We are very pleased to have been invited here today, thank you very much, we are Jahne Nicolaisen and Alissa Weiße, my colleague. We are here today representing the Mideast Freedom Forum Berlin, which was founded in 2007 to campaign against Islamism, anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism as well as for democracy in the Middle East and here in Germany. In addition to the various events we organise, we also work in political education and provide political advice, mainly on Iran and Israel.

It's great to see so many people here today for the ‘vigils against anti-Semitism’. We don't think we need to tell most of you about the current social situation. Since 7 October, there has been an incredible rise in anti-Semitism - not just in Berlin, not just in Germany, but worldwide. What shocks us the most: The lack of solidarity with people who are critical of anti-Semitism, especially Jewish people, and the widespread silence about their experiences.

Today we would like to take the opportunity to talk about the devastating anti-Semitism that is spreading at Berlin universities. With moral self-righteousness, so-called pro-Palestinian students are protesting at Berlin universities and making campus life a Sisyphean task for others. We ask ourselves: Does it help the Palestinians? As a rule, they only refer to Palestinian people when it is against the Jewish state. Not even the relatively simple ambiguity of criticising both concrete war operations by the Israeli military and the Islamist terror regime of Hamas is permitted. The concrete fate of Gazans is generally only of interest if it can be used to agitate against the Jewish state. The real suffering is instrumentalised in order to demonise Israel with the worst crimes. The Palestinians in Gaza, who are protesting under the slogan ‘We want to live!’ in 2017, 2019 and 2023 against the living conditions in Gaza, sent peace signals to Israel with the help of white doves and organised resistance against the terrorist organisation Hamas in the Gaza Youth Committee.

The possibility that, as a left-wing student, you can be against Netanyahu and his radical right-wing coalition partners Ben Gvir and Smotrich as well as against Hamas - without somehow putting the following on the same level - is barely addressed. A scandal! So it is very doubtful that the prevailing campus protests will really help the Palestinians on a currently utopian path towards collective democratic self-determination. This is precisely what Gazan Hamza Howidy doubted in an article for the American ‘Newsweek’. Other Palestinian critics of the regime who lived in Gaza for a time, such as the journalist Manar Al-Sharif, the activist Mohammed Altlooli and the political analyst Mohammed Fouad Alkhatib, are too little known in Germany. These critics of the regime all experienced severe repression by Hamas, were imprisoned, tortured and ultimately fled.

Nevertheless, the protests in the Gaza Strip are of course relatively small - anyone who protests is in danger of death. Over the decades, Hamas has succeeded in radicalising people and harnessing them to its suicidal programme. Hundreds of residents took part in the pogrom of 7 October by looting, destroying, raping, kidnapping and murdering. It will take decades to come to terms with these acts, should a change of power even succeed in the coming months. The deep break that would allow a new beginning in Gaza will not come until other states in the region and around the world declare themselves responsible!

The good news is that there are Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that are working with Israel towards a more peaceful Middle East. These Arab states want to defend themselves against the Iranian threat together with Israel. Israel has been at war with anti-Semitic terrorist organisations and the Iranian mullah regime for decades, sometimes more, sometimes less directly. What all these barbaric terrorist gangs have in common is that they instrumentalise civilian victims for their own propaganda and force Israel to attack civilian facilities if terrorists are hidden there. It is Hamas' explicit goal to force Israel to attack Hamas fighters in civilian buildings. It is Hamas' goal to increase international pressure on Israel not to defend itself against barbaric enemies who want to destroy the Jewish state through the inevitable deaths of bystanders. ‘The murderers are hiding behind the call for peace,’ Central Council President Paul Spiegel once said.

We now come back to the topic of campus protests and academic anti-Semitism: There are a number of clever measures [against it] that need to be implemented, but the university administrations fail - if they are not the problem themselves - think of TU President Geraldine Rauch, Günter Ziegler at the FU or von Blumenthal at the HU - so if they are not the problem themselves, then they all too often fail because of their own colleagues, professors and diversity officers. You can certainly say a lot of negative things about the students, but they are sometimes powerless against the authorities at their university: by this we mean the professors. What shocks us most is the failure of intellectuals, the widespread silence, ignorance and relativisation of the academic elite in the face of anti-Semitism in this country. 

It is a betrayal of the idea of an academic community when a Jewish enemy is labelled within it and most people hardly take any action against it. An academic community that is so proud of its certainly always limited university autonomy vis-à-vis the state, of its academic freedom in Germany, is eating away at its own values and academic structural principles when Israeli universities are increasingly boycotted and excluded. This threatens to become an academic autonomy that does not want to be disturbed by criticism of anti-Semitism and Jewish experiences. According to the Federal Constitutional Court, academic freedom is not only an individual and institutional right of defence against external interference, for example by the state. In addition to this defence dimension, there is also a guarantee dimension, namely to promote and enforce the just freedom of all individuals to participate in science. This is the responsibility of universities.

Instead, scientists who are criticised are very happy to adopt a victim pose and pretend that their scientific opinion is being suppressed.

Open letters such as the ‘Statement against the Boycott of Israeli Academia’ are important and good. However, they are not enough to extinguish the anti-Semitic conflagration. Coalitions are needed at universities; we need to advise and connect interested students and lecturers in order to improve conditions together. At the same time, there must also be serious consequences for crossing red lines. In addition to prevention (1.) and intervention (2.), the third pillar of combating anti-Semitism, repression by the democratic constitutional state, must not be neglected out of false sentimentality. In the event of violations of fundamental academic practices and principles, there must be symbolic and personal sanctions by the university; in the event of criminal offences, the police and judiciary must intervene.

It is the responsibility of the non-Jewish academic majority first and foremost to stand up against anti-Semitism and in favour of Jewish campus life. University administrations need institutional protection concepts for and with those affected and, in the long term, better-informed reporting structures, especially with regard to Israel-related anti-Semitism. At the same time, Jewish students and teaching staff must be given an audible and loud voice!

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We must fight democratically against all forms of anti-Semitism, whether left-wing, right-wing or Islamic anti-Semitism! Thank you for your attention.