Document comes days after government published dossier of 'secular Palestinian extremist' symbols, such as the watermelon and the Handala cartoon

The German government last week published a new brochure on what it believes to be antisemitic codes and symbols.

Over 80 pages, the brochure catalogues a list of concepts, terms and images ranging from Nazi-era propaganda to contemporary symbols against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Intended audiences for the brochure include teachers, “who can use the booklet as supplementary material in the classroom”, and other educational staff, who can use it as a “guideline to help recognise any anti-Semitic remarks in the working environment”.

Germany is one of the key supporters of Israel’s genocide, despite its own history of committing genocide against Jews, Slavs and Roma during the Second World War, and in Namibia in the early 20th century.

  • Verdorrterpunkt@feddit.orgEnglish
    11·
    5 days ago

    I read this trying to see if they are better than portrayed in this post, but they directly equate zionism with israel and with jews, which is antisemitic. This is insane.

    • OrteilGenou@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      5 days ago

      That direct link between the Zionist political movement and Judaism has been used - seemingly more frequently of late - by the former to try and deflect criticism of their political ideology.

      The fact that the authorities were beating and jailing Hasidim for protesting in Tel Aviv against the Palestinian conflict is a pretty compelling illustration that there is a stark difference.

  • RunawayFixer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    5 days ago

    Questioning the German government their continued support for the Palestinian genocide is officially antisemitic, see „NIE WIEDER… FÜR WEN?“ on page 60 of the brochure. https://www.verfassungsschutz.de/SharedDocs/publikationen/DE/allgemein/2026-05-antisemitische-codes-und-chiffren.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=9

    The writers of the brochure also try really really hard to equate criticism of Israel with anti Jewish racism. That page 60 meme is about Germany and Israel, and their explanation tries to make it about Jews. It’s jarring.

    • chaitae3@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      5 days ago

      They aren’t writing any of that, they explainer box below says

      Einordnung: Im Gegensatz zu den anderen Beispielen in dieser Broschüre ist im vorliegenden Fall der Interpretationsspielraum, ob oder inwiefern hier antisemitischer Gehalt vorhanden ist, deutlich größer. Die folgende Analyse zeigt, dass dieses Fallbeispiel aufgrund seiner Bildsprache sowohl als legitime Kritik als auch als antisemitisch verstanden werden kann.

      Translation:

      Context: Unlike the other examples in this brochure, in this case there is significantly more room for interpretation regarding whether or to what extent anti-Semitic content is present. The following analysis shows that, due to its visual language, this case study can be interpreted as both legitimate criticism and as anti-Semitic.

      Also, don’t equate the German government to its intelligence service, it’s more complicated than that.

      • RunawayFixer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        And some other excerpts:
        Demonization: The portrayal of Israel as a criminal collective directly connects to the antisemitic interpretation of the accusation of systematic child murder.

        The image portrays violence against “the Jews” as just “resistance” and a necessary reaction to a supposedly absolute injustice.

  • acargitz@lemmy.caEnglish
    9·
    5 days ago

    I could potentially imagine a world in which the document is a good faith attempt at having an extremely nuanced discussion about the ways that antisemitic tropes might seep into otherwise legitimate pro-palestinian discourse. And that would have been a very useful document indeed. I could bring myself to imagine such a world if the BfV had a similar document that does an equally thorough job at uncovering all the ways anti-Palestinian racism, islamophobia and jewish-supremacist and genocidal language enters the pro-Zionist discourse. But instead, what this document does do, is to always put Palestinian resistance in scare quotes, to always frame pro-Palestinian advocacy as suspect and illegitimate. There is no context in which Palestinian grievances are taken seriously, at face value. Instead we get this document, a monument of BfV’s actually extremist anti-Palestinian frame-setting.

  • ShotDonkey@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    5 days ago

    German here. My country made up for it’s gruesome past only in a performative sense, the painful look in the mirror within families never took place. Very few ever confronted their grandparents, touched the real pain from which learning comes. Too “delicate”. Most importantly: we have no concept of colonialism. There is awareness of our own bloody colonial history in our populace, like the genocide of the Herero and Nama, and the bloody crackdown during the Maji-Maji uprising (death toll 300’000 people). For the latter, there’s a tiny remembrance place in Berlin, while the perpetrator who ordered the crackdown on the East Africans has a big statue on his grave and is not being remembered critically in public (if at all: positively). As a consequence Nazism is never seen as a form of colonialism (in the East), nor is Israel seen as a colonial endeavor. It’s a giant blind spot. A blind spot that is deadly. True learning from our sins never happened, even though we took it quite far, yet not far enough. There are hundreds of tv-documentaries about the nazi perpetrators, while the stories of the victims is hardly being told. Eastern Germany did a better job there. But now they’re all Neo-Nazis or staunch Israel supporters. (The fuck went wrong there?) Or both. What we Germans have done (are doing!) to Palestinians and to Judaism is shameful.

    This piece sums it up perfectly: https://mondoweiss.net/2026/05/how-gaza-is-exposing-germanys-never-again-myth/

      • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        5 days ago

        my google just pulled up shit with words, which i would like to argue for the purpose of this is not what we’re looking for. stuff that has gained meaning in multiple languages or rather without language, like the three arrows.

        how the three arrows have become memetic communication basically over the years? i am not communicating well right now