The images are not very colorful, the speaker sounds serious and gloomy, and the background music chosen does not help to lighten the subject. Journalists from “Report Munich” followed the psychologist and publicist Ahmad Mansour for several months and processed their impressions into a half-hour documentary, which was released on Wednesday First is being broadcast and has been in the since Tuesday ARD media library is available.
Mansour has lived in Germany for exactly 20 years. He grew up in a Muslim family in the small town of Tira in Israel. As a teenager, he adhered to the radical ideologies of the Muslim Brotherhood and only broke away from it during his studies in Tel Aviv and Berlin.
Today, Mansour is viewed by many Muslims as an “Islam hater,” “agitator,” and “fouler.” His appearance at a university in Berlin on the topic of hatred of Jews after October 7th was canceled by the university management due to security concerns. A cave in to the critics, emphasizes Mansour.
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Since the publication of the audit report he co-authored on allegations of anti-Semitism against employees German wave In February 2022 and even more so after October 7, 2023, the threats grew massively again. Mansour now lives under police protection. Every day. Year for year.
The documentary describes the impact this has not only on his own life, but also on that of his wife Beatrice and their daughter, as vividly as Mansour’s attempts to enter into conversation with his critics.
Some of them are mentioned in the film. The Frankfurt educational scientist Harry Harun Behr is one of them. He invited Mansour to his home. “I have a few questions for Ahmad Mansour about the technical concepts he uses in his prevention work,” says Behr. He dislikes the fact that Mansour supposedly only focuses on one group – Muslim young people – in his work in schools.
Then the doorbell rings, Behr’s gray cat has to leave the dining room table and Mansour sits down at the table. The two start talking. »My approach is to say that you can be Muslim and a democrat, you can be Muslim and German. You don’t have to choose one.” Mansour says he would never hold workshops just for Muslim students. The different cultures, he emphasizes, are also part of Germany. But he wants to question certain attitudes.
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Afterwards, Behr sounds rather conciliatory: “If I listen and watch you a little, I can pick up one or two things.” Mansour also says he wants to continue the exchange – and invites Behr to come along to one of his training courses.
The ARD journalists also accompany Ahmad Mansour to Israel. There he visits the sites of the October 7 massacres, stands at the border fence with the Gaza Strip and sits in the Israeli army press center, where he watches film clips of the atrocities filmed by Hamas terrorists themselves.
Visit to Israel
The impressions go to Mansour’s core; he is visibly touched. “I saw death, a place that screams but is silent.” But for him it was “the most normal thing to go to where it all began.” He saw “young assassins sitting laughing next to corpses” and even had fun watching people die.
Mansour writes on However, the 47-year-old does not want to be filmed in his hometown of Tira – for security reasons, he says, and to protect his relatives there.
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He faces his critics, but also defends himself against defamation and false allegations. When a publicist questions his academic credentials as a psychologist, he presents his diplomas. In court, Mansour successfully defends himself against the accusation that he is a “racist.”
In the exciting ARD documentary it also becomes clear: Anyone who is a Muslim of Arab origin fighting against anti-Semitism in Germany in 2024 needs a thick skin. A very thick skin.
Mansour sums up that he is under personal protection. But in his head he is freer than others who don’t need that.
The documentary from “Report Munich” will be broadcast on Wednesday, April 3, 2024 at 5 a.m. on Erste and is now also available on ARD media library available.