Hamas apologism, antisemitism on a small German campus

‘We want to establish a safe environment for Jewish people on campus. That’s why we need to talk about Hamas-supporting movements on campus.”

This was a message The Jerusalem Post received from Hinenu, the Jewish Student Association of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, rural, federal states in the northern southwest of Germany. Hinenu (“here we are”) reached out to ask for the pligf Jewish students in the states to receive international attention.

Once connected, Hinenu spoke to the Post about the virulent pro-Palestine and anti-Israel groups on campus at Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU) in Mainz, and sent links to various incendiary and antisemitic material published by communist groups, students for Palestine groups and others.

“People always hear something about Columbia University [in the US], or maybe even Berlin,” Hinenu said, “but nobody pays attention to smaller universities or cities.”

Especially in a country with such stringent laws on public support for terrorism, these incidents show a surprising lack of enforcement on the ground, the Jewish Student Association said.

“We do not want to forcefully expose Hamas supporters, but in order to establish safety for Jews, it’s something we must do,” they affirmed.

“We want people to be aware of what we experience.”

Jews in Mainz

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz is a public research university in the Rhineland-Palatinate capital, which is part of the so-called U15 – the 15 leading German universities. Founded in 1477, it is one of the oldest universities in Europe.

The city of Mainz has one of the oldest Jewish communities in Germany, according to the Jewish Virtual Library. Jews are believed to have settled in the city during the Roman era, having sought work as merchants. A church council there in the year 906 referenced a man who killed a Jew out of malice suggesting that there were Jewish residents at the time.

The majority of the city’s Jewish population were deported to Poland or Theresienstadt in 1942, and the community was fully liquidated in 1943.

Mainz, which now has an estimated population of about 232,000, has a small Jewish one. 2015 estimates placed the number of Jews at 1,000.

Hamas in German law

In a signed statement addressed to the University on 18 June, members of Hinenu wrote of their concerns surrounding the group “Students for Palestine Mainz,” which they claim is trying to make antisemitism, dehumanization and exclusion of Israelis “socially acceptable at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.”

While Hinenu affirmed the rights of students to protest on behalf of human rights, and accepted that “constructive criticism of the behavior of the State of Israel is just as legitimate as criticism of the behavior of other states,” the body stressed that this should not extend to hate messaging, such as what they have experienced.

Hinenu denounced the group’s support of Hamas, a designated terrorist organization in Germany.

The German Federal Ministry of the Interior announced a ban against Hamas and Samidoun (the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network) on November 2, 2023. The ban extends to the use of the organizations’ symbols in public spaces and in pamphlets, audio or image media that are created with the intent to distribute them. Any such items will be “seized and confiscated” by the authorities.

Despite this state ban, Hinenu told the Post that Students for Palestine Mainz sold a brochure with support for Hamas and antisemitic content at a “spontaneous sit-in” two weeks ago on June 12.

The group also collaborated with another organization called the “Communist Organization” that sells another brochure denying Hamas’s actions.

Both brochures contain explicit content that not only contravenes the ban on a state level but goes against university policy. Yet Hinenu says that the university has been “silent.”

Intifada, revolution

The first brochure is titled “From Resistance to Liberation; For a secular, democratic, socialist Palestine.” Written by Jaqueline Katherina Singh and dated April 2024, it was sold on June 12 for three euros each and can be found on the website of the socialist group ArbeiterInnenmacht.

The 45-page piece brochure is uncompromising in its antipathy towards Israel, stating from the start that “a democratic solution to the so-called Middle East conflict is impossible as long as Israel exists as a racist state” as “the exclusion and expulsion of Palestinians are inscribed in its mode of existence.”

While the article originally states that “a strict distinction” must be made between the “Zionist state of Israel and the Jewish people,” with Jews possessing an “undeniable” right to live in the region, it later claims that “today’s struggle against the genocidal war… is inextricably linked to the struggle against Zionism and imperialism in the entire region and in the imperialist countries.”

Singh continues by saying that Israel as a state “cannot be reformed, but must be crushed in a revolutionary way and replaced by a binational socialist state.”

The brochure unequivocally states support for violence as a means of resistance: “we support the armed Palestinian resistance.” This is outlined in the following lines:

“Neither the occupying power nor capitalists will peacefully give up their position. This is clear to the majority of the forces in the resistance. The tactics of guerrilla warfare are based on long-term conflicts with a military superiority,” it says.

“Moreover, the First Intifada has shown that mass protests by the entire population are the means to most effectively shake the Zionist state and its apparent omnipotence. In the face of land grabbing in the West Bank, [and] armed settlers arbitrarily harassing and expelling Palestinian residents, what is needed is a mass revolutionary movement that culminates in a mass uprising.”

It should be noted that the First Intifada (“uprising” – 1987-1993) resulted in the killing of several hundred Israelis.

The support for Hamas, likewise, is clearly stated: “The breakout of the Hamas-led forces from Gaza was itself a legitimate act in the national liberation struggle.” Since the brochure is dated this April, this statement apparently refers to the October 7 massacre, during which Hamas and its supporters killed more than 1,200 people and took about 250 hostage, more than half of whom are still in captivity.

THE BROCHURE seemingly justifies October 7 by saying, “Oppressed people have the right to break out of a territory where they are imprisoned by the oppressive state for years.”

However, the brochure later contradicts itself when it says it condemns “Hamas’ arbitrary killing or massacre of Israeli civilians.”

Singh also claims that “Hamas is not the cause of such bloodshed and horror. Rather, it is the Zionist state of Israel that is based on the racist, colonialist expulsion of Palestinians,” attributing all violence to Israel and absolving Hamas of responsibility.

Continuing on this same vein, Singh writes that it would be short-sighted to blame “arbitrary killings of civilians solely on Hamas or Islamism” as they are instead an “expression of the much broader, decades-long oppression, the daily experience of misery, hunger, dehumanization in Gaza through the Israeli lockdown.”

She appears to define most Israelis as the oppressors, saying that: “National oppression gives rise to hatred of the state of the oppressors and all those who support or openly support it – and this includes the vast majority of the Israeli population and working class.”

The brochure also expresses admiration for the Houthis in Yemen, saying they are the only state to make “real attacks on the imperialist presence.”

Singh ends by calling for a “flare-up of a second Arab Spring” and announces “a new mass intifada.”

Exploring the website of ArbeiterInnenmacht (Workers’ Power, the German section of the Trotskyist League for the Fifth International), the Post found scores of articles expressing similar sentiments since October 7. The first piece published by the group following the outbreak of the Hamas-Israel war on October 7, titled “No to Israeli Oppression – Solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance,” says: “We have always denounced the political character of Hamas, the system with which it dominates the Gaza Strip” but that “we must make a clear distinction between the violence of the oppressed and the oppressors.”

Hinenu responded by saying that “the brochure practices a perpetrator-victim reversal by counter-factually blaming Israel for the massacres by Hamas and” saying that Israel is “solely responsible for the current escalation.”

Freedom fighters, saviors

The second brochure that Hinenu told the Post about can be found on the website of Kommunitische Organisation (KO) – the Communist Organization. Titled “15 common myths about Hamas – and why we must fight against its ban,” it was written by Noel Bamen in February 2024.

KO claims to have around 25 groups across Germany and purports to be a centralized body of communists in Germany.

The stated aim of the booklet is to “clarify and refute common myths that are spread about Hamas or are brought against it,” to argue why “we [KO] must fight against the Hamas ban,” and to defend the banned group against “unjustified criticism.”

The introduction refers to Hamas as “part of the legitimate Palestinian resistance,” claiming it should not be accused of being a terrorist organization.

Some of the dispelled “myths” include Hamas being an Islamist fundamentalist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood having had contacts with Nazis, and the claim that Hamas is an Iranian puppet organization.

“Hamas is a sustainable political party and movement, with strong roots in the masses,” writes Bamen, “which, due to the specific situation in Palestine, maintains a military arm that is part of the guerrilla force of the Palestinian independence movement.”

The brochure dismisses comparisons to Islamic State, stating that unlike ISIS, which carries out “brutal murders or even celebrated them on camera… there are no known mass executions of Israelis by Hamas, let alone that there are any such recordings being circulated by it.” This also apparently refers to October 7, since it attempts to deny such recordings, which Hamas itself has publicized.

“15 common myths about Hamas” accuses the “Zionist propaganda apparatus and the western [sic] imperialist” of lying about October 7, saying there is no evidence of massacres.

The author writes “I personally only know of great recordings that show how freedom fighters flatten military targets, take prisoners, etc,” therefore not only condoning, but celebrating Hamas’s actions on October 7.

“In the ears of many Germans,” Bamen continues, “the phrase ‘the Jews’ arouses discomfort due to our own history.” However, he encourages people to remove themselves from the “German perspective [that] any action against a Jewish person would be antisemitic.”

The brochure argues that Palestinians are merely fighting against the “rulers,” who coincidentally happen to be Jews: “The Palestinians cannot help it that their oppressors are Jews and they naturally have the right to defend themselves against them.”

Hamas’s charter states, “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.”

The brochure claims that all antisemitism among Palestinians and Arabs, and more widely among Muslims, is due to “Zionist crimes and propaganda.”

“Only when Zionism is defeated will the real breeding ground for this hostility disappear.”

The writer claims that overcoming Zionism is in the interest of Jews worldwide.

The brochure also denies any antisemitism in the Arab world, saying that “from the emergence of Islam until the 20th century, there was no antisemitism in countries populated by Muslims that even came close to what we know from Europe: n No ghettos, no pogroms, no racism.”

More than 850,000 Jews fled or were expelled from Arab and Muslim lands in 1948, upon the creation of the State of Israel. Before this, Jews living in Arab countries had been subjected to secondary citizen status – being known as dhimmis – and had experienced violence, massacres, rapes and pogroms. One such example was the Farhud (violent dispossession) – the pogrom in Iraq on Shavuot 1941 (June 1-2), in which 179 Jews were killed.

The New York Times ran an article on May 16, 1948, titled: “Jews in Grave Danger in all Muslim Lands: Nine Hundred Thousand in Africa and Asia face wrath of their foes.”

The brochure goes on to negate the claim that Hamas wishes to annihilate Israel, saying that “the ‘annihilation’ or ‘destruction’ of Israel has never been mentioned in any Hamas publication, but only the ‘liberation of (all of) Palestine.’”

In Article 7 of the 1988 Hamas charter, the group paraphrases the prophet Muhammad: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees.” (Based on Sahih Muslim, 41:6985. Since the mid-20th century, they are called Muslims.)

THE BAMEN brochure also states that Holocaust revisionism and comparisons of Jews to Nazis is acceptable: “The practice of Hamas of placing the Zionists in the tradition of the Nazis should not be seen as antisemitic or as Holocaust revisionism.”

It also denies that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and refers to this as an “expression of colonial arrogance.”

On the subject of hostage taking, the brochure says that “hostage-taking is a relatively common practice, especially in wars between unequal opponents or in guerrilla wars” and that, unlike the treatment of Palestinians in “Zionist prisons… those imprisoned by the Al Qassam Brigades are well treated.”

Bamen argues that Israel’s arrest policy is “nothing other than state hostage-taking, and on a far greater scale than Hamas could ever do.”

It concludes this section by declaring, like the other brochure, that Hamas is not a “terrorist organization,” but a mere component of the Palestinian liberation movement.

Referring to Hamas as terrorists, it claims, “directly legitimizes the murder of Palestinian freedom fighters and (government) politicians.”

Bamen says that he does not view positively the fact “that Hamas is prepared to accept a two-state solution.”

Myth 15 involves the brochure denying that “October 7 was a terrorist attack by Hamas” claiming that this accusation aims to “accuse the Palestinian resistance of terrorism or war crimes and antisemitism.”

It claims that the well-documented mass rapes, burnings and beheadings orchestrated by Hamas on October 7 are lies, and any civilian deaths were due to the “Hannibal Doctrine,” according to which “a dead Israeli is better than one in Palestinian captivity,” insinuating that all civilians were killed by Israel, not Hamas.

The document concludes by saying that a ban on Hamas is a “blatant attack on the Palestinian liberation movement as a whole, because it completely illegalizes the most important and politically and militarily strongest force of resistance in this country.”

Students for Palestine Mainz

On their Instagram page, which at the time of writing had 1140 followers, Students for Palestine Mainz defines itself as “a group of students from Mainz in solidarity with the Palestinian civilians who suffer from the extreme violence of the Israeli military and the silence of the West in this regard.”

Among other things, they call for a ceasefire, the end of arms supply to Israel and the prosecution of “Israeli war crimes” and express “solidarity with the protest camps and occupations at other university in Germany (and beyond).”

While they state there is “no room for antisemitic speech” and wish that “Jewish students feel safe at university,” they also stress this cannot be “at the expense of Palestinian or pro-Palestinian studies.”

On May 23, a statement shown in an Instagram post demanded that all “JGU connections to Israel and especially Israeli supporters of the genocide be disclosed.”

On June 12, they called for a full disclosure of all research results obtained in collaboration with Israeli academic institutions.

Hinenu on the university response

Hinenu spoke to the Post about antisemitism on campus, and the fears of Jews in Germany toward growing radicalism and hatred of Israel.

While they did not know of any physical attacks on Jewish students in Mainz, the group referenced the incident in Berlin in February where a Jewish student ended up in the hospital after he was beaten by a pro-Palestine student, and spoke of the fear of such an incident happening closer to home.

“People are afraid to stand up for Israel,” Hinenu said.

The group said that there have been repeated boycott events, sit-ins and speaker events organized by the various anti-Israel groups at the university, which they estimated had up to 400 attendees.

There was a recent call to boycott McDonald’s, Hinenu recounted, due to its apparent association with the IDF. The Israeli franchise Alonyal, which until April ran the Israeli outlets of the fast-food chain, announced after October 7 that it would be donating free meals to the Israeli military, a move that led to mass protests by pro-Palestinians.

Hinenu said calls for “stop the genocide,” “stop the apartheid” and for the disavowal of the IHRA definition of antisemitism were commonplace on campus.

“They shouted ‘baby-killer Israel’ at us at a pro-Israel protest,” the group’s spokesperson said in the interview.

“I’m always looking around when I go on campus, and I know others are, too.”

There has been no response as yet to their statement to the Johannes Gutenberg University. Before the statement, Hinenu said that JGU had shown a desire to act against antisemitism, but that the silence following their raised concerns shows the college was “weak.”

The Jewish student association said that their experience at the campus in Mainz was similar to other universities in Germany, having heard stories from students elsewhere.

They said that despite Germany taking a strong stance against antisemitism and public support of Hamas, the situation on the ground was different, and there was little benefit of such bans if they were not enforced.

“We want people to be aware that this doesn’t just happen in big cities; it doesn’t just happen in elite universities in America,” Hinenu said.

“We, as Jewish students, feel that German society often stays silent. So we as young Jewish people living in Germany need to step up for our rights – even though the Jewish people should not be the ones who are responsible for this,” the spokesperson said.

“If we don’t do it, who will?”