The historian Jeffrey Herf, in Undeclared Wars with Israel, tells of East Germany’s vicious anti-Zionism, which went well beyond condemning Israel and expressing solidarity with those seeking its destruction: indeed, the German Democratic Republic provided funds and weapons to both Arab regimes and the PLO. For its part, Herf relates, the West German far left equated opposition to the government in Bonn with opposition to Israel, often crossing the line into anti-Semitism and, for the most committed, active participation in terrorist attacks against Jews. Allan Arkush writes in his review:

Unlike other Soviet-bloc nations, East Germany didn’t break relations with Israel after the Six-Day War—because it never had them in the first place. This was mostly due to its refusal to pay reparations for the crimes of the Nazis. But it did denounce Israel as the aggressor and likened it to the Nazi regime. . . . In the ensuing years, East Germany’s sales of armaments to the Arab world . . . ran in to the hundreds of millions of dollars. . . .

The West German far left, [meanwhile], emerged in a society that believed its own legitimacy to be bound up with a Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) that entailed not only repudiation of the Nazis but reparations to their Jewish victims. While East Germany was denying any responsibility for the Nazi regime and excoriating Israel, West Germany was transferring massive amount of money to it and offering the country its broad support. . . .

As the New Left turned against Israel after 1967, West German leftists followed suit and, in Herf’s words, “redefined the meaning of Vergangenheitsbewältigung” to justify the equation of the Jewish state’s alleged crimes with those of the Nazis. Leftists in the Federal Republic began speaking of the malign effects of Germany’s “Jewish complex” and condemning philo-Semitism. Arkush concludes:

Herf has produced not only a prodigiously researched indictment but also a timely reminder. . . . Undeclared Wars with Israel is . . . a post-mortem with a polemical edge, a book that very carefully digs up half-forgotten enemies of Israel from the recent past, in part to remind us that they have heirs who still repeat the same arguments, slogans, and calumnies. It is, unfortunately, doubtful that Herf’s tale of two hatreds would shame them, even if they were to read it.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.