Germany’s federal government commissioner for culture and the media, who pushed for the resignation of the Berlin International Film Festival (aka the Berlinale)’s director over anti-Israel content at her event, paid a public visit last week to the Israeli pavilion at the Venice Biennale in Italy, which has been the target of protests and a boycott attempt.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog thanked Commissioner Wolfram Weimer for his “solidarity with Israeli artists facing shameful anti-Israel and antisemitic boycotts at the Venice Biennale and elsewhere,” Herzog wrote Saturday on X.
Thank you to @BundesKultur Wolfram Weimer for your solidarity with Israeli artists facing shameful anti-Israel and antisemitic boycotts at the Venice Biennale and elsewhere.
— יצחק הרצוג Isaac Herzog (@Isaac_Herzog) May 16, 2026
Culture should transcend borders and politics, not be politicized to divide, isolate, and silence the… https://t.co/1wwcIlKetr
On Friday, Weimer, from Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union, posed for a photograph, which his ministry later shared on X, with the main featured Israeli artist at the pavilion, Belu-Simion Fainaru.
Weimer called the display “impressive,” adding, “Antisemitic attacks on artists like Fainaru are intolerable,” and “for that reason, the visit to the Israeli pavilion is particularly important” to him.
Dozens of protesters have gathered several times outside the Israeli pavilion, which the event’s managers had tried to ban along with Russia’s, but which opened to the public earlier this month after Italy’s culture minister expressed opposition to the boycott.
The five-member jury quit last month, saying only that the move was connected to the decision to ban Russia and Israel. Before it was reversed, the ban announced by management said that countries whose leaders are under investigation at the International Criminal Court should not participate. Currently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin are the only world leaders under investigation at the ICC.
The pavilion of Russia, which is the subject of E.U. sanctions, remains closed to the public and was open only during the press preview stage of the event.
In February, sources from Weimer’s office told Bild that he and Tricia Tuttle, the former director of the Berlinale art show, had “agreed that it is untenable to continue” Tuttle’s leadership of the film festival.
Weimer has reversed the policies regarding Israel pursued by his predecessor as culture commissioner, Claudia Roth of the left-wing Green Party.
