me.

Freedom is never given once and
for all. Shameful democratic back-
sliding, not just in Poland but in
Hungary and Slovenia, demonstrates
this all too clearly. And there is no
guarantee that Ukraine, if it man-
ages to repel the Russian onslaught,
will become a democratic showcase,
happily engaging in debate about
the sins of its past. It is legitimate to
be skeptical.

But there can be no doubt that if
Putin wins, freedom will not have a
chance. Just look at Russia today (or
at Russia Today, before it abruptly
shut down). Or imagine Poland after
such a victory, say, 10 years from now.

Between Putin’s brutal terror, and
our homegrown autocrats, freedom
would not stand much of a chance.

Should Jews care? If this were a
Monopoly game, and if there were
a “Get out of history free” card, I
wouldn’t blame those who would
grab it in order to show it to the next
jackbooted thug who came to break
down their door. But good luck to
anyone who thinks the men with
guns will play by the rules of the
game. Or believe it’s a game at all. JE
Konstanty Gebert is a veteran Polish
journalist, Jewish community figure
and former underground activist in
Warsaw. JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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