Strong pro-Israel consensus among political leaders has led to conflict with Berlin’s diverse cultural sector and a fraught debate over antisemitism
Two weeks after Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, Berlin’s senate for culture commissioned a legal report to establish whether a cultural centre in the German capital’s Neukölln district had violated the city’s antisemitism prevention guidelines and should lose its funding as a result.
In question were several statements that the cultural centre had posted or shared on its social media channels in response to Israel’s retaliation against Gaza – including phrases such as “apartheid state” and “settler colonialism”. The investigation was also, however, looking at the centre’s plans to host an event one wouldn’t ordinarily suspect of meeting anyone’s definition of antisemitism: a wake hosted by a Jewish organisation to commemorate the victims of 7 October.
