Matthias Monroy

Palestine solidarity groups in Germany allegedly use a well-known symbol to recall the lynching of Israeli soldiers. Experts vehemently contradict this narrative. To what end is it being spread?

At the end of April, the Jewish Community of Frankfurt sharply criticised a poster for the ‘Make Freedom Ring’ benefit concert in St. Catherine’s Church, which collects donations for the work of the human rights organisation Medico International in the Gaza Strip. In addition to classic peace symbols such as olive branches and doves, the poster also featured two hands painted red with an eye in the centre – an allusion to the ‘Hand of Fatima’, which is widely used as a symbol of protection in the Middle East. It is named after Fatima al-Zahra, the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed.

Despite this, the Jewish Community accused the organisers of using a motif with the red hands that is ‘instrumentalised by Islamist groups such as Hamas as a symbol that glorifies violence and is anti-Semitic’. As they claim it is reminiscent of a picture from the year 2000, which shows a Palestinian man holding his bloodied hands out of a window in triumph after a lynching of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah.

The dispute over a tile posted on X by Ulrike Eifler, a member of the Left Party’s executive committee, also led to criticism of the symbolism of red hands used. The image shows the outline of historical Palestine on a black background, filled in with handprints in the Palestinian colours white, green and red, accompanied by the slogan ‘Free Palestine’. Some users of the short messaging service interpreted the motif not only as a delegitimisation of the state of Israel, but also as an allusion to the aforementioned lynching in the occupied territories 25 years ago.

Eifler did not give in to the furore – and received a public distancing from the party board in return. However, the humanitarian organisation Medico International, which had organised the ‘Make Freedom Ring’ concert in other cities and most recently in Frankfurt’s Katharinenkirche, removed the red hands from the poster. This was preceded by an intervention by the Evangelical Church of Frankfurt and Offenbach, which referred to the statement by the Jewish community. ‘We deeply regret that it [the poster motif] has caused pain and outrage,’ reads a statement from the church.

The Protestant Church had also stated that the motif had been ‘misused in the past to justify violence against Israelis’. But is the claim even true? In any case, when asked several times, the spokeswoman was unable to name any example in which red hands had ever been depicted with the intention of glorifying the double murder in the West Bank. The Jewish community did not respond to any further enquiries.

In Germany, this narrative was spread by ‘Belltower’ two years ago. The website operated by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation described the use of the red hands symbol as a ‘dogwhistle tactic’: for the majority of viewers, it appears harmless, but for Jews it is intended to remind them of the violent event in Ramallah – in other words, according to this interpretation, as a deliberate provocation.

The internet portal referred to a protest action at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) in November 2023: Around 100 students had shown blood-red hands while reading out hundreds of names of children killed in the Gaza war. ‘Belltower’ classified its report under the heading “right-wing extremism” and described the performance as “smear theatre”.

The narrative that it was an anti-Semitic action at the UdK five weeks after 7 October was spread in many German media – hundreds of teachers and staff at the UdK Berlin even described the red hands as an ‘iconic intifada sign’ in a statement. A year later, the Berlin Senate-funded portal ‘Democ’ followed suit under the title ‘What do the red hands mean?’, claiming that the photo ‘still refers to anti-Semitic murders and terror’. In the Middle East conflict, red hands are even ‘inextricably linked’ with this meaning for many Israelis and Jews.

However, the symbol of red hands has been used for decades in various political and activist contexts, for example in the 1960s during protests against the Vietnam War, against the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet or Vladimir Putin – something that ‘Democ’ does not deny. Women’s rights movements, climate activists and animal rights activists also use it. On the annual ‘Red Hand Day’ on 12 February, people around the world demonstrate with red hands against the recruitment of child soldiers.

More importantly, the symbol of the red hands has also been used regularly in Israel for more than two decades in political protests by a wide variety of movements. In a thread on Bluesky, ‘nd’ author Yossi Bartal points out that it is even increasingly seen in current anti-government demonstrations calling for the release of hostages. Bartal therefore considers the portrayal by ‘Belltower’, ‘Democ’ and the Jewish Community of Frankfurt that the motif is clearly or ‘inseparably’ connoted with lynching, particularly in Israel, and is used by certain groups for precisely this reason, to be ‘absurd’.

Middle East researcher Tom Khaled Würdemann also sees the origin of the red hand motif in the Western anti-war movement. He calls the alleged connotation with the deed in Ramallah a ‘circumstantial, delusional conspiracy theory’. Anyone who claims that the red hands are a ‘secret symbol of bathing in the blood of slaughtered Jews’ lacks ‘media literacy in the internet age’, Würdemann told ‘nd’. In an earlier publication, the researcher also pointed out that the students at the UdK had contextualised their performance of the red hands with the words ‘Your silence equals blood on your hands’ and thus avoided interpreting it as a glorification of murder. Nevertheless, according to Würdemann, the debate about the use of this symbol also shows the hardened fronts of a conflict in which little value is placed on the sensitivities of the other side.

So what is behind the alleged red-handed conspiracy, which has been labelled anti-Semitic? It may be true that some Israelis and Jews associate the motif with anti-Semitic violence, as the Evangelical Church in Frankfurt suspected, but this is not the case for many others. There is even less evidence that the symbolism is deliberately used with this intention in past or current protests against Israel’s government policy in the Palestinian territories.

It is obvious that the insinuations are intended to help reprimand Palestinian solidarity voices – as is currently happening in Germany to an unprecedented extent. The statement by the Frankfurt Jewish community also refers to this, stating: ‘Due to the history and the special responsibility arising from the failure of the churches in the Shoah, they should take a very close look at who they cooperate with.’ It is not only musicians who want to draw attention to the tens of thousands of deaths in the Gaza war with concerts that are being silenced with such accusations.

Published in German in „nd“.

Image: In Israel, too, the motif of red hands is regularly used in protests against the Gaza war, as here in front of the Ministry of Defence (Oren Ziv).