Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 East Germany and the Six-Day War of June 1967
- 3 An anti-Israeli Left Emerges in West Germany: The Conjuncture of June 1967
- 4 Diplomatic Breakthrough to Military Alliance: East Germany, the Arab States, and the PLO: 1969–1973
- 5 Palestinian Terrorism in 1972: Lod Airport, the Munich Olympics, and Responses
- 6 Formalizing the East German Alliance with the PLO and the Arab States: 1973
- 7 Political Warfare at the United Nations During the Yom Kippur War of 1973
- 8 1974: Palestinian Terrorist Attacks on Kiryat Shmona and Ma'alot and Responses in East Germany, West Germany, Israel, the United States, and the United Nations
- 9 The United Nations “Zionism Is Racism” Resolution of November 10, 1975
- 10 The Entebbe Hijacking and the West German “Revolutionary Cells”
- 11 An Alliance Deepens: East Germany, the Arab states, and the PLO: 1978–1982
- 12 Terrorism from Lebanon to Israel's “Operation Peace for Galilee”: 1977–1982
- 13 The Israel-PLO War in Lebanon of 1982
- 14 Loyal Friends in Defeat: 1983–1989 and After
- 15 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - An anti-Israeli Left Emerges in West Germany: The Conjuncture of June 1967
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 East Germany and the Six-Day War of June 1967
- 3 An anti-Israeli Left Emerges in West Germany: The Conjuncture of June 1967
- 4 Diplomatic Breakthrough to Military Alliance: East Germany, the Arab States, and the PLO: 1969–1973
- 5 Palestinian Terrorism in 1972: Lod Airport, the Munich Olympics, and Responses
- 6 Formalizing the East German Alliance with the PLO and the Arab States: 1973
- 7 Political Warfare at the United Nations During the Yom Kippur War of 1973
- 8 1974: Palestinian Terrorist Attacks on Kiryat Shmona and Ma'alot and Responses in East Germany, West Germany, Israel, the United States, and the United Nations
- 9 The United Nations “Zionism Is Racism” Resolution of November 10, 1975
- 10 The Entebbe Hijacking and the West German “Revolutionary Cells”
- 11 An Alliance Deepens: East Germany, the Arab states, and the PLO: 1978–1982
- 12 Terrorism from Lebanon to Israel's “Operation Peace for Galilee”: 1977–1982
- 13 The Israel-PLO War in Lebanon of 1982
- 14 Loyal Friends in Defeat: 1983–1989 and After
- 15 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the West German New Left, the turn against Israel emerged between June and September 1967. For all of its criticisms of actually existing Communist regimes during the preceding decades, the West German New Left shared much of the criticism of Israel that had been coming from East Berlin. As in the East so now in the West, radical leftist activists transformed the Jewish victims of the past into the Zionist and Israeli aggressors, expellers, exploiters, colonialists, and even racists of the present. It was in these months that leaders of the West German New Left increasingly interpreted Israel through the prism of Marxism or Marxist-Leninism and therefore placed it on the wrong side of the central global divide between “imperialism” and “national liberation.” Israel's West German New Left antagonists now placed the language of leftist anti-fascism, which had previously fostered support for the Jewish state and the survivors of the Holocaust, in the service of attacking that very same state and its people. If only, as one prominent leftist wrote, the West German Left could free itself from its “Jewish complex” – that is, supposed guilty feelings about the Holocaust – it would be able to express solidarity with the Palestinians and fight the new fascism in the form of the state of Israel. The attack on and even reversal of the meaning of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, “coming to terms with the past,” was a distinctive contribution of the West German radical Left from 1967 to 1969. And for some, this redefinition was important in offering West German leftist support for Palestinian terrorist organizations in the years to come.
From 1949 to 1967, the preeminent stance of non-Communist leftist and left-liberal opinion in West Germany was emphatically pro-Israeli. The unspoken eleventh commandment of postwar West German public life – do no more harm to the Jews – was part of the Social Democratic and left-liberal political and moral engagement as well. Though they differed with Adenauer's conservative government of 1949 to 1963 on a range of issues, the Social Democrats shared Adenauer's empathy for Israel.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Undeclared Wars with IsraelEast Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989, pp. 75 - 118Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016