Like many other artists, Dieter Hallervorden has commented on the war in Gaza. The actor criticized Israel, called for a ceasefire and also gave Germany’s Middle East policy a tough lesson.
In a three-minute video that the 88-year-old uploaded to Facebook on Tuesday, Hallervorden calls for a rethink of Israel policy against the backdrop of Hamas propaganda videos and news clippings from the region. Together with Bundestag member Dieter Dehm (Die Linke) he wrote a poem about it.
In it, Hallervorden assesses the arms deliveries to Israel and asks suggestively, with regard to the many victims among the Palestinian people: “And that shouldn’t be genocide?” At the same time, he uses the controversial term apartheid and criticizes German politics in emotional words: “Should I Recommend this father to be as cool as a talk guest and just not miss a word that appears anti-Semitic? They pledge allegiance to apartheid, from traffic lights to AfD. They deliver grenades again and again, asking them to be handled delicately.”
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Poem as a cover?
The clip immediately attracted a lot of attention online. Many consider Hallervorden’s ideas to be borderline and politically one-sided. “If you are looking for an example of guilt-defense anti-Semitism in the context of perpetrator-victim reversal in the Middle East conflict, Hallervorden’s work is a picture-perfect example,” said Volker Beck (Greens), President of the German-Israeli Society, to “Bild”. A comment in the “Jüdische Allgemeine” also states: “Who murders innocent children? But probably no one. Or is it? Of course, Israel! Hallervorden doesn’t say that, but he obviously means it exactly that way.”
Others praise the actor for the fact that this is exactly what is important about the poem: not to confuse criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
Hallervorden also addresses the terrorist attack by Hamas in the poem and also calls for the release of the hostages still held by the attackers, but it is only part of the introductory words: “Of course I also condemn the terror of Hamas, but despite all this, I long for it At the same time, we have a new chance for peace for a two-state solution. In order to be able to talk to each other, we need a silence of the weapons and the immediate release of all hostages.”
Nevertheless, the theater owner, who has recently taken a stance on the Gaza conflict on a smaller scale, adds that no one is born a terrorist and that every atrocity usually has a history.