Jewish students at Berlin university launch barricade protest against antisemitism on campus

Jewish student members of the organization “Occupy Against Antisemitism” at Technische Universität Berlin (Berlin Technical University) launched on Monday a barricade protest against antisemitism on campus. The students are reportedly barricading themselves in the general student assembly building on campus. 

In an official statement, the left-leaning Jewish students announced that their protest action aims to bring focus to the growing hostility at the university against Jews and Israel since the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

“We are students at TU Berlin who belong to the Jewish left, and raise criticism and awareness about antisemitism at the university,” the students said in a joint statement. 

“We believe the student council must include the broad spectrum of students at the university, including Jewish and Israeli students,” the statement continued. 

“We demand that the University of Berlin be a safe place for Jewish and Israeli students,” the protesting students announced. 

The action by the Jewish students is a response to two years of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish protests at the Berlin university, which included Muslim and left-wing students barricading themselves in protest against the Jewish state’s self-defense actions against the terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza. 

The protesting Jewish students are also accusing the newly elected student council members of being behind last year’s violent anti-Israel demonstrations on campus. Furthermore, the Jewish students argued that the student elections were held in “a non‑democratic climate, where any critical thought was blocked and Jewish students became the subject of jokes every time they raised their concerns.”

Addressing the growing Jew-hatred on campus, the Jewish students demand that the student council retracts its support for antisemitic groups and a new appointment to the position responsible for fighting antisemitism on campus. 

It is currently unclear how the university will respond to the Jewish student protest and its demands. The university’s president Geraldine Rauch reportedly “liked” an antisemitic tweet that depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a swastika. She has also “liked” social media posts that accuse Jewish state of committing “genocide” in Gaza. Facing criticism, Rauch reportedly tried to remove her “likes” and the controversial posts. However, the university head was eventually exposed for viewing pro-Hamas propaganda on pro-Russian sites. 

The Central Council of Jews in Germany reportedly opposed Rauch’s appointment of Ufa Jensen as the university’s antisemitism official due to her controversial positions on Israel and Jews. 

While Jensen reportedly admitted that the university president’s likes on social media was a mistake, she also argued that “from a scientific perspective, tweets alleging that Israel is committing genocide or war crimes are not 100% antisemitism, even in light of the fact that such accusations are now being discussed in international courts.”

Israel, Germany and the United States have strongly rejected the accusations of “genocide” in Gaza. Israeli leaders have described the accusation as a modern blood libel against the Jewish people while it fights against an enemy that seeks the murder of all Jews. 

Furthermore, the accusation against Israel of “genocide” is not supported by the documented facts on the ground where the Israeli military’s policy has been to minimize civilian casualties by evacuating civilians from battle zones. By contrast, Hamas has deliberately embedded itself in hospitals and other civilian structures, seeking to maximize civilian casualties in Gaza and thereby turning international opinion against the Jewish state.

In addition, Hamas’ official casualty statistics does not distinguish between civilians and armed terrorists. The Israeli military has estimated that it has eliminated between 20,000 and 25,000 terrorists in Gaza during the past two years of war. 

Jewish Holocaust survivors recently compared contemporary Jew-hatred with antisemitism at the Kristallnacht in 1938, which preceded the Holocaust. 

"We live in an era equivalent to 1938, where synagogues are burned, and people in the street are attacked," 101-year-old Holocaust survivor Walter Bingham warned.