Antisemitism - Ideology and Communication Strategy of the "Islamic State"

Lecture and debate with Alexander Steder

Moderator: Ulrike Becker, Mideast Freedom Forum Berlin

When: July 1st, 2020, 7 p.m.

Where: online event, Facebook livestream.

An event of the Mideast Freedom Forum Berlin and the Amadeu Antonio Foundation.

You can find the Facebook event for the lecture here.

With the hostage-taking in the kosher supermarket "Hyper Cacher" in January 2015, IS supporter Amedy Coulibaly tried to help the terrorists who had committed an attack on the editorial staff of "Charlie Hebdo" two days earlier and who were on the run holed in a building near an airport in France.

The French broadcaster BFM TV managed to conduct a short telephone interview with the hostage-taker. When asked whether he had chosen the business for a specific reason, he replied: “Yes. The Jews. Because of the oppression, especially the oppression of the Islamic State, and everywhere. It is for all areas where Muslims are oppressed. Palestine is one of them.” At this point, Coulibaly had already murdered four Jewish hostages. Special police forces stormed the supermarket and ended the hostage situation and in this way prevented further bloodshed.

Despite this obvious antisemitic background of the hostage-taking, the antisemitic ideology of the terrorist organization “Islamic State” was rarely addressed in the following media reports. The lecture therefore debates what status antisemitism has in the ideology of the terrorist organization “Islamic State”, how it is communicated in IS propaganda, what security risks are associated with it and what measures must be taken.

Alexander Steder is a historian and political scientist from Marburg and has systematically evaluated the IS magazine "Dabiq" for this lecure.

This event is supported by "Aktionswochen gegen Antisemitismus".