Pro-Palestinian activists want to try again on Monday evening to set up a camp in front of the main entrance to Munich’s Ludwig Maximilians University (LMU). They announced this on the Instagram platform: “We are back and need your reinforcements,” writes the “Palestine Speaks” group. On Friday evening, the Munich police deployed a large force to prevent such a camp from being set up in front of the LMU.
Israel was dubbed a “terrorist” state in a chant on Friday before the protesters withdrew into the weekend. Three days later, the pro-Palestinian groups tried again, this time by registering with the Munich District Administration Department (KVR) – and with a location across the street, Professor-Huber-Platz. Tents should be there until Thursday. 100 participants are registered.
In the late afternoon, the KVR ordered the protest camp to be relocated to the square west of the Propylaea, about one kilometer from the university as the crow flies. This was closely coordinated with the Munich police. The city cited the long duration of the protest camp in the immediate vicinity of the LMU premises as the reason for the relocation. “Sustainable and massive disruptions to academic operations, especially to students,” are to be feared.
The organizers were able to take urgent proceedings to court against the relocation decision. Meanwhile, the “Munich is colorful” alliance called for counter-protest. Under the motto “Never again is now!” A vigil against anti-Semitism should take place – the location should be the Brüder-Scholl-Platz, starting at 5.30 p.m.
On Friday, around 70 demonstrators demanded, among other things, that the LMU stop working with Israeli universities. The LMU is connected to four universities in Israel through the Erasmus program. However, on its homepage, the Munich University continues to express its solidarity with its partner institutions in Israel and Israeli and Jewish students and scientists and is clearly against any form of anti-Semitism as well as any discrimination.
Last week, a public letter from teachers at various Berlin universities caused a stir, in which around 100 initial signatories supported the pro-Palestinian demonstrators. The letter was preceded by the unannounced evacuation of the pro-Palestinian protest camp at the Free University of Berlin.
The universities are obliged to “support students on an equal footing” and “under no circumstances subject them to police violence,” the letter says. Instead, universities should seek dialogue with the protesting students. Only then, it goes on to say, can teachers and universities live up to their mission.
Among the now around 1,300 people who have signed the letter are 14 lecturers at Munich universities, nine of them at the LMU, three at the Bundeswehr University in Neubiberg and one each at the University of Philosophy and the Munich University of Applied Sciences.
Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) was outraged after the letter was published. Instead of taking a clear stand against hatred of Israel and Jews, “university occupiers are made victims and violence is trivialized,” said Stark-Watzinger in an interview with the Bild newspaper. The protest camp in Berlin was evacuated after the police said anti-Semitic slogans were shouted there. Individual people were temporarily arrested for sedition and trespassing. Therefore, says Stark-Watzinger, it is “right for university management to act quickly in the event of anti-Semitism and violence and involve the police.”
The organizers of the Munich protest camps have published safety guidelines for the demonstrators. The participants are asked not to talk to the press if possible, but to leave it to the official spokespersons. “Let’s come together as students, trainees and workers to show solidarity with Rafah,” says the current call.
The reference to the workforce is no coincidence. The Munich “Uni Committee for Palestine” was founded largely from the ranks of the Trotskyist group “Class against Class / Weapons of Criticism”, which is classified by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as left-wing extremist and anti-Israel. A statement from the group published on Sunday said: “The student movement is currently forming a vanguard of protest in the imperialist centers.” Camps, occupations and blockades are mentioned as means of this protest.
The LMU management, the statement goes on to say, is constructing “a racist enemy image” against Palestinians and has “no problem (…) inciting the police to the last Palestine rally in front of the university’s main building.” It is important “that we do not allow ourselves to be intimidated by the police.” A student general assembly at the LMU on Tuesday wants to use “class against class” in their spirit in order to “at the same time give the movement greater legitimacy”.
As on Friday, there was no further statement from the LMU about the planned protests on Monday and Tuesday. When asked, a spokeswoman simply referred again to the statement, which has been available on the LMU homepage since May 3rd. It also states that none of the groups calling for the protests belong to the LMU and that they oppose the demands raised during the protests.
The Technical University (TUM) also simply said that it would not comment on the matter. The day after the Hamas terrorist attack, TUM was the first Munich university to express solidarity with its Israeli partner universities and research institutions on its website and to take a clear position against anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attacks and protests.
Almost simultaneously with the protest camp, an LMU event on the topic of “The German ‘culture of remembrance’ and its enemies” with Norbert Frei, professor of modern and contemporary history at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, was scheduled for Monday evening – under police protection and security service. The foreword was to be spoken by Michael Brenner, Chair of Jewish History and Culture at the LMU. He is criticized on the website of “Klasse gegen Klasse” as a representative of the “ideological narrative of German reasons of state”.
If the Trotskyist group implements its plans for “a program of mobilizations,” as its website says, it could be difficult for universities to ignore the protests. They want to win over the “official” organs of the student body to expand the protests in order to obtain the necessary resources and the presence to call for meetings and actions in every corner of Munich’s universities, it says. As early as February, the Association of Jewish Students in Bavaria called for more protection against the anti-Semitic tendencies that were evident in the pro-Palestinian protests.