Editor's Note: On Monday, 23 September, a public lecture and discussion was held at Korea University's Life Library on the topic of ‘One Year After the Genocide, the Tasks of Palestine Solidarity Movement in Campus’. In the first part of the lecture, Comrade Kilian Gremminger, an activist of the German socialist student organisation Waffen Der Kritik (Weapons of Criticism), a student at the University of Munich, spoke about the Palestinian solidarity movement on German campuses. we publish the script of speech here, with the consent of the speakers.

 

1. The Current International Situation

 

Over the summer, we saw a certain lull in the protests worldwide and at the universities. This is partly due to the fact that many students are not there and no courses are taking place, but also to the international dynamics of the protest, which are always cyclical. At American and also European universities, actions are currently being planned for the start of the semester, so there could be more momentum again. This is also connected to the developments in the Middle East, of course. We see an intensified enforcement of the occupation in the West Bank, the massacres in Gaza continue, and Lebanon has increasingly become a war target of the Israeli government with the air strikes and rocket attacks.

 

The international situation is contradictory. On the one hand, we see a general shift to the right, in many “liberal democracies” either far-right parties are in power or are driving other bourgeois parties forward, as is happening in Germany with the AfD. This is related to the ongoing economic crisis since 2008 and the intensification caused by Corona, but there are even more causes. At the same time, since 2022 we have seen a new dynamic in the class struggle, with progressive examples such as the mass protests in France against the pension reform. With Palestine, it also seems possible to connect parts of the working class more with political issues, so that they do not just fight for more wages. These can be starting points for combating the shift to the right. 

 

2. The two waves of the movement
 

In general, we can observe two waves of the worldwide Palestine movement from October 7 to the present day.

 

The first wave begins soon after October 7 and is characterized by huge, very heterogeneous demonstrations on the streets. There are mass demonstrations in all parts of the world, in the USA, Latin and South America, Arab countries, and Asia. The protest initially has a humanitarian character, it is about making the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza visible, demands for humanitarian aid are made to their own governments. In addition, the Palestinian movement is trying to break the dominant narrative that the “conflict” began on October 7, without telling the story of the last 76 years, the Nakba and the illegal occupation. The protest is therefore humanitarian and civil, the protesters from trade unions, parties, students, migrants, pensioners are addressing their own governments as well as the UN and asking them to do something about the suffering. With the special exception of Germany, large parts of the climate and Black Lives Matter movements are also participating in the protests, so there is a certain natural connection between anti-colonial, anti-racist struggles and the climate crisis caused by capitalism. In Munich and other European cities where our organization is active, committees are also being set up to unite students for various actions. At the same time, there are already actions by the working class in the first wave at international ports, where there are blockades of arms deliveries.

 

But at the beginning of the year, the situation changed, with a decision by the International Court of Justice providing evidence of genocide by the Israeli government against Palestinians in Gaza. However, since nothing happened as a result and the mass killings continued, clearly also targeting civilians in so-called “safe areas in Gaza”, more and more people lost faith in their own civil governments and in international institutions such as the International Court of Justice or the UN as a whole.

 

For the movement, April 17 changed everything: a dozen courageous students at Columbia University in New York found the world's first Gaza Solidarity Encampment, facing massive opposition from police and university administrators. This repression directly triggers solidarity from parts of the university staff, who try to use chains to protect the camp and the students from eviction. In the following days, the action quickly spread to universities across the country, and at the end of April the spark also spread to European and German universities. The second wave was born and the students led the protest as the vanguard.

 

In doing so, the students expand their program and criticize the complicity of their government with regard to arms deliveries, the lack of diplomatic attempts to suppress the movement, which they also relate to the universities. Imperialism does not stop at the university and expresses itself in research collaborations with Israel, through arms research and sometimes also direct participation in arms production. The students are fighting the university administrations and want to take back their universities, which must no longer be used to serve genocide. They are calling for a boycott of relations with Israel in scientific, political, cultural and military terms, but they are also calling for divestment, for the universities to open their books so that every student and employee can see where the money is going. In their protest, the students are objectively opposing imperialism; they are no longer acting as citizens, but explicitly as students, and are thus struggling for power and control at their own universities. These aspects, along with the expansion of the program, enable their vanguard character, which distinguishes them as pioneers in the protest against other sectors.

 

3. Three tendencies in the German movement
 

The first tendency in the current phase is withdrawal or routinism. This phenomenon arises from the exhaustion of months of activity with very limited success. It shows itself in forms of repetitive protest, be they vigils, information stands or protest camps, which eventually run out of steam. We see this even in the initially explosive experiences in the USA, where camps like the one at Columbia are being rebuilt, but no new forms of action are being developed, and no attempts are being made to expand the movement to include larger sections of the population. Much of the focus is then on educating and informing passers-by, but less on attracting or activating new activists. This retreat into one's “own community” has political reasons, but of course it is also related to the objective conditions, that is, the stagnation of the protest cycle. Because we have to abandon the idea that we can create our own momentum at the local level, so to speak; our own activity and mobilization power depends to a large extent on the international situation.

 

We call the second tendency symbolic radicalism. This tendency is currently most prevalent in the hard core of the movement and comes to expression again and again. In Germany, this tendency was most visible at the Berlin universities. We remember that windows and walls were smeared with symbols and slogans of resistance, and the activists even renamed the institute “Jabalia Institute”. I myself have great sympathy for the latter in particular, but these actions do not help us strategically. This tendency was born out of disillusionment with international, bourgeois institutions, which considers physical and highly symbolic resistance to be the only conceivable option. The logic here can be summarized as “if we can't influence power, then let them pay as much as possible for it.” Repression is accepted and stylized into a moral proof of militancy in the style of martyrdom. The fundamental rejection of legal forms of action and the focus on political vandalism are further defining elements. We are talking here about a “sectarian” tendency that declares the masses of students and the rest of the population “lost” and turns its back on them.

 

The third tendency is the political expansion. Since October 7, this has been taking place in the form of committees at many universities and has, to a certain extent, already prepared the explosion in April and May; the already prepared structures could serve as springboards for the movement. The purpose of the committees was and is to overcome the isolation of students in a situation of anger and grief as well as fierce repression, i.e. a defensive situation. When you are on the defensive, you have to gather forces as broadly as possible in order to be able to strike back at some point. That is why unorganized first-year students without political experience found and find themselves in the committees, as do people who are close to political Islam or people like me who call themselves Marxists. Through these months of preparation, it was possible for us to occasionally become at least a thorn in the side of the university administration through protest camps and to expand our movement over the summer semester.

 

But political expansion is above all about content. Not only has the movement put its solidarity with other anti-colonial struggles, such as in Sudan or Congo, on the agenda, but other forms of oppression are also being linked to the Palestinian question. A current example illustrates this. Originally focused on issues such as pinkwashing in Israel, the question of queer connection is expanding to larger parts of the movement, which we have seen in the discussions around the CSDs. The question of national liberation and anti-colonial struggle is thus linked to further forms of oppression, which sets a clear counterpoint to the conservative to Islamist parts of the movement. Our movement needs many people, but it also needs hard discussions about questions of oppression, which can also raise the question of the liberation movement of Palestine. As bad as the situation in Israel is for the queer community, we must not remain silent about the leadership of the resistance by Hamas. We unconditionally support the right to resist, but if the dreams of Hamas were realized, there would continue to be massive oppression of women, queers and other marginalized groups.

 

4. The Munich Palestine Camp

 

The Munich Palestine Camp has been standing almost continuously since the beginning of May and is now probably the longest camp in the world. In Bavaria, we have a specific political situation, because the regional government has been consistently dominated by a right-wing conservative party since 1945, resulting in authoritarian tendencies such as border controls or an almost non-existent student co-determination at the university. Particularly in view of the repression against the camp and the student protests, the government has taken an initiative against the criminalization of students in order to be able to expel them from the university more easily for “anti-Semitic or extremist reasons”. At the same time, an initiative was launched while the camp was being set up that would establish a binding cooperation between the military and Bavarian universities. That is why we have formulated specific demands, such as: Bundeswehr out of the universities, universities should only conduct research for purely civilian purposes, or: an end to the criminalization of protest, for the full implementation of democratic freedoms such as academic freedom or freedom of assembly. Since several political events have been banned by the administration over the last few months, leaving almost no room for discussion of repression or the liberation of Palestine at the university, we demand a university under the control of workers and students, so that not a small minority can decide what is taught and discussed at the university.

 

The last but very important element was the workers' initiatives that we founded at the camp. Because the workers are actually the class under capitalism that has the most political power in the fight against war, with blockades at the port or occupations of arms factories. In Germany, however, they are still very much controlled by the trade union bureaucracies, which follow a pro-Zionist line and try to keep any political demands regarding Palestine out. That is why we founded “Health not arms” and “Workers for Palestine” in order to build up a base of workers in the trade unions who would put pressure on the leadership. We did this, for example, with a petition from trade union members in solidarity with Palestine.