You couldn’t make it up! It’s that damned watermelon again…
JVL Introduction
If it were April Fool’s day we’d know how to categorise this story.
Since it isn’t we can only assume that German guilt for the Holocaust has consumed its intelligence service.
It has just determined that images of watermelon slices in the shape of Israel and the Palestinian territories are “antisemitic”.
The image accompanying the article, of one such offending watermelon image carried on a demonstration is unfortunately copyrighted so we can’t reproduce it here – that from an item on sale on Amazon will have to do in its place
Get carving, everybody!
RK
This article was originally published by the Jewish Chronicle on Mon 18 May 2026. Read the original here.
Some watermelon slice symbols are examples of extremism, says German intelligence
The fruit symbol is antisemitic when used in the shape of Israel and the Palestinian territories, the agency said
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What a pain, will this happen here? I love my watermelon banner and hair slides, and particularly because they are dissident symbols and not a national flag. I first saw them created by a Palestinian artist , and later in different forms at all the stalls that enliven our marches for Gaza. I also like the fruit!
At a recent JVL personal meeting , several of us shared how each time an opening for hope appears it seems to get slammed shut. This applies on so many fronts, and of course the creativity of the oppressed is endless but sometimes it feels difficult not to get disheartened. I will continue to wear and show my watermelon items. Perhaps it’s only the map images that are verboten?
This over reach by the German authorities inspired a Monty Python style sketch – The Ministry of Suspicious Fruit
Enjoy
https://cdn.jewishvoiceforliberation.org.uk/uploads/2026/05/The-Ministry-of-Suspicious-Fruit.pdf
JVL has pointed out on at least 2 previous occasions how the octopus has been instrumentalised to attack pro-Palestine voices. Of course, it’s true that the Nazis used the octopus-motif in their antisemitic propaganda as a symbol for the claimed global Jewish conspiracy; the most notorious example is the cartoon of an octopus with Churchill’s head grasping the world under a star of David.
While some antizionists have indeed used similar tropes to attack Israel, pro-Israel propaganda frequently uses such images to depict Iran. Furthermore, Naftali Bennett is credited with inventing the term ‘Octopus Doctrine’ to describe striking ‘the head’ in Teheran and not just cutting ‘the tentacles’ in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere.
‘Octopus’ is the nickname given to an IDF tank-maintenance robot and is the name of an Israeli security systems start-up. An octopus image very similar to the Nazi cartoon is the mission patch (logo) of the US reconnaissance satellite NROL-39, with the Orwellian slogan “Nothing is beyond our reach”.
The German politicisation of animals has a long history; the poor octopus was not the only animal to feature in the Nazis racialised iconography. Tough predators and raptors – wolf, bear, eagle – were considered nobly German, while Jews were associated with rats and insects. Dogs were praised as embodiments of German values of loyalty and obedience, but cats were considered to be Jewish scroungers.
Meanwhile, the banning of the red triangle has caused consternation in the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime – Federation of Antifascists (VVN-BDA). The inverted red triangle was the identifying mark that had to be worn by political prisoners in concentration camps and it’s a prominent part of the association’s logo. Sadly, this being Germany, the VVN-BDA has been at best ambivalent in their stance on Israel/Palestine.
Chris’s info on the octopus image (which don’t forget is the logo of a UK electricity supplier, and nonetheless nearly got Martin Rowson kicked off the Guardian for drawing it) has reminded me of the Orban takeover of Hungarian media. Grossly antisemitic ‘octopus’ family trees of all the Jewish figures in public life, communications and NGOs were circulated. Each grotesque head and name was shown at the end of a different tentacle. tentacle. I remember being fascinated and horrified without ever imagining that such images could surface in the UK.