Claus Mueller

Given its past, Germany has a dilemma defining, coping with, and translating antisemitism it into policies. In this most advanced European economy with a population of 84.7 million in 2023, including 5.5 million Muslims as well as a Jewish community of at least 225 thousand, there seems to be a political consensus about a special relationship with the state of Israel and the need to protect its interests. This has been engrained by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2008 declaration that Israel’s security is part of Germany’s reason for existence and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s widely adopted definition of antisemitism included any critic of the State of Israel that alleges racist policies, regardless of the truth of such allegations.

The close alliance between Germany and Israel stemming from restitution payments and arms deals which began in the 1950s has led to Israel having an outsized influence on German culture. As distinct from most other countries, financial support for virtually all cultural projects from exhibitions, film festivals, conferences, to art works, is provided in Germany by state and federal public agencies which in turn are funded by tax payers.  Any project involving an individual who has been identified as demonstrating antisemitism can be denied funding.  This process of institutionalizing constraint has been closely documented in the December 2023 New Yorker essay “In The Shadow of The Holocaust” by Masha Gessen, the recipient of the 2023 Hanna Ahrendt Award, where she suggests parallels between Nazi run East European Ghettos and the Gaza strip conditions. As a consequence, several German organizations, including the German-Israel Society, requested the Ahrendt Award be withdrawn.  The award sponsor Heinrich Boell Stiftung declined.

Of the most important international film festivals, Cannes, Venice, and Berlin, the Berlinale is the biggest public international film festival and the most relevant one when it comes to embracing political issues ever since its establishment 75 years ago. Funded by the federal government, income from the Berlin government, and working with corporate support it offered an extensive program in 2024 including more than 400 productions, selling more than 300,000 tickets and attracting more than 20,000 global film professionals and critics. Having attended many Berlinales for decades, I always experienced the film festival and discussions as spirited and open events, but do not recall any public censoring by festival management and politicians of statements by award winners and the audiences at the awards ceremony.  The outgoing festival management condemned the awardees’ statements after they had applauded the award winner, NO OTHER LAND during the ceremony. The mostly conservative politicians did likewise, though they added during the next day’s their demand that the orientation of the Berlinale should be changed.

NO OTHER LAND, a Palestinian Norwegian 2023 co-production by several local filmmakers directed by the Palestinian Basel Adra and Israeli Yuval Abraham received the top documentary honors of the festival and was also voted the best film by the 24,000 member audience in the  Berlinale Panorama section which programmed it.  NO OTHER LAND It is a highly personalized visual documentation of the devastation of Palestinian villages in the West Bank’s Masafer Yatta area by Israeli armed forces bulldozing homes in front of the residents.  The IDF wants to use that area as a military zone.  NO OTHER LAND covers  spring 2019 to winter of 2023  and reflects the story of Basel Adra who grew up as part of the slow motion West Bank destruction of Palestinian  communities.  By mid-2023, 520,000 colonial settlers lived on the West Bank alongside 3 million Palestinians. The documentary, made by a collective of four film directors, includes horrifying footage often shot on phone cameras, the continual frequent demolition of homes paralleling the colonization of the West Bank, and the violence of colonial settlers.

Berlin’s Mayor Kai Wagner from the CDU, whose government provides financial support to the Berlinale, emphasized that Berlin is firmly on the side of Israel and that he expected the new management of the Berlinale to act accordingly.  His chief of culture Joe Chialo suggested recently that whoever applies for funding in Berlin has to insert an antidiscrimination provision in the proposal expressing opposition to antisemitism, provisions which are also discussed now in other states. One day after the awards, Chialo condemned so-called anti-Israeli propaganda on the Berlinale stage. Chancellor Olaf Schulz from the social democratic party strongly objected to critical comments about Israel at the Berlinale. The president of the German Israel Society called the applause for Basel Adra the “cultural, intellectual, and ethical lowest point” of the Berlinale. Israel’s ambassador Ron Prosor argued that under the cover of freedom of speech and the arts antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric were celebrated in Berlin.

Not mentioned in  NO OTHER LAND is that most settlers carry arms while Palestinians are not allowed to have arms.  During the award ceremony, Berena Paravel, jury members, and other film makers, including Jewish ones, expressed support for a Gaza cease fire now, as did the audience. Some objected to the Gaza war against Hamas, others called Israel‘s action a genocide war. Basel Adra denounced the massacre of Palestinians by Israel and Germany selling arms to Israel.  Abraham Yuval deplored Israel’s West Bank rule with civil law for Israelis and military law for Palestinians without civil rights, thus apartheid. Yuval Abraham also reported that after his presentation at the Berlinale gala, including his request for ending the Hamas Israel war and terminating the West Bank apartheid, he and members of his family received death threats  from the Israeli mob. He also found it revolting that German politicians labeled him as antisemitic; his grandmother was born in a concentration camp and many family members of his grandfather were murdered by the Germans during the Holocaust.

For a review of German-Israel relations in the late 50s & 60s check  out Claus Mueller’s  About Executing Eichmann, filmfestivals.com,  February, 21, 2021

Claus Mueller, filmexchange@gmail.com   1 347 210 6759