Zurich Academics vs Germany’s pro-Israel stance? (1)
A conference in Zurich, Switzerland, on December 5, 2025, argues against German pro-Israel policies and the very term “reason of state”. It aims at one of the most pro-Israel countries in the West, despite the fact that recent developments have shown that Germany even did stop the delivery of some weaponry due to the Gaza War. We need to distinguish between a Zionist critique of Israeli and IDF policies on the one hand, and the anti-Zionist attack by mainstream academia on the other side.
This article consists of three parts. This is part one.
Disclaimer
This article deals with disturbing tendencies in academia. Be aware of this, when reading the article. It is not about the individuals quoted in this study, as they stand pars pro toto, they aren’t but examples of a worldwide trend in the humanities and social sciences.
1) Introduction
October 7 changed the world and academia. While anti-Israel sentiment has been part of academia for a very long-time, after Oct. 7, things got much worse. Hatred of Israel – which is not the same as criticism of Israeli policies, which is essential for a democratic society – became the new lingua franca on campus and among left-wing, Arab, Muslim and Islamist activists on the streets. Particularly those who always claim to be against antisemitism were silent. They did not rally for Jews and Israel on Oct. 8. Instead, they were – silent. Their silence frightened Jews in all of Europe and the West. Others were even happy about the massacres by Hamas and framed it as post-colonialism in action, paragliders became symbols of “liberation”.
Sharon Nazarian, president of the Y&S Nazarian Family Foundation, writes on Oct. 6, 2024 in The Hill:
Oct. 7 and its aftermath forever altered the daily lives of every Jewish person around the world.
For nearly a century, Jews in places like America, Canada, Great Britain and Australia took for granted their connection to and comfort within their homes and nations. Even if antisemitism still dwelt at the fringes of society, Jews in these places felt as though they had finally been woven into the very fabric of society and shared history.
There was comfort and confidence in being Jewish as well as a part of daily American, British, Canadian and Australian life. Finally, after wandering for thousands of years, we found homes and places where we could let our collective guard down.
It took a single day last year for that comfort and confidence to shatter. In the wake of Hamas’s gruesome attack in Israel, our homes, businesses and places of worship suddenly became targets of hateful acts, slurs, screams of “go home,” graffiti, assaults, gunshots and murder.
The following case-study is about art historians, cultural studies scholars, architect theorists, historians, the social sciences and the humanities in general. The analysis may stand pars pro toto. It does not aim at the individual activists and scholars at play. Instead, they are all but examples of mainstream academia worldwide and their typical reaction to Oct. 7.
Germany killed six millions Jews in the Holocaust. The Holocaust was not at all a crime like colonialism or slavery. The Shoah aimed at destroying an entire people and Germany succeeded in destroying German Jewry and vast parts of European Jewry. Germans have a special responsibility for Jewish life and for the Jewish and democratic state of Israel. Zionism of course predated the Shoah, including the preparation of the Jewish state, but that has nothing to do with German responsibility for Jewish life, which will exist eternally.
Finally, from a pro-Israel point of view, criticism of Israeli policies is crucial. Hunger policies during the recent Gaza War, executions and murder have been criticized in mainstream Jewish and Israeli media and among the left-wing or woke Zionist camp, although they are a minority among the pro-Israel scholars and activists. These crimes during the Gaza War are shocking and outrageous.
We may never forget why this war started in the first place: Oct. 7. Hamas and the Gaza Palestinians had plenty of time to build a civil society, a civil infrastructure and starting a process of nation-building. Instead, they put millions of dollars into the building of terror tunnels all over the Gaza strip.
This is no excuse for war crimes by the IDF. But it realizes that Hamas did start the war, not Israel. Most people in left-leaning academia did long forget the unspeakable horrors of Oct. 7. Many, if not most, were not even shocked on that very day.
Woke Zionists make a clear distinction between criticism and defamation. They criticize in the sharpest way IDF crimes, without framing them irrationally as “genocide” – because not every war crimes is part of a genocide. Many people used the slur “genocide” immediately after Oct. 7, at a time when the Gaza War against Hamas had not even started.
War criminals have to be brought on trial, of course. That holds for Netanyahu like for every other war criminals. Real Zionists would urge the world to deal with the crimes by the IDF during the Gaza War – without, of course, defaming the entire Zionist project. But those who frame Netanyahu as war criminal in Germany, Switzerland, Europe and worldwide, are most often people who were silent on Oct. 8 and did not deal with Jihad, Islamism and anti-Zionist antisemitism.
Rather, they prefer a life in the diaspora, if they are Jewish. Non-Jewish allies of these diaspora Jews frame them as the “real” Jews, which is ridiculous, as way over 90 per cent of Jews in Germany, for example, are Zionist. Some of the diaspora Jewish activists will be at the event in Zurich, as the program shows.
Former Israeli Minister of Defense and former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army IDF, Moshe Ya’alon, attacked the IDF and criticized war crimes of Israel:
There is ex-Israeli army chief Moshe Ya’alon, who said recently that Israel “sends soldiers to commit war crimes in Gaza,” and former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who this week claimed that Israel is “no longer fighting against Hamas” and decrying its weaponization of starvation as a war crime. And there are the growing weekly demonstrations where participants hold photos of Palestinian children killed in Gaza, and former judges and other senior officials signing petitions invoking the “duty to refuse manifestly illegal orders.
Obviously, this is a criticism from within the Zionist camp. And that is tremendously important! Most famous Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz puts it like this: “If Zionism is hijacked by an authoritarian and anti-democratic political project, what will be left of it?”
It counters the huge wave of similar criticism from the anti-Zionist camp, which is not criticism, but resentment and defamation of Israel as such.
2) Backlash
There has been a right-wing backlash in all of Western politics in recent decades. From austerity policies to the denial of climate change to attacks on feminism, abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and same sex marriage (like Japan’s new female prime minister Sanae Takaichi who’s party runs riot against same sex marriages, the one and only exception among the leading Western industrial nations), the list goes on and on. Western anti-feminist policies are not much different from nasty Putinist attacks on feminists and criticism of the family ideology.
The election of Trump, Meloni, Orban or the exit of the UK from the EU (Brexit) are examples of this right-wing backlash. Then, authoritarianism and the militarization are the new normal in Germany, including the irrational and fanatic support of the War in Ukraine and the rejection of a diplomatic solution against the Russian aggression. Germany is currently planning the largest militarization and rearmament since the end of National Socialism.
Most people are unwilling or unable to deal with both sides in a critical way: Putin’s ideology or a new Czarist Empire on the one hand. This goes hand in hand with Russia’s right-wing ideology in recent decades, including the killing of political opponents and the list goes on and on.
However, what about Ukraine? Memorials, places, buildings and streets named after Holocaust perpetrators in Ukraine are shocking. Ukraine is probably the country on earth with the most monuments and streets named after Holocaust perpetrators, as Lev Golinkin has already shown in January 2021 in the Jewish Forward. In addition comes of course geo-politics and the imperialism of NATO. In February 1990, the US government and the Soviet Union agreed verbally and in writing that NATO would expand “not one inch” to the east if the GDR and the FRG were to unite (“NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard“). This promise was broken, and today almost all of Eastern Europe is in NATO.
The pro-Israel camp in Germany, too, became more and more right-wing, including anti-German stickers who even embrace Israeli tanks in the Westbank.
The anti-Germans are synonymous for the academic and activist pro-Israel camp in Germany, the one and only non-Jewish and relatively strong pro-Israel camp in all of Western countries, to be sure. But the change and backlash also appeared in these circles, criticism of the recent Gaza War was most often neglected in these circles. Some of them even ignore or even embrace the fact, that Netanyahu himself has been fighting the PA for decades, while emboldening Hamas … The co-responsibility of Netanyahu for Oct. 7 is still a huge topic in Israeli society. He supported Hamas while weakening the security situation at the Gaza border, sending IDF troops to the Westbank instead, before Oct.7. There has to be an independent commission to deal with the failure of the IDF, the police, the government, Mossad and Bin Shet to prevent Oct. 7.
Then there is the anti-Zionist backlash. Perhaps there was never such an antisemitic climate in Germany and all of Western Europe in recent decades. Antisemitic attacks climb new highs in most European countries, including Germany.
Why then, does this Zurich event fear the pro-Jewish and pro-Israel German mainstream and the “Staatsräson” or reason of state? Even after the German government for the first time truly disagreed with his Israeli counterpart and rejected to send some weaponry which could be used in Gaza, these activists and academic want more. They want no more established and state organized solidarity with Israel at all. Why?
3) Israel as “reason of state” (Staatsräson) in Germany
Germany is center-stage. Why? Because here the Holocaust happened and was organized. Because here, solidarity with Israel has become mainstream in the German parliament, the Bundestag, and among the elites in politics – contrary to academia and the cultural elites, where anti-Zionism is much more widespread.
The following quote is from the announcement material for a conference about Germany in Zurich, Switzerland, on December 5/6, 2025 entitled
Der Grosse Kanton. Rise and Fall of the BRD ,
and reads like follows:
International law and human rights, the very structures that emerged from Auschwitz and decolonization, are being sacrificed for the sake of political expediency. The nation’s pluralistic culture is being subordinated to a Staatsräson, which is increasingly at odds with its post-fascist consensus and opening massive rifts in German society.
Germany’s “pluralistic culture is being sacrificed” because of the Jews and the German support of Jews and the Jewish and democratic state of Israel? Seriously? Are these people serious with that accusation?
Since Oct. 7, there have been countless rallies against Israel in Germany, and just a very few rallies in support of Israel.
What is true, though, is the fact that there have been no rallies against the War from a Zionist perspective, like it did happen in Israel with hundreds of thousands participants, fighting for the release of the hostages and for an end to the war.
We can distinguish different kinds of suffering:
Palestinians and their allies suffered during the horrible war and we can understand their suffering.
Woke Zionist, though, suffered from that war and the plight of the Palestinians as well. In addition, woke or left-wing Zionists suffered too, as soon as they realized that a truly just war become a no longer justified and truly horrific war.
Finally, woke Zionists suffer from antisemitism in all its forms, before and after Oct. 7
The German term “Staatsräson” or “reason of state” means a fundamental solidarity with Israel. Then chancellor Angela Merkel used the term during her speech in the Knesset on March 18, 2008:
Here of all places I want to explicitly stress that every German Government and every German Chancellor before me has shouldered Germany’s special historical responsibility for Israel’s security. This historical responsibility is part of my country’s raison d’être.
Taken the announcement material for this Dec. 5/6, 2025 conference in Zurich one might wonder, what these people understand, when they use the term reason of state. It must be something horrible, as Germany’s “pluralistic culture is being scarified” to the term “reason of state”. The ETH Zurich is among the leading universities worldwide and among the most famous and influential academic entities outside the UK and the US. This is where the international elite is studying, teaching and collaborating. At the event speakers from Germany, Switzerland, the UK and other countries are involved.
If someone uses the term reason of state in Germany, everybody knows what it means: solidarity with Israel. The term is used exclusively for that relationship. Here it works like a dog-whistle for the international anti-Zionist academic scene.
For the organizers and all the speakers at the ETH event in Zurich, though, the term stands for “shaking the post-Nazi self-image”. Is criticism of anti-Zionist antisemitism, which lies at the core of the reason of state, destroying the “pluralistic culture” in Germany and “shaking the post-Nazi self-image”? Does this insinuate that support for Israel translates into a distortion of a supposedly “post-Nazi self-image”?
When reading this announcement, people might think about a relationship between Nazism, post-Nazism and the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany or BRD), Jews and Israel.
Again: Is criticism of anti-Zionist antisemitism, which lies at the core of the reason of state, destroying the pluralistic culture in Germany and “shaking the post-Nazi self-image”?
Every reasonable person (are there still reasonable people out there?) would immediately think otherwise: Jihad, Islamism, neo-Nazis, secular, left-wing or post-colonial and Palestinian and Arab anti-Zionism, support for Hamas and the celebration of the massacres of Oct. 7 are destroying the pluralistic culture in Germany.
Many people, scholars and activists in the humanities, social sciences and from the NGO world did frighten Jews in Germany or Switzerland after Oct. 7. There have been many rallies with anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish slogans and cries. There have not been racist rallies by Jews against Arabs or Muslims in Germany of Switzerland (contrary to racist events like the Jerusalem March in Israel).
Part two of this essay will deal with ETH Zurich and Architecture