Middle East crisis: Hamas open to deal but willing to keep fighting, leader says

He called on German lawmakers to “stop sending weapons to Israel,” before Abraham called for a ceasefire and an end to the Israeli occupation.

The audience, including German Culture Minister Claudia Roth, applauded loudly, and there were whistles and cheers in the hall.

In the days since, Abraham and Adra’s speeches have become the latest flashpoint in a long-running debate in Germany over whether public statements by filmmakers, musicians and other artists should be described as anti-Semitic if they do not conform to the official position of Germany over Israel.

Dozens of German journalists and politicians have done so denounced the speeches. On Sunday, Kai Wegner, the mayor of Berlin, said said in messages on X that the filmmakers’ statements were filled with “unbearable relativization” as they omitted any mention of Hamas.

Roth, the culture minister, said in an Instagram post on Monday that the “shockingly one-sided” speeches were “marked by a deep hatred of Israel.” Her department was opening an investigation into the matter, she said.

The German art sector has been under increased scrutiny since 2022, when months of furor arose over anti-Semitic caricatures being shown at the influential Documenta art exhibition. On Sunday, Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, said: said on X that the speeches at the film festival showed “once again” that Germany had a problem.

“Under the guise of freedom of speech and art, anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric is celebrated,” Prosor said. “You don’t need seven professors to state the obvious: This is blatantly anti-Semitic discourse,” he added.

German newspapers also paid attention on Saturday to a speech by Ben Russell, an American filmmaker won a prize together at the festival. 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 a resolution adopted local governments are being urged to deny funding to any group or individual that “actively supports” a boycott of Israel, which the country has officially labeled 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.

Thorsten Benner, a political analyst and director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin, said that as much as Germany needed to combat rising anti-Semitism, the furore surrounding the speeches at the film festival – known as the Berlinale – showed that the response on the views of some artists had become ‘exaggerated and unproductive’.

Benner said he disagreed with the filmmaker referring to “genocide” in Gaza, but added that the accuracy of the term is currently being debated. at the International Court of Justiceso it couldn’t be banned in Germany.

“We risk very liberally labeling any legitimate criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic,” he said.

These accusations become particularly sensitive when they are directed against Jewish people. Abraham, the film director, said he had found the discussion about his speech in Germany absurd because he was Jewish and had relatives murdered during the Holocaust. When German newspapers and politicians criticized his views, he said, it was not only “irritating” but also “irresponsible.”

Germany must fight anti-Semitism, Abraham said. But, he added, shutting down legitimate discussions was “not the lesson to be learned from the Holocaust.”