US photographer opens Berlin exhibition with anti-Israel speech
An American photographer and activist of Jewish descent has leveraged a speech at the opening of her exhibition in Germany to condemn the Israeli regime’s merciless aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon.
Nan Goldin announced on Friday that she intended to use her retrospective show at the Neue Nationalgalerie museum in Berlin “as a platform to amplify my position of moral outrage” at “genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.”
The 71-year-old photographer said, “My grandparents escaped pogroms in Russia. I was brought up knowing about the Nazi Holocaust. What I see in Gaza reminds me of the pogroms that my grandparents escaped.”
Goldin pointed to the Israeli regime’s displacement and destruction in Gaza, and told a cheering audience that criticism of the occupying entity “should not be conflated with anti-Semitism.”
American photographer and activist Nan Goldin on Germany's silence on Gaza genocide:
— Palestine Highlights (@PalHighlight) November 24, 2024
"The UN is talking about genocide. Even the Pope is talking about genocide. Yet, we're not supposed to call it a genocide. Are you afraid to hear this, Germany?" pic.twitter.com/wI4OkE9ctn
The American activist also censured Germany over ignoring Islamophobia in the country, saying, “Germany is home of the largest Palestinian diaspora in Europe. Yet, protests are met with police dogs and deportation and stigmatization.”
Goldin walked off the stage to loud chants of “free, free Palestine,” which drowned out a subsequent speech by the director of the gallery, Klaus Biesenbach.
Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, to which the Neue Nationalgalerie belongs, rebuked Goldin’s talk and the protesters’ disruption of Biesenbach’s speech.
Goldin, who is of Jewish origin, was born in Washington D.C. and is a leading artist and activist whose life and work were documented in the award-winning 2022 film “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.”
Over 44,000 Palestinians, mostly children and women, have been killed and more than 104,000 others wounded in the Gaza war that Israel began on October 7, 2023, following a retaliatory operation by the Palestinian territory’s resistance movements.
The brutal military onslaught enjoys unreserved military and political support on the part of the Israeli regime’s Western allies, including the United States and France.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has used its veto power four times to block a ceasefire in Gaza since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war.
The US provides Israel with at least $3.8 billion in military aid annually, and the Biden administration has authorized $14 billion in additional assistance to its ally since the war began.
The death toll from the Israeli onslaught on Lebanon since October 2023 has surpassed 3,500. More than 15,000 others have also been injured.
Most of them have lost their lives in the past month amid the intensified airstrikes and a ground offensive.
Lebanon's resistance movement Hezbollah has been putting up firm resistance in the face of Israeli aggression against Lebanon and vowed to continue its struggle until the regime's onslaught stops.
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