Lahav Shapira was beaten on a Berlin street in early February 2024 in what is thought to have been an antisemitic attack. The Jewish student had expressed his opinion at his university on the Middle East conflict. The trial of the alleged perpetrator, a 23-year-old former fellow student of the victim, is due to begin at Tiergarten District Court on April 8.
It was among the most dramatic antisemitic incidents Germany has seen since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, after which the country invaded the Gaza Strip. Since the began, Jewish students have reported a climate of fear at German universities, where they worry about intimidation and attacks.
On Thursday, the German Union of Jewish Students (JSUD) and the American Jewish Committee Berlin (AJC) presented a “Situation Report on Antisemitism at German Universities.” Outgoing JSUD president Hanna Veiler, 27, spoke of a “tsunami of ” in the university environment, outlining a chronology of incidents including the brutal attack on Shapira, along with numerous university occupations and “so-called pro-Palestinian protest camps” where people have called for Israel to be wiped off the map.
Little research on the issue
The new report is important because a “really central challenge” for the JSUD has been that there is little research on antisemitism at universities, she said. A such, the 26-page report does not contain any newly collected figures. The authors used statistics from the Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS). According to the report, the involving universities rose from 16 in 2021 and 23 in 2022, to 151 in 2023.
Veiler said that the report is an important resource for Jewish students, who must deal with the issue whether they want to or not. “Jewish students have had to become experts on antisemitism at universities over the past 17 months,” she said. For some, the fear of entering university buildings and feeling abandoned has impacted the course of their studies, and possibly their financial support as students.
AJC Berlin director Remko Leemhuis spoke of an “explosion” of antisemitic incidents at German universities since October 7, 2023, saying that many Jewish students had been avoiding campuses altogether for some time now.
The report makes clear that while there have been incidents, antisemitic statements or intimidation at universities nationwide, . The German capital has seen several university buildings occupied by protesters, often with anti-Israeli graffiti found inside afterwards.
The report called for a number of preventative policy changes in response, including the consistent prosecution of antisemitic crimes, compulsory training on modern forms of antisemitism at universities, and clearly named points of contact for Jewish students. In addition, the of antisemitism should be included in university constitutions, it said.
University negligence?
According to Veiler, there is still a lack of backbone and support from university management. Taking action is “not a foregone conclusion,” she said.
The attack on Lahav Shapira sparked another legal proceeding: A lawsuit by a student at the Free University of Berlin that has been pending at the Administrative Court since June 2024. Last summer, German broadcaster ZDF’s investigative show “frontal” quoted from the indictment. It states that the university had “not taken adequate measures” to prevent or structurally eliminate the antisemitic discrimination against the plaintiff and other Jewish students, and that the FU had allowed “antisemitic language to materialize into actions.” This would violate the requirements of Berlin’s Higher Education Act.
Oral proceedings are expected to take place this summer and could attract great interest, a court spokeswoman confirmed to DW on Thursday. It is hoped the case will bring more clarity on the question of what university representatives have done in the fight against antisemitism.
This Sunday, the JSUD will elect its next president. Veiler will not be running again and plans to travel abroad for a while. “The main thing is that I need distance from Germany,” she told German Jewish daily Jüdische Allgemeine, adding that over the past two years, she has become estranged from this country.
This article was originally written in German.
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