New Yorker Writer Masha Gessen’s Prize in Jeopardy After Gaza Essay

The political foundation behind a prestigious German award is yanking its support for the prize’s presentation to a well-known staff writer at The New Yorker this week, condemning them for publishing an essay earlier this month that drew parallels between Jewish oppression under Nazi occupation and the Israeli bombardment of Gaza today.

Masha Gessen’s 7,500-word essay, “In the Shadow of the Holocaust,” argues “that we place the Holocaust outside of history and refuse to learn from it,” they tweeted after it was published on Saturday.

The piece also makes explicit reference to “the Jewish ghettoes of Occupied Europe” in discussing the modern conflict in the Middle East. As in the former, Gessen, who is Jewish, wrote that in Gaza “there are no prison guards—Gaza is policed not by the occupiers but by a local force.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.