For a brief moment, it looked as if German officials were going to hold Sukkat Salam, a taxpayer-funded interreligious project, accountable for promoting antisemitic and extremist narratives under the guise of “dialogue” and “solidarity” among Jews and Muslims. It didn’t happen.
The Municipal Association for Youth and Social Affairs (Kommunalverband für Jugend und Soziales Baden-Württemberg, or KVJS) informed Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) that it examined allegations of antisemitism within Sukkat Salam, which has been accused of mourning Islamist terrorists killed during Israel’s war with Hamas. “The KVJS is investigating the allegations you have made and will examine them,” wrote spokeswoman Sima Arman-Beck in an email to FWI.
That is not bringing people together—it is denying that there is good and evil in the world.
Following its inquiry, KVJS later told FWI that “after evaluating the information you provided and speaking with the project manager, we see no basis for a legal review to fund the project you mentioned.”
The episode illustrates how Islamism operates not only through mosques and religious networks, but also through progressive, state-supported NGOs that cloak ideological hostility toward Israel and the West in the language of inclusion and peacebuilding.
Questionable Memorial Events
FWI supplied KVJS with documentation showing that Sukkat Salam participated in a Joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony held in July 2025—an event viewed in Israel as equating victims of Hamas terror with their murderers.
This is not the first time German officials have courted controversy over such events. Channel 14 reported that in 2023, Israel’s government rebuked German Ambassador to Israel Steffen Seibert after he joined an “Alternative Day of Remembrance” in Tel Aviv that honored both Israeli terror victims and their Palestinian terrorist attackers.
Before her appointment as International Affairs Adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, author and columnist Caroline Glick told this reporter that Seibert’s participation was “a hostile act toward not just the Israeli government but Israeli society,” because it “honors dead Palestinian terrorists” and advances a false “moral equivalency” between victims and perpetrators.
When confronted after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, Germany’s embassy in Israel said Seibert “did not participate in any memorial event for Hamas terrorists in the past and will not do so in the future.” Israeli diplomats criticized him in December 2024 for circulating unverified anti-Israel claims on social media.
Sukkat Salam’s Leadership and Record
According to its website, Sukkat Salam aims “to bring people together, emphasize commonalities and solidarity, practice a culture of non-violent dialogue, reduce prejudices, and promote an open, racism-free society.” KVJS is listed as a public funder.
Sukkat Salam’s director, Oron Haim, has a record of anti-Israel activism. In a September 27 interview with the left-wing daily taz, Haim demanded “sanctions against settlers and the Israeli government” and urged a boycott of products from Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. He claimed, without evidence, that “there is blatant racism within Jewish society” but said nothing about the rampant Islamist antisemitism sweeping Germany since October 7.
Haim also appeared to draw a parallel between Israel’s democratically elected government and Nazi Germany, telling taz that “the way Netanyahu and his partly right-wing extremist cabinet are acting today shows what happens when you do not oppose fascists.”
Such comparisons are grotesque given Nazi Germany’s wartime alliance with the antisemitic Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al Husseini.
Simon Wiesenthal Center Condemnation
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, questioned Sukkat Salam’s credibility as a peace organization in light of Haim’s record.
“The very idea of a Sukkat Salam is pregnant with the hope of creating the building blocks of reconciliation,” Cooper told FWI. “Where is the evidence that any of this is taking place when the person who heads it is pro-BDS and attacks the prime minister of Israel by making political statements? If the basis is mutual respect, it seems to be functioning in a way that makes people of other faiths comfortable with anti-Israel bias rather than creating true reconciliation.”
Cooper said he was astonished that German taxpayers were funding the group.
“The Bundestag was the first parliament among Western democracies to label BDS for what it is—antisemitic. When the person in charge of Sukkat Salam expresses support for BDS, it makes a mockery of the stated goals of bringing people together.” Cooper also condemned Sukkat Salam’s involvement in memorials such as the “Alternative Day of Remembrance.”
“It appears that Sukkat Salam has been sponsoring and participating in memorial programs that mourn the deaths of the victims of Hamas and the mass murderers who killed the Israelis and others,” Cooper said. “That is not bringing people together—it is denying that there is good and evil in the world. That is not a concept shared by any civilized group, and it is beyond the pale even as we speak—13 families whose loved ones’ bodies are still being held by Hamas. This is not a worldview that should ever be endorsed by any government, especially any German government.”
Other Funders and Political Backing
A spokesman for the Berthold Leibinger Foundation, another funder, said it had no evidence Sukkat Salam supports BDS, but declined comment on its memorial activities.
Spokesman Markus Wener said the foundation focuses “exclusively on the objectives of the project sponsor’s current and planned activities,” adding that Sukkat Salam “promotes reconciliation and dialogue between Jews and Muslims in Germany.” When pressed about Cooper’s remarks and Sukkat Salam’s ties to groups that mourn Hamas members, Wener declined further comment.
Commissioner on Antisemitism Defends Organization
Michael Blume, Baden-Württemberg’s commissioner for combating antisemitism, defended Sukkat Salam in October, portraying it as a model of interfaith cooperation. Yet Blume himself has long faced accusations of enabling political Islam and downplaying Islamist extremism.
Baden-Württemberg’s intelligence agency reportedly warned as early as 2003 that Blume, then the state’s Islam adviser, “largely ignores the danger posed by radical Muslim associations that are only superficially willing to engage in dialogue.” Since then, his record has become increasingly controversial: two German courts have ruled that he can legally be described as antisemitic due to his repeated tirades against German Jews.
Despite his official role, Blume has used social media to target Zionist organizations while dismissing Islamist threats—a pattern critics say reflects the broader hypocrisy of Baden-Württemberg’s Green–Christian Democratic coalition, which publicly insists there is “no place for antisemitism” even as it funds projects accused of promoting it.
KVJS’s decision will likely intensify criticism that German authorities tolerate taxpayer-funded Islamist projects disguised as dialogue.
