HAMCHA art integration - Menschen im Gespräch / Ronnie Barkan: Palestine and Israel are the same place. (Interview)

In the apartment of a Jewish friend of the interviewer in Haidhausen, Munich, a conversation unfolds between the Israeli dissident and activist Ronnie Barkan and the interviewer Heinz Michael Vilsmeier about Palestine, Zionism, Judaism, Israel, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and resistance.

Much of what Ronnie Barkan expresses in the conversation will likely be considered antisemitic by those accustomed to moving exclusively within the prevailing discourse about Israel in Germany, who adhere to the German state policy of defending Israel against any criticism.

However, they should take note that Ronnie Barkan, as he states himself, belongs to the privileged population in the apartheid state of Israel: "I come from the group of oppressors. They come from the group of victims."

Ronnie Barkan's family lives in Ra’anana, a city north of Tel Aviv. "My father's family," he reports, "arrived shortly after the foundation of the Zionist state, and my mother's family came in the early 1960s.. ... Both parents were born into Hungarian-speaking families in Eastern Europe, not in Hungary, but into Hungarian-speaking families. My father arrived in Palestine as a baby, my mother spent her childhood in Romania and had quite a good, happy childhood, even though it was after the war. And my grandparents were survivors of the worst events. On my mother’s side, my grandmother is a survivor of Auschwitz. My grandfather, a survivor of Dachau."

In his 20s, Ronnie actually went to demonstrate in the West Bank in a village where refugees from Tabsur—now Ra'anana—ended up. It was very important for him. This knowledge drives Ronnie Barkan. He says, "Israel is literally built on top of Palestine, at the expense of its indigenous population."

For Ronnie Barkan, this gives rise to the obligation to fight for the rights of the Palestinians until their rights are restored and thereby lay the foundation for a peaceful coexistence of Jews and Arabs in Palestine.