Screening + Q&A: Germany's Israel Obsession

Prominent Jewish Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein returns to his ancestral home, Germany, to investigate how the country’s impulse never to repeat the horrendous anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust has resulted in the suppression of any criticism of Israel and its actions in Gaza. With critics of Israel being sacked, cancelled, silenced, arrested and banned from Germany, one Jewish philosopher has called this a “McCarthyism” for the 21st century. We’ll see how in today’s Germany, a nation that killed most of his family but granted him citizenship in 2011, Loewenstein is told, as a Jew, what is acceptable to say about Israel. To find out why the German authorities are so committed to stifling any criticism of Israeli actions and what it means for democracy and human rights in the country, he will meet those being arrested and suffering job losses for criticising Israel, the people enforcing these laws and those on the far right claiming to support Israel. The journey will reveal the ultimate irony – how determination to fight anti-Semitism is actually being used to empower the very forces, the far right, with the closest ties to Germany’s dark fascist past.

Antony Loewenstein is a Jewish Australian/German independent, award-winning, investigative journalist, best-selling author and film-maker. A freelance journalist for over 20 years, he’s worked in dozens of countries around the world and was based in South Sudan in 2015 and East Jerusalem between 2016 and 2020. He’s written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera English, The New York Review of Books and many others. In 2025, he released an award-winning documentary series on Al Jazeera English, The Palestine Laboratory, adapted from his global best-selling book of the same name. It won a major prize at the prestigious Telly Awards. He’s a monthly columnist with the UK outlet, Middle East Eye.. He’s the subject of the 2024 documentary film, Not In My Name, broadcast on Australia’s ABC TV and Al Jazeera English about Jewish dissent and his critical journalism on Israel/Palestine. In the same year, he was appointed to the advisory committee of the Jewish Council of Australia.