Berlin's Senator for Culture and Social Cohesion Joseph Chialo faced outrage from pro-Palestinian protesters last week after 50 kaffiyeh-wearing demonstrators barged into his speech during the opening of a new art center in the city.
The protesters charged toward the hall where Chialo was speaking, fired pyrotechnics, threw the microphone stand at him, hit a woman standing in front of him and chanted: "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" and "There's only one solution, intifada revolution." Local police forces had to fend off the attackers and evacuate Chialo from the area.
The protesters, mostly white Germans, continued shouting "racist, racist, racist" at Chialo, who is of African origin and the son of Tanzanian immigrants. Since the incident, Chialo has been under police supervision at public events and is closely guarded by law enforcement.
In another incident, which took place Sunday overnight, the walls of Chialo's home and the entrance gate in Berlin's Mitte neighborhood were painted red with graffiti reading "Chialo is a genocidal murderer."
The violent protests follow Chialo's decision to cut funding to Oyoun, a cultural center in the immigrant neighborhood of Neukolln in late 2023 due to antisemitic content presented there by the anti-Zionist and BDS-supporting group Jewish Voice for Peace a month after October 7.
"There’s no more dialogue here, only a brutal argument," Chialo told Spiegel magazine in an interview. "These are radical leftists and Hamas supporters. I have no words to express my outrage, especially when it involves people trying to extort subsidies for their projects. To call me a racist, after my parents’ families and I suffered from colonialism and racism, shows a severe lack of historical awareness."
Chialo first came under the pro-Palestinian radar when he tried to end cultural events where artists expressed or displayed antisemitic views. His attempt to introduce a clause that would have required Berlin to only fund cultural and artistic projects if the recipients guaranteed they wouldn’t engage in antisemitism sparked significant backlash and was removed from the agenda.
Chialo, however, remains determined to fight the issue, believing personal attacks and accusations of racism against him only prove his point – that the radical antisemitic left controls the discourse on the subject.