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Statement on TU Berlin’s response to scholasticide

How the Technical University Berlin ignored Gaza’s universities’ call under attack but praised complicit Israeli institutions


03/09/2025

Dear members of the executive board of TU Berlin,

We are writing to express our profound disappointment at the statement issued on 8 August 2025 regarding the open letter from five Israeli university presidents.

For almost two years, since the beginning of Israel’s genocide, the facts have been widely available, reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Education, UN experts, and international media. They have been there for anyone to see—for those who care, that is. 

University presidents in Gaza have been murdered: Prof. Sufyan Tayeh, President of the Islamic University of Gaza, killed in an Israeli airstrike on 2 December 2023 with his family; Dr. Said Al-Zubda, President of the University College of Applied Sciences, killed in an Israeli airstrike on 31 December 2023 with his family; and Prof. Muhammad Eid Shabir, former President of the Islamic University of Gaza, killed in an Israeli airstrike on 14 November 2023 with family members. At least seven deans have also been killed, among them Dr. Ibrahim Al-Astal, Dr. Omar Farwana, Dr. Taysir K. Ibrahim, Dr. Ahmad Abo Absa, Dr. Nasser Abu Al-Nour and others—all targeted in their homes. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 1,256 university students and 16,721 pre-university students have been killed in Gaza and in the West Bank, along with 222 university staff and 736 pre-university. All universities have been destroyed in Gaza. 

Despite all this, In May 2024, Palestinian academics issued a Unified Emergency Statement from Gaza and exile. Explicitly affirming their existence and collective determination to remain on their land and to resume teaching, studying, and researching in Gaza, at their own Palestinian universities. “The Israeli occupation forces have demolished our buildings but our universities live on”, they wrote, resisting all attempts that sought to erase Palestinian educational life. They described issuing this call “from beneath the bombs… as the Israeli occupation continues to wage its genocidal campaign against [their] people daily”, while their families, colleagues, and students were being targeted. 

If any moment deserved your recognition, it was this—a direct message from Palestinian scholars asserting their right to survive, teach, and learn. But you ignored it. As much as you might want to claim you “see” Palestinians, you only seem to see them when their killers are the ones speaking.

Instead of finally centering these victims and their own calls to action, you issued a statement praising the “courage” of Israeli university presidents—leaders of institutions deeply embedded within the Israeli military apparatus, which has for decades enforced occupation, apartheid and for the last two years, supported an ongoing genocide in Gaza. The Israeli letter you cite does not acknowledge Israel’s responsibility for the famine in Gaza. It speaks only of “intensifying efforts” to “address” hunger without ending the blockade that causes it. It restricts references to international law violations to future proposals, ignoring two years of massacres, sieges, and targeted destruction of civilian infrastructure, including universities, and 77 years of violent illegal occupation.

By portraying this letter as moral courage worthy of praise, you are not showing solidarity, you are providing cover for complicit institutions. You are appropriating Palestinian suffering to perform a false balance and to shield yourself and zionist institutions from criticism for two years of deliberate silence. 

The message to Palestinian students, scholars, and staff at TU Berlin could not be clearer: Their lives, their families, their murdered colleagues do not matter enough to be named. Only when Israeli individuals speak up do you say something—and even then, it is to praise their courage. A courage, by the way, you did not dare to show. Even those complicit in genocide have managed to speak, albeit through a weak and evasive statement, before you—an institution “equally committed to the well-being of all its employees and students”, where “freedom from discrimination, morals and ethics, as well as human rights, apply to all [their] members”—ever did. 

You write, “At TU Berlin, we listen and offer space for discussion. However, much as talking can be beneficial, it is clear that listening alone is not enough when it comes to some of the stories related between colleagues and at consultations”. Yet you have done nothing to help Palestinians. You have refused to cut ties with institutions directly involved in the genocide. You have refused to condemn the scholasticide. You have refused to answer the call from Gaza’s educational system, which was sent to you on 12.11.2024. That call was not abstract. It laid out concrete priorities: Public pledges to rebuild Gaza’s universities—immediate support to continue teaching through their own institutions with volunteer lecturers—online platforms and essential IT equipment—scholarships and debt relief—partnerships and fellowships to keep faculty and students within their universities rather than hollowing them out in exile—and research cooperation to aid recovery and long-term rebuilding. These were practical, urgent steps that any university serious about solidarity could have taken. You chose to do none of them. Instead, you continue in your active complicity in the genocide and other forms of oppression of the Palestinian people. And we will not stop until we expose all of it.

Red Flag: Anti-Irish repression shows growing authoritarianism

In his weekly column, Nathaniel Flakin covers Kneecap ban and Irish Berliner getting punched


Kitty O'Brien with a bloody nose, being led away by two police officers.

As I write these lines, I should be at a Kneecap concert. The Irish hiphop group was supposed to play in Berlin on Tuesday night—but the gig was cancelled back in April without explanation. Of course we all know the reason: Kneecap’s German tour was scrapped after they said “Free Palestine” at Coachella.

Instead, they organized 15 sold-out shows across the US—which have all been nixed as well. This because Mo Chara, aka Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, has to appear in a London court facing terrorism charges.

It seems quaint now, but does anyone remember when the Right was warning of “cancel culture”? I can’t think of a single right-wing windbag who was actually cancelled. But now we have musicians being persecuted for speaking out against a genocide—and “free speech absolutists” like Elon Musk aren’t interested.

As the Western powers have supported genocide in Gaza, they’ve become more authoritarian at home. They say we need trillions of euros for weapons so they can protect our “freedom” and “way of life.” Meanwhile, they’re beating and arresting people for voicing opposition to government policy.

Mo Chara, Irish for “my friend,” is charged with supporting a proscribed terrorist organization after he draped a yellow Hezbollah flag over his shoulders at a show last year. The Lebanese group has certainly been responsible for violent actions—but so have the Israeli Defense Forces, which are currently carrying out genocide.

As of yet, no one in the UK has faced prosecution for using IDF symbols—and no one has been arrested for joining that particular terrorist group. The term “terrorism” is entirely political: it refers to violent political groups that a government doesn’t like. It can even refer to entirely peaceful groups like Palestine Action, who are guilty of nothing more than civil disobedience.

Who knows, really?

While we should have been listening to Kneecap, we were watching videos of other Irish activists. Kitty O’Brien, a 25-year-old, non-binary, Irish Berliner, was punched in the face twice by a black-uniformed cop. Their supposed crime was insulting an officer—and since German law mandates that police use “proportionality” and the “mildest possible means,” this means that nothing short of striking O’Brien’s nose and breaking their arm could have stopped this offense.

Every Irish media outlet took up the story. Within a few days, even the Taoiseach (prime minister) Micheál Martin said he was “deeply concerned” about such “unacceptable” violence.

Yet German media didn’t see what the fuss was about. Tagesspiegel waited a full day to publish a headline with a subjunctive formulation: a police officer “supposedly” punched a woman (sic!) in the face. Spiegel expressed the same uncertainty (though they did later correct the gender in their headline). Both articles acknowledge the numerous videos from different angles—but who knows, really? Maybe the fist stopped a millimeter before O’Brien’s face, whose nose started gushing blood spontaneously at that exact moment.

Germany’s bourgeois journalists are waiting patiently for the police to investigate. Yes, the thugs are supposed to look into their own thuggery. The same ones who clear the perpetrators in over 99 percent of charges.  

Germany’s ambassador in Dublin told the Irish Times: “I would like to stress that in Germany, peaceful demonstrations are not suppressed. Freedom of expression is a fundamental right and it is not under question in our democracy in Germany.”

Yet anyone with access to social media can see this is not the case. For two years, Berlin cops have been attacking basic democratic rights, often in violation of court orders. This is just a particularly appalling example caught by numerous cameras.

If you had the luck of the Irish

Ireland and Palestine share a history of British colonization, and even a few of the same oppressors: Arthur Balfour, who declared the British government’s support for Zionist colonization of Palestine in 1917, had previously been called “Bloody Balfour” for his violent repression of Irish self-determination.

So it’s no coincidence that Irish people are overrepresented in Berlin’s beleaguered but brave Palestine solidarity movement. The Berlin government tried to deport four activists—unsuccessfully, for now—and half of them were from Ireland. Berlin cops have banned the Irish language at protests. Even chanting “Saoirse don Phalaistín” (Free Palestine) in front of the Irish embassy is enough to get you arrested.

Liberal politicians claimed that Ireland had finally been pacified by a so-called “peace process,” with Western Europe’s last civil war ended and the legacies of colonialism buried under an intricate system of power-sharing and segregation. Globalization, we were told, would make partition irrelevant.

Yet, Irish opposition to the genocide in Gaza reminds us that the anti-imperialist struggle was never about one particular culture being suppressed. Rather, it is about a handful of capitalist great powers plundering the world and exploiting its people. That’s why it’s the same struggle, from Ireland to Palestine to Berlin.

In a video, you can hear Comrade Kitty telling those cops: “You don’t fucking scare us!” The German media might try to ignore police violence in Berlin, just like they ignore genocide in Gaza. But the whole world saw that punch—and everyone is trying to get tickets to Kneecap.

Red Flag is a weekly opinion column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears at The Left Berlin.

17+8 demands from the Indonesian protesters

Core Principles: Transparency · Reformation · Empathy


02/09/2025

Trust is earned, not given.
We are waiting — prove to us that you are listening.

17 Demands Within 1 Week

(Deadline: 5 September 2025)

Responsibilities of the President

  1. Withdraw the military (TNI) from civilian security and end the criminalization of demonstrators.
  2. Establish an Independent Investigation Team into the cases of Affan Kurniawan, Umar Amarudin, and all victims of state violence and human rights violations during the August 28–30 protests, with a clear and transparent mandate.

Responsibilities of Parliament (DPR)

3. Freeze salary/benefit increases for DPR members and cancel new facilities (including pensions).
4. Proactively publish full budget transparency (salaries, benefits, housing, facilities).
5. Launch ethical and judicial investigations (including through KPK) into corrupt or problematic DPR members.

Responsibilities of Political Parties

6. Strictly sanction or expel cadres who act unethically and provoke public anger.
7. Publicly commit to standing with the people in times of crisis.
8. Involve party members in public dialogue with students and civil society.

Responsibilities of the Police

9. Release all detained demonstrators.
10. End police violence and comply with existing SOPs for crowd control.
11. Transparently prosecute and bring to justice officers and commanders responsible for violence and human rights violations.

Responsibilities of the Military (TNI)

12. Return immediately to the barracks and cease involvement in civilian security.
13. Enforce internal discipline to prevent TNI members from taking over police functions.
14. Make a public commitment not to intervene in civilian spaces during the democratic crisis.

Responsibilities of the Economic Sector

15. Ensure decent wages for all sectors of the workforce (teachers, healthcare workers, laborers, ride-hailing partners, etc.).
16. Take emergency measures to prevent mass layoffs and protect contract workers.
17. Open dialogue with labor unions to resolve issues related to minimum wage and outsourcing.

8 Demands Within 1 Year

(Deadline: 31 August 2026)

  1. Clean up and overhaul Parliament (DPR): conduct public independent audits, set higher standards for membership (reject corruptors), establish performance indicators, abolish privileges (lifetime pensions, special cars, escorts).
  2. Reform political parties and strengthen oversight of the executive branch.
  3. Draft a fairer tax reform plan and roll back unjust tax increases.
  4. Pass and enforce the Law on Asset Confiscation from Corruptors (RUU Perampasan Aset): strengthen the KPK and the Anti-Corruption Law (Tipikor).
  5. Reform the police to be professional and humane, with decentralized functions (security, traffic, national defense).
  6. Return the military (TNI) fully to the barracks, without exceptions.
  7. Strengthen the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) and other independent oversight bodies.
  8. Review economic and labor policies, including revising the Omnibus Law on Job Creation and PSN priority projects, to protect workers, indigenous communities, and the environment.

These 17+8 demands are a summary* of various demands and calls that have been circulating on social media over the past few days, including:

The 7-day demands from@salsaer@jeromepolin @cherylmarella, the result of deliberations from millions of people’s voices in the comment section & Instagram Stories.

The demands of 211 civil society organizations published through YLBHI’s website.

Press Release of the Center for Indonesian Law and Policy
Studies (PSHK).

Statement of the Association of Master’s Students in Notarial Law, University of Indonesia.

Statement of the Center for Environmental Law & Climate
Justice, University of Indonesia.

Demands from the Labor Protest on August 28, 2025.

12 People’s Demands Towards Reform, Transparency & Justice by Reformasi Indonesia on Change.org, which has already received more than 40,000 signatures.

*This summary seeks to capture the essence of the various reference sources mentioned above and may not include all details in full. This summary also does not intend to overlook other demands that may have circulated at the same time.

🔥 We are waiting.
🔥 Prove to us that you are listening.

September 4, 2009 – Kunduz massacre

This week in working class history


In the early hours of 4 September 2009, US planes dropped two 500-pound bombs on two fuel tankers in Kunduz, Afghanistan. This was a NATO mission, and the order to bomb was given by German Colonel Felix Klein. Well over 100 people were killed, most of them civilians, including many children. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECHR) called the attack the “deadliest German military operation since the end of the Second World War”.

The German government showed no remorse. The army initially announced that there had been no civilian victims. Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung celebrated the attack, claiming that dozens of Taliban fighters had been killed. Jung’s successor, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, described the attack as “militarily appropriate”. There were no direct disciplinary or criminal investigations. In 2013, Colonel Klein, who had ordered the bombing, was promoted to brigadier general. 

When lawyers representing the victims tried to prosecute, the German Ministry of Defence withheld important documents and reports. In February 2010, Germany amended its own laws, reclassifying the military deployment as an “armed conflict within the parameters of international law”. This meant that German troops, and their leaders, were no longer liable to prosecution for the Kunduz massacre.

In February 2010, an extensive article in Der Spiegel described the Kunduz bombing as a “war crime” that the German government had attempted to cover up. Two weeks later, during a Bundestag debate, LINKE MPs held up posters with the names of the victims. They were thrown out of the parliamentary chamber. Later that year, Germany paid $5,000 each to the families of 100 of the victims—former Afghan minister Amin Farhang described the sum as “laughable”. Larger claims for compensation were rejected by German courts.

In 2021, German troops left Afghanistan, forced out by a population which had suffered decades of occupation by both the Soviet Union and the US. History is being rewritten to suggest that before the Taliban took over Afghanistan, people lived in peace and democracy. Kunduz shows this was not the case and that Germany’s attempts to expand its army and reintroduce conscription must be resisted.

Sex and outrage sells

On Sydney Sweeny and American Eagle


31/08/2025

One month ago American Eagle launched its controversial ad campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney. It remains a hot topic on the internet. Sweeney has been a popular subject for celeb-related gossip for some time, from rumors of an affair with Glenn Powell of romcom Anyone But You to recent back-to-back box office bombs. She’s been threatening over-exposure for a while, and now appears to have reached the tipping point. I feel like every time I open an app I get a jeans jumpscare. In one snippet, with all the energy of a sloth on valium, Sweeney saunters around denim-clad, the camera zeroing in particularly on her behind as she admires herself in a mirror. “This is not me telling you to buy American Eagle jeans,” she tells the camera, before the slogan SYDNEY SWEENEY HAS GREAT JEANS splashes itself across the screen. In another, she mumbles her way through some boring gene factoids while buttoning up the fly and then schmoozes at the camera. 

A few years ago, I was very much expecting her to climb to the ranks of the Silver Screen Gen Z Brat Pack. I didn’t predict her having quite the clout as Zendaya, Timothee Chalamet, etc, but I was expecting her to hover on the periphery of the group. Even with Euphoria season two exposing the show’s style-over-substance problem, she did her best with the material she was given,. It sounds strange, but Sweeney can really nail a whimpering, cowardly mess. She’s also appeared in other prestige shows such as Sharp Objects, The White Lotus, and The Handmaid’s Tale, and she’s given solid, commendable performances. Obviously I’m no publicist or public relations manager, but I would’ve advised her to choose commercial work carefully and sparingly. Instead, she’s been taking what seems like every brand opportunity that comes her way; she’s defended the choice because it helped her to buy a house. Now she owns  a 13.5 million compound in Florida. But still. A quick google search estimates that Sweeney gets paid 800k per Euphoria episode, and I imagine her other acting gigs pay pretty well.. 

On one hand, the ad doesn’t seem very good. I’m no Don Draper, but I think I could’ve put something a touch more coherent together. As a woman, it just doesn’t make me want to buy the jeans. Sweeney is undoubtedly beautiful, but the garments look ill-fitting and uninteresting. The flat affect she adopts inspires absolutely no enthusiasm from me, and kind of undermines the sultry sexpot thing she tries to sell. Compare her to Sabrina Carpenter, the other blonde bombshell of the hour. Carpenter is campy and coquettish, there is a slyness, a wink and a nudge. Sweeney seems to try to emulate this, and at least for me, it very rarely lands. 

On the other hand, the entire point of an ad is to attract attention, and American Eagle certainly did that. Companies harness outrage culture by purposefully incorporating problematic slants that can technically be hand-waved away after the fact. Do I think that the original idea of “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans/genes” was proffered with only the intention to allude to her figure? Yes. Do I also think that as they bandied ideas about, they considered the fact that it could be interpreted as promoting white supremacy? Absolutely. I just can’t fathom a room of professionals in marketing not considering that would be the case. They knew how it could be picked up, and they decided to go with it anyways.But if we decide to look the other way, and not critique for the sake of drawing attention to unsavory practices, surely they’ll just continue. And a company making the choice to imply eugenics in our current political climate for the sake of cashing in on disarray is something that shouldn’t be ignored. 

Matters haven’t been helped by the fact that Sweeney has since been revealed as a Republican.  Pop culture aficionados will know that she’s been a suspected MAGA-head since 2023, when pictures from her mother’s sixtieth hoedown birthday party surfaced.  Attendees wore  Make Sixty Great Again hats and Blue Lives Matter t-shirts. Sweeney pushed back against the reaction, insisting that the party was innocent fun and not politically charged. 

But the Republican bombshell was dropped, and she’s made no moves to distance herself from the right. Trump has given Sweeney a glowing review online, saying, “Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the “HOTTEST” ad out there. It’s for American Eagle, and the jeans are flying off the shelves”. That much is true: a number of the products sold out in record time, presumably due to swathes of conservatives reacting to what they see as a liberal tantrum. Trump keeps petty celebrity drama in his mouth and uses it to muddy other conversations: it’s a ploy to have the discord reach such a crescendo that everyone drops out of it, exhausted and unmotivated to continue fighting. 

I also only recently found out that one of the designs had a butterfly logo on it, intended to bring awareness to domestic violence awareness, with all of the proceeds going towards Crisis Text Line. A very worthy cause, and I am delighted they are receiving funds from the campaign. But if bringing awareness to the charity was another aim, they categorically failed. The bizarre optics, the sexually charged angles, the clumsy tagline, the lack of pretty much any narrative other than “Sydney Sweeney is hot!!!!!”, none of that recipe has any link to domestic abuse. And I also find it fundamentally strange and tasteless for a campaign intending to spotlight abuse made to appeal to the male gaze, and using a fifteen-year-old as a reference. 

 The ad was a clear throwback to Brooke Shields’ 1980 Calvin Klein jeans campaign, a troubling touchpoint Controversial even when it was aired, it’s been recontextualized as even more disturbing. Shields’ admitted in documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields that she hadn’t understood the double entendres peppered throughout the campaign. Shields was hideously exploited as a child. Her sexualization and objectification was a twisted thing that was carried out in the public sphere. The Calvin Klein campaign was technically iconic, but was unforgivable manipulation of a minor. I believe American Eagle were aware of their sparking a eugenics row, I imagine they were equally prepared for this element of the ads to spark backlash. They chose indignation and scandal over sensitive and structured storytelling. It was lazy, it was a stunt.  Unfortunately conservative rhetoric is alive and well and companies will profit if they court Republican favor. I guess you could still say it’s a net positive, because the chatter surrounding the ad drove sales, but referencing a minor’s erotic ad campaign while attempting to support domestic abuse charities seems to require the same amount of cognitive dissonance that casting scientologist Elizabeth Moss as the protagonist of The Handmaid’s Tale did. 

Of course, when making judgement on a famous woman being sexualized, you always run the risk of being accused of shaming her for her sexuality. We saw the aforementioned Sabrina Carpenter receive backlash when the cover of her next album, Man’s Best Friend, was unveiled. In it, Carpenter crawls on the ground, a faceless man’s hand gripped in her signature curls. It prompted so much discourse that there was discourse about the discourse. One side found the cover debasing, reminiscent of abusive pornography, and utterly unempowering. Another crowd insisted that Carpenter was entitled to express her sexuality however she saw fit, and that the cover was obviously tongue-in-cheek. Commenters acknowledged Carpenter’s business savvy and her intention to make controversial waves. But Carpenter usually manages to wriggle out of things by being charismatic and much more clued-in than you’d expect. 

But I don’t think it can be denied that it was made to show off every contour of Sweeney’s body in a highly voyeuristic manner. You can make sexy content that appeals to women, but Sweeney feels like she has no agency in the videos; she is just a monotone Barbie doll, wriggling in and out of denim and smouldering lazily at the camera. This was made for men, and we’re seeing more and more content like that. The Girl Boss feminism of the mid 2010s, was cringe but well-intentioned. 

This flat, drawling, sexed-up act from Sweeney has been on our screens before. In June, Sweeney collaborated with Dr. Squatch Soap to produce a bar using her bathwater as one of its ingredients. Yes, you read that right. “Hello, you dirty little boys,” she says unenthusiastically from a bubble bath. “Are you interested in my body…wash?” Again, the campaign was effective: the product sold out. It seems she’s embraced centering men. Most people found the launch of the soap pathetically cringe and cheapening her brand, but a few optimists supported her for securing the bag by taking advantage of the guys who creep on her online. Some try to argue that by sexualizing themselves, Sweeney and Carpenter are getting there before the male gaze does; they are liberated by embracing their sexuality. But then, is it really a choice, when it’s made in a vacuum? And does the male gaze need to be centered so aggressively? Are they taking ownership of their desires and expressing agency or simply surrendering to the patriarchal status quo that they could be challenging? 

Jo Ellison wrote a piece for the Financial Times offering up another viewpoint: that our preoccupation with Sweeney is a reflection of our own issues, and not hers. Comparing her to Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield Ellison points out that we choose to politicize Sweeney because she has natural assets.  Ellison states “for a huge swath of the population a pneumatic blonde still embodies the ideal of womanhood”. I understand her point, and it was nice to have a differing perspective. I don’t quite think Sweeney is interesting enough to garner such a defence, but I partially agree. Putting Sweeney herself at the center of our critiques, and levelling all the criticism on her, is not conducive to change or a solution to media storms. Plus, people really are always far too eager to jump on a famous woman and pummel her down to a splinter. The issue really lies at the feet of large brands using strife to make sales, and governments that are propelling forward a movement that values white supremacy, female subjugation, and outdated ideals.