Photo: S. Kupferberg, L. Doron, K. Lederer (by Senatverwaltung für Kultur und Europa)
The social, cultural, political and economic action of boycotting is a recurring theme throughout the life of Israeli writer Lizzie Doron, who lives in Tel Aviv and Berlin. Her latest book, »Sweet Occupation«, deals with the Palestinian-Israeli grassroots movement Combatants for Peace and to this day has only been published in German – neither in its original language of Hebrew, nor in English, nor in French. This event with Senator for Culture and Europe, Klaus Lederer, moderated by cultural journalist Shelly Kupferberg, will cast a glance back at Doron's youth before arriving in the here and now. Doron’s mother, a survivor of the Shoah, not only boycotted her own German language but also German products. On the day of 12-year-old Lizzie’s Bat Mitzvah, her mother went through the gifts Lizzie had received, looked for German products and threw the long-awaited Agfa camera in a high arc from the apartment window onto the street, where it shattered into a thousand parts. Who, if anyone, is Doron boycotting herself? And what does Klaus Lederer think about boycotts? Can boycotting be a useful tool with which to achieve change or even rapprochement?
