An Israeli film-maker who won one of the top prizes at the Berlin film festival has said German officials’ description of the awards ceremony as “antisemitic” has led to death threats and the physical intimidation of family members, causing him to hold off plans to return to Israel.
Yuval Abraham, 29, was on Saturday awarded the Berlinale’s best documentary award for No Other Land, which charts the eradication of Palestinian villages in Masafer Yatta in the West Bank.
Abraham’s acceptance speech, in which he decried a “situation of apartheid” and called for a ceasefire in Gaza, was one of several moments during the closing ceremony in which film-makers expressed solidarity with Palestine. It sparked an outcry in German media the following day, with several politicians alleging the speeches had been “antisemitic”.
“To stand on German soil as the son of Holocaust survivors and call for a ceasefire – and to then be labelled as antisemitic is not only outrageous, it is also literally putting Jewish lives in danger,” Abraham told the Guardian.
“I don’t know what Germany is trying to do with us,” he added. “If this is Germany’s way of dealing with its guilt over the Holocaust, they are emptying it of all meaning.”
I’ve said it before that Germany has no choice here and can never act rationally on this subject. They don’t have a way out.
They could consider not labelling any criticism of Israel as antisemitic.
They do have a way out - instead of pretending to have achieved holiness on this subject, just not perpetuate the problem. Boring and mundane, yeah.
But this is actually the hardest thing to do for people of all European (in very general sense) cultures, even USSR had that “догнать и перегнать”, Europeans simply can’t admit that the best they can do in some cases is to not make matters worse. They always need to claim the crown.
White knight syndrome I suppose.