Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner defended government orders to have police forcibly clear pro-Palestinian anti-war protesters from buildings at the city's Humboldt University, despite criticism from some higher education leaders.
Leaders of Humboldt University initially tolerated the protesters, who occupied several rooms in a university building on Wednesday, and opted for a dialogue with student activists and faculty.
But on Thursday evening, police cleared the occupied building.
Humboldt University President Julia von Blumenthal said the police operation was carried out under orders from Berlin's minister for research, Ina Czyborra, in agreement with Wegner.
Wegner on Friday doubled down on that decision, accusing the protesters of anti-Semitism and expressing support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by Germany, the United States and Israel.
"I will not let this pass, we do not tolerate anti-Semitism, hatred and agitation at our universities," Wegner, a conservative, declared on Friday. "Jewish students must be able to study at universities without fear."
The president of the Technical University (TU) of Berlin, Geraldine Rauch, criticized Wegner and Czyborra for ordering police into the Humboldt University buildings instead of consulting with von Blumenthal and other Humboldt leaders, a move Rauch called "extremely disconcerting."
"President von Blumenthal would have evacuated [the buildings] even without instructions from above if the dialogue had finally failed," Rauch said. "Not only does this show a lack of trust in university management, it also undermines university autonomy itself."
Anti-Semitic slogans and graffiti are unacceptable, said Rauch.
"But it is also unacceptable that our mayor lumps all protesters together and declares them to be 'terror sympathizers,'" Rauch added, referring to Wegner's comments about the protests.
Wegner responded by suggesting he would continue to push a hard line against pro-Palestinian protesters at universities in Berlin in the future.
"If the TU president thinks it's a new style, then she's absolutely right," Wegner said. "I attach great importance to academic freedom and freedom of opinion, but anti-Semitic crimes are not an opinion."
Police in Berlin have repeatedly cracked down on pro-Palestinian demonstrations, sometimes banning demonstrations altogether. Authorities have cited the possibility that protesters might chant anti-Semitic slogans or display banned symbols.
At Humboldt University, pro-Palestinian activists had occupied parts of a building in protest against Israel's ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, Germany's supply of weapons to Israel and in support of Palestinians.
Student organizers denounced the police actions and accused officers of using unnecessary violence against students.
"The violent eviction" of the student protesters "marked by police brutality" as well as "the failure of the university authorities to protect their students" is a "grave injustice," the group Student Coalition Berlin wrote in a post to Instagram.
The group called for continued protests in solidarity with Palestinians.
Police in Berlin said they briefly detained 169 people on Thursday evening as part of the operation to clear the protesters and recorded their identities, a police spokeswoman said earlier on Friday. Criminal investigations have been launched into 25 people.
The clearing out of protesters late Thursday triggered a large-scale police operation.
Around 530 police officers were deployed, the authorities said on Friday.
On Thursday evening, the officers led around 170 pro-Palestinian activists out of the Institute of Social Sciences building. Of these, 50 squatters were in the courtyard and a further 120 in the building.
Twenty of them had barricaded themselves in the upper floor of the four-storey building. "A battering-ram had to be used to open the barricaded door," police said in a statement issued Friday.
Von Blumenthal told broadcaster RBB-Inforadio on Friday that clearing occupied spaces had always been an option - even if, in her view, it had ultimately started too early.
"We were ... in a dialogue in the situation there, and from our point of view we would have needed some more time to see whether we could lead this dialogue to a result ourselves or not," said von Blumenthal." However, the university would not have tolerated the occupation for longer than the evening.
The university had set a deadline for protesters to leave by 6 pm on Thursday (1600 GMT) and said authorities would remove the demonstrators occupying the premises after that.