Stefan Steinberg. WSWS, 20 Feb 2026

This year’s Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) has witnessed a growing conflict between a layer of artists determined to speak out against the genocide that has taken place and continues until this day in Gaza, and the Berlin festival management, together with its backers in the German government, determined to keep genocide off the agenda.

An open letter released February 17, and now signed by more than 100 film artists, all of whom have attended previous Berlinales, accuses the film festival of “censoring artists who oppose Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the German state’s key role in enabling it.”

The signatories include Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Peter Mullan, Mike Leigh, Nan Goldin, Adam McKay, Alia Shawkat, Brian Cox, Hany Abu Assad, Joshua Oppenheimer, Ken Loach, Mahdi Fleifel, Mark Ruffalo, Saleh Bakri and Sarah Friedland.

The open letter raises a serious allegation made by the Palestine Film Institute to the effect that the festival has been “policing filmmakers alongside a continued commitment to collaborate with Federal Police on their investigations.”

The letter refers to those filmmakers who spoke out on behalf of Palestinians and their rights on the Berlinale stage at the 2025 festival being aggressively reprimanded by senior festival programmers. The letter cites one film worker who told Film Workers for Palestine​: “there was a feeling of paranoia in the air, of not being protected and of being persecuted, which I had never felt before at a film festival.”

The open letter also deplores the statement made at the opening of the festival that artists should “stay out of politics”: The artists write:

We fervently disagree with ​the statement made by Berlinale​ 2026 jury president Wim Wenders​ that filmmaking is “the opposite of politics”​. You cannot separate one from the other. We are deeply concerned that the German state-funded Berlinale is helping put into practice what Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion recently condemned as Germany’s misuse of draconian legislation “to restrict advocacy for Palestinian rights, chilling public participation and shrinking discourse in academia and the arts.”

​The letter quotes the Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei who described what was happening in Germany as “doing what they did in the 1930s.”​

The public appeal points to the joint role of the US and German governments in supplying Israel with the weapons (including internationally forbidden US-made thermal and thermobaric weapons) it requires to continue its campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Noting that previous Berlinales had publicly condemned “atrocities ​carried out against​ people in Iran and Ukraine,” the letter concludes:

We call on the Berlinale to fulfil its moral duty and clearly state its opposition to Israel’s genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against Palestinians, and completely end its involvement in shielding Israel from criticism and calls for accountability.

In another significant development, Kaouther Ben Hania, director of the award-winning film The Voice of Hind Rajab, refused to accept the “Most Valuable Film” award handed out at the Cinema for Peace ceremony in Berlin this week after an Israeli general was recognized at the same gathering. Also in attendance at the “peace” gathering was the former US Secretary of State and war criminal Hillary Clinton.

While Cinema for Peace is not officially a part of the Berlinale, the gathering has been held since 2002 on a yearly basis to run parallel to the film festival and attract the same audience.

In refusing to take her award, Ben Hania said: “The Israeli army killed Hind Rajab; killed her family; killed the two paramedics who came to save her, with the complicity of the world’s most powerful governments and institutions.”

“I refuse to let their deaths become a backdrop for a polite speech about peace. Not while the structures that enabled them remain untouched,” she continued.

Ben Hania added that the death of the six-year-old Hind was “not an exception, it’s part of a genocide,” and she criticized those who described large-scale civilian killings as “self-defense” or “complex circumstances” while repressing all opposition.

“Peace requires justice and accountability, not glossy slogans,” she concluded.

In response to the artists’ open letter directed toward the Berlinale, its management and supporters in the German media have gone into overdrive to defend the festival’s stance.

Festival director Tricia Tuttle issued a statement, evasively declaring: “We are representing lots of people who have different views, including lots of people who live in Germany who want a more complex understanding of Israel’s positionality than maybe the rest of the world has right now.”

In one short paragraph, Tuttle repeats the phrase complex/complexity in relation to Israel three times—the very same words Kaouther Ben Hania criticised in her award rejection speech!

What is Tuttle talking about! There is no “complexity” when it comes to taking sides on the issue of genocide.

On the one side, are the broad masses of the world’s population who increasingly regard Israel as a pariah state responsible for one of the worst acts of genocidal violence since the Holocaust. This opposition, which has taken the form of numerous mass protests, demonstrations and strikes, also extends to those countries which are the closest allies of the state of Israel, the US, Germany, Great Britain and France. 

On the other side, are the governments listed above, together with bourgeois regimes and nominal opposition parties all over the world that continue to aid and maintain relations with the war criminals in Tel Aviv, thus making a continuation of the genocide possible.

In Germany, it should be noted, it was a Green Party Culture Minister Claudia Roth who in 2024 denounced a Berlinale jury team as antisemitic for awarding a prize to the film No Other Land, which documents the crimes of the Israeli army and government against the Palestinian population in the West Bank. More recently, a leading member of the Left Party, Andreas Büttner, raised false claims of antisemitism to close down an art exhibition held in Potsdam defending the rights of Palestinians.

The stirrings of opposition among film workers to the complicity of cultural institutions in supporting genocide is to be welcomed. At the same time, those engaged in the culture industry in Germany should take note. The comment made by a Palestine film worker cited in the open letter, “there was a feeling of paranoia in the air, of not being protected and of being persecuted, which I had never felt before at a film festival,” recalls a similar comment by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.

A year ago, Albanese was prevented from holding lectures in Germany on the situation in Gaza. Responding to the threats and intimidation she had faced in Germany, Albanese commented: “I have to admit that about 75 hours in this country have made me pretty nervous and I cannot wait to get back to ‘peaceful’ Tunisia [where she is a resident]. I have never felt this sense of lacking oxygen that I feel here.”

This process is not restricted to Germany. Across the globe, governments and a host of official institutions are using police-state methods, recalling actions taken by fascist governments in the 1930s, to arrest, intimidate, imprison without due process and violently repress opposition to the mass slaughter in Gaza. Genocide is being normalised by these forces in order to justify new wars and new atrocities directed at the broadest layers of the world population.  

Chris Hedges

Feb 16, 2026

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/godS-0hPQdU?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Full Text:

The vicious and sustained campaign mounted against Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, by Israel and the U.S. now includes the German, Italian, French, Austrian and Czech foreign ministers demanding her resignation. This campaign is part of an effort by industrial nations to at once sustain the genocide in Gaza — nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the sham ceasefire took effect — and silence all those who demand the international community abide by the rule of law.

The latest assault on Francesca, part of a concerted effort to discredit international bodies such as the U.N., is based on a deliberately truncated video of a talk Francesca gave in Doha on February 7 that distorts and misconstrues her words. But truth, of course, is irrelevant. The goal is to silence her and all who stand up for Palestinian rights.

Francesca was placed by the Trump administration on the Office of Foreign Assets Control list of the U.S. Treasury Department — normally used to sanction those accused of money laundering or being involved with terrorist organizations — six days after the release of her report, “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide,” which documented the global corporations that make billions of dollars from the genocide in Gaza and occupation of Palestinians.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control list — weaponized by the Trump administration to persecute Francesca and in violation of the diplomatic immunity granted to U.N. officials — bans her from entering the U.S. It prohibits any financial institution from having her as a client. A bank that engages in financial transactions with Francesca is banned from operating in dollars, faces multimillion-dollar fines and is blocked from international payment systems. This has cut her off from global banking, leaving her unable to use credit cards or book a hotel in her name. Her assets in the U.S. are frozen. It has seen her medical insurance refuse to reimburse her for medical expenses. It has resulted in institutions, including U.S. universities, human rights groups and NGOs that once collaborated with her severing ties, fearing onerous U.S. penalties. The sanctions followed those imposed in February and June of last year on The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Karim Khan along with two judges for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

By making Francesca, who receives frequent death threats, the lightening rod, these governments seek to deflect attention from the ongoing slaughter and humanitarian disaster in Gaza. They seek to mask Israel’s system of apartheid and unlawful occupation of historic Palestine. They seek to hide, most of all, their complicity with their continuing weapons shipments that fuel Israel’s genocide.

The pace of the genocide has slowed, but it has not stopped. Israel has seized 60 percent of Gaza and blocks most humanitarian aid, including fuel, food and medicine. At the same time, Israel is accelerating its seizure of the occupied West Bank, where more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes since October 2023.

The campaign against Francesca presages a terrifying world where Western industrial nations exploit and prey upon the weak, where the law is whatever powerful nations say it is, where those who dare to speak the truth and stand up for the rule of law are relentlessly persecuted, where genocide is another tool in the arsenal to crush the aspirations and rights of the vulnerable. This is a fight we must win. If we lose, if we let voices like Francesca’s be silenced, we will usher in an age of blood and terror.

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Thousands of Western nationals joined the Israeli military in its genocidal war on Gaza that killed over 72,000 Palestinians.

By Yashraj Sharma

Aljazeera, 15 Feb 2026

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Thousands of Western nationals joined the Israeli military amid its genocidal war in Gaza, raising questions over international legal accountability for foreign nationals implicated in alleged war crimes against Palestinians.

More than 50,000 soldiers in the Israeli military hold at least one other citizenship, with a majority of them holding US or European passports, information obtained by the Israeli NGO Hatzlacha through Israel’s Freedom of Information Law has revealed.

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Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed at least 72,061 people in military actions that have been dubbed war crimes and crimes against humanity by rights groups.

Rights organisations around the world have been trying to identify and prosecute foreign nationals, many of whom have posted videos of their abuse on social media, for their involvement in war crimes, particularly in Gaza.

So, what does the first such data reveal about the Israeli military? And what could be the legal implications for dual-national soldiers?

Which foreign nationals enlist most in the Israeli military?

At least 12,135 soldiers enlisted in the Israeli military hold United States passports, topping the list by a huge margin. That is in addition to 1,207 soldiers who possess another passport in addition to their US and Israeli ones.

The data – shared with Al Jazeera by Israeli lawyer Elad Man, who serves as the legal counsel for Hatzlacha – shows that 6,127 French nationals serve in the Israeli military.

The Israeli military, which shared such data for the first time, noted that soldiers holding multiple citizenships are counted more than once in the breakdown.

The numbers show service members enlisted in the military as of March 2025, 17 months into Israel’s devastating war in Gaza.

Russia stands at third, with 5,067 nationals serving in the Israeli military, followed by 3,901 Ukrainians and 1,668 Germans.