Anti-German Sentiment - in Israel

In Israel

Up to the rise of Hitler in 1933, many European Jews tended to be pro-German. German Jews were deeply integrated in the country's culture, and many of them fought with distinction in the ranks of the First World War German Army. Jews in Czech lands tended to adopt the German language and culture in preference to Slavic languages (Kafka being a conspicuous example), and a similar phenomenon was evident in other parts of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Throughout Eastern Europe, Jews spoke Yiddish, a language closely related to German, and Jewish intellectuals often took up German as "The Language of Culture". Theodore Herzl, the founding father of Zionism, himself spoke and wrote German and in his utopian book Altneuland actually depicted the future Jewish state as German-speaking.

Such attitudes suffered an extremely painful rupture and complete reversal with the persecutions and atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, culminating with the systematic genocide of the Holocaust. In the first decades of Israel's existence, anti-German feelings were strong and dominant in Israeli society. There was a widespread cultural and commercial boycott of all things German (and often, Austrian as well) and a determination "never to set foot on German soil." German Jews in Israel, themselves refugees from the Nazi persecutions, came under strong social pressure to cease using German, their mother language.

At the time, the words "German" and "Nazi" were used interchangeably. (Until the late 1990s the sign language of Israeli deaf communities used the Swastika as the sign for "German".) There was a widespread scepticism about the possibility of "another Germany" ever emerging, and specifically a suspicion of Konrad Adenauer's claim to be involved in the creation of a new, democratic Germany. Many Israelis took up the Soviet claims, made in the early years of the Cold War, that West Germany was "a fascist state" in which ex-Nazis held key positions.

The Reparations Agreement with Germany, signed by the David Ben-Gurion government in 1952, was the focus of intense political controversy, and the protest demonstrations led by then opposition leader Menachem Begin turned into pitched battles with the police. In the early 1960s, the Eichmann Trial brought the horrors and traumas of the Holocaust to the center of public consciousness. The establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and West Germany in 1966 entailed a new wave of protests and demonstrations, though less violent than those of 1952.

However, since the late 1960s, there has been a clear, though gradual, process of rapprochement between Israelis and Germans in all spheres: diplomatic, commercial and cultural. The 1967 Six Day War realigned Israeli politics, with the issue of occupied territories henceforth defining what is "right wing" and "left wing," with, among other things, the result that militant Israeli nationalism tended to be anti-Arab rather than anti-German. When Begin became Israel's Prime Minister in 1977, he had little option but to take up the maintenance of already very extensive ties with Germany, to whose creation he had been fiercely opposed as an opposition leader.

A momentary flare-up of anti-German feeling occurred during the 1991 Gulf War, when Israel was the subject of missile attack by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Some Israeli columnists and politicians combined the revelations of German corporations helping the Iraqi arms industry and the strong anti-war movement in Germany and tied both with the German Nazi past.

The German government of the time managed, however, to assuage Israeli feelings by providing the Israeli Navy with several advanced submarines, which, according to repeated reports in the international press, were used to mount nuclear missiles and provide Israel with a second strike capacity.

At present, anti-German feelings in Israel are at low ebb. The ongoing debate about whether the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra should play the works of Richard Wagner is mostly considered as a remnant of the past. In 2008, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was the first foreign head of government invited to deliver a speech in the Israeli parliament, which she gave in the German language. Several Israeli members of parliament left in protest during the speech, claiming the need to create a collective memory that "will create a kind of electric wave when Jews will hear the sounds of the German language, they'll remember the Holocaust.".

Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta'ot–which, as its Hebrew name "Fighters of the Ghettos" implies, included among its founders survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising–decided to reverse a long-standing ban and let a delegation from its museum accept an invitation to visit Germany. This was explained with saying that "When German babies born on the day of Hitler's death are now sixty-three years old, it is ridiculous to continue to demand a collective responsibility".

In a recent article, researcher Hanan Bar (חנן בר) summed up the ambiguous Israeli attitude to Germany: "If the average Israeli happens to see a football match between Germany and Holland, he would automatically root for the Dutch. But the same person, when buying a washing machine, would prefer a German model, considering it to be the best"

However, a silent boycott of German goods continues among some sectors of Israel. For example, it is rare to see Orthodox Israelis driving German cars, preferring non-German cars, in particular Volvo.

Many of the present-day Jewish youth–grandchildren of the survivor generation–still maintain this silent boycott of German goods, finding the purchase of even small Germanic-made items repugnant. For instance, many would not consider buying even a Braun food processor until verifying that the originally German company had been bought out by a US-based firm.