The Association of Palestinian–Jewish Academics (PJA) expresses its profound concern regarding the City of Berlin’s allocation of nearly 1.4 million euros in public funds to the NOVA Music Festival Exhibition (1), which ran from 7.10 to 16.11.2025, as well as the directive from the Senate Department for Education urging schools, universities, and youth institutions to organise visits. Both the exhibition and the pedagogical materials produced for its educational use reveal a troubling orientation towards a nationalist and emotionally manipulative mode of remembrance that is fundamentally at odds with democratic education, critical scholarship, and universal human rights principles. The promotion of the event by the city of Berlin is furthermore a conflict of interest and state neutrality (2).
The exhibition itself operates through a strategy of immersive spectacle. Rather than contextualising the events of 7 October 2023 within the broader histories of occupation, siege, displacement, and structural violence, the installation transforms trauma into an aesthetic experience intended to overwhelm the senses, narrow interpretive possibilities, and substitute emotion for understanding. Far from encouraging reflective engagement, this approach discourages precisely the kinds of analytical, ethical, and political inquiries that responsible remembrance requires (3–7). In Berlin, furthermore, the exhibition’s guests and promoters include individuals against whom credible allegations of war crimes have been brought and formal complaints filed in Germany (8).
These concerns are dramatically heightened by the content of the NOVA exhibition’s official pedagogical toolkit (9), distributed to educators across Berlin. The materials were developed by MIND gGmbH, founded by Ahmad Mansour, a so-called ‘islamist extremism expert’ and vocal proponent of the Israeli state (10). They present a fully one-sided narrative, embedding politicised definitions that erase the existence and experiences of Palestinians. Zionism is presented simply as “the recognition of the existence of Israel and the right of Jews to a state,” without any reference to ethnonationalism, settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing and other human rights violations, or the decades-long military occupation that defines Palestinian life. Antisemitism and terrorism are defined narrowly and selectively, without acknowledging that state violence—including war crimes—are also internationally repudiated forms of violence. These omissions fundamentally distort reality, positioning Israeli suffering in the spotlight while Palestinian history, identity, and trauma are denied entirely.
The pedagogical exercises cultivate empathy in one direction only, inculcating a worldview in which Palestinian lives, experiences, and human rights are simply absent. This is not education nor does it foster understanding. It is emotional conditioning designed to promote a right-wing ethnonationalist view. Within the accompanying classroom guidance, teachers are instructed to prioritise emotional presence over explanation—“Wahrnehmen statt erklären”—and to avoid analytical engagement. Such a framework suppresses contextual knowledge and forecloses critical thought. A remembrance culture grounded in emotional immersion and selective empathy is not a culture of memory but an instrument of political messaging (11).
Our concern is intensified by Germany’s ongoing military, economic and political support for Israel—measured in around 500 millions of euros in arms exports and other material assistance since October 7, 2023 (12)—during a period in which Israeli military operations in Gaza have resulted in the deaths of more than 72,000 Palestinians (the vast majority civilians, including at least 20,000 children) (13, 14). Half a million Gazans have been trapped in conditions of famine (15), caused by the Israeli military’s intentional withholding of aid to civilians. Numerous UN experts, civil-society actors and legal filings including at the ICJ have classified these actions as genocide or, in the mildest terms, as crimes against humanity (16). The broader context is also one of decades of Israeli occupation, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid (17, 18). Meanwhile, multiple UN reports have identified Germany—including universities and corporations—as materially complicit in the genocide as well as in the broader system of occupation, apartheid, and dispossession (19,20). To promote an exhibition that erases the ongoing genocide in Gaza and advances a nationalised narrative in support of a state in grave violation of international law is not merely intellectually dishonest; it is ethically indefensible.
We affirm that survivors of violence deserve to be heard and that experiences of trauma warrant careful and respectful remembrance. But remembrance grounded in selective empathy, political erasure, and affective manipulation is propaganda. A responsible culture of memory must recognise universal human dignity, attend to structural and historical realities, and foster analytical capacities necessary for genuine understanding and a multi-directional memory politics. It must refuse to instrumentalise the suffering of one group while denying the existence and humanity of another.
We call upon the Berlin Senate, the Senatsverwaltung für Bildung, Jugend und Familie, and Berlin’s educational institutions to commit themselves to educational practices that reflect critical thinking, rigorous scholarship, and universal human-rights principles. Berlin’s students and educators deserve better than state-sponsored narratives that substitute emotional manipulation for critical exchange. They deserve an educational environment grounded in context, complexity, and the equal rights of all peoples.
This statement is also available in German here.
Sources
- Tagesspiegel: https://checkpoint.tagesspiegel.de/telegramm/7pncoqLRKmp19zMF3uvctP
- ND. Nova-Ausstellung: Noch mehr politische Einflussnahme durch Senat. https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1195528.staatliches-neutralitaetsgebot-nova-ausstellung-noch-mehr-politische-einflussnahme-durch-senat.html
- Naomi Klein: „How Israel Has Made Trauma a Weapon of War“, The Guardian, 5. Oktober 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/oct/05/israel-gaza-october-7-memorials
- Ben Ratskoff: „Prosthetic Trauma at the Nova Exhibition: Holocaust Memory, Reenactment, and the Affective Reproduction of Genocidal Nightmares”, Journal of Genocide Research, 2. September 2025, https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2025.2551946
- Tom Holert on Nova Exhibition in Berlin
https://debatte.krisol-wissenschaft.org/en/the-nova-exhibition-immersive-entertainment-and-deceptive-unambiguity/ - Hanno Hauenstein, Berlin Review. Die Nova-Ausstellung in Berlin. https://blnreview.de/ausgaben/2025-11/hanno-hauenstein-nova-ausstellung-berlin
- Red Flag: Your tax money for Israeli war propaganda https://www.theleftberlin.com/nova-festival-tempelhof/
- Hind Rajab Foundation Files War Crimes Complaint in Germany Against Israeli Extremist Elkana Federman for Torture and Starvation of Civilians https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org/posts/hind-rajab-foundation-files-war-crimes-complaint-in-germany-against-israeli-extremist-elkana-federman-for-torture-and-starvation-of-civilians
- Begletimaterial zur Nova-Ausstellung “6:26 The Moment Music Stood Still”: Pädagogisches Toolkit für Lehrkräfte, Schulsozialarbeit und Schulpsychologie. Berlin, 29. Oktober 2025. In German. This activity book seems to have been developed specifically for Berlin. A related but less detailed educational toolkit is on the Nova website in English link here.
- Ahmad Mansour kann kein Vorbild sein https://jacobin.de/artikel/ahmad-mansour-islam-integration-staatsraeson
- D. Fassin. 2011. Humanitarian Reason A Moral History of the Present. UC Press
- Germany to halt military exports to Israel for use in Gaza war https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/8/germany-halts-military-exports-to-israel-for-use-in-gaza-offensive
- Explainer: How many Palestinians has Israel’s Gaza offensive killed? https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-many-palestinians-has-israels-gaza-offensive-killed-2025-10-07/
- Israeli army database suggests at least 83% of Gaza dead were civilians https://www.972mag.com/israeli-intelligence-database-83-percent-civilians-militants/
- Famine confirmed for first time in Gaza https://www.who.int/news/item/22-08-2025-famine-confirmed-for-first-time-in-gaza
- Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, UN commission of inquiry says https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8641wv0n4go
- Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/
- International Court Rulings Require EU Action on Israel and Palestine https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/10/25/international-court-rulings-require-eu-action-israel-and-palestine
- “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” – Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 (A/HRC/59/23)
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/a-hrc-59-23-from-economy-of-occupation-to-economy-of-genocide-report-special-rapporteur-francesca-albanese-palestine-2025/ - “Gaza Genocide: a collective crime” – Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories (A/80/492)
https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/a80492-gaza-genocide-collective-crime-report-special-rapporteur-situation
Association of Palestinian and Jewish Academics 