The city-state of Berlin’s commissioner to combat antisemitism, Lorenz Korgel, criticised Humboldt University for holding an event with an alleged academic antisemite who promotes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign targeting Israel.
“If anti-Israeli boycott and delegitimisation campaigns are directly supported, the line regarding Israel-related antisemitism was crossed. The Berlin Senate has clearly taken a stand against campaigns of this kind,” Korgel told The Jerusalem Post.
The Berlin-based Humboldt University hosted an anti-Israel event with the pro-BDS academic Georg Meggle.
Dr. Elvira Groezinger, vice chairwoman of the German branch of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told the Post that the Humboldt University “defies scientific integrity and ethics. Apparently, the old antisemitic GDR [German Democratic Republic] spirit still prevails there, which Jeffrey Herf describes so well in his latest book Undeclared Wars against Israel.’’
Herf, a distinguished University of Maryland historian, outlined in his monumental book the role that the former East German communist state played in supplying weapons to Israel’s enemies and promoting an ideological war against the existence of the Jewish state. Humboldt University is located in the now-defunct capital of the GDR.
Sigmount Königsberg, the representative to combat antisemitism for Germany’s largest Jewish community in Berlin, tweeted last week: “And then you wonder that at Humboldt an antisemitic event takes place under the guise of ‘freedom of science.’”
