It is hard to think of a more grotesque campaign than the one promoting the use of keffiyehs at a former Nazi concentration camp. In effect it combines a classic Stalinist trope – equating Israel with Nazi Germany – with the demonisation of Israel rife in contemporary academia. The not-so-subtle message is that Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, is essentially Nazi.
Kufiyahs in Buchenwald is the umbrella group promoting this campaign. It demands there should be no ban on Palestinian symbols, including the Palestinian headscarf, at the Buchenwald Memorial. The campaign also wants the memorial to openly addresses the “genocide in Gaza” and allow promotion of the view that Israel is an "apartheid state".
The organisation had hoped to have a rally in the car park at the entrance to the memorial site on 12 April, the 81st anniversary of the camp’s liberation.
However, the protest was banned by the German authorities. Instead it is being allowed to have a rally nearby in the town of Weimar (although at the time of writing a legal appeal is underway). Those outraged by the absurd comparison are in turn organising a counter-protest in the town (see graphic above for details).
In reality Supporters of Kufiyahs in Buchenwald are almost certainly small in number. However, at least on the face of it, the group has several impressive-sounding signatories to its statement. These include the International Jewish Antizionist Network, the Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost (Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East) and the Kommunistische Organisation (KO – Communist Organisation), a tiny leftist group.
The KO, which seems to be playing a central role, is particularly interesting. Historically it has links which go back to an organisation which had close financial and ideological connections with the Soviet bloc state of East Germany. Although the German Democratic Republic, as it was known, collapsed in 1990 its malign ideas live on in this grouplet.
But even without that organisational link the move to equate Israel with Nazi Germany first took off in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. Back then old-style anti-Semitism – such as portraying Jews as operating an international conspiracy to control the world – were generally frowned upon. It contradicted what was officially an anti-racist world view. But this did not stop the Soviet Union and its allied Stalinist states, such as East Germany, portraying Jews as a malevolent force. Except they rebranded their animosity as anti-Zionism rather than anti-Semitism.
In the Soviet Union at the time the most hated force was Nazi Germany – remembered for its brutal invasion a couple of decades earlier. So likening Israel to Nazi Germany was a way for the Soviet Union to portray it as a demonic force without using the traditional language of anti-Semitism.
This comparison really took off after the 1967 six-day war in which Israel defeated the surrounding Arab countries in less than a week of fighting. Only this was not just a defeat for the radical Arab regimes. It was a huge embarrassment for the Soviet Union as it had backed the Arab states whereas the West had generally supported Israel.
Izabella Tabarovsky, a researcher who was born and brought up in the Soviet Union, has documented this subject extensively. This includes research on how the Soviet Union promoted the Israel-as-Nazi world view to its allied organisations in the West and the developing world. Many of the images apparent on anti-Israel protests today, such as Jewish Stars of David alongside Nazi swastikas, originate from this time.
Mahmoud Abbas, the now aged head of the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, was one product of this relationship. As Tabarovsky has written he completed his doctorate at the prestigious Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1982. The subject was “The Relationship Between Zionists and Nazis, 1933-1945.” This theme has become a staple of anti-Israel activism more recently. It is a thesis based on half-truths and taking facts out of context.
However, all of this would probably have remained a footnote in the history of Stalinism if the western left had not taken up the idea. As I argued recently on this website it is the rise of identity politics which has given this malign Stalinist trope a new lease of life.
The left has come to define itself not as representing working class interests – as it often did historically – but in narrow anti-colonial terms. It portrays itself speaking on behalf of indigenous people in places such as Australia, Canada and America. And Israel is absurdly portrayed as the ultimate colonial-settler state.
From this perspective the goal for the new generation of leftists is not human liberation but decolonisation. By the latter they mean purging the world of the what they see as the malign influence of western civilisation and modernity. Israel, from this warped perspective, must be destroyed.
Starting from the same post-colonial premise Nazi Germany is portrayed as just one particularly violent chapter in the bloody history of colonialism. It is an idea popularised by, among others, Naomi Klein in her 2023 book Doppelganger. There is no essential difference, in this world view, between Nazi Germany and America or Britain. All should simply be seen has as having histories of unremitting brutality.
Of course it is true that there were violent episodes in America and Britain’s colonial past. But to depict the countries purely in such terms is grossly one-sided. They also embodied important movements for democracy and liberty.
In any case marry together the two arguments – on Israel as a colonial-settler state and colonialism being akin to Nazism – and it becomes possible to argue Israel is equivalent to Nazi Germany. The Stalinist equation of the two is recreated in a new form.
In fact contemporary Germany is a particular target of hostility for anti-Israel activists. That is because, for obvious historical reasons, it feels some obligation to support Israel’s right to exist. For example, in 2008 the then chancellor, Angela Merkel, told the Israeli Knesset (parliament) that:
“Here of all places I want to explicitly stress that every German Government and every German Chancellor before me has shouldered Germany's special historical responsibility for Israel's security. This historical responsibility is part of my country's raison d'être [in Germany known as its Staatsräson]. For me as German Chancellor, therefore, Israel's security will never be open to negotiation.”
This perspective has led prominent leftist academics to mount a vociferous attack against contemporary Germany. For example, Dirk Moses, an Australian specialising in German history, has written on what he calls the German Catechism. Among the ideas he attacks are the notion that Germany has a special responsibility to Israel and that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism.
I have also discussed previously about how Pankaj Mishra, an Indian leftist intellectual, has written a book attempting to use the Holocaust against Israel. As with Klein he argues that the Holocaust should be seen in just another chapter in the bloody history of colonialism. He then goes on to argue that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is, in important respects, akin to the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews. This leads him to the shameful conclusion that anyone horrified by the 7 October 2023 in southern Israel – for him a heroic act of resistance by indigenous people – must be racist.
It is this contemporary leftist world view which provides the intellectual backdrop to Kufiyahs in Buchenwald. The protestors may be small in number but they represent one of the most pernicious trends in contemporary politics. A movement which equates Israel, a state born as a reaction to the horrors of anti-Semitism, with the perpetrators of the Holocaust.
*Our Fight Frankfurt is supporting a counter-demonstration, organised by the Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft (German Israel Society), against the Kufiyahs in Buchenwaldinitiative. It will start at 11.30am on Sunday 12 April at the Goetheplatz Weimar. See the graphic above for details. I would encourage all those who are able to attend.
*A statement (in German) on the Kufiyas in Buchenwald campaign from the Netzwerk Jüdischer Hochschullehrender (Network of Jewish University Lecturers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland) is available to read HERE.