These are words that leave you incredulous and dumbfounded. Did he really just say that? Does he genuinely mean it? How cold-hearted can one be? And how detached from all the research – and from the lived reality of Jews in Germany?
The man in question is Wolfgang Benz, professor emeritus, antisemitism researcher and longstanding director of the Centre for Research on Antisemitism at TU Berlin, a public research university. In the face of numerous incidents of Jew-hatred within the Left Party, the doyen of German antisemitism research has now given a remarkable interview to Berlin’s daily Tagesspiegel.
Benz begins by describing the dramatic number of antisemitic incidents recorded in the capital as “terrible”, only to add immediately: “Jews have been saying they are afraid for 50 years. Even in the past, people would say: We are sitting on packed suitcases. It is part of the self-justification of Jewish life in Germany.”
The Tagesspiegel journalists, seemingly incredulous, pressed him on whether he did not believe the Jewish community. His answer: he believed Jews when they said they were afraid. “But I also know that they are under pressure to justify themselves because they live in the country of the perpetrators. Besides, no minority is as well protected by the police.”
In other words: feelings are subjective. Empirical evidence is another matter. Or, more precisely: don’t make such a fuss.
In fairness to the German academic, Wolfgang Benz is right. We Jews are very safe behind bulletproof glass, barbed wire and armed police officers. Every time we take our children to the Jewish nursery in Berlin’s Grunewald district, we are overcome by that warm feeling of security when, from some distance away, we catch sight of the security checkpoint, the police officers and the additional Israeli security personnel hired by the nursery itself.
The worshippers attending Yom Kippur services in Halle in 2019 must surely have felt the same cosy sense of safety before a far-right terrorist tried to shoot everyone inside. As must the Jewish community in Wuppertal a few days ago, when only hours earlier an Afghan refugee had tried to set fire to the synagogue. Or Lahav Shapira, the young Jewish trainee teacher who, after October 7, 2023, was almost beaten to death in central Berlin by a fellow student of Arab background, suffering skull fractures and swelling of the brain.
Or the worshippers at the Kahal community in central Berlin, on the border with Wedding, who cannot go out on to the street visibly identifiable as Jews without sooner or later being subjected to verbal or physical attack. Well protected indeed. We Jews are simply privileged.
Some remarks can only be met with gallows humour, if one is not to despair at this new-old German shamelessness in playing down eliminationist Jew-hatred. In a relationship, one would probably describe Benz’s assessment of the situation as gaslighting: You’re imagining it. It’s really not that bad.
Yet Wolfgang Benz’s remarks are no aberration. One could be forgiven for thinking that this form of relativising antisemitism has become something of a speciality at the so-called Centre for Research on Antisemitism. Whenever there is a major debate about blatant Jew-hatred from the political left or from within the Muslim community, the Berlin research institute can reliably be counted on to offer an unsettling explanation.
Earlier this week, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, the current director of the Centre for Research on Antisemitism, spoke out to make clear that she regarded the fierce debate about antisemitism in the Left Party following its election victory in Berlin as inappropriate.
“Antisemitism exists in all parties,” the 64-year-old stressed. “I see this as an exaggerated debate which is obviously also about influencing the formation of a government in Berlin.”
So, in other words, this is supposedly all just a smear campaign by the ruling centre-right Christian Democrats? “Antisemitism exists in all parties” – would Schüler-Springorum say the same about the far-right AfD and dismiss it as a trivial matter?
Who, after all, would dream of calling it a problem when elements of the Left Party fraternises with Hamas supporters, hold party events with PFLP activists, and smears the Jewish state as “genocidal”, reviving the old antisemitic blood-libel myth?
No less revealing, and no less resounding, was the Centre’s public silence after Hamas’s genocidal attacks on October 7, 2023. A few months after the massacres, Remko Leemhuis, the head of AJC Berlin, wrote in a widely noticed opinion piece for this newspaper:
“Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the Centre for Research on Antisemitism at TU Berlin has contributed absolutely nothing of relevance to the public debate. One might have thought that such an institution would be ideally placed to contribute scholarly expertise on the antisemitic mass murder carried out by Islamist death squads.”
He continued:
“Anyone who looks more closely at the institute’s research inevitably discovers that Islamic Jew-hatred has for decades been systematically ignored or relativised in the Centre’s academic work, so it is hardly surprising that it has nothing to say on the subject. Quite the contrary: at the end of last year, Uffa Jensen, deputy director and professor at the institute, responded to a question about the prevalence of antisemitism among Muslims in Germany by saying that this had ‘not yet been researched in detail’.”
The same Uffa Jensen made national headlines shortly afterwards over another issue. First, despite fierce protests from the Jewish community, he was appointed antisemitism commissioner at TU Berlin. As the Central Council of Jews put it: “Professor Jensen has not demonstrated in the past that he understands the situation facing Jews,” citing his opposition to the IHRA definition of antisemitism and his failure “to speak credibly about the dangers of antisemitism emanating from Muslim communities”, particularly after October 7. “This appointment rolls out the red carpet for left-wing extremists and Hamas sympathisers.”
A little later, he effectively gave his boss, Geraldine Rauch, a kosher certificate – the president of TU Berlin, who had liked on social media posts showing Netanyahu with a swastika and accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
Why does the Centre for Research on Antisemitism recognise Jew-hatred when it comes from the right, but not when it comes from the left or from within the Muslim community? By the strict logic of scholarship, should not the same standards applied to the AfD also apply to the Left Party? And should not fanatical Arab Jew-haters be judged by the same standards as jackbooted neo-Nazis?
Perhaps the state of Berlin and the university leadership should finally ask themselves whether such a centre still has any justification for existing. The purpose of research is to come as close as possible to the truth – not to obscure it for ideological reasons.
At the very least, in the interests of honesty, the Centre for Research on Antisemitism should give itself a new name. As a working title, “Centre for the Denial of Antisemitism” would certainly not be the worst suggestion.
Philipp Peyman Engel is editor-in-chief of the Jüdische Allgemeine, Germany’s most important Jewish newspaper
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