The Danish academic who last week displayed the slogan “Death TO THE IDF” during a University of Copenhagen law faculty lecture defended it as criticism that questions whether those serving in Israel’s army “should not be met by (violent) resistance.”
Lino Vogt, whom the university lists on its website as an external lecturer, said this in a written reply to a JNS query about the incident, which the university had condemned, along with Israel’s embassy in Copenhagen and others.
The incident, which a lawmaker highlighted in the media, came amid concern over the violent anti-Israeli rhetoric on Western Europe’s campuses and its frequent crossovers into antisemitism.
“We will probably have to agree to disagree,” Vogt said of the university’s reaction, which called the slogan’s use by Vogt “unacceptable.” Vogt added he would comply with the university’s decisions in connection with the incident. He declined to elaborate on his interaction with the university’s administration in connection with the incident.
The slogan appeared in a slide featuring the cartoon figure Betty Boop holding a firebomb and using a keffiyeh, an Arab headdress, to cover her face. It was “presented before the seminar began, serving as a placeholder to signal that things were getting ready,” Vogt said.
The slogan, he added, was presented “in a humorous context” and a “funny interpretation. It functions as criticism, but in a non-aggressive manner,” he added.
Asked to respond to allegations that the slogan was a call for violence, Vogt said he is “not advocating terrorism, but it is fair to question if those who participate in illegal warfare against civilians do not have a responsibility and should not be met by (violent) resistance.” He referred to Israel’s military operation against Hamas in Gaza as a “genocide,” a term that many scholars, including from Yad Vashem and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, dispute in the context of Israel’s actions.
Accusations of antisemitism
Vogt said he has been accused of being antisemitic since the incident occurred, and that he objected to this “as an anti-racism activist since the 1980s.
“I find the accusations of antisemitism not only wrong but slanderous. Do people really think that the IDF is exclusively Jewish? Or that all Jews rally behind the genocide in Gaza? For my part, I would consider the first notion ignorant, and the second frankly ... antisemitic,” he said.
The slogan Vogt displayed was popularized last year by the musical duo Bob Vylan at a music festival in the United Kingdom, where thousands chanted it at the duo’s encouragement, as the BBC aired the event live. Lead singer Pascal Robinson-Foster went on to recall his days working for “f**king Zionists” in the U.K., in what Amanda Bowman, co-chair of London Jewish Forum, said was a stand-in for “Jews,” and which she called at the time a display of “violent antisemitism.”
A picture of the slide appeared on Tuesday in the Danish media after it was given to lawmaker Christian Holst Vigilius of the Conservative People’s Party, who shared it online.
The university has declined to say whether it intends to take disciplinary action against Vogt.
Vigilius wrote on Wednesday on X: “Fortunately, it seems that the University of Copenhagen is taking it seriously.”
However, “something at least as frightening as the teaching assistant’s hateful politicizing misuse of his position is the apparent support he is receiving from many law students,” Vigilius added.
On Tuesday, Israel’s Mission to the European Union and NATO underlined antisemitism at universities as an area of concern to be addressed in annual talks with European Commission officials about combating Jew-hatred.
“Combating antisemitism requires not only responding to attacks after they occur, but also addressing its root causes through education in schools and academic institutions, particularly universities, which have increasingly become spaces where Jewish students face harassment, intimidation and attacks,” the mission said ahead of the annual seminar on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life.
A 2025 report by the European Union of Jewish Students, B’nai B’rith International and the Democ academic watchdog found that Jewish students across nine European countries face a “climate of fear and exclusion” on campus, with documented cases of harassment, intimidation, physical attacks and students concealing their Jewish identity or avoiding classes altogether.
