The Israeli war against the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, which is commonly portrayed as a war against Hamas, enjoys great moral solidarity in the political and media discourse in Germany. At the same time, the Palestinian experience of violence, which has been going on for decades, is once again being made invisible. This is compounded by the invisibilisation and criminalisation of symbols of Palestinian identity and practices of Palestinian remembrance culture in Germany. This article addresses the growing alienation of Palestinians in Germany in the face of this situation, as the violence continues for them even in exile.

Sarah El-Bulbeisi joined the Orient Institut Beirut in November 2019 after completing her PhD at the Institute for Near and Middle East Studies at the lMU Munich, Germany. Before joining the OIB, she coordinated the DAAD project “Violence, Forced Migration and Exile: Trauma in the Arab World and in Germany”, a Higher Education Dialogue between Palestinian and Lebanese universities as well as with the LMU Munich. Prior to that, she worked as a lecturer and research associate at the Institute for Near and Middle East Studies at the LMU Munich. she is the author of Taboo, Trauma and Identity: Subject Constructions of Palestinians in Germany and Switzerland, 1960 to 2015, published with transcript in 2020.