As of: February 7, 2024, 1:10 p.m
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Students sit in a lecture hall.
© Jens Kalaene/dpa/Symbolbild
The Free University is criticized for being too tolerant in dealing with anti-Semitism.
Now there is a demonstration in front of the cafeteria under the title “Solidarity with Palestine”.
Berlin - After the alleged attack on a Jewish student in Berlin, the Free University (FU) is planning a rally entitled “Solidarity with Palestine”.
A private person had registered 100 participants for Thursday (12 p.m. to 2 p.m.), a police spokeswoman said on Wednesday when asked.
The location is Otto-von-Simson-Straße 26, where the large FU cafeteria is located.
According to the police, the title of the announced event also states that the rally is directed “against the selective solidarity of the university management and restrictions on democratic rights.”
On the same date, a call for a demo from a “Palestine Committee FU Berlin” is circulating on social media with, among other things, the inscription “Freedom for Palestine!”
When asked by the dpa on Wednesday, the university initially left the question of how the FU wanted to deal with the registered demo open.
The university has come under fire from several quarters after 30-year-old Jewish student Lahav Shapira was hospitalized over the weekend with broken bones in his face.
A 23-year-old pro-Palestinian fellow student is said to have hit and kicked him in the nightlife district in Berlin-Mitte.
The federal government's anti-Semitism commissioner, Felix Klein, then told the “Tagesspiegel” that the university management was “far too tolerant” and left too much uncommented.
Among other things, a lecture hall occupation by a group called “FU Students for a Free Palestine” caused a stir in December.
Lior Steiner from the Berlin Jewish Student Association said on Tuesday evening in the RBB that as soon as Israel's right to exist is denied and clearly anti-Semitic messages are conveyed to the outside world, this no longer has anything to do with freedom of expression.
Several student associations, together with the Jewish Student Union of Germany and the Young Forum of the German-Israeli Society, are calling for, among other things, the exclusion and ban of anti-Semitic and extremist groups on campus.
Debate about the demand for exmatriculation
Berlin's Science Senator Ina Czyborra is skeptical about calls from the Central Council of Jews for the student who is said to have beaten up his Jewish fellow student to be expelled from the register. "It is a high fundamental right that would be affected by exmatriculation here," said the SPD politician the RBB “Abendschau” on Tuesday.
She also fundamentally rejects exmatriculations for political reasons.
Universities are open spaces for communication and debate.
“Science lives from exchange, lives from internationality, lives from international students.
And of course there are sometimes conflicts on campus.
And we have to contain them.”
As the FU had announced, under the current legal situation in Berlin it is not possible to deregister students for regulatory reasons.
The background is that the so-called regulatory law was abolished in 2021 through an amendment to the Berlin Higher Education Act.
FU President Günter Ziegler told the “Abendschau”: “I have the impression that we need to sharpen things up, at least in the tools we have.
And that what exists at the moment, a stay-at-home ban limited to three months, may not be enough for the situations we have.”
The science policy spokesman for the CDU parliamentary group in the Berlin House of Representatives, Adrian Grasse, wants to campaign for the reinstatement of regulatory law, as he explained when asked.
“In view of recent events, I will raise the issue again in the coalition.” The instrument of exmatriculation is also needed “to protect Jewish students and to make it clear that anti-Semitism has no place at our universities.”
He expects the availability of this remedy alone to have a preventative effect.
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Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) called on universities to take consistent action.
Anti-Semitism must have clear consequences, she told the Germany editorial network (Wednesday).
“University management must therefore make use of all the options to which they are legally entitled.” Turning a blind eye is unacceptable.
Universities are places of maximum freedom, but not lawless spaces.
Meanwhile, the injured Lahav Shapira was robbed in the hospital, as his brother, comedian Shahak Shapira, reported on the X platform.
However, so far there is apparently no evidence of an act specifically directed against him.
“Unfortunately, unauthorized people managed to get into a ward that was actually locked and stole property from a total of three patients,” the “BZ” quoted a Charité spokesman as saying.
dpa