Criticism of Israel's bombing of Gaza and the killing of around 30,000 people so far during Berlin's annual film festival ignited condemnation from German politicians over the weekend.
In an awards ceremony concluding the Berlinale, Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra accepted an award for his documentary about the West Bank and called on Germany to stop sending weapons to Israel, in remarks that were met with applause and cheers from the audience.
"It is very hard for me to celebrate when there are tens of thousands of my people being slaughtered and massacred by Israel in Gaza," said Adra, whose film "No Other Land" depicts the Israeli settler displacement of Palestinians in villages in the West Bank.
During the awards ceremony on Saturday evening, several other filmmakers criticized Israel over the bombing of Gaza, which has seen more than 29,600 people killed, mostly women and children, according to authorities.
West Jerusalem-based Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham also condemned onstage the apartheid conditions being endured by Palestinians in Israel.
Several politicians later took to social media to condemn the remarks as "anti-Semitic," with Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner saying he hopes Berlinale's future management will prevent "such incidents" from ever happening again.
"What happened yesterday at the Berlinale was an unacceptable relativization. There is no place for anti-Semitism in Berlin, and that also applies to the arts," Wegner said on Sunday in a post on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
Volker Beck of Germany's Greens and president of the German-Israeli Society condemned the applause from the audience and said the awards ceremony was "a cultural, intellectual and ethical low point" of the Berlinale.
Critics said the participants who criticized Israel's indiscriminate attacks killing just under 30,000 people, destroying 80% of the Gaza Strip and displacing at least 1.5 million people, did so without mentioning the Hamas incursion into Israel on Oct. 7, which killed 1,200 people.
Filmmaker Ben Russell condemned Israel's bombardment of Gaza as "genocide." Several people onstage meanwhile held up a sign with the words "ceasefire now" on it.
Berlin's Culture Minister Joe Chialo, from the same conservative Christian Democrats party as Wegner, meanwhile said the awards ceremony was "characterized by self-righteous anti-Israeli propaganda."
Criticism was also heard from within the Social Democrats of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and foreign affairs committee chairperson Michael Roth condemned "the drivel about genocide, the applause (and) the fact that nobody really stood up and objected."
Later on Sunday evening, Berlinale distanced the event from an anti-Israel Instagram post on the Middle East conflict that was briefly published on one of Berlinale's accounts.
"Panorama's Instagram channel was hacked today, and statements were posted about the Middle East war that does not originate from the festival and does not represent the position of the Berlinale," a festival spokesperson told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) on Sunday evening.
"The fact that someone is misusing a Berlinale social media channel for 'anti-Semitic hate speech' is intolerable," the spokesperson said. The posts were deleted immediately and an investigation is underway into how the incident occurred.
"And we have filed criminal charges against unknown persons. We condemn this 'criminal act' in the strongest possible terms."
Screenshots from the account of the Panorama section of the Berlinale circulated on social media platform X on Sunday. One photo showed the slogan "Free Palestine – From the River to the Sea."
The slogan suggests that there should be a free Palestine in an area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – which includes the area where Israel is located.
