How to talk about Israel when you disagree

Melbourne Writers Festival is the latest event damaged by Israel-Gaza tensions. But some are finding ways to have civilised discourse about the conflict.

Two weeks ago, Shai Hoffmann and Ahmad Dakhnous didn’t even know each other. Now the Israeli and Palestinian have completed an audacious three-day experiment in trying to help their fellow Germans talk more constructively about the Israel-Hamas war.

Hoffmann and Dakhnous brought a Tiny House — a one-room shed on wheels — to the Berlinale film festival this weekend and beckoned passersby: “Come in! Talk about Israel and Palestine!”

Like many other cultural events around the world, Berlin’s international film festival has been marked by protests against the Israel-Hamas war, which is now in its fifth month. Some curators and artists associated with the festival have called for a ceasefire and demanded that the festival officially do so as well.

In Australia, the issue reared its head at the Melbourne Writers Festival this week when Dr Leslie Reti, a retired Jewish clinician who served as the festival’s deputy chair for the past two years, resigned over promotional material that casts Israel as an illegitimate, settler colonialist state, accuses it of atrocities and seeks to align Indigenous Australia with the Palestinian cause.

In Berlin, the Tiny House provided a respite from the tensions. Sitting on Potsdamer Platz, where the Berlin Wall once divided east from west and where festival-goers rushed between screenings, the structure accommodated up to eight people at a time to discuss the conflict.