Dozens of faculty members at the Berlin University for the Arts (UDK) — Germany’s leading academic body for study of art, music and culture — have attached their signatures to an open letter condemning the rise of antisemitism on campus and in society more widely, two months after students at the institution staged a pro-Hamas protest that drew angry accusations of antisemitism.
“With this letter, we, the undersigned teachers and employees of the Berlin University of the Arts, would like to position ourselves clearly and emphatically against antisemitism at our university and in our society,” the letter, published on the university’s website, stated.
The university is still reeling from a protest organized by pro-Hamas students in November that alluded to the brutal murder of two Israeli reservists in the West Bank nearly 25 years ago.
Carrying banners declaring “Stop Genocide,” “End Colonialism,” and “Free Palestine,” the students sat around a table with their palms facing outwards painted in red ink to symbolize blood. While the gesture was apparently intended to condemn the German government’s support for Israel’s defensive military operation in Gaza, several observers noted a striking similarity with the notorious lynching of two IDF reservists, Vadim Nurzhitz and Yosef Avrahami, in the West Bank city of Ramallah in Oct. 2000. In an outburst of intense violence reminiscent of the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel, Nurzhitz and Avrahami were brutally murdered and their bodies mutilated by a Palestinian mob while both were in the custody of Palestinian Authority (PA) police officers.
“We are shaken by the violent antisemitic protests and actions at our university,” the faculty letter declared.
“We condemn the performance of Nov. 13. 2023, in which an iconic intifada sign was presented, which refers to the lynching of two Israelis; the call for strikes on Nov. 29 2023, in which Hamas terror was put into perspective; as well as all other protests in which anti-Semitic content was shared and disseminated in the name of solidarity with Palestine. Antisemitism is not an opinion, but a form of discrimination that, like other inhumane narratives, does not fall under freedom of speech or art.”
Among the signatories to the letter was UdK president Norbert Palz, who was shouted down when he attempted to reason with the students at the protest in November.
One of the initiators of the letter told the Zeit news outlet that almost no academics teaching at UdK’s Faculty of Fine Arts had agreed to sign it.
“There is a crack at UdK around the attitudes towards Israel, which seems to be less between teachers and students than between departments,” the unnamed person observed.
