Afrasianet - Hossam Fahmi - German support for the Israeli government has not ceased, even as the huge number of civilian casualties in Gaza has increased: tens of thousands have been killed, mostly women and children, but during the war, the German government has increased its arms exports to Israel ten times its exports last year.

Germany's support for Israel was not only at the level of arms extension, but also extended political and diplomatic support, the latest of which was the vote of Germany's representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council against the recommendation to stop arms exports to Tel Aviv.

Germany's unilateral support at the artistic and cultural level continued, and extended to the extent of banning Palestinian voices or defending Palestine inside Germany, restricting the right to expression and creativity during the past six months in an unprecedented way in Germany since reunification in the early nineties.

How does the German government continue to lose its global diplomatic capital, because of its full support for the Israeli government, its disregard for the blood of tens of thousands of civilians and the starvation of children? How are the voices of artists and creators inside Germany trying to defend Palestine, defying difficulties and threats?

The documentary "No Other Land" was screened at the Berlinale in February this year, about the displacement of West Bankers and the destruction of their villages by the Israeli army and Zionist settlers.

During the screening of the film, some of the audience chanted "Freedom for Palestine", which led to accusations of anti-Semitism in the film and the audience, and a campaign against them was launched in the German media.

The campaign continued and intensified with the film winning the award for best documentary at the festival, especially after the speech of the film's directors, namely the Palestinian Bassel Adra, who called on the German government to stop exporting weapons to Israel, and the Israeli activist and journalist Yuval Abraham, who described Israel as an apartheid state.

After the ceremony, a fierce campaign was launched to attack the filmmakers and stigmatize them as anti-Semitic, and the campaign and comments came out by the Mayor of Berlin, "Kai Wegener" and "Claudia Roth", the Federal Commissioner for Culture and Information, and the accusations were published in a propaganda form in German newspapers and channels.

This eventually led to Israeli film director Yuval Avraham and his family being subjected to death threats from right-wing Israeli extremists, prompting the Berlinale Festival's government-independent management to issue an official statement defending its choices in screening the film and the foreign artists who expressed their opinion of solidarity with Palestine on the festival stage.

Official German agitation remains at its height, and accusations of anti-Semitism are distributed collectively for any criticism of the Israeli war machine, even if this criticism is sometimes directed by Jewish and Israeli activists.

The German government in the state of Saarland has decided to cancel an art exhibition by Jewish artist Candice Breitz because of her statements defending the Palestinians and criticizing Netanyahu's far-right government.

Breitz then posted on her official Instagram account part of a speech she gave at a demonstration in the streets of Berlin: "We gathered today to demonstrate against the ongoing erosion of the public sphere in Germany, through the weapon of accusation of anti-Semitism, often used as cover to cover Islamophobia and racism.

While the German state and society suffer from sweeping Islamophobia and undeniable racism, politicians and state media cover this up by accusing foreign opponents and defenders of the Palestinian right to life of anti-Semitism. They are the director of the German Museum in charge of the exhibition, and the minister of culture of the Zaranand government – they are defenders of the Judaism represented by Israel in the face of a Jewish artist.

This frenzy is increasing in preventing everything that is Palestinian or in solidarity with Palestine, even if it was years ago, and it has reached the point of searching what some artists have written, expressed or supported during their past, and for example, the Grammy-winning American musician Laurie Anderson canceled her participation as a visiting professor at Volkvang University in Essen, Germany, because the university administration questioned her for a letter of support for the Palestinians, which she had signed in 2021, and Anderson found  the accountability strange, And I decided to cancel the trip.

Germany's battles did not stop at banning exhibitions and seminars and threatening to ban awards, but even went so far as to cut off government funding for art programs and projects, as happened with the Oyoun Cultural and Art Center in Berlin's Neukölln district, which suspended its government funding for hosting an event for Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist organization that defends Palestinian rights.

This was followed by defamation campaigns against the center, led by the newspaper "Tagesspiegel", which is one of the most famous Berlin newspapers, and it always describes as anti-Semitism every event or statement that criticizes the Israeli war machine, but the management of the "Oyoun" center was able to obtain a court ruling against the newspaper, forcing it to amend or delete the defamation and accusations it broadcast against the Cultural Center.

On the other hand, the suffering of the Jewish Voice for Peace was even greater, especially after the suspension of its main bank account at the state-owned Sparkasse public bank and its inability to dispose of its funds. This peace-loving German Jewish community participated in almost all events defending Palestinian rights in Berlin, and its members were exposed to daily harm at the hands of the German police force.

This systematic confiscation of all cultural and artistic views defending Palestine inside Germany was also accompanied by attempts to legalize this McCarthy situation (after Joseph McCarthy), as the Minister of Culture in the Berlin government, Joey Kayallo, from the Christian Democratic Party, tried to pass a law granting him "non-discrimination", but in fact it prevents any project critical of Israel from obtaining government funding.

Mass demonstrations of artists and intellectuals ensued in Berlin, some of which surrounded Kayallo's office itself, and lawyers eventually assured him that the decision was unconstitutional, and the minister decided to withdraw it.

In the midst of this gloomy and McCarthyite atmosphere, a number of artists in Berlin launched a "Strike Germany" campaign, to boycott all cultural and artistic events and projects run by the German government, with clear demands to stop.

The demands are to launch freedom of creativity, with a focus on fighting anti-Semitism and systematic racism against Arabs and Palestinians at the same time, and more than a thousand German and international artists have signed the strike and boycott campaign, most notably the writer "Annie Arnault", winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2022.

Two months after the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, the Jewish writer Masha Jessen published an article in the American newspaper "The New Yorker", comparing what the Nazis did in World War II, and what the Israeli army is doing in Gaza, and in response the German government of Bremen withdrew from honoring the writer "Jessen" with the "Hanna Arendt" Prize.

After a hate campaign and intense attack on Jessen for criticizing Israel's war machine, she said: "If Hanna Arendt herself were in Germany today, she wouldn't have been nominated for the award that bears her name.

This is how the situation of cultural and artistic freedom looks like in Germany today, as there is no room for intellectual or artistic theses that oppose the official voice cheering for the continued killing and export of weapons to the Israeli army, but the artistic movement is trying to resist, including activists of different races and cultural backgrounds, so that Germany does not reach what it was 70 years ago.