Two filmmakers at the Berlinale [The Berlin Film Festival], one Israeli and one Palestinian made a joint film that won best documentary. At Saturday night’s awards event, Palestinian film-maker Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham jointly took to the stage on Saturday to accept the best documentary prize for their joint film No Other Land, which charts the eradication of Palestinian villages in the West Bank.
Yuval Abraham gave a speech about how they will both go back to their homes but they will never be treated the same: he will go back to a privileged life while the Palestinian colleague will go back to a Palestine without rights.
The German Minister of Culture below clapped among others and she came under attack with calls for her resignation: a delegate for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) called for Roth’s resignation, while a politician for the Free Democratic party (FDP) proposed that the film festival’s state funding be withdrawn.
As the Guardian noted, the Berlinale, one of the big three European film festivals alongside Cannes and Venice, was financed by the German state with about €12.9m this year, roughly a third of its overall budget.
Hence her statement below, which the Guardian posted, that she clapped for the Israeli guy and not the Palestinian: “Germany’s minister of state for culture has insisted she was only clapping the Israeli but not the Palestinian half of a film-making duo that won one of the major awards”.
It should be noted that Yuval has had multiple death threats since that speech and he was accused of being ‘anti-semitic’.
Yuval Abraham wrote this on X on 27 Feb, 2024:
A right-wing Israeli mob came to my family’s home yesterday to search for me, threatening close family members who fled to another town in the middle of the night. I am still getting death threats and had to cancel my flight home. This happened after Israeli media and German politicians absurdly labeled my Berlinale award speech – where I called for equality between Israelis and Palestinians, a ceasefire and an end to apartheid – as ‘antisemitic’.
The appalling misuse of this word by Germans, not only to silence Palestinian critics of Israel, but also to silence Israelis like me who support a ceasefire that will end the killing in Gaza and allow the release of the Israeli hostages – empties the word antisemitism of meaning and thus endangers Jews all over the world.
As my grandmother was born in a concentration camp in Libya and most of my grandfather’s family was murdered by Germans in the holocaust, I find it particularly outraging that German politicians in 2024 have the audacity to weaponize this term against me in a way that endangered my family.
But above all else, this behavior puts Palestinian co-director Basel Adra’s life in danger, who lives under a military occupation surrounded by violent settlements in Masafer Yatta. He is in far greater danger than I am. I’m happy our award winning film, No Other Land, is sparking an important international debate on this issue – and I hope that millions of people watch it when it comes out this year. Sparking a conversation is why we made it.
You can have harsh criticism of what me and Basel said on stage without demonizing us. If this is what you’re doing with your guilt for the holocaust – I don’t want your guilt.