[D66] Berlinale: No Other Land

[René Oudeweg]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Other_Land

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/02/22/luee-f22.html

wsws.org
Will books be burned again soon in Germany?
7–9 minutes

Reading the media and official comments about the closing gala of this 
year’s Berlin International Film Festival, the Berlinale, the question 
inevitably arises: will books soon be burned again in Germany? Because 
some award-winners and festival jurors had the courage to call things by 
their right names, instead of being mouthpieces of the powers that be, 
they are treated like criminals.

The fact that the film No Other Land, which documents the brutal 
expulsion of Palestinian villagers in the West Bank, received both the 
documentary prize awarded by a jury and the audience prize for 
documentaries was too much to bear for the morality watchdogs in the 
various editorial offices and political party headquarters.

After two of the filmmakers, Israeli Yuval Abraham and Palestinian Basel 
Adra, also condemned the massacre in Gaza and apartheid in Israel during 
the awards ceremony, festival jury members demanded a ceasefire and 
another prize winner appeared wearing a Palestinian scarf, the outrage 
in official circles knew no bounds.

“Embarrassing, shameful, disturbing and propagandistic,” said Christian 
Tretbar, the editor-in-chief of the Tagesspiegel. “The shame of Berlin,” 
headlined the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Die Welt raged against “a milieu 
blind to reality” that “sought the big stage for its antisemitism in a 
self-centered drunkenness.” The list goes on and on.

Although the Israeli army has murdered more than 30,000 Palestinians, 
displaced two million, starved and systematically destroyed homes, 
hospitals, schools and mosques over four and a half months, and is 
planning another offensive against Rafah, where 1.5 million now exist 
densely packed together, the appeal for a ceasefire alone is considered 
“antisemitism.”

The call for state-led conformity and suppression is omnipresent. The 
public funding of art is to be transformed into a tool of censorship. 
“It must be made clear: there is no state money for antisemitism,” 
asserted the Green politician Volker Beck. And Die Welt blustered: “The 
fact that taxpayers’ money is spent on this is inexcusable.”

Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (Free Democrats) is 
examining whether any statements were made that could be pursued under 
criminal law. And the Mayor of Berlin, Kai Wegner, warned on X/Twitter: 
“I expect the new management of the Berlinale to ensure that such 
incidents do not happen again.”

It is clear that this is not just about the Berlinale, but about the 
suppression of the freedom of any artistic activity. If art is forbidden 
to tell the truth, it is not art, but state propaganda.

The consequences of the campaign go even further. It is life-threatening 
for those affected. No Other Land co-director Abraham had to delay his 
return trip to Israel the day after the award ceremony because, as he 
reported on his X account, “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.” He continues to 
receive death threats.

The reason, according to Abraham, is the absurd description of his 
Berlinale prize speech 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,” he said.

Abraham, whose grandmother was born in a concentration camp in Libya 
operated by Germany’s Italian fascist allies, and whose grandfather’s 
family was largely murdered by Germans in the Holocaust, finds 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.”

Abraham wrote that he is pleased that their film No Other Land is 
sparking an important international debate on this issue and hopes that 
millions of people will see the film. One can criticize his statements 
at the award ceremony without demonizing them, he said. “If this is what 
you’re doing with your guilt for the Holocaust–I don’t want your guilt,” 
he added.

In fact, the denunciation of pro-Palestinian statements at the Berlinale 
has nothing to do with German responsibility for the Holocaust. The 
German ruling class, which after 1945 left tens of thousands of Nazi 
criminals in their government offices, on court benches and in 
university professorships, and allowed mass murderers who had killed 
enormous numbers of Jews to escape unscathed, never made a serious 
effort to come to terms with the Holocaust. It also supports Israel, 
which serves as a bridgehead for its imperialist interests in the Middle 
East, for purely geostrategic reasons.

The bitterness with which it pursues any criticism of the Israeli 
genocide in Gaza has other motives. German imperialism sees the courage 
with which Abraham, Adra and other artists face official propaganda as a 
harbinger and expression of a broad opposition to its war policy.

Gaza is only one front where the German government supports and fuels a 
murderous war. In the conflict with Russia in Ukraine, it has invested 
22 billion euros [US$24 billion] in the past two years alone–not 
counting the billions that flowed through the European Union.

The more desperate the situation on the front, the more it escalates the 
war, the goal of which is the subjugation and dismemberment of Russia 
and the control of its precious raw materials. Even the use of ground 
troops and the construction of Germany’s own atomic bomb are now under 
discussion. Defence Minister Boris Pistorius wants to make Germany “fit 
for war,” which requires a further increase in military spending and 
corresponding social cuts.

This cannot be achieved by democratic means. The war policy has no 
support among the general population. The vast majority of young people 
are not prepared to be used like their great-grandfathers as cannon 
fodder in the interests of German corporations and banks. And the 
working class refuses to bear the costs of rearmament and war through 
further rounds of austerity.

When Nazi leader Jospeh Goebbels and the students and professors 
beholden to him threw books by Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Karl Liebknecht, 
Carl von Ossietzky, Bertold Brecht, Heinrich Mann and dozens of others 
into the flames on May 10, 1933, they sent a signal that they would nip 
any opposition to war and militarism in the bud. The persecution of 
critical artists, youth and workers under the false accusation of 
antisemitism—persecution that is enthusiastically supported by the real 
antisemites in the ranks of the AfD (Alternative for Germany)—serves the 
same purpose today.

The defence of the freedom of art, of democracy and social gains today 
coincides directly with the struggle against war, militarism and its 
cause, the capitalist system.