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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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North London Synagogue, Nursery Targeted in Eighth Local Antisemitic Incident in Just Over a Week

Demonstrators against antisemitism in London on Sept. 8, 2025. Photo: Campaign Against Antisemitism
A synagogue and its nursery school in the Golders Green area of north London were targeted in an antisemitic attack on Thursday morning — the eighth such incident locally in just over a week amid a shocking surge of anti-Jewish hate crimes in the area.
The synagogue and Jewish nursery were smeared with excrement in an antisemitic outrage echoing a series of recent incidents targeting the local Jewish community.
“The desecration of another local synagogue and a children’s nursery with excrement is a vile, deliberate, and premeditated act of antisemitism,” Shomrim North West London, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and also serves as a neighborhood watch group, said in a statement.
“This marks the eighth antisemitic incident locally in just over a week, to directly target the local Jewish community,” the statement read. “These repeated attacks have left our community anxious, hurt, and increasingly worried.”
Local law enforcement confirmed they are reviewing CCTV footage and collecting evidence to identify the suspect and bring them to justice.
This latest anti-Jewish hate crime came just days after tens of thousands of people marched through London in a demonstration against antisemitism, amid rising levels of antisemitic incidents across the United Kingdom since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In just over a week, seven Jewish premises in Barnet, the borough in which Golders Green is located, have been targeted in separate antisemitic incidents.
According to the Metropolitan Police, an investigation has been launched into the targeted attacks, all of which involved the use of bodily fluids.
During the incidents, a substance was smeared on four synagogues and a private residence, while a liquid was thrown at a school and over a car in two other attacks.
As the investigation continues, local police said they believe the same suspect is likely responsible for all seven offenses, which are being treated as religiously motivated criminal damage.
No arrests have been made so far, but law enforcement said it is actively engaging with the local Jewish community to provide reassurance and support.
The Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters, condemned the recent wave of attacks and called on authorities to take immediate action.
“The extreme defilement of several Jewish locations in and around Golders Green is utterly abhorrent and deeply distressing,” CST said in a statement.
“CST is working closely with police and communal partners to support victims and help identify and apprehend the perpetrator,” it continued.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) also denounced the attacks, calling for urgent measures to protect the Jewish community.
“These repeated incidents are leaving British Jews anxious and vulnerable in their own neighborhoods, not to mention disgusted,” CAA said in a statement.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, the United Kingdom has experienced a surge in antisemitic crimes and anti-Israel sentiment.
Last month, CST published a report showing there were 1,521 antisemitic incidents in the UK from January to June of this year. It marks the second-highest total of incidents ever recorded by CST in the first six months of any year, following the first half of 2024 in which 2,019 antisemitic incidents were recorded.
In total last year, CST recorded 3,528 antisemitic incidents for 2024, the country’s second worst year for antisemitism despite being an 18 percent drop from 2023’s record of 4,296.
In previous years, the numbers were significantly lower, with 1,662 incidents in 2022 and 2,261 hate crimes in 2021.
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Germany to Hold Off on Recognizing Palestinian State but Will Back UN Resolution for Two-State Solution

German national flag flutters on top of the Reichstag building, that seats the Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, in Berlin, Germany, March 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Lisi Niesner
Germany will support a United Nations resolution for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but does not believe the time has come to recognize a Palestinian state, a government spokesman told Reuters on Thursday.
“Germany will support such a resolution which simply describes the status quo in international law,” the spokesman said, adding that Berlin “has always advocated a two-state solution and is asking for that all the time.”
“The chancellor just mentioned two days ago again that Germany does not see that the time has come for the recognition of the Palestinian state,” the spokesman added.
Britain, France, Canada, Australia, and Belgium have all said they will recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly later this month, although London said it could hold back if Israel were to take steps to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and commit to a long-term peace process.
The United States strongly opposes any move by its European allies to recognize Palestinian independence.
Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the US has told other countries that recognition of a Palestinian state will cause more problems.
Those who see recognition as a largely symbolic gesture point to the negligible presence on the ground and limited influence in the conflict of countries such as China, India, Russia, and many Arab states that have recognized Palestinian independence for decades.
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UN Security Council, With US Support, Condemns Strikes on Qatar

Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani attends an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, following an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, at UN headquarters in New York City, US, Sept. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
The United Nations Security Council on Thursday condemned recent strikes on Qatar’s capital Doha, but did not mention Israel in the statement agreed to by all 15 members, including Israel‘s ally the United States.
Israel attempted to kill the political leaders of Hamas with the attack on Tuesday, escalating its military action in what the United States described as a unilateral attack that does not advance US and Israeli interests.
The United States traditionally shields its ally Israel at the United Nations. US backing for the Security Council statement, which could only be approved by consensus, reflects President Donald Trump’s unhappiness with the attack ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Council members underscored the importance of de-escalation and expressed their solidarity with Qatar. They underlined their support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Qatar,” read the statement, drafted by Britain and France.
The Doha operation was especially sensitive because Qatar has been hosting and mediating negotiations aimed at securing a ceasefire in the Gaza war.
“Council members underscored that releasing the hostages, including those killed by Hamas, and ending the war and suffering in Gaza must remain our top priority,” the Security Council statement read.
The Security Council will meet later on Thursday to discuss the Israeli attack at a meeting due to be attended by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani.