Criticism of Israel at the Berlin Film Festival fuels the debate on anti-Semitism

German newspapers also paid attention on Saturday to a speech by Ben Russell, an American filmmaker together won a prize for the best experimental film. He appeared on stage wearing a kaffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian scarf, and denounced a “genocide” in Gaza. In an interview, Russell said the news media response had been “surprising in its intensity and overwhelming in its one-sidedness.”

There was also a fierce resistance going on in Israel, Abraham said. He had postponed the flight to Jerusalem, he added, because he had received more than a hundred death threats on social media and feared for his safety.

Abraham said he could not understand why the German and Israeli media characterized his comments as anti-Semitic. On stage, he had called for an end to “apartheid” between Israeli and Palestinian citizens, but he justified the use of that term by saying that Israelis and Palestinians do not have the same rights, including the right to vote, or to freely to travel.

“If everything is anti-Semitic, the word loses its meaning,” Abraham said.

Because of the Holocaust, German officials have long felt a special responsibility to Israel. In 2019, lawmakers passed a resolution urging local governments to deny funding to any group or individual that “actively supports” a boycott of Israel, which Israel officially labeled as anti-Semitic.

Since then, arts administrators have closed museum exhibitions, concerts and lectures, or pulled artists from programs if they had signed open letters in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, known as BDS.

But in the more polarized atmosphere following the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks and Israeli military operations in Gaza, many artists have complained that the criteria for closing exhibitions and events have been broadened to include artists who accuse Israel of war crimes. or of genocide.