Rasha Al Jundi (رشا الجندي) is a Palestinian visual storyteller and an aspiring photographer.
Earlier this year Al Jundi published a story on her website titled “Cacti – A visual statement against the silencing of Palestinian voices in Germany“. The story is accompanied by a series of staged photographs, including this truly horrible image taken at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin. The image is captioned “Together, we rise in spite of your history“ and depicts, according to Al Jundi, “Palestinian symbols of resistance“. She is thoroughly exploiting and abusing the memory of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust to advance her politics. This is utterly disgusting and unacceptable. Al Jundi uploaded the same image to her Instagram page.
In April 2023, Rasha Al Jundi also published an antisemitic text titled “The art of protesting – Resisting the systemic silencing of Palestinian voices in Germany through photography and illustrations”. This piece was also shared on The Left Berlin website. The article includes the same offensive image above, but also downright falsehoods about the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) consensus working definition of antisemitism, Nazi comparisons, and stereotypical and mendacious statements about Jews:
- In 2017, Germany adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) non-legally binding revised definition of antisemitism that conflates Zionism with Judaism. As such, any criticism to the State of Israel is labeled as “anti-semitism” under this definition.
- Since the establishment of the Zionist state on stolen Palestinian land in 1948, Germany has taken it upon itself to provide blind political, monetary and military support to Israel as a way to make up for the bottled-up public guilt from the Holocaust.
- Again the German state drew similarities between the dark days of the Third Reich and its persecution of the Jews – and Palestinian led resistance of the Israeli occupation and reclaiming the right to self-determination.
- Through a sequence of staged and abstract images, I wanted to juxtapose key monuments erected around Berlin that mainly commemorate the Holocaust and the Wall. My choices stemmed from my belief that the points in Germany history that led to the Holocaust are closely linked to the ongoing blind support to a settler colony in Palestine. In other words, a context where minorities were viewed as sub-humans at a certain point in time (Jews in this case) is one that still accepts viewing another group of people, i.e. Palestinians, through the same colonial lens. The Holocaust is employed by politicians from all sides of the political spectrum for their own political gains. Even Jews who argue against Germany’s anti-Palestinian actions are labelled as “self-hating”. Indeed, pro-Zionism and anti-semitism are two faces of the same coin.
Like many on the pro-Palestine camp, Rasha al Jundi’s activism involves toxic, controversial, and horrendous antisemitic rhetoric. Al Jundi, who is a Ian Parry Photojournalism 2022 Winner – Tom Stoddart Award, must not be given a platform to express her hateful views.
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