Zurich Academics vs Germany’s pro-Israel stance? (3)
A conference in Zurich, Switzerland, on December 5/6, 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 three. Part one was published on Nov 30, 2025, part two on Dec. 1, 2025.
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.
6) From Zurich to Birzeit University
As shown in part two of this essay, in his doctoral dissertation, Mari thanks the Palestine Committee Zurich. Immediately after October 7, 2023, this group and others caused shock waves among the Jewish community and others in Switzerland. They agitated against Israel and that a “genocide” was being carried out not by Hamas but by Israel.
Mari is assistant professor at Birzeit University in the West Bank.
Mari established an online platform about Gaza, the Palestinians, and “Resistance”, the “Maktabat Sabil initiative”. That homepage was also based at the department of architecture at the ETH Zurich, which many faculty, students and others criticized, a change.org petition reads like follows:
To the esteemed leaders of ETH Zurich,
We, the undersigning persons, including members of the ETH Zurich community (such as students, faculty members, alumni) as well as academics from other institutions, respectfully draw upon the rich and diverse heritage of ETH Zurich — a heritage that, since its foundation, has been significantly enriched by the contributions of Jewish scientists and scholars. It is within this context of historical significance and the ongoing commitment to uphold the values of diversity, inclusion, and academic excellence that we express our concerns regarding the Maktabat Sabil initiative hosted by the Department of Architecture.
We do this especially in light of the events of 7 October 2023, a dark day marked by horrific acts of violence where Jewish individuals were brutally slaughtered by Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization.
We emphasize the importance of unbiased academic research and university teaching at ETH Zurich.
Today, there is no longer an ETH Zurich URL for this Palestinian project.
However, does the conference on Dec. 5/6, 2025 reflect on this criticism?
Germany’s best-known pop theorist, Diedrich Diederichsen, has been invited to speak at the conference in Zurich. Shortly after October 7, on 22. November 2023, he, along with Adam Tooze, Nancy Fraser, and a few other authors, vehemently opposed a declaration of solidarity with Israel by Germany’s most famous philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, and some of Habermas’ friends. Habermas and his allies published “Principles of Solidarity” with Jews on November 13, 2023.
In this open letter by Habermas’ opponents, which appeared in The Guardian on Nov. 22, 2023, the signatories oppose Hamas and the massacres of October 7, but they are much more upset about Habermas’ and his allies’ solidarity with Israel.
Rather, Diederichsen and his group saw the danger of “genocide” in November 2023 – and Israel is already identified as the possible perpetrator at that time. They believe it is better to talk “preventively about a possible genocide”—and thus discredit Israel in its response to the massacres committed by Hamas—than to do so after the fact. Their main problem was perhaps Habermas’ solidarity with the Jews, because Habermas’ statement read:
The Hamas massacre with the declared intention of eliminating Jewish life in general has prompted Israel to strike back. How this retaliation, which is justified in principle, is carried out is the subject of controversial debate; principles of proportionality, the prevention of civilian casualties and the waging of a war with the prospect of future peace must be the guiding principles. Despite all the concern for the fate of the Palestinian population, however, the standards of judgement slip completely when genocidal intentions are attributed to Israel’s actions.
In particular, Israel’s actions in no way justify antisemitic reactions, especially not in Germany. It is intolerable that Jews in Germany are once again exposed to threats to life and limb and have to fear physical violence on the streets.
7) Is woke Zionism possible?
One aspect in the announcement to this conference is the reference to the authoritarian and irrational Corona policies. Criticism of Corona policies and the Pandemic Turn is indeed very relevant, but has nothing to do with the Gaza War, plain and simple.
Therefore the following announcement for a panel on Dec. 6, 2025, on that conference, is only half-true:
Today, a large part of the population no longer trusts the media. Since the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing reporting on Gaza, they are seen as carriers of a state ideology that operates without public consent.
Reports about Corona were indeed shocking, irrational, authoritarian and many people did not trust the media. Many people, like a majority among the 10 million in Germany alone who did not take the genetherapy framed as vaccine, did not trust the mainstream. That is true. However, most people did trust the media and the mainstream. For sure way over 80 per cent and up to 95 per cent of the German population supported most or all Corona policies and had no problem at all with the media. Many left-wingers, who were silent on Oct. 7 and the Hamas massacres, were very aggressive against all kind of criticism of Corona policies. But also those who were already anti-Hamas before Oct. 7, 2023, were very aggressive against any kind of substantial criticism of Corona policies in Germany in 2020 until early 2023.
Again, we really have to remember: most people in the mainstream, including German chancellors Merkel and Scholz (and of course Netanyahu), as well as almost the entire pro-Israel camp in Germany, followed an irrational and unscholarly anti-public-health-path during the Corona crisis.
Those who argued in a rational manner were defamed and could not even enter restaurants for many months if they were not vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2. The vaccine, though, did not at all stop transmission, as we already knew in 2021. Masks did not work, lockdowns caused huge problems, including increase in suicide, cultural, social, economic and political problems not seen before in a democracy.
To make a long story short – and for most self-thinking people the years 2020 until 2022 felt like an eternity: criticism of Corona policies is very important. In Israel, immunologists, biologists, public health scholars and activists were more sceptical about Corona policies than the pro-Israel scholars and activists in Germany. I dealt with that in five books between 2020 and 2025, including the analysis of Israeli critics of the irrational Corona approach by the Israeli government.
Then, in Februar 2022, came the aggression of Russia and the war in Ukraine. German state media as well as private media companies and the cultural elites were exactly as fanatic and one-sided like during Covid-19 or Corona. I dealt with this at the beginning of this essay as well.
But during the Gaza War there were and are many different positions in mainstream media. The government itself criticized Netanyahu and stopped the delivery of some weaponry. This lasted from August 2025 until November 2025. Many media were critical of the way the IDF did wage this war, most often without defaming the state of Israel as such.
Criticism of Germany and the BRD (FRG) is essential, but never ever when mixed with the defamation of solidarity with Israel and the reason of state of Germany: fighting for Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
This solidarity includes sharp criticism of the current right-wing extremist government under Benjamin Netanyahu and their anti-democratic and anti-Zionist approach. Racism against Palestinians in Israel and in the territories is anti-Zionist in nature. Anti-Zionists in general, though, frame it as integral to Zionism – that is a defamation.
Woke Zionists fight for democracy and did fight against the War in Gaza, which did start in October 2023 as a just war, but became an irrational and unjust war, as most Zionists realized, including Gilad Kariv (MK, The Democrats) or UnXeptable, a group which was already in 2020 and later fighting against antidemocratic tendencies in Israel.
On May 27, 2025, Gilad Kariv wrote the following:
“The war in Gaza – the Six Hundred Days War – is the longest in Israel’s history. It must come to an end.
For the sake of the hostages. For the sake of our sons and daughters serving in the IDF. For the sake of a generation of young Israelis. For the sake of Palestinian infants and children who are not collateral damage but human beings. For the sake of Israel’s international standing, which is collapsing as you read these words.”
What follows? We need to remember the unspeakable crimes of Oct. 7.
We also need to analyze war crimes of the IDF in Israel’s longest war.
Of course, the occupation of the Westbank must end immediately, without running into a Hamas trap like in 2005, when Israel unilaterally left the Gaza strip. There are moderate Palestinians, that is for sure! They are eager to finally have their own state – and Zionism is based on that promise. Two states for two people. Never ever a one-state solution, which many diaspora Jews, Islamist and secular non-Jewish anti-Zionists alike prefer.
Woke Zionism is based on the Zionist foundations of the one and only Jewish state: two states for two people, and a clear majority of Jews in the Israel, like 75 per cent, with equal rights for the strong Muslim, Christian and Arab minority and other minorities as well.
That makes Israel since 1948 the one and only democracy in a region of aristocrats, laughable and bloody Arab despots and antidemocratic maniacs, including the Islamo-fascist regime in Teheran.
“Death to Israel”, a core ideological trope of the Iranian regime, might be the one and only worldwide slogan aiming at destroying an entire country.
8) Defamation of Germany’s reason of state: From Bergen-Belsen to support of Israel?
Several speaker of the Zurich event, including Anselm Franke, Schirin Amir-Moazami, Sultan Doughan, Nahed Samour, Simon Strick, and Ana Teixeira Pinto support a declaration from August 2025 which starts like this:
“We declare that, for reasons of conscience, we refuse to cooperate with the Israeli state and Israeli institutions involved in illegal occupation, apartheid, genocide, and other violations of international law.”
The letter does not mention Hamas, Oct. 7 or antisemitism. Many Israeli and pro-Israel activists outside the one and only Jewish state criticize Israel’s violation of international law when it comes to the occupation of the Westbank.
But again, even horrible war crimes like in the Gaza War are not the same as an intentional genocide.
Generally speaking, the term genocide is often used to associate Jews with the term genocide – indirectly (and also unintentionally) associating Israel and Jews with Nazi Germany and the real genocide against the Jewish people.
One could say more about the many more speakers at this event in Zurich. As said, criticism of Israeli policies, including war crimes during the Gaza War or crimes by violent settlers in the Westbank, is essential for a Zionist position. But this is not the case in that declaration, which urges the world to stop collaborating with Israel and Israeli universities and academic institutions.
The core message of the two day conference in Zurich, though, seems to be crystal-clear:
The German government and the Staatsräson or reason of state are held responsible for racism in Germany. Solidarity with Israel is held responsible for such a racist climate in Germany.
They do not say that antisemitism by Arabs, Muslims, left-wingers and the mainstream are responsible for an antisemitic climate which threatens Jewish life in Germany since Oct. 7 in an unprecedented way in recent decades.
Worse, solidarity with Israel is even indirectly associated with Nazism – this becomes clear if we look at the poster which is on top of the announcement material, see the screenshot below.
You see a fantasy map of Germany and the river Rhein, which borders to Switzerland on the south. One can read the names of Nazi concentration camps like Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen or Dachau, names of cities were racist attacks occurred in recent decades and years, including like Rostock-Lichtenhagen or Hanau. In addition, the name of Stammheim, where left-wing terrorists of the Red Army Faction (RAF) were imprisoned, particularly in the 1970s, is mentioned, as the year 1977 is a symbol for the FRG and its fight against left-wing terrorism.
But most importantly, on the right side on top, close to “Sachsenhausen”, there is a fantasy building, which might resembles Castle Neuschwanstein, for example, which is in Bavaria, entitled “Fortress reason of state”. As if the German government resides in a castle or “fortress.” The German reason of state and political solidarity with Israel are part of a democratic process, not at all associated with German history in castles, among aristocrats, led by kings etc.
Solidarity with Israel is defamed. There is a complete confusion of racism, antisemitism and the Holocaust in that poster. The dog whistle can be interpreted as: Jews and their allies – fortress reason of state – are dominating the discourse in Germany and immigrants are the victims. For sure, the involved scholars and speakers at the event are all against antisemitism, most of them come from the political Left. But why, then, do they aim at the pro-Israel reason of state? Can one be against antisemitism and against Israel at the very same time? Really?
On that poster, there is the name of the city Hanau, where on February 19, 2020, a racist attack by a right-wing extremist occurred and nine people, all of whom with a history of migration to Germany, and his mother were killed. However, they do not write the name of the city “Halle”. There, on Oct. 9, 2019, an antisemitic attack occurred, when another neo-Nazi tried to enter the local synagogue – it was Yom Kippur! – and just by accident he could not enter because the wooden door was strong enough. He then killed one by-passer on the street and another person in a Turkish restaurant. Of course, such a poster cannot depict all crucial cities, events etc. However, it is telling that one such horrible event – Hanau – is mentioned, while the other one, which happened just a few months before and was equally shocking for German society – is omitted.
Anti-racist but also pro-Israel NGOs like the German Amadeu-Antonio-Foundation analyze neo-Nazi activism and right-wing mainstream policies in recent decades. Many racist right-wing extremists are followers of antisemitic conspiracy myths.
On October 23, 2023, the Amadeu-Antonio-Foundation wrote:
Hamas does not represent all the people of Palestine.
Hamas is a terrorist organization.
Hamas’s terror is not a struggle for freedom. The murder of women and children is not a struggle for freedom.
As shown in this essay, the attack on the reason of state or Staatsräson is a core element of the Zurich event, not to forget other activities against Staatsräson from some of the speakers as shown in this essay.
The Amadeu-Antonio-Stiftung, known for its fight against neo-Nazism, racism, but also against antisemitism and hatred of Israel, writes in a study in 2024:
On April 27, 2024, Muslim Interaktiv mobilized a demonstration in Hamburg with around 1,000 participants. “Allahu Akhbar,” chanted the crowd. Again and again, calls for the establishment of a caliphate were made from the stage. Several signs read “Staatsräson tötet” (Reason of state kills), alluding to the German government’s commitment to Israel’s security.
What all three front organizations have in common is that they create and reinforce an “us versus them” dichotomy. According to their ideology, politicians and the media impose solidarity with Israel and raison d’état from above. The general tone is that they place Muslims under blanket suspicion of antisemitism. “Would you be willing to die for ‘Israel’?” asks Reality Islam in a brochure on German raison d’état. “Raise your voice against the dictatorship of opinion” is the slogan.”
Agitation against German Staatsräson or reason of state, seems to be very fashionable among certain political and academic circles today. Why share hardcore Islamists and many well-educated secular scholars the very same resentment against the term Staatsräson or reason of state and solidarity with Israel?
9) Former Zionism at ETZ Zurich
Is the event on Dec. 5/6, co-organized by the ETH Zurich, a symbol for what the ETH Zurich stands for today? Or do other bodies at the ETH Zurich oppose such events? Are there voices in faculty and among the students and scholarly co-workers who criticize antisemitism, including diaspora driven Jewish anti-Zionism? Are there faculty with a left-wing Zionist or woke Zionist scholarly agenda?
I recall my study of the great scholarly book “Europe in Palestine. The Architects of the Zionist Project (1902-1923)” by Professor Ita Heinze-Greenberg (published in 2011) in 2015 during my work as a scholar at the Faculty of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Hannover. I dealt with the history of the Hachschara, Zionism and the preparation for Alijah by young Germans before the Nazis came to power in 1933 and then from 1933 until the start of the Second World War in 1939. Heinze-Greenberg thanked Professor Andreas Tönnesmann, who wrote a foreword to the study.
The book was even published by an ETH Zurich publishing house. Reading this book today, including the close connection to a famous institution like the department of architecture at the EHZ Zurich, one wonders: when will Zionism come back to ETH Zurich, who will reawaken it?
Can we reestablish a strong Zionist environment, both fighting anti-Zionist antisemitism in Europe and the entire world, and also right-wing extremism, messianism, and racism in Israel?
We need scholarship on architecture and Zionism, which of course includes criticism of anti-Zionist right-wing extremist policies in Israel itself, but also criticism of post- and anti-Zionist Jews in Europe, the US and other parts of the world who use their Jewishness to defame the one and only Jewish state.
And we need to scholarly confront antisemitism in all its forms, including Islamist and secular forms of the “longest hatred,” as the best historian of the history of antisemitism of our time, Robert S. Wistrich (1945-2015) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, famously put it.
Finally, the Hebrew University was founded with the active support of Albert Einstein., the most famous scholar of all time from ETH Zurich…
