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Former Jewish leader clashes with demonstrators at Munich anti-vax protest on Kristallnacht
(JTA) — A prominent member of Munich’s Jewish community filed antisemitic harassment charges against two right-wing demonstrators attending a protest of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.
Marian Offman, former deputy chair of the Jewish community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, clashed verbally with the demonstrators at the anti-government rally in the Bavarian state capital. Offman challenged the protesters for comparing pandemic restrictions to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, and police eventually intervened.
He filed the charges Nov. 9, while the unnamed demonstrators, including a representative of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, of AfD, also filed charges against Offman. Offman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he had cursed them out after challenging them on antisemitic posters and statements.
Police at the scene led Mr. Offman away “like a criminal,” he said in a telephone interview from Munich.
The incident occurred on the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom against Jews and their property that foreshadowed genocide. Some 350 adherents of the German Querdenker (“contrarian”) movement had chosen the anniversary to protest against government pandemic restrictions and against the imprisonment of pandemic deniers and proponents of conspiracy theories.
The use of Holocaust imagery to protest coronavirus protocols and other public health measures became frequent in Germany during the pandemic, testing the country’s strict laws against trivializing or minimizing the Holocaust. In June 2020, Munich made it illegal to trivialize the Holocaust at such demonstrations, after several cases in which people wore yellow stars printed with the word “unvaccinated,” or held posters comparing themselves with Anne Frank.
Offman, 74, who served as a member of the Munich city council until 2020, had been attending a counter demonstration of about 300 people on Max-Joseph-Platz, a large square in the city center, when he saw an anti-vax demonstrator “holding a poster with a Jewish star on it, which is forbidden,” he told JTA.
“I said to the police, ‘That is forbidden,’ and they took the poster,” said Offman, who then saw a woman holding a similar sign. “I asked her if she thought it is ok to have a demonstration like this of all days on the ninth of November,” the anniversary of Kristallnacht.
She countered, inaccurately, that it was also the anniversary of a failed attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler by George Elser, which took place on Nov. 8, 1939. “I said I was sorry that they had not killed Hitler, and if I had had the chance, I would have done it, given the fact that part of my family was wiped out by the Nazis. Then she asked me: ‘Where is your humanity?’ I was so surprised, but I said nothing. Then she said, ‘People like you can get away with anything, you are above the law.’ It was blatant antisemitism.”
A man — later identified as a politician from the AfD — then asked Offman if he would separate people according to whether they wore masks and had been vaccinated. Offman said that, as a property manager, he attended meetings in which vaccine protocols were enforced by mutual consent.
“The man said, ‘Oh, so you are also selecting people,’” referring to the Nazis’ selections of people for extermination at death camps.
Marian Offman is seen at a dedication ceremony for plaques commemorating Holocaust victims in Munich, July 26, 2018. (David Speier/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Offman said this infuriated him: “On one hand they say they are being treated like Jews, and on the other side they trivialize the Holocaust,” he said. “I got very angry, called him an asshole, and said ‘I’ll take you to court because of this.’”
Offman also objected when police escorted him from the scene, taking him by both arms. “I said, ‘Please stop it, I will go with you.’ But they treated me like a criminal.”
Police spokesperson Sven Müller told JTA that all three individuals “were brought to a processing station of the criminal police at the edge of the demonstration, where the charges were registered; after 20-30 minutes all were then released.”
Offman was also dissatisfied after a follow-up meeting held Monday with Munich’s police chief and deputy police chief, the antisemitism officer of the Bavarian judiciary and Offman’s attorney.
“They agreed that what the police had done was not good. But when I asked them if they would like to tell this to the press, they said ‘No we will not,’” Offman said.
In a statement after the incident, police spokesperson Andreas Franken blamed “a group of young police officers” from various units who did not know who Offman was. “I can understand that a citizen of the Jewish faith feels emotionally burdened in such a situation with the context of the meeting and the special date,” Franken said.
Offman said he did not plan to file charges against the police officers, who were “just following orders” when they hustled him off. He described the incident as painful, both physically and psychologically, heightening his feeling that he did not want to live in Germany anymore. But he told JTA it was too late for him to start a new life elsewhere. Instead, he will continue to attend counter demonstrations against the far-right, he said.
Meanwhile, according to the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, the organizer of the right-wing demonstration, attorney Markus Haintz, ended the event early after speaking with an unnamed “gentleman of Jewish origin” who apparently convinced him that the rally should not have been held on the Kristallnacht anniversary.
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The post Former Jewish leader clashes with demonstrators at Munich anti-vax protest on Kristallnacht appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage
A campus event featuring freed Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov drew the condemnation of UCLA’s student government on Tuesday. In an open letter, the UCLA Students Associated Council said that bringing Tov to speak to students “served to legitimize and normalize” atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.
Shem Tov, 23, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and held hostage in Gaza until his release in a prisoner exchange in February 2025. UCLA hosted him on April 14 for a Yom HaShoah event.
“While we affirm the humanity of all people impacted by violence, we reject the selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence,” the student government letter wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the UCLA administration and UCLA Hillel among others. “Israel is currently continuing to carry out what has been widely identified by human rights advocates as a genocide in Gaza, while also expanding its illegal military campaign into Lebanon.
“In this context, elevating a single narrative, absent of critical political and humanitarian framing, serves to legitimize and normalize these ongoing atrocities.”
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s director emeritus, called the statement “completely ridiculous.”
“You can’t present the narrative of your experience without it being called ‘one sided,’” Seidler-Feller said. “There has to be a counter-story to persecution. Is there a counter-story to killing people?”
UCLA Hillel executive director Daniel Gold dismissed the criticism in Tuesday’s letter as antisemitic.
“Hillel at UCLA and Students Supporting Israel UCLA would like to apologize…for absolutely nothing,” he wrote in a statement. “Members of UCLA student government have once again shown they are anti-dialogue, anti-learning, anti-truth, anti-student and antisemitic.”
The USAC did not respond to a request for comment.
As college campuses across the country became a hotspot for pro-Palestinian activism following the Oct. 7 attack, UCLA, with an activist history and a large Jewish population, stood out as a major flashpoint. Its student encampment was the site of a riot in April 2024 and eventually cleared by police in riot gear.
The USAC has sided with pro-Palestinian protesters throughout. In a Feb. 2025 letter titled “We Are All SJP,” the USAC, which is democratically elected by the roughly 30,000-member UCLA student body, condemned Chancellor Julio Frenk’s suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine. The letter referred to Israel only as “the Zionist state” or put the country’s name inside quotation marks.
The University of California has since been sued by the Department of Justice, which said that UCLA created a hostile work environment against Jewish and Israeli faculty in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The post UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump extends ceasefire with Iran, even after Iran balks at new round of negotiations
(JTA) — President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he would unilaterally extend the U.S.-Israeli ceasefire with Iran, even though Iran had not agreed to his conditions or even to return to the negotiating table.
Trump announced the decision on Truth Social just hours before the two-week-old deal was set to expire. Citing Iran’s “fractured” leadership, Trump wrote that he had been asked by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to “hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
Vice President JD Vance’s planned trip to Islamabad, where talks were set to take place, was postponed indefinitely after Iran failed to confirm its participation in negotiations.
Trump added that the United States would maintain its naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, despite Iran’s repeated calls for the restrictions to be lifted.
The announcement marked a sharp departure from the president’s statements earlier in the day, telling CNBC that, if a deal was not made before the deadline, “I expect to be bombing.”
In a statement Tuesday, Sharif thanked Trump for his “gracious acceptance” of Pakistan’s request to extend the ceasefire, adding that the country would “continue its earnest efforts for a negotiated settlement of the conflict.”
The announcement adds to uncertain about the war’s future, including for Israelis who lived through six weeks of Iranian bombing, and renews questions about Trump’s commitment to achieving his war goals, which have varied and included blunting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, achieving regime change, and destroying Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles. He said earlier this week that he was asking Iran to limit its nuclear program for 20 years, five years longer than was required by the deal struck by Barack Obama in 2015. Trump exited that deal in 2018.
Last week, Trump announced a different ceasefire, between Israel and Lebanon, on Truth Social, contradicting Israel’s claim that the Iran ceasefire would not apply to its fighting with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed proxy in Lebanon.
Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire extension came during the night in Israel, after Israelis began their celebration of Independence Day. It drew criticism from one of his staunchest pro-Israel supporters, the Zionist Organization of America, whose national president Morton Klein said in a statement that “interminable delay is the standard Islamic Iranian regime negotiating tactic” and that acceding to it represented a victory for Iran. The statement did not mention Trump.
The post Trump extends ceasefire with Iran, even after Iran balks at new round of negotiations appeared first on The Forward.
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Alan Dershowitz quits Democratic Party, calling it ‘most anti-Israel party in U.S. history’
(JTA) — Alan Dershowitz, the prominent pro-Israel attorney whose clients have included Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, announced on Monday that he was leaving the Democratic party and registering as a Republican.
Describing himself as a “lifelong Democrat,” Dershowitz wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he had decided to “bite the bullet and register as a Republican,” citing Democratic support for an arms embargo on Israel last week and the Michigan Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
“There is no denying that the hard left, anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party has moved from the fringe to the mainstream,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that “Republicans have their own antisemitic fringe, but for now it remains a fringe.”
The announcement formalized a political evolution for Dershowitz, who defended Trump during his first impeachment and has increasingly broken with Democrats over Israel in recent years.
In 2021, Dershowitz nominated Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Avi Berkowitz, Trump’s top Middle Eastern envoy during his first administration, for the Nobel Peace Prize over their hand in shaping the Abraham Accords.
Dershowitz — who has recently faced scrutiny over his ties to Epstein, and previously denied allegations of sexual misconduct made by one of Epstein’s accusers — panned the Democratic Party as the “most anti-Israel party in U.S. history” in the op-ed.
“I believe that the Democratic Party’s hostility to Israel represents a deeper and more dangerous shift away from the center and toward a radical approach that is bad for America and the free world,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that he intended to “work hard to prevent the Democrats from gaining control of the House and Senate.”
Dershowitz’s comments are in line with Trump’s statements about Jews and the Democratic Party. He has repeatedly expressed amazement at how any Jews could vote for the Democrats considering his own record when it comes to Israel.
The post Alan Dershowitz quits Democratic Party, calling it ‘most anti-Israel party in U.S. history’ appeared first on The Forward.