Dieter Hallervorden: Anti-Semitism Accusations Spark Online Support and Controversy

Dieter Hallervorden posted a video and prompted extensive media coverage. He gets a lot of support online, but there are also accusations of anti-Semitism.

Actor and cabaret artist Dieter Hallervorden has responded to accusations of anti-Semitism about his video about the war in Gaza. “I am free from being pushed into this corner – just because I expressed criticism – about being an anti-Semite,” the 88-year-old told the German News Agency.

“I grew up as the grandson of a grandfather who saved a synagogue from being burned to the ground and was severely punished for it.” He described himself as a political figure, but not as a Middle East expert. “I knew of course that I would not meet love from all sides, but that did not matter to me. ” He has nothing to blame himself for.

Hallervorden was at an event Thursday organized by the Federal Children’s Hospice Association, for which he has been an ambassador for years. “I cannot join the children’s hospice here and reject the cry for help from children who die every day in the Gaza Strip,” the actor said.

In the three-minute video posted by Hallervorden on Instagram and Facebook on Tuesday, he talks about apartheid and genocide in a poem related to Israeli policy. He called for a ceasefire and the release of “all enemies”. He wrote the text together with the controversial songwriter and left-wing Bundestag member Diether Dehm. To support his statements, Hallervorden used propaganda videos from Hamas and excerpts from the Qatari news channel Al-Jazeera. He described his video as a “call for peace.”

In particular, he says of a father from Gaza whose child was killed: “Should I suggest that this father be as cool as a talk host and not miss a word that sounds anti-Semitic?” Of German politics he says: “They pledge allegiance to apartheid, from traffic lights to AfD“The concept of apartheid is related to Israel very ideologically controversial. He also criticizes the delivery of arms to Israel and asks: “And shouldn’t that be genocide?”

A few weeks ago he shared a post on Instagram in which he spoke out against the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu own situation and called on the German government to work to end the war between Israel and Hamas.

On October 7, the terrorist group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, attacked Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and kidnapping around 240 people as hostages. Israel then launched a war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. According to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, the death toll in Gaza recently rose to around 33,800.

Dieter Hallervorden is the director of the castle theater in Berlin and has made a name for himself over the decades as a cabaret artist and actor in film and television. In the 1970s he became famous for the series “Nonstop Nonsens”, and in 2014 he starred with Return to Schweiger in the movie “Honey in the Head”.