麻豆社

The Hannah Arendt Prize has been awarded every year since 1995 to individuals representing the tradition of Arendt, especially in regard to totalitarianism. In August it was announced that this year's winner was the writer and historian Masha Gessen who has written extensively on Putin's Russia.

But this week the The German Heinrich B枚ll Foundation, who are co-sponsors of the prize, said that they were withdrawing their support because of a recent essay for the New Yorker in which Masha Gessen made a comparison between Gaza and a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe.

In a statement they said that "it is incomprehensible to us how a scholar as experienced as Masha Gessen, who has made such a great contribution to the critical analysis of Russian imperialism, can seriously equate Gaza with the Nazi extermination ghettos. For us, there is only one explanation: a deep-seated and fundamental negative prejudice against the Jewish state. This has nothing to do with political judgment in the sense of Hannah Arendt."

The ceremony went ahead as normal in the city of Bremen, but the mayor did not attend. The German Israeli society of Bremen have said that 'such an honour - (awarding the prize) - would contradict the necessary decisive action against the growing anti-Semitism.' They also said that Gessen's piece represented 'a deep-seated and fundamental negative prejudice against the Jewish state'.

Masha Gessen came onto Weekend to respond.

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