An Evening in Neukölln
On 10 May, US historian Jeffrey Herf spoke at a small café in Berlin established to discuss antisemitism and the Western Left’s growing hostility to the state of Israel.
In 2022, three German intellectuals and restaurateurs opened the Café Bajszel (pronounced by-zel) in the Neukölln section of Berlin. Alexander Carstiuc, Andrea Reinhard, and Alexander Renner’s project had a political purpose—namely, to create a public place where liberal supporters of Israel and critics of antisemitism could meet and hear talks by academics and intellectuals about these issues.
On 10 May, I gave a talk at Bajszel about Drei Gesichter des Antisemitismus, the German translation of my latest book, Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left, and Islamist. My German publisher, Hentrich and Hentrich, has also recently published Matthias Küntzel’s work on Nazism and Islamic antisemitism and Benny Morris’s works on the war of 1948 and the Palestinian refugee problem.
Neukölln is a dangerous place for an establishment of this kind, since a signif…
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