BERLIN: The Berlin Film Festival is set to screen a documentary about an Israeli actor taken hostage by Hamas, organizers said Tuesday, as it looks to move on from a row about alleged anti-Semitism at last year’s edition.
The documentary called “A Letter to David” by Israeli director Tom Shoval recalls his friendship and work with David Cunio who was abducted from his home in a Kibbutz on October 7, 2023.aThe film is a “tender and deeply personal lament” from Shoval, programming co-director Michael Stutz told reporters at a press conference ahead of the February 13-23 festival.
Cunio’s fate remains unknown, with hopes raised by a recent ceasefire agreement that will see Hamas return its captives and Israel release Palestinian prisoners from jails.
The Berlin awards ceremony last year saw several filmmakers criticize Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which has now killed around 47,000 people and wounded 110,000, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.
US filmmaker Ben Russell, wearing a Palestinian scarf, accused Israel of committing “genocide” with its bombardment of the densely populated territory.
Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra said the local population was being “massacred” by Israel, to applause from the audience.
A spokeswoman for the German government, a staunch ally of Israel, said it was “unacceptable” that the Hamas attack on Israel which triggered the war had not been mentioned at the ceremony.
Berlin’s mayor Kai Wegner called the remarks “unacceptable” and said that there was “no place for anti-Semitism in Berlin.”
Wegner also said that he expected new festival director Tricia Tuttle to “ensure such incidents do not happen again.”
Tuttle said last month that the furor had put some film directors off the festival because of free speech concerns.
“Lots of filmmakers from Arab countries have approached us as well over the last weeks, just to make sure the festival is a space for open dialogue and discourse,” she added on Tuesday.
“Where we can, we like to have individual conversations, and we’d encourage filmmakers to come to us to talk to us about this.”
South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, famed for his 2019 prize-winner “Parasite,” is set to present his new film “Mickey 17” out of competition in Berlin.
The festival has also announced that it will give a lifetime achievement award to British actor Tilda Swinton, who has collaborated with Bong in the past.
Tuttle unveiled the full line up of films for its main competition, which includes work from American director Richard Linklater, South Korea’s Hong Sangsoo, Mexico’s Michel Franco and Radu Jude from Romania.
Linklater is returning for the first time since 2014 when he won a director’s silver bear, the second-highest award, for his epic “Boyhood” that was filmed over more than decade.
After Gaza row, Berlin festival to screen Israeli hostage film
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After Gaza row, Berlin festival to screen Israeli hostage film
- The Berlin awards ceremony last year saw several filmmakers criticize Israel’s military campaign in Gaza
- Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra said the local population was being “massacred” by Israel, to applause from the audience
Republican congress members pay an unofficial visit to Syria as US mulls sanctions relief
- Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana and Rep. Cory Mills of Florida visited the Damascus suburb of Jobar and met with Christian religious leaders
- They were toured around by Syrian Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Kabawat, the only woman and only Christian serving in the transitional government
DAMASCUS, Syria: Two Republican members of the US Congress were in the Syrian capital Friday on an unofficial visit organized by a Syrian-American nonprofit, the first by US legislators since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December.
Also Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa in his first visit since Assad’s fall and since the beginning of the Syrian uprising-turned-civil-war in 2011.
Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana and Rep. Cory Mills of Florida visited the Damascus suburb of Jobar, the site of a historic synagogue that was heavily damaged and looted in the civil war, and the Christian neighborhood of Bab Touma, where they met with Christian religious leaders. They also were set to meet Al-Sharaa and other government officials.
The Trump administration has yet to officially recognize the current Syrian government, led by Al-Sharaa, an Islamist former insurgent who led a lightning offensive that toppled Assad. Washington has not yet lifted harsh sanctions that were imposed during Assad’s rule.
Mills, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Associated Press that it was “very important to come here to be able to see it for myself, to be with various governmental bodies, to look at the needs of the Syrian people, to look at the needs for the nation for stability.”
Mills said he expected discussions with Al-Sharaa to include the issue of sanctions, as well as the government’s priorities and the need for the transitional administration to move toward a “democratically elected society.”
“Ultimately, it’s going to be the president’s decision” to lift sanctions or not, he said, although “Congress can advise.”
The Congress members came at the invitation of the Syrian American Alliance for Peace and Prosperity, a nonprofit based in Indiana that describes its mission as fostering “a sustainable political, economic, and social partnership between the people of Syria and the United States.”
Syrian Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Kabawat, the only woman and only Christian serving in the transitional government, joined the congressional team on a visit to Bab Touma, which she said was “very important” to Syrians.
The US State Department, meanwhile, issued a statement Friday reiterating its warning against US citizens visiting Syria. The statement said the State Department “is tracking credible information related to potential imminent attacks, including locations frequented by tourists.”
Palestinian leader visits as Israeli troops remain in Syria
The Palestinian official news agency Wafa said that Abbas’s visit, his first since 2007, was “aimed at strengthening Palestinian-Syrian relations and discussing pressing regional developments.”
Abbas and Al-Sharaa discussed the ongoing war in Gaza and international efforts to move forward long-stalled efforts to reach a two-state solution to the to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “agreed to form joint committees aimed at enhancing bilateral cooperation across multiple sectors,” it said.
Syria has a population of about 450,000 Palestinian refugees. The Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus was once widely considered the capital of the Palestinian diaspora before it was largely destroyed in the war.
Palestinian refugees in Syria have never been given citizenship, ostensibly to preserve their right to go back to the homes they fled or were forced from during the 1948 creation of the state of Israel. But in contrast to neighboring Lebanon, where Palestinians are banned from owning property or working in many professions, in Syria, Palestinians historically had all the rights of citizens except the right to vote and run for office.
Syria does not have diplomatic relations with Israel. While the new Syrian authorities have said publicly that they are not interested in entering a conflict with Israel, the Israeli government regards the Islamist former insurgents now in power in Damascus with suspicion.
Israeli forces seized a UN-patrolled buffer zone inside Syria after the rebels toppled Assad and have launched an extensive series of airstrikes on military facilities in Syria. Israeli officials have said that they will not allow the new Syrian military south of Damascus.
Abbas’ arrival in Damascus was delayed after Israeli authorities denied permission for a helicopter to land in Ramallah that was supposed to arrive from Jordan to take the Palestinian president, said a Palestinian official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. Israeli officials did not respond to a request for comment on the incident.
Hamas says ‘no’ to new Israeli bid to rewrite Gaza truce
GAZA: Hamas on Friday rejected Israel’s latest attempt to renegotiate the Gaza ceasefire as at least 43 more Palestinians died in airstrikes.
Among the victims were 10 members of the Baraka family killed in an attack on their home near Khan Younis.
The Israeli military said its troops were operating in the Shabura and Tel Al-Sultan areas near the southern city of Rafah, and in northern Gaza, where it has taken control of large areas east of Gaza City.
Last month Israel ended a two-month truce that had largely halted fighting, and it has since seized about a third of the enclave. A new Israeli offer to renew the truce for 45 days included demands that Hamas release 10 Israeli hostages and lay down its arms. The militants dismissed the proposal on Friday as imposing “impossible conditions.”
“Partial agreements are used by Benjamin Netanyahu as a cover for his political agenda ... we will not be complicit in this policy,” a Hamas spokesman said on Friday.
Hamas sought “a comprehensive deal involving a single-package prisoner exchange in return for halting the war, a withdrawal of the occupation from the Gaza Strip, and the commencement of reconstruction,” the spokesman said.
Egyptian mediators have been trying to revive the original January ceasefire deal but there has been little sign the two sides have moved closer on fundamental issues.
Tunisian court set to rule in conspiracy trial, lawyers protest
- Forty people, including high-profile politicians, businessmen and journalists, are being prosecuted in the case
- “It’s a farce, the rulings are ready, and what is happening is scandalous,” lawyer Ahmed Souab said
TUNIS: A Tunisian court is set to issue a ruling in the conspiracy case against prominent opponents, as lawyers protested and described the trial as a farce, while others called the proceedings a symbol of President Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule.
Rights groups say the trial highlights Saied’s full control over the judiciary since he dissolved the parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree before later dissolving the independent Supreme Judicial Council.
Forty people, including high-profile politicians, businessmen and journalists, are being prosecuted in the case. More than 20 have fled abroad since being charged.
Some of the opposition defendants — including Ghazi Chaouachi, Issam Chebbi, Jawahar Ben Mbrak, Abdelhamid Jlassi, Ridha BelHajj and Khyam Turki — have been in custody since being detained in 2023.
Following the judge’s decision to clear the courtroom in preparation for deliberation and the issuance of rulings, dozens of lawyers protested, raising slogans calling for freedom and justice.
“In my entire life, I have never witnessed a trial like this. It’s a farce, the rulings are ready, and what is happening is scandalous and shameful,” Lawyer Ahmed Souab told reporters.
Journalists and civil society groups were barred from attending the trial.
Some of the country’s most prominent opposition politicians — including Nejib Chebbi, the leader of the main National Salvation Front opposition coalition — face a range of conspiracy charges in the trial that started in March and has been postponed twice.
“The authorities want to criminalize the opposition. I wouldn’t be surprised if heavy sentences are issued tonight,” Chebbi told reporters before going into the court.
Authorities say the defendants, who also include business people and former officials including the former head of intelligence, Kamel Guizani, tried to destabilize the country and overthrow Saied.
Activists and families of the defendants shouted “free the prisoners,” “stop the farce” and other slogans.
“This authoritarian regime has nothing to offer Tunisians except more repression,” the leader of the opposition Workers’ Party, Hamma Hammami, said.
Protest letters from former Israeli soldiers lay bare profound rifts over brutal war
- Tens of thousands of academics, doctors, former ambassadors, students, and high-tech workers have signed similar letters of solidarity in recent days, also demanding an end to the war
TEL AVIV: When nearly 1,000 Israeli Air Force veterans signed an open letter last week calling for an end to the war in Gaza, the military responded immediately, saying it would dismiss any active reservist who signed the document.
But in the days since, thousands of retired and reservist soldiers across the military have signed similar letters of support.
The growing campaign, which accuses the government of perpetuating the war for political reasons and failing to bring home the remaining hostages, has laid bare the deep division and disillusionment over Israel’s fighting in Gaza.
By spilling over into the military, it has threatened national unity and raised questions about the army’s ability to continue fighting at full force.
It also resembles the bitter divisions that erupted in early 2023 over the government’s attempts to overhaul Israel’s legal system, which many say weakened the country and encouraged Hamas’ attack later that year that triggered the war.
“It’s crystal clear that the renewal of the war is for political reasons and not for security reasons,” said Guy Poran, a retired pilot who was one of the initiators of the air force letter.
The catalyst for the letters was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision on March 18 to return to war instead of sticking to a ceasefire that had facilitated the release of some hostages.
In their letters, the protesters have stopped short of refusing to serve. And the vast majority of the 10,000 soldiers who have signed are retired in any case.
Nonetheless, Poran said their decision to identify themselves as ex-pilots was deliberate — given the respect among Israel’s Jewish majority for the military, especially for fighter pilots and other prestigious units.
Tens of thousands of academics, doctors, former ambassadors, students, and high-tech workers have signed similar letters of solidarity in recent days, also demanding an end to the war.
“We are aware of the relative importance and the weight of the brand of Israeli Air Force pilots and felt that it is exactly the kind of case where we should use this title in order to influence society,” said Poran.
Herders suffer in West Bank as settlers encroach on grazing land
- Israeli shepherd outposts take 14 percent of the total area of Palestinian territory, report says
AL-MUGHAVIR, West Bank: Fatima Abu Naim, a mother of five, lives in a hillside cave in the occupied West Bank, under increasing pressure from Jewish settlers who, she says, try to steal her family’s sheep and come by regularly to tell her and her husband to leave.
“They say, ‘Go, I want to live here,’” she said.
The same stark message from settlers has been heard across the West Bank with increasing frequency since the start of the war in Gaza 18 months ago, notably in the largely empty hillsides where the Bedouin graze their flocks.
According to a report last week by the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, nearly half of the over 40 settler attacks documented at the end of March and early April hit Bedouin and herding communities, “including incidents involving arson, break-ins, and destruction of critical livelihood sources.”
The West Bank, an area of some 5,600 sq. km that sits between Jordan and Israel, has been at the heart of the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians since Israel seized it in the 1967 Middle East war.
FASTFACT
According to a report last week by the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, nearly half of the over 40 settler attacks documented at the end of March and early April hit Bedouin and herding communities, including incidents involving arson.
Under military occupation ever since, but seen by Palestinians as one of the core parts of a future independent state, it has been steadily cut up by fast-growing Israeli settlement clusters that now spread throughout the territory.
Most countries deem Israeli settlements to be illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this. Ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government talk openly about annexing the area completely.
Sparsely populated areas in the Jordan Valley, near the south Hebron hills, or in central upland areas of the West Bank have come under increasing pressure from outposts of settlers who have themselves begun grazing large flocks of sheep on the hillsides used by Bedouin and other herders.
According to a joint report last week by Israeli rights groups Peace Now and Kerem Navot, settlers have used such shepherding outposts to seize around 78,600 hectares of land, or 14 percent of the total area of the West Bank, harassing and intimidating nearby communities to expel them.
“The Jordan Valley or southern areas are where there used to be big meadows for Palestinians, and this is why these areas were targeted,” said Dror Etkes, one of the authors of the report.
“But if you look at a map, the outposts are everywhere. They keep constructing more and more.”
The report quotes documents from the attorney general’s office to show that around 8,000 hectares of West Bank land have been allocated for grazing by Israeli settlers in such outposts, who receive significant funding and other material support, including vehicles, from the government.
“The Bedouin communities are in many ways the most vulnerable,” said Yigal Bronner, an activist on the board of Kerem Navot who has monitored settler abuses for years and who says the problem has become more severe since the war in Gaza.
Without being able to graze their animals, many Bedouin cannot afford to maintain their flocks, leaving them with no way of earning a living, he said. “People are struggling to make ends meet.”
The windswept hillside where Abu Naim’s family lives in an encampment set up around two rock caves just outside the village of Al-Mughayir, is typical of the rugged terrain along the spine of the West Bank.
The family has already been forced to move from the Jordan Valley, where Bedouin communities have faced repeated attacks by violent groups of settlers who run flocks of their own.
Now living in their third home this year, she says they have once again faced aggression from intruders who she noted recently killed six of her family’s sheep and forced her husband to keep them penned up.
“The problems with the settlers started a year and a half ago, but we’ve only been harassed for two months now. The goal is to get us out of here,” she said.
“The sheep stay in the enclosure. They don’t let them out or anything.”
Abu Naim’s husband, who has confronted the settlers, was arrested this week for a reason she is unaware of. Palestinian and Israeli rights groups say there is effectively no legal redress for the herding communities, and the bitterness of the Gaza war has hardened attitudes further.
“This is our land,” said 65 year-old Asher Meth, a West Bank settler who was enjoying an outing at the springs of Ein Al-Auja, in the Jordan Valley that the nearby Bedouin community is prevented from accessing.
“And if the state of Israel would wake up, and say ‘Actually, do take the land’ and say ‘This land is now part of Israel’, the Arabs will understand better and move back from trying to kill us.”
A few hundred meters from the spring, in a large Bedouin encampment, 70-year-old Odeh Khalil has heard the message.
Ever since losing 300 sheep to a raid by settlers last August, he has kept his remaining animals in an enclosure, but he says he is determined to hang on for the moment.
“People cannot live without sheep. If we leave, it will be all gone,” he said.
“They want to deport us and say this is Israeli property.”
