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Germany’s Parliament Moves to Combat Antisemitism at Universities

Students at Berlin’s UdK University display palms stained with red to symbolize blood during a Nov. 13 pro-Hamas protest. Photo: Screenshot
Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag, overwhelmingly passed a motion on Wednesday to address antisemitism and hostility toward Israel in schools and universities, seeking to combat a surge in pro-Hamas demonstrations on campuses and antisemitic incidents across the country.
After the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Germany has seen a record increase in antisemitic incidents and disruptive pro-Hamas protests, including the occupation of university buildings. The Oct. 7 atrocities, in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 hostages were abducted to Gaza, started the Israel-Hamas war.
The parliamentary motion stipulates that the federal government — in collaboration with the ministers of education and the German Rectors’ Conference, an association of state and state-recognized universities — must ensure that antisemitic behavior in educational institutions results in sanctions.
“This includes the consistent enforcement of house rules, temporary exclusion from classes or studies, and even … expulsion,” the motion reads.
According to the proposal, the federal government should also increase funding for research on antisemitism and contemporary Jewish studies, while also supporting cooperation with Israeli science and opposing any boycott of the Jewish state.
The motion aims at halting the activities of groups promoting antisemitism, including the boycott, divestment, and, sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination. Leaders of the movement have repeatedly stated their goal is to destroy the world’s only Jewish state. Last year, Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), classified BDS as a “suspected extremist case.”
Germany previously adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum. It is now used by hundreds of governing institutions — including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations — and presumably will be the basis for enforcing last week’s resolution.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
Last week, when presenting the resolution against campus antisemitism, parliamentary officials emphasized that Jewish and Israeli students, faculty, and staff are “exposed to strong hostility and personal threats, increasingly violence.”
“The brutal massacre perpetrated by the terrorist organization Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel, and the war in the Gaza Strip … have brought the Middle East conflict back into focus, especially in schools and universities,” officials said.
Jewish students at German universities widely expressed a growing sense of insecurity and uneasiness following Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, amid a slew of incidents purportedly meant to protest the war in Gaza.
In December 2023, for example, police were forced to clear a lecture hall at the Free University of Berlin occupied by pro-Hamas activists. That incident came days after dozens of students at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) staged a protest that involved them sitting 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 Israeli military reservists, Vadim Nurzhitz and Yosef Avrahami, in the West Bank city of Ramallah in October 2000. One of their killers appeared at the window of the police station delightedly displaying his blood-stained palms to the appreciative crowd gathered outside following the murder of the two Israelis.
Germany’s education minister said in December 2023 that students who engage in antisemitic agitation could face expulsion from their universities, addressing concerns voiced by the Jewish student union.
A year later, the University of Leipzig canceled a lecture by Israeli historian Benny Morris following student protests described by the school as “understandable, but frightening in nature.” Morris, one of Israel’s leading public intellectuals, was scheduled to deliver a lecture about extremism and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, in which the Jewish state secured its independence, at the university on Thursday as part of a lecture series on antisemitism. However, the university nixed the event after various groups, including Students for Palestine Leipzig, called for the lecture to be canceled, arguing Morris — who has expressed political opinions associated with both the left and the right — held “deeply racist” views against Palestinians.
To help combat an atmosphere of hostility toward Israelis and Jews, last week’s resolution calls for increased support and training for educators. It also requires students to engage more with Jewish life, including visiting a memorial site at least once during their school years.
Additionally, it demands more security for Jews at universities, regardless of whether they are students, staff, or faculty.
The Left Party (Die Linke) and the newly formed left-populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) were the only parties not to support the measure, with the former abstaining and the latter voting against it. Left Party member Nicole Gohlke criticized the initiative, stating that its proponents were calling for the use of the police and intelligence services instead of building bridges and creating spaces for dialogue.
In November, the parliament had already reaffirmed its stance against antisemitism with a broader resolution, one of its goals being to stop supporting organizations and projects that spread antisemitism or question Israel’s right to exist.
Germany has experienced a sharp spike in antisemitism amid the war in Gaza. In just the first six months of 2024 alone, the number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin surpassed the total for all of the prior year and reached the highest annual count on record, according to Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS).
The figures compiled by RIAS were the highest count for a single year since the federally-funded body began monitoring antisemitic incidents in 2015, showing the German capital averaged nearly eight anti-Jewish outrages a day from January to June last year.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), police registered 5,154 antisemitic incidents in Germany in 2023, a 95 percent increase compared to the previous year.
The post Germany’s Parliament Moves to Combat Antisemitism at Universities first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.