Stuttgart under fire for hosting a who's who of German anti-Israel activists

Antisemitism is running amok in the Stuttgart, Germany—the headquarters of the giant auto company Mercedes—where the city government is slated in March to finance an alleged antisemitic event featuring a who’s who of German anti-Israel activists, according to critics of the Stuttgart’s Mayor Frank Nopper.

The anti-Israel symposium is funded by the Cultural Office of the City of Stuttgart, Department of Literature and Philosophy, according to the German online outlet Ruhrbarone, which first broke the story on Tuesday.

Stuttgart, the capital city of the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, has been embroiled in multiple antisemitism and pro-Hamas scandals, including indifference to “No-Go-Zones” in Stuttgart for German Jews in order to allow pro-Hamas marches, according to a January 2025 i24NEWS report.

Writing for the Ruhrbarone, the German Journalist Stefan Laurin said ”Emily Dische-Becker, one of the initiators of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, will be present, as she was in Zurich. One of the main aims of the declaration is to exonerate the BDS campaign, whose goal is the destruction of Israel through economic and cultural boycotts, from the accusation of antisemitism.”

Ruhbarone said the Stuttgart event (“On the critique of freedom and its repression in liberal democracies”) is a kind of Act 2 of an anti-Israel event held in December in Zurich, Switzerland with many of the same activists, who will attend the Stuttgart symposium.

The Swiss daily NZZ wrote about the Zurich event “From the participants' point of view, Germany, with its special responsibility towards Israel, has maneuvered itself into a position that can no longer be justified today.”

The zealous pro-BDS activist Hanno Hauenstein is listed as a symposium participant. According to February 15 article on the Vienna-based mena-watch think tank website by German journalist Stefan Frank, “The BDS activist Hanno Hauenstein spread a rumor with a false report that quickly became widespread” that the German supermarket chain “Rewe has removed Israeli wines from its product range.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, told i24NEWS that he sees an anti-Isarel international campaign unfolding to gut the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and replace it with a feeble definition—the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.

The Stuttgart event symposium “mimics or follows the same sort of event in Switzerland. It is beginning to appear that there is a renewed effort to attack IHRA, not on its merits. This is the third effort to attack the growing worldwide acceptance of IHRA. This is not part of an academic discussion about which one is better in the pursuit of peace. There are those opposed to IHRA and they are not ready to say, we lost. “

Cooper said “anti-Zionists like the new Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, are opposed to IHRA. “The first thing he did was remove the commitment to operate under IHRA” in New York, said Cooper, who has testified on antisemitism in Congress. Germany’s Federal government accepted the IHRA definition.

“This is what the city of Stuttgart is investing in, so they can mask their attacks to weaken protections for the Jewish people,“ said Cooper, adding “The Simon Wiesenthal Center would love to hear what the Mayor of Stuttgart and Governor of the state have to say about this program in Stuttgart. Antisemitism is unleashed. What should the leaders of Stuttgart understand from this move. “

Cooper argued that “There are many cultural figures who hate Jews” and are happy to use the pre-text of academia and culture to attack Jews and Israel. ”Shame on all of them,” said the expert on antisemitism.

The controversial Christian Democratic Union party Mayor of Stuttgart, Frank Nopper, and the city officials, Marc Gegenfurtner and Fabian Meyer, who are funding the alleged anti-Israel symposium, refused to answer numerous i24NEWS press queries.

Cooper said “This is a renewed effort to defeat IHRA because it is standing in the way of Israel and Jew-haters. IHRA correctly points out there are red lines when criticizing Israel, They are well defined and accepted on nearly every continent. If you need guidance where valid criticism of Israel ends, and where antisemitism starts, that is IHRA.” 

Cooper noted IHRA helps refute the demonization of Israel‘s self-defense war in Gaza against the US and EU-designated terrorist movement, Hamas. Cooper said “There was no genocide and there was no starvation” in Gaza. It was the demonization of Israel.” He stressed that” IHRA is one of the most important achievements, and one of the most effective legal and pedagogical tools, to explain what is antisemitism.”

Cooper has also accused the alleged anti-Israel civil servant in Stuttgart, Michael Blume, with the demonization of Jews and Israel. Blume is tasked with fighting antisemitism but two German courts declared that he can be termed “antisemitic” because of his attacks on a Zionist German Jew, Malca Goldstein-Wolf and Israel, i24NEWS reported.

Blume, a member of the CDU party, sparked new outrage when he recently claimed, without evidence, that the Simon Wiesenthal Center is seeking to influence the March state elections in Baden-Württemberg. Blume wrote on social media “Unfortunately, we must expect far-right digital campaigns to influence state elections” with respect to Wiesenthal.

Cooper said “Blume is the source of the problem. He needs to look into the mirror. Blume should be held accountable for his behavior and the government should be held accountable for not doing anything. While Blume is looking for people to blame for his troubles, where was he when there was all this antisemitism in Germany? Here he is feeling sorry for his outrageous and dangerous rhetoric and putting himself out as some sort of victim. And while all around him is soaring Jew-hatred.”

Cooper added” Take a look at which side of the ledger this person has impacted antisemitism with regard to fighting it or abetting it. That is the issue he should be dealing with. His behavior is indefensible when it comes to the Jewish people and home of the largest Jewish community in the world, state of Israel.”

Cooper said during a 2023 US congressional hearing on combating antisemitism in Europe that Blume should be fired.

Blume declined to answer multiple i24NEWS press queries.