Alarming Levels of Political Distortion

In Haaretz, Hanno Hauenstein writes:

Shortly before "No Other Land" won best documentary at the Berlin International Film Festival, I moderated a panel at the festival alongside a group of filmmakers, including Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham, the protagonists and two of the co-creators of the Palestinian-Israeli team that made it.

The documentary tells the story of home demolitions and forced displacement of Palestinian communities in Masafer Yatta – a cluster of West Bank villages in the Southern Hebron Hills that are at the center of a decades-long and now-accelerated struggle between the Palestinian communities who live there, the Israeli government and military, and extremist settlers.

During our discussion, Adra, who is Palestinian and Abraham who is Israeli, characterized their collaboration as one of "co-resistance instead of coexistence." As the film shows in harrowing detail, Adra and Abraham use their voices and cameras to resist and shed light on the systemic discrimination against Palestinians in the West Bank. It's a reality best encapsulated in a term Germans don't really like hearing: "apartheid."

Abraham used this term to describe the divergent realities he and Adra live everyday back home in his acceptance speech upon receiving the top prize as the film festival known as the Berlinale, Adra then went on to implore Germany to stop arming Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza which has seen a catastrophic loss of civilian life in Gaza. Some 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians.

Their statements sparked an immediate backlash, with journalists working for news organizations owned by Axel Springer, a right-wing, explicitly pro-Israeli media company, leading the charge.

The reports quickly spilled out across the majority of Germany's news outlets decrying the Berlinale speeches as an "antisemitism scandal" fueling strident responses from high-ranking German politicians that then captured the attention of the Israeli media as well. In wake of the damning press coverage Abraham has been receiving death threats so severe he has had to delay his return home. His family's home even became the target of a right-wing Israeli mob.

The fallout over Abraham's and Adra's comments, and other critical voices at the film festival's awards ceremony, expose a long-time problem in Germany in which critical discourse about Israel-Palestine is quickly labeled as antisemitic, shutting down the possibility of measured or thoughtful discourse. As a German myself, I feel troubled and ashamed by what happened at the Berlinale as well as the broader trend it indicates. The dismissal of Palestinian voices, as well as the growing marginalization of left-wing Jewish and progressive Israeli ones, all in the name of supposedly reckoning with Germany's deeply antisemitic past, has reached alarming levels of political distortion.

Germans increasingly appear to try to absolve their shame over the Holocaust by policing dissenting voices that challenge the prevailing pro-Israeli German state narrative. The price is often grotesque disregard for the very descendants of the victims of our forefathers' crimes, let alone for the plight of Palestinians.

In doing so, many Germans today place a performance of staunch pro-Israel rhetoric above the very values that should guide any right-minded individual towards a firm rejection of both antisemitism and racism. Such travesty bears little connection with the ongoing debates within Israeli civil society or with Palestinians' well-founded aspirations for liberation and self-determination.

During the award ceremony, Abraham and Adra weren't the only ones that drew Germany's wrath. Ben Russell, an American filmmaker who also received a prize, took to the stage wearing a keffiyeh, and denounced Israel's actions in Gaza as genocide. Other filmmakers called for a ceasefire. Such statements come amid a profound upheaval in Germany's cultural scene, catalyzed by the events that unfolded following October 7. Recent months have seen a spate of cancellations of exhibitions, conferences, and other cultural events over artists' outspoken statements on Israel-Palestine, including those by Palestinians and Jews.

Notable examples were a cancellation of an award ceremony for the Palestinian writer Adania Shibli in October, as well as the international scandal surrounding the cancellation of the Hannah Arendt prize ceremony for Masha Gessen, a Russian-American Jewish writer who had compared Gaza to Jewish ghettos under the Nazis, in December.

Berlin mayor Kai Wegner denounced the Berlinale ceremony as "unacceptable relativization" and "antisemitism." Berlin's culture minister Joe Chialo echoed similar sentiments, condemning it as "anti-Israeli propaganda". A Bundestag member for Germany's liberal party, Frank Müller-Rosentritt even called to defund Berlinale. And Germany's justice minister Marco Buschmann announced potential legal repercussions. A particularly embarrassing aspect of the story involved Germany's Culture Minister Claudia Roth of the Green party.

A screenshot of the award ceremony published by the Axel Springer tabloid Bild attempted to scandalize her clapping during the prize presentation for Abraham and Adra. Shortly after, an official statement by the Federal Culture Ministry's Account on behalf of Roth clarified that her applause was directed at "the Jewish-Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham," pointedly excluding recognition for the Palestinian Adra.

In essence, the statement perpetuated the very discriminatory logic the critique of which Roth had allegedly applauded, adding a bewildering layer of absurdity and political clumsiness to the situation.

Anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli incidents in Germany have been on the rise ever since the beginning of the war – one particularly disturbing incident involving the throwing of a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue in Berlin in late October, luckily without injuries; another involved physical violence against a couple speaking Hebrew at a McDonalds in Berlin. Less than five years ago, a chilling reminder of the persistence of anti-Semitism shook Germany when a right-wing extremist attempted to storm a synagogue in the city of Halle intending to murder Jews.

At the same time, Germany has honed a particular sensitivity to what is labeled as "imported" anti-Semitism, predominantly associated with people of Muslim or Arab descent who criticize or protest Israel's policies.

In a widely-discussed speech at the end of 2023, German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck called for Muslims to distance themselves from antisemitism, effectively casting all Muslims in Germany as antisemitic until proven otherwise.

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier echoed this sentiment by urging individuals of Arab origin to distance themselves from Hamas in the aftermath of the October 7 attack. The current debacle surrounding the treatment of Abraham and Adra demonstrates how Germany's current trajectory risks perverting the noble pursuit of grappling with historical responsibility into a kind of shield for not dealing with the deeply unjust treatment of Palestinians – and to allow the suppression of dissent within our own communities – even those visiting our country to, say, receive a prize.

In the meantime, Germany has interpreted its so-called "Staatsraison" (an abstract policy of safeguarding Israel rooted in the idea that the Jewish state's security is Germany's responsibility because of the Nazi genocide) by ramping up its weapons exports to the most right-wing government in Israel's history, despite its disastrous conduct in Gaza, while allowing the neo-fascist AfD party and other equally dubious actors to align themselves with its "Staatsraison" – a convenient tool for hiding evident antisemitism under the guise of unwavering support for Israel.

Unless Germany aims to further diminish its reputation as a country that learned something from its dark past, it must cease its bias against Palestinians and left-wing Israelis and engage in a profound reckoning with what historical responsibility might look like in 2024.

Admittedly, the prospects for such realignment look pretty bleak these days. That's why Germany needs an urgent reminder why it finally should listen to critical voices – like those of Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham – instead of stifling them.