Germany’s crackdown on Palestinian solidarity has affected academic institutions, silencing dissent and targeting students and academics.

Protests have been repressed, events and lectures critical of Israeli policy cancelled, smear campaigns against conferences and academics have been organized, and internal investigations against academics were put in effect. Actors were university administrations, police and media alleging “antisemitism,” ”lack of neutrality,” or “breach of policy.”

On May 7, 2024, 100 students gathered on the campus of the Free University Berlin and erected tents to create a protest camp, joining the international students’ encampment movement. The university administration informed the police immediately, who came and violently evacuated the camp brutally detaining activists that participated.

In response to this repression a “statement by lecturers at Berlin universities” was published signed by over 1,000 academics in support of the protesting students and calling on administrators “to refrain from deploying the police against their own students, as well as from pursuing further criminal prosecution.”

Leaked internal emails from the Education Ministry in June 2024, show that the former minister of Education and Research requested a criminal investigation into the letter and an assessment to gauge the ability to withdraw the university’s funding over the open letter.

Amira, a former student herself, chose to quit her studies after getting detained and fined by her own university for participating in a pro-Palestine lecture hall occupation in November 2023. “I didn’t feel like going there anymore, to be honest.”

Inside the schools, policies have further marginalized Palestinian identity and repressed pro-Palestine voices. In October 2023, a directive was issued allowing schools to ban Palestinian symbols such as the keffiyeh and “Free Palestine” badges.

A teacher in Berlin hit a student for displaying the Palestine flag at school on October 9, 2023. The student was then expelled and the police brutally dispersed a solidarity protest.

The German parliament adopted a resolution (pdf) earlier this year against “antisemitism in schools and universities” that provides for sanctions such as suspension or expulsion for antisemitic behavior in educational institutions.

In February 2024, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Berlin decided to distribute the brochure “Mythos #Israel 1948,” in which the Nakba (the mass displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians) is described as a “myth” in high schools. After backlash the decision was revoked.

“Imagine being a kid from Palestine,” said Amira, “growing up with the stories how your grandparents got expulse, how your parents lost houses, how family members have lived through violence and then some German politicians come and want to make you believe that all this never happened. This is the denial of genocide, that is also part of committing genocide.”

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