Controversial Gaza Essay Leads to Cancellation of Masha Gessen's Arendt Prize

The Heinrich Böll Foundation, a left-wing German political foundation, has decided not to present the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought to Masha Gessen, a Russian American journalist, due to an essay they wrote drawing parallels between the situation of Jews in Nazi Germany and Palestinians in Gaza. The foundation, affiliated with Alliance90/The Greens, withdrew from awarding the prize, which recognizes critical political thought, but it will still be presented to Gessen without the foundation's participation. The decision came after criticism from the Bremen chapter of the German-Israeli Society, which argued that honoring Gessen would contradict action against growing antisemitism. Germany's defense of Israel has often led to the conflation of criticism of Israeli policies with antisemitism, silencing Jewish voices critical of Israel.