Matthias Küntzel

Matthias Küntzel (born 1955), is a German author and a political scientist. He is a research associate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

Career

From 1984 to 1988, Küntzel was a senior advisor of the Federal Parliamentary Fraction of Germany’s Green Party. In 1991, he received his doctorate, summa cum laude, in Political Science at the University of Hamburg. His thesis Bonn & the Bomb. German Politics and the Nuclear Option, London: Pluto Press was in English in 1995. In 2004, he has been named a research associate at the Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Since 2001, his main field of research and writing have been anti-Semitism in current Islamic thinking, Islamism, Islamism and National Socialism, Iran, German and European policies towards the Middle East and Iran. Among others, he wrote for The New Republic, the Wall Street Journal and Internationale Politik. In 2006 he became a member of the Board of Directors of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

Work

In 2003, he delivered the Keynote Address at the Conference on "Genocide and Terrorism – Probing the Mind of the Perpetrator" at Yale University. In 2004, he was a panelist at the "Lessons & Legacies VIII International Conference on the Holocaust: From Generation to Generation" at Brown University. In 2005, he discovered antisemitic tracts at the Iranian stands at the Frankfurt Book Fair: an incident he wrote about in the Wall Street Journal. He was a panelist at the 2006 Paris conference "Les démocraties face au défi islamiste" (The democracies in the face of the Islamist challenge) organised by the Center for Security Policy and L’institut pour la Défense de la Démocratie. He organized the 1999 conference "Die Goldhagen-Debatte: Bilanz und Perspektiven" (The Goldhagen-Debate: results and perspectives) of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Germany, with Daniel Goldhagen, Andrei Markovits, Wolfgang Wippermann, Jürgen Elsässer, et al. in Potsdam/Germany.

Controversy over cancelled lecture at the University of Leeds, England

On March 14, 2007, Küntzel was due to address University of Leeds in England on the topic ‘Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic Antisemitism in the Middle East.’^[1] The university's student Islamic society complained about what they called the lecture's "provocative" title and the University removed the words "Hitler" and "Islamic" with the title amended to read: "The Nazi Legacy: The Export of Anti-Semitism to the Middle East." However, several hours before the talk was due to take place, the talk was unexpectedly cancelled due to "security concerns," following protest e-mails from some of the university's Muslim students claiming the lecture was an "open racist attack".^[2]

Dr. Küntzel said he had given similar addresses (at Yale University, as well as universities in Jerusalem and Vienna) around the world and there had been no problems. "I know this is sometimes a controversial topic," he said, "but I am accustomed to that and I have the ability to calm people down. It's not a problem for me at all. My impression was that they wanted to avoid the issue in order to keep the situation calm. My feeling is that this is a kind of censorship." Dr. Küntzel also said that the contents of emails described to him did not overtly threaten violence but "they were very, very strongly worded". He added: "It's stupid, because I also talk about Christian anti-semitism." Members of the German department at Leeds accused the university of "selling-out" academic freedom.^[3]

Books

• Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, Telos Press, New York, 2007.
• Djihad und Judenhaß: über den neuen antijüdischen Krieg, Ça Ira, Freiburg, 2002
• Der Weg in den Krieg. Deutschland, die Nato und das Kosovo (The Road to War. Germany, Nato and the Kosovo), Elefanten Press, Berlin, 2000
• Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Goldhagen und die deutsche Linke oder: Die Gegenwart des Holocaust (Goldhagen and the German Left or: The Presence of the Holocaust), ed. Matthias Küntzel, Ulrike Becker, Klaus Thörner et al., Elefanten Press, Berlin, 1997
• Bonn & the Bomb: German politics and the nuclear option, Transnational Institute (TNI), Pluto Press, London; Boulder, Colorado, 1995.
• Bonn und die Bombe: deutsche Atomwaffenpolitik von Adenauer bis Brandt, Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt/Main; New York, 1992

Publications (selection)

• Confronting Anti-Semitism — But How?, Telos Press, September 28, 2006
• A Sense Of Foreboding: German Reactions to Ahmadinejad, Transatlantic Intelligencer, November 7, 2005
• The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Transatlantic Intelligencer, October 24, 2005
• A Dubious Achievement: Joschka Fischer, the Road Map, and the Gaza Pullout, Transatlantic Intelligencer, 2005
• Suicide Bombing "for a Higher Ideal"?, Germany’s Central Office for Political Education on "Paradise Now", Transatlantic Intelligencer, October 10, 2005
• Are 500,000 Keys to Paradise Enough?, Germany "Confronts" Ahmadinejad, December 27, 2005
• Antisemitism in the Middle East: Abbas and Hamas, SPME, February 2005
• European Roots of Antisemitism in Current Islamic Thinking, matthiaskuentzel.de, November 2004
• German Silence: Nazis, Jihad, and the Left, matthiaskuentzel.de, April 2003
• Germany and the Kosovo, How Germany paved the way to the Kosovo War, matthiaskuentzel.de, April 2000
• National Socialism and Anti-Semitism in the Arab World, Political Studies Review at matthiaskuentzel.de, Spring 2005
• The Booksellers of Tehran, Every book fair exhibits bestsellers. But anti-Semitic bestsellers? And in Germany, of all places?, The Wall Street Journal Online, October 28, 2005
• Islamic Antisemitism And Its Nazi Roots, matthiaskuentzel.de, April 2003

Notes

1. ^ Hitler's Legacy: Islamic Antisemitism in the Middle East, text of Küntzel's essay
2. ^ University is accused of censoring anti-Semitic Islam lecture by Sean O’Neill, Times Online, March 15, 2007
3. ^ John Steele (2007-03-15). "Freedom of speech row as talk on Islamic extremists is banned". The Daily Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/15/nislam15.xml. 

External links

• Homepage
• English articles at matthiaskuentzel.de
• M. Küntzel's articles with the Transatlantic Intelligencer
• Interview with Matthias Kuntzel from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

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Name	Kuntzel, Matthias
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Date of birth	1955
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