February 18, 2019 | The Jerusalem Post

Students at large German university condemn BDS as antisemitic

The University of Cologne, located in the state North Rhine-Westphalia, has a student body of nearly 49,000.
February 18, 2019 | The Jerusalem Post

Students at large German university condemn BDS as antisemitic

The University of Cologne, located in the state North Rhine-Westphalia, has a student body of nearly 49,000.

The University of Cologne’s student parliament passed a resolution against the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign targeting the Jewish State because BDS is an antisemitic movement that seeks to abolish Israel.

According to the resolution that was voted on in late October, 2018, “The student bodies of the University of Cologne are fighting the anti-Semitic BDS campaign against the Jewish state of Israel by all available means.” The students wrote BDS groups “should not be offered a platform at the University of Cologne. The student parliament and the AStA are working to prevent BDS propagating events at the University of Cologne.”

AStA stands for The General Students’ Committee, a student representative organization on German universities.

The University of Cologne, located in the state North Rhine-Westphalia, has a student body of nearly 49,000.

The student parliament resolution wrote “AStA is invited to advocate the university for a ban on university-connected events that are related to the BDS, or otherwise attempt to delegitimize the State of Israel.”

The text added. “The student parliament also condemns antisemitism in relation to the state of Israel in any form. It sees itself as being in solidarity with the State of Israel, which also means that its right to existence and self-defense is beyond question.”

In the two-page resolution, the students outlined the expressions of contemporary antisemitism. According to the resolution, “Modern antisemitism is often directed against the state of Israel. There are several attempts to delegitimize the existence of the state of Israel from the fact that the founding of the state has already been ‘unlawful.’ And followed by the statement that Israel is the authoritarian and racist state par excellence, to assertions denigrating Israel as an ‘apartheid state.’”

The students wrote. “Israel is the only functioning democracy in the Middle East,” adding “Also disregarded by such self-styled ‘critics’ [of Israel] is that Israel is the only state whose existence is openly threatened by threats of annihilation by other countries in the Middle East.”

The Cologne students noted, “When it comes to Israel, double standards are often on the agenda. In many political, social and especially media contexts, the state of Israel is often judged or treated differently than other states.”

According to the resolution, “BDS is a transnational political campaign that wants to isolate the state of Israel economically, culturally and politically, using various anti-Semitic stereotypes. The implementation of these campaign goals – as well as the related requirement that Israel should allow all Palestinians, not only those who left the country, but also all their descendants to ‘return’ – would be the de facto liquidation of the State of Israel.”

The University of Cologne students are the latest college students to follow student groups in rejecting BDS as an antisemitic campaign. The University of Vienna in Austria, Goethe University in Frankfurt, Leipzig University and Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz all have rejected BDS since 2016.

Benjamin Weinthal is a European correspondent at The Jerusalem Post and a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 

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Israel Palestinian Politics Sanctions and Illicit Finance