OPINION: Diplomatic cold war in a Berlin ice cream shop

It’s instructive, occasionally, to look online and see what else is being said about a story where you might think you had all the facts to hand.

Such a case is that of the owner of Café Dodo, an ice cream shop and café in the heart of Berlin. The owner is one Avi Berg, who achieved global notoriety in the last few days by making it clear to the Israeli ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, that he was not welcome.

His Excellency — who might be more familiar to Jewish News readers as Israel’s former ambassador to the UK, where he served with some distinction from 2007 to 2011 – is not just one of the Jewish state’s most senior diplomats but also one of its best-known faces.

If I know anything about Ron Prosor – and I encountered him on innumerable occasions when he was based in London – it is that he loses no opportunity to make Israel’s case. Whatever his private views, and it is right and proper that I have no idea what they are while he continues to serve as a foreign ministry employee (and, importantly, not a political appointee), the ambassador will make the case for Israel — even if he finds that a difficult task just now.

I can’t say I envy Israel’s diplomats at the moment. Who would wish to pretend all is sweetness and light in Israel’s garden when the country is quite clearly tearing itself apart over the proposed judicial reforms? Some diplomats have resigned. Others, such as ambassador Prosor, have elected to stay in post.

But back to Avi Berg, one of an estimated 10,000 ex-pat Israelis living in Berlin. He has made no secret of his political views, which are against those of the Israeli government. He obviously recognised the ambassador when he and his bodyguards walked in.

What an opportunity, he might have thought, to do the next best thing to sticking it to Netanyahu – he would stick it to the Israeli ambassador instead.

I can’t say I envy Israel’s diplomats at the moment. Who would wish to pretend all is sweetness and light in Israel’s garden when the country is quite clearly tearing itself apart over the proposed judicial reforms?

In fact, as Berg later made clear, his objection was not to Prosor’s presence as an individual but to what he represented. Because, Berg claimed, the foreign ministry has been ordering its diplomats to pursue a campaign denouncing critics of the judicial reform proposals as antisemitic.

He wrote on social media: “Since he [the ambassador] implements an invalid and manipulative policy, which claims that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic — a policy that claims that I and my peers are antisemitic — he is not welcome in my café. I asked him and his entourage of German bodyguards to leave.”

Berg complained that the ambassador and the embassy “are deeply involved in putting pressure on the Bundestag and on German media and institutions to block any criticism of Israel and to label any such criticism as antisemitism. This diplomacy is implemented all over the world, but is especially effective in Germany… This policy is also very damaging against the fight against genuine antisemitism!”

Plainly the antisemitism card is a delicate one to play in Germany and I have no idea whether Berg’s allegation against Prosor holds water – although it may well be that the ambassador’s robust defence of Israel in these troubled times gives those on the left the shivers.

Meanwhile, however, I wonder at the embassy staff, who cannot have been ignorant of Berg’s views. What possessed them not to do due diligence on a place where the ambassador might sit down for a relaxing coffee? You don’t send your man into the lion’s cage unless you ensure the lion is ready to sit and play nicely, rather than emit a self-righteous roar.

And now to the little extra that the internet has to offer. Tripadvisor reviews online of Café Dodo, several from Israel-based Israelis, are dreadful. ‘Hannah L’, from Jerusalem, advises travellers: “Don’t go…horrible. Awful ambience and service and very bad food. I wouldn’t recommend at all, no redeeming qualities”.

Avi Berg is just as blunt in his response. He tells Tripadvisor: “This review is part of a political smear attack against me and my café, which is a typical violent attempt to hurt me because of my political beliefs… None of these reviewers ever visited my café and they won’t deter me from expressing my political opinions”.

On the whole, I think this was a missed opportunity on both sides. I don’t subscribe to the “Jew thrown out of cafe in Germany, where have we heard that before?” commentary. What I do think is that Prosor could have tried to talk Berg out of his tree, and Berg equally could have tried to tell the ambassador how passionately he felt about Israel’s political trajectory.

After all, according to Netanyahu, “we are all brothers”, aren’t we?