New Delhi, March 4 -- At times, the Berlinale assumes the form of a tinderbox waiting to explode. Last year, when No Other Land, the documentary made by Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham won the Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary Film and the Berlinale Documentary Film Award, it flew in the face of a festival that refused to contend with the genocide in any true and thoughtful sense. When Germany's minister of state for culture insisted she only clapped for the Israeli and not the Palestinian filmmaker, the faultline was made evident of a culture that refuses to distinguish anti-Semitism from anti-Zionism.

This year, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PAC...