“The shame of Berlin” is the headline of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Something like this should not happen again, says the governing mayor. And the Minister of Justice is threatening criminal law. The outrage is directed at the closing evening of the Berlinale, especially the pro-Palestine speeches of some of the winners. They chose words like “apartheid” and “genocide” that went unchallenged during the ceremony.
You can reject these speeches, of course. They could have been contradicted during the event. But brushing it off with a blanket accusation of anti-Semitism is wrong. The accusation of anti-Semitism is serious; it must be proven and justified, not simply alleged. And to even criminalize speech, as Marco Buschmann has now suggested, would be a dangerous infringement on freedom of expression.
What was even said? One speech that has particularly attracted a lot of attention is that of Yuval Abraham. The young director, a Jewish Israeli, stood on stage alongside his co-director Basel Adra and accepted the award for Best Documentary. Her film “No Other Land” is about a Palestinian town that is being demolished to make way for an Israeli army training area. In his speech Abraham said – and this is a passage that is particularly criticized:
“I am Israeli, Basel is Palestinian. In two days we will go back to a land where we are not the same. I live under civil law, Basel under military law. We live thirty minutes apart, but I have the right to vote, Basel doesn’t have the right to vote. I can move freely, Basel is imprisoned in the occupied West Bank, like millions of other Palestinians. This apartheid situation between us, this inequality – it must end.”
The emotive word “apartheid” immediately caused a stir in Germany. The outrage begins and ends with this word. The conditions that Abraham describes, the real inequality that he experienced and filmed – they are buried by the furor surrounding the word “apartheid”. The choice of words is called scandalous, intolerable or unbearable – and the discussion ends. This also seems symptomatic of Germany’s handling of the war in Gaza. Abraham’s plea for a ceasefire, with which he ended his speech, no longer needs to be discussed.
There was applause for Abraham’s speech in the hall, including from Kai Wegner, the governing mayor, and Claudia Roth, the State Secretary for Culture and Media. This applause was subsequently noted and criticized by various media outlets, leading Roth to declare that she had applauded for Abraham, but not (so the implication was) for Basel Adra, who was standing next to him on stage. Wegner wrote on Twitter that the next festival management should ensure “that such incidents do not happen again” – however he imagines it: as a drastic restriction on free speech?
What else was said? Adra, the Palestinian director, said: “It is difficult for me to celebrate this award when tens of thousands of my compatriots in Gaza have been slaughtered and massacred by Israel [slaughtered and massacred] become. […] I ask Germany to respect the UN’s call and not to send any more weapons to Israel.” That, too, was met with great applause in the hall – and sharp criticism and accusations of anti-Semitism afterwards. His choice of words is harsh and caused contradiction the day after: Israeli people were “slaughtered” by Hamas, was the reaction. The outrage over the choice of words again obscures the content of what was said: Adra’s demand to stop arms deliveries, i.e. his specific political concern, received little attention – just as little attention was given to Abraham’s call for a ceasefire.
Given the violent reactions and the accusations of incitement and hatred that they receive, one might assume that they were calling for more weapons and more violence. They did the opposite. This is important, and it should not go unmentioned when criticizing the two filmmakers. (Abraham has received death threats since his speech. Dozens of Israeli filmmakers have expressed solidarity with him.)
There were further requests to speak from filmmakers whose works have nothing to do with the Middle East conflict. The American director Ben Russell, who accepted an award for the spin-off series “Encounters,” wore a keffiyeh, a “Palestinian scarf,” and casually described Israel’s actions as “genocide.” A statement that is certainly to be assessed very differently than that of Abraham and Adra, and which seemed more like an attempt to position oneself quickly and as extremely as possible.
The fact that the terror of Hamas was not mentioned, that it was not about the Israeli victims but only about the Palestinian ones, that no one expressed solidarity with the traumatized population of Israel – with the exception of the Berlinale managing director Mariette Rissenbeek – this one-sidedness became clear Quite often noticed and criticized. But it can hardly be denied that the acute humanitarian emergency is also one-sided. You don’t have to agree with the filmmakers who show solidarity with Palestine. But you shouldn’t shut them up.