Why Did Germany Crack Down on Palestine Protests?

From India to Australia, student protests against the Israeli assault on Gaza have erupted around the world since the war began last October. Yet while the protests have varied in size and duration, in Germany, where campus protests are a common sight and generally tolerated by university administrations, pro-Palestinian voices have faced police violence, the loss of their livelihoods, jobs, visas, and reputations.

In February, Professor Ghassan Hage was fired by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology over a social media comment criticizing Israel, and artist Laurie Anderson resigned from the Folkwang University of Arts in Essen over her support for a 2021 statement by Palestinian artists titled Letter Against Apartheid. In April, the University of Cologne rescinded a visiting professorship for Jewish-American Professor Nancy Fraser after she condemned the killings in Gaza carried out by Israeli forces. Perhaps most disturbingly, last month, it emerged that Germany’s Federal Minister of Education Bettina Stark-Watzinger had tried to cut funding from over 1,000 professors who signed an open letter criticizing the police violence against student protesters. 

This particularly repressive stance cannot be understood without accounting for Germany’s sense of historical responsibility as a consequence of the Holocaust. Berlin-based writer Madhvi Ramani spoke with Uffa Jensen, a historian and scholar at the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at the Technical University of Berlin, about the emotions, politics, and challenges facing German universities amidst the worldwide protests against the war in Gaza.

Students around the world, including in Germany, put their bodies and their futures on the line to protest Israel’s war in Gaza this year. In Berlin, Leipzig, Cologne, Freiburg, and elsewhere, protesters set up camps and occupied university buildings. Police forcibly removed them in some cities. What was your initial reaction when these protests broke out?

I was surprised! I didn't think the conflict would erupt so heavily on college campuses in Germany. Partly because in the US, there’s a much bigger Jewish community that is more torn into different positions. Here that community is smaller, and the number of Jews participating in the protests is less pronounced.

There are other differences, as well. The protests in Germany have been significantly smaller, and shut down faster. Why is that?

Freedom of speech is guaranteed by the US Constitution. In Germany, there are legal mechanisms to curb freedom of speech if someone is voicing racist or anti-Semitic ideas. So, state or university administrators can intervene in protests much more easily than in the US.

From a legal standpoint, there needs to be hard proof that protesters are being racist or anti-Semitic. And there’s been disagreement between politicians, university administrators, scholars, and judges about what counts as anti-Semitic speech.

We need this discussion space precisely because we are a very diverse culture, and we want to have open universities with more international students.

For example, shouting “From the river to the sea” at a German demonstration is potentially criminal. It was introduced as an anti-Semitic crime by our interior minister in November, who said it was a Hamas saying. It isn’t — I know this slogan from the 1980s. It has a broader history within the Palestinian national movement, and was used by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) before Hamas. But the police arrest people and open cases based on this narrow identification of the slogan with Hamas. The courts, however, consider context. They do not just in general assume that it is anti-Semitic. It may be, and often it is, but not necessarily.

That’s the legal side. The other element is that Germany has a different history. Some politicians and administrators feel that by acting against certain protests, they are acting according to the lessons of World War II.

What are those lessons?

The current approach to the lessons of the Holocaust in Germany is unlike previous approaches.

The lesson formulated at the founding of the state was to protect the Jewish community. The idea was that the continued existence of the Jewish community would be proof of the success of post-war democracy in West Germany.

A more universalist narrative became popular in the 1960s and 1970s, which argued that the lesson of the Holocaust is to prevent any kind of genocide anywhere — “Never again.”

Now, we have the idea of Staatsräson — that the security of the state of Israel is part of the raison d’etre of the German state. This final, Israel-based interpretation of the lessons of the Holocaust is a very focussed and relatively new narrative. Suddenly, the situation in the Middle East is part of German policy. This would have been very weird, if not incomprehensible, for a politician in the 1970s or 1980s.

What do you think about this current approach of German politicians?

There is honest — although in some cases not very reflective, smart, or knowledgeable — support for Israel among many politicians. Some people care about these issues on all sides, and I don’t want to negate that. But there are tons of people who don’t care and want to do the easiest thing. What people, and especially politicians, know, is that making a mistake here will cause a scandal. So philosemitism is useful. I wouldn’t call all these politicians philosemites — maybe opportunists.

Then, there are groups who use this mechanism to police Palestinian and Muslim voices by calling much of what these people say about Israel anti-Semitic. As a social mechanism, it leads to silencing certain voices in academia, culture, and the arts. It’s a kind of trick on the part of the political right. The society imagined by this discursive structure has nationalistic undertones: the Germans killed many of Jews, which was bad for the national project, but they learned how to deal with it, and now they’re policing everybody who didn’t get it. They keep telling the world that their legacy and understanding from the war is to protect Israel, and everything else is wrong.

Is there space for international students in this context? I’m thinking of a student from South Africa, for instance, who might view Israel–Palestine through a framework of apartheid, racism, and post-colonialism. Can they voice their opinions?

I think it’s possible, but it’s a fragile space — and an important space. After all, we’re not doing this just to express our individual beliefs. These are institutions of learning, even more than culture and art. If somebody from South Africa comes here with an important understanding of racism, it might be interesting and fruitful for them to understand more about antisemitism than they might from their background. Just as discussions about antisemitism and post-colonialism can be fruitful.

We need this discussion space precisely because we are a very diverse culture, and we want to have open universities with more international students.

Following the protests and an attack on a Jewish student back in February, the Berlin Senate proposed re-introducing a so-called “exmatriculation law”, which could affect politically active students, particularly those from marginalized groups or in Germany on student visas. Do you think that’s a good idea?

I was on the radio the day after this horrible incident where a Jewish student was beaten up, and everyone just wanted to discuss exmatriculation. As if that was the most important consequence! This was a criminal act. Shouldn’t we first ask for a proper police investigation, a ruling by the courts, and a verdict? The event happened in a pub in the centre of Berlin. How are universities supposed to know about something that happened outside their territory? Universities are not the police.

I really think that knowledge can help you understand things and cope emotionally. But how are we supposed to continue if the university is in danger of shutting down these discussions?

But aside from the practicalities, I’m against it because universities are a realm of free speech. We’ve just started teaching courses on the Middle Eastern conflict. What if somebody makes a statement that is offensive to somebody else? Is the university going to penalize this person by kicking them out? Then how is my work possible?

There’s no doubt that the war has increased divisions, antisemitism, and Islamophobia in the US and Europe. As a professor at one of Germany’s most prominent university campuses, with a highly diverse student body, how are you experiencing this tension?

I’ve talked to Jewish students and Palestinian students, and they’re all terrified. After 7 October, many Jewish students felt insecure about coming to university or going out on the streets of Berlin. Currently, many Jews don’t show their identity openly, because they don’t know what trouble they might get into. They are worried that if there’s a slogan uttered in the classroom, nobody will be prepared to discuss it, or its potentially problematic nature. And of course, many people at universities aren’t prepared to discuss these issues, because they feel insecure and lacking in knowledge. But for Jewish students, that is no protection.

Palestinian students feel like their voices are delegitimized as soon as they identify as Palestinian. This is due to the political system and political elite in Germany being more pro-Israel than in other countries. They feel their voices are not heard, and their pain is not acknowledged. I’ve talked with Palestinian students who feel like they can’t even talk about their family history, like the fact that they might live here as a result of the Nakba, which some people deny even happened.

So, people on all sides believe that their identity is not welcome, or appreciated, or under attack. This isn’t just a problem at universities — it’s a broader issue in German politics and society. But it puts the universities in a difficult situation. How can we create a common space in which everyone feels welcome? How can we address people’s emotions, while not making things worse for either side?

How can universities help solve this problem?

Last summer, a colleague and I designed a course on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The course started a week after the Hamas attack. I told the students that we needed to create a safe space given the recent events and set rules to maintain that. If someone made a voice recording of a seminar and put it on social media, it could all blow up. I was really tense every week. We had 60 students — about three times as many as usual. Some students didn’t like it and there was controversy, but we maintained a relatively safe space.

I really think that knowledge can help you understand things and cope emotionally. I’m invested in this idea. But how are we supposed to continue if the university is in danger of shutting down these discussions?