Many participants in the Berlin Film Festival called for an end to the Israeli war on Gaza (Reuters)

The organizers of the Berlinale Film Festival denied responsibility for “anti-Israel posts” published on one of the festival’s social media accounts.

A festival spokesman told the German News Agency yesterday evening, Sunday, February 25, 2024: “The Panorama channel on Instagram was hacked today, and data was broadcast about the Middle East war that was not issued by the festival and does not represent the position of the Berlinale.”

The spokesman continued, "The fact that someone misused the Berlinale's social media platform to spread anti-Semitic hate speech is unacceptable," noting that the posts were immediately deleted, and an investigation is underway into how the incident occurred.

He added: "We have filed criminal charges against unknown persons. We condemn this criminal act in the strongest possible terms."

Social networking pioneers circulated snapshots from the panorama section of the “Berlinale” Instagram account yesterday, Sunday, which showed the slogan “Free Palestine - from the river to the sea.”

German politicians criticized some participants in the Berlin Film Festival's demand for a ceasefire in Gaza (Reuters)

German politicians criticize sympathy for Gaza victims

Many participants in the Berlin Film Festival made statements calling for an end to the Israeli war on Gaza, which was met with criticism and condemnation by German politicians.

While Palestinian director Basil Adra received an award for his documentary film about the West Bank, he called on Germany to stop sending weapons to Israel, in statements that were met with applause and cheers from the audience.

“It is very difficult for me to celebrate when there are tens of thousands of my people being killed and slaughtered by Israel in Gaza,” said Adra, whose film “No Other Land” talks about the displacement of Palestinians by Israeli settlers in villages in the West Bank.

Many filmmakers also criticized Israel during the awards ceremony held on Saturday because of its war on Gaza, which caused the death of more than 29,000 people, most of them women and children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Jerusalem-based Israeli director Yuval Abraham also condemned on stage what he described as the "apartheid" conditions suffered 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 hoped the festival's management would prevent "such incidents" in the future.

Wegner said in a post on the social media platform X: “What happened yesterday at the Berlin International Film Festival was unacceptable relativism. There is no place for anti-Semitism in Berlin, and this also applies to the arts.”

For his part, Volker Beck of the German Green Party and head of the German-Israeli Association condemned the audience's applause, considering that the concert was a "cultural, intellectual and moral low point."

While director Ben Russell condemned the "genocide" caused by the Israeli bombing of Gaza, several people on stage raised a banner with the words "Ceasefire Now."

Meanwhile, Berlin Culture Minister Joe Chialo, from the same conservative Christian Democratic Party as Berlin Mayor Wegener, said the awards ceremony was “marked by anti-Israel propaganda.”

It also heard criticism from within the Social Democratic Party of German Chancellor Olaf Schulz, and Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael Roth condemned "the genocide drive, the applause and the fact that no one really stood up and objected."

Source: German