Press release of 11 September 2025
Lahav Shani disinvited: The right to remain silent
PEN Berlin criticizes the decision to disinvite Israeli conductor Lahav Shani from the Flanders Festival Ghent, in particular the reasoning that he had not provided »sufficient clarity about his attitude to the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv«.
Whether this incident constitutes blatant anti-Semitism, as claimed by the Minister of State for Culture, Wolfram Weimer, remains to be seen. What is undoubtedly scandalous, however, is that the organisers of the festival believe that Lahav Shani, the chief conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and future chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, must answer questions about his views on the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government before he is allowed to perform Schubert, Beethoven and Wagner (!) with them.
Freedom of expression is not only the right to express oneself freely and without fear of reprisals, but also the right not to express oneself if one wishes. Forcing people to confess is a characteristic of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Demanding confessions from artists violates the fundamental right to freedom of expression and disregards the principle of separation between art and artists. In this sense, disinviting Lahav Shani is indeed, as Wolfram Weimer says, an »attack on the foundations of our culture«.
Unfortunately, this kind of attack has become commonplace in Germany, especially since Hamas’s attack on Israel. Some of those who are now rightly outraged by Lahav Shani’s disinvitation were quick to call for the cancellation of other artists because they had not distanced themselves from Hamas »with the necessary clarity’ — or because they had criticised the Israeli government. However, this misguided politicisation of art, which prioritises the political views of artists over art itself, did not begin on 7 October 2023. The same Munich mayor, Dieter Reiter, who now says he »cannot understand in any way« the organisers’ decision to disinvite Lahav Shani, dismissed the chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic three years ago for failing to comply with his request to ‘clearly and unambiguously distance himself from Putin’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine’.
»The proximity to their respective governments may be very different in the cases of Gergiev and Shani, but the accusations made against both are similar. It’s not about things they said, but things they didn’t say», commented PEN Berlin spokeswoman Thea Dorn. »Cancel culture and political coercion must be rejected on principle, and not only when they fit into one’s ideological concept.«
However, we at PEN Berlin are happy to make a commitment — a commitment to the Charter of International PEN, which states: »Literature knows no frontiers and must remain common currency among people in spite of political or international upheavals. In all circumstances, and particularly in time of war, works of art, the patrimony of humanity at large, should be left untouched by national or political passion..«
PEN Berlin. We stand by our word.