The German intelligence service has officially categorised images of watermelon slices in the shape of Israel and the Palestinian territories as “antisemitic”.
Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) said that the sliced watermelon symbol alluded to the colours of the Palestinian flag red, black, white and green.
It added that when the outline of Israel plus Gaza and the occupied territories are depicted in the colours of a sliced watermelon, it is “thereby denying Israel's right to exist”.
The classification is part of a new BfV dossier targeting what it calls “secular pro-Palestinian extremism”, which has been published alongside an 80-page document examining antisemitic codes, and symbolic language.
The dossier includes a dedicated section on “symbols and identifying marks” associated with what the agency describes as secular pro-Palestinian extremism.
It states: “The watermelon, alluding to the colours of the Palestinian flag, is a symbol of solidarity with Palestine.
“The outline of the entire State of Israel is depicted in the colours of the Palestinian flag (as a sliced watermelon), thereby denying Israel's right to exist.”
As well as the watermelon, the BfV flagged several other symbols in its dossier including the red inverted triangle, originally used in Hamas propaganda videos to mark and identify Israeli military targets.
The slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, and an octopus motif historically linked to antisemitic conspiracy theories were also identified as antisemitic.
The BfV claim the images link otherwise disparate extremist factions – from the far-right and far-left to Islamist movements – to a shared anti-Israel ideology.
Symbolic use of the watermelon in Palestine dates back to the Six-Day War in 1967 when the Israeli government made public displays of the Palestinian flag a criminal offence in the occupied territories.
Palestinians began using sliced watermelons as a covert act of solidarity.
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