At Spanish national film awards ceremony, filmmaker calls for Israel boycott

MADRID — A filmmaker who won a Spanish national film award for a documentary about Gaza called during his acceptance speech for a boycott of Israel, which he called an apartheid state.

Director Julio Perez del Campo’s “Gaza, a Look into the Eyes of Barbarism,” won the 2019 Goya Award for best documentary film, the equivalent of an Academy Award. Critics say the film is one-sided and inaccurate.

“No to Israel and the Eurovision, long live the fight of the Palestinian people,” he said in his speech Thursday.

Israel will host the Eurovision Song Contest in May after winning last year’s contest.

Del Campo also said “We should not legitimize countries that violate systematically human rights, we must not be complicit in Israeli apartheid.”

Israel’s embassy in Spain called the speech “a discourse of hate.”