In Freiburg’s Christmas market, it is easy to forget how violent our “normality” is organized. Lights, music, mulled wine – and at the same time: mobile vehicle barriers at every entrance, officially there to protect against “terror and rampage attacks”. These blocks are not just technical security. They are props for a story: the ever-present threat of “Islamic terror” outside, and a supposedly innocent, peaceful “inside” that must be defended.
This securitized “inside” is heavily staffed. The police are on duty at the market every day; at weekends they are reinforced by police from France and Switzerland. Riot police are planned, alongside private security and the city’s enforcement officers patrolling the stalls. Weapons and knives are formally banned. The message is clear: this is a controlled zone, guarded from “dangerous others”.
And because it is Freiburg, the whole thing is, of course, proudly advertised as running on “100% green energy” – a clean, sustainable Christmas. But that “green” electricity does not fall from the sky. It depends on batteries, cables and infrastructure built from raw materials ripped out of places like Congo: cobalt, copper, lithium. Meanwhile, genocide is being funded with our taxes and our labour. The cosy glow on the Münsterplatz is plugged directly into extractivism, poisoned rivers and exploited labour elsewhere.
Barriers, police, security and green branding together draw a line through the city. Inside the bright, fenced-off area: those who can afford five-euro Glühwein, welcome as customers. At the edges of the same square: people without housing, people in poverty, people racialised as “risky” – treated as security problems, not as neighbours. They literally sit at the periphery of the Christmas market, in the shadow of a celebration that is not meant for them.
Here, Merz’s talk of the Stadtbild becomes concrete. The Christmas market, with its consumer logic and “attractive cityscape”, is what is to be praised and protected. The people at its margins – the homeless, the poor, migrants – are what is to be admonished as a “problem for the cityscape”, something that spoils the image and should be removed.
Christmas sells itself as a time of charity and warmth, but it is organized as an exclusionary space. It separates those who “deserve” comfort from those who are allowed to exist only as a disturbance or threat. Even the supposed “way out” offered within this logic is individual: if you are poor, you are told to work harder, be entrepreneurial, maybe one day open your own stand. Poverty is framed as personal failure, not as the consequence of a system that needs winners and losers.
What is missing is any idea of solidarity that breaks with this logic altogether.
We can see another practice in Sudan.
KHARTOUM STATE, SUDAN – MARCH 17, 2025: A man distributes food at an Emergency Response Room communal kitchen in Bir Hamada, in Khartoum state. As a war between rival generals and their armed forces devastates Sudan, millions have been displaced and left without access to basic services like medical care, water and electricity. While those at the top fight for power, neighbourhood committees and Emergency Response Rooms build kitchens like this one to keep people alive and practice grassroots solidarity from below.
Under war, displacement, hunger and state collapse, neighbourhood resistance committees in Sudan have set up community kitchens to keep people alive. There are no cosy markets there, and no NGOs swooping in to “save” anyone. Human rights organisations and aid agencies are absent, or appear only on terms set by the same imperial states that help fuel the war – often providing just enough assistance to stabilise the situation and discourage migration towards Europe.
The community kitchens are something else entirely. They are not charity from above. They are self-organised survival: neighbours pooling what exists locally – a truck, a yard, a gas bottle, a field, cooking skills, time, labour – and turning it into shared infrastructure.
This is a radical reconceptualisation of resources. Instead of asking “Who has money?”, people ask “What do we have among us?” The return is not profit, but collective survival and strength. This model:
mobilises local, non-financial assets,
distributes food according to need,
and keeps control in the hands of those who use it.
Because decisions are made collectively, it resists hegemony and co-optation. It is explicitly political: a social space where popular power is practised daily, where people defend their ability to survive and shape their future, independent of external agendas. In Sudan, this is a matter of life and death.
In Freiburg, we live in extreme privilege by comparison. People freezing on the street here are not doing so because the city has no food, no space, no money. They are freezing because of political choices: property rights enforced more harshly than the right to housing; a city centre designed for consumption and tourism, not for need; ever-growing budgets for policing and “security” while social services are cut, privatised or buried in bureaucracy.
Exactly because our situation is so privileged, there is no excuse to maintain Christmas as an exclusionary spectacle ringed by barriers, police and guards – and then wash it green with “100% renewable” branding built on extraction elsewhere.
If we take the Sudanese community kitchens as a model, an autonomous, anti-capitalist Advent in Freiburg could mean:
Setting up solidarity kitchens at the edges of the Christmas market, serving hot food and tea to anyone who needs it – housed or unhoused, with or without papers – without pity, tests, or charity branding.
Pooling resources – kitchens, cars, storage spaces, skills, time, some money – to build common infrastructure: food, warm clothes, sleeping bags, power banks, information.
Treating these places not as neutral welfare, but as spaces to meet and organise: to talk about why people are homeless, policed and poor in one of the richest regions in the world – and how to change it.
The goal is not to make Christmas a bit “nicer” within capitalism. It is to practise something that stands outside its logic: a redistribution from those with more to those with less, not as charity from above but as a conscious decision from below.
The person sitting at the periphery of the Christmas market is not a blemish on the festive scenery. They are a mirror held up to the city, showing that this way of celebrating is built on exclusion, securitisation and the criminalisation of poverty – powered, quite literally, by resources extracted from somewhere else.
We cannot copy Sudan’s struggle into Freiburg, and we should not romanticise it. But we can learn from the fact that, under bombardment and hunger, people build daily structures of solidarity without waiting for states, NGOs or donors.
Here, under fairy lights, mobile “anti-terror” barriers, permanent police presence and “100% green” marketing, the question for us is simple and sharp:
If they can build community kitchens under war, why can’t we build them under Christmas?
On 29.11.25, many left, Antifa and solidarity groups followed the call by Widersetzen to protest the formation of the AfD youth in Gießen. The demonstration was met with police violence. This article argues that the struggle against fascism is necessarily global and international – otherwise it is doomed to fail. It aims to strengthen the connections between our different struggles and make visible that they belong to the same fight.
“They tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them… because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples.”
Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism
Fascism cannot be separated from colonialism, racism, or capitalism. In Germany, fascism used the same tools first deployed in Namibia. The genocide of the Herero and Nama is the model that the Holocaust followed. Genocide was the final step in a fascist project that began with the brownshirts, who terrorized any opposition as well as minorities and Jews.
We see the same logic at work today:
In Sudan, where the RSF terrorizes civilians and seizes their homes, land, and property, and has built an entrepreneurial empire on gold and oil smuggling and human trafficking.
In the USA, where ICE hunts, cages, and deports migrants, forcing people into precarity and making super-exploitation and low wages easier to enforce.
In the West Bank, where settlers attack, expel, and dispossess Palestinians, trying to replace them with Jewish settlers and turn Palestinian land and homes into Jewish property and enterprise.
Seeing the common ground between these movements and the Nazi brownshirts and Nazi state makes the pattern clear:
First define a group as “the other.”
Then strip them of rights.
Then take their homes, wages, land, and future.
Fascists start by liquidating the assets and lives of the weakest and most exposed: the people on the fringes, the “not integrated,” migrants, racialized people, the poor, queer and trans people, disabled people, women and gender-nonconforming people.
Instead of confronting the capitalist class, where wealth is concentrated, fascism offers capitalism its ugliest compromise: in times of crisis it reorganizes the system through racist violence – a dog-eat-dog redistribution from below that strips the most oppressed of their homes, wages, land, and lives while the rich remain untouched.
Being antifascist means committing to fight these movements where they hit first: at the margins, against those made vulnerable by racism, colonialism, and poverty.
In Germany, state and police violence has systematically targeted Black people and people of color.
In the last two years, the Palestine movement has faced bans, criminalization, and police attacks on an unprecedented scale.
The same methods are now used against antifascists and left movements.
Our struggles against racism, against Zionism, against police violence, and against fascism are all connected.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
We have to fight for liberation for all, not for some.
Fighting the AfD cannot be separated from fighting the global systems it feeds on: borders, deportations, prisons, apartheid, war, surveillance, and exploitation.
Solidarity is not just a word. It is action and long-term commitment. It is a struggle – not a game of whack-a-mole, chasing fascists wherever they pop up, but a fight to confront the conditions that allow them to emerge in the first place.
Instead our solidarity has to be the opposite of fascism and colonialism: a real commitment to global justice, made concrete through the redistribution of wealth and power—away from corporations and empires, toward communities, workers, and all who are pushed to the margins.
A protester stands on a construction structure holding flares in Giessen, Germany, on November 29, 2025, during a nationwide day of mobilization against the relaunch of the youth organization of the far-right AfD (Alternative für Deutschland). The alliance widersetzen had called for the mobilization. More than 200 buses and over 50,000 protesters from across Germany arrived in Giessen to oppose and prevent the relaunch. Police responded with a major deployment and used a level of force not seen in the leftist scene outside of Palestine-solidarity protests. (Photo by Tonny Linke/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Robin D.G. Kelley — “The Black Radical Tradition Against Fascism and Genocide: The Long Durée” (UMass Amherst, April 3, 2025)
At this stage of the Palestine solidarity movement, it’s hard to claim that our primary task is still “educating the masses.” A genocide has been live-streamed to the world; even those trying to avoid it on social media can’t escape it on the street. People everywhere know about Palestine. It’s also hard to argue that Zionism persists because people “lack the facts.” Most people aren’t Zionists; many are at least sympathetic to Palestinians—but they feel powerless.
The most common question we hear is: “What can I do?”
There are a thousand answers, and whether they’re concrete and achievable will determine the size and strength of our movement. Our goal should be to help as many people as possible break their silence and get organized—not by shaming them, but by giving them specific ways to act. In short: a strategy of action.
To build a mass movement that breaks the silence and pushes for real liberation of Palestine—beyond the recognition of a Palestinian state—the Palestine solidarity movement is pursuing two main strategies:
Vertical
Work through established structures and state institutions—DGB, IG Metall, ver.di—and parties such as Die Linke to shift their positions on Palestine, push for parliamentary change, and encourage their members to join more revolutionary currents.
Horizontal
Build grassroots organizations and independent worker unions, connect struggles, and invest in community building to mobilize society across issues—treating the Palestinian struggle not as unique, but as part of a shared, collective struggle.
While both strategies differ greatly in method, they are ultimately complementary. A group may focus on one, but its success is tied to the success of others pursuing the other. What matters is having a strategy—and remaining critical of how we implement it, and how others do.
This isn’t competition; it’s how we learn what works and what doesn’t. No group should exist in isolation. Open collaboration is essential. Openness to critique from ourselves and others is crucial.
On Organizing
In the current leftist political landscape, many groups invoke workers’ revolution to justify working through state institutions. The result has been a dilution of the core message of Palestinian liberation in hopes of securing those institutions’ base. With heavy reliance on state channels—and limited engagement with communities—the project reads as reformist, whatever the rhetoric.
On the other hand, some anti-racist groups gatekeep by insisting only those who share the victim’s identity may speak. This blocks the connection of struggles and confines each to a “safe space.” In effect, it fragments society along identity, gender, sexuality, religion, and race—functioning as a counter-productive logic. The result is that the majority remains a majority while the rest remain isolated as minorities, instead of uniting to challenge existing power.
Meanwhile, human-rights and peace-centered groups focus on awareness campaigns, lobbying, and charity—hoping appeals to humanity will suffice to correct those very failings. In the name of “peace,” they often sidestep the roots of the conflict, echoing calls for “coexistence” rather than co-resistance.
On BDS
Within the context of Palestine solidarity movements, BDS is a central organization that provides target lists as well as principles and guidelines. It identifies complicit institutions, companies, and governments—including many that are not consumer-facing (e.g., the arms industry)—and turns them into prioritized targets for organized action. The task is to build leverage that ends complicity, not to reduce the struggle to skipping brands like Coca-Cola. Both horizontal and vertical strategies offer complementary ways to operationalize these targets and escalate pressure.
BDS also supplies a clear compass: anti-normalization, an explicit anti-racist stance, and a call for co-resistance with the oppressed rather than performative “coexistence.” Organized action is what makes goals achievable. BDS provides the targets and principles; coordinated campaigns provide the force to end ties and end complicity.
Reducing BDS to a consumer boycott is harmful to the movement because it obscures the need for a tangible strategy that produces tangible actions and effects. BDS should not be understood as limited to Palestine solidarity alone; its method can extend across struggles. There is significant overlap between complicity in Palestine and complicity elsewhere, further underscoring the connectedness of the struggles.
On Tadamun
Tadamun has emerged as a grassroots, initiative-based, decentralized group. For such a group, a horizontal strategy is the natural fit; it mirrors how Tadamun is organized. Tadamun does not claim a definitive roadmap for Palestinian liberation, but it presents a clear alternative to the dominant currents in the movement.
Tadamun should practice explicit anti-racist organizing that links struggles in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, and beyond, engaging directly with marginalized and racialized communities. This grows the movement horizontally. Apply BDS principles consistently—not only to Palestine—by advancing co-resistance rather than “co-existence.”
With that said, we need to keep questioning ourselves and our movement—what works, what doesn’t, and what we’re aiming for. We should not let Tadamun become a monolith or grow stale. We need active, constructive criticism of our actions, goals, and strategies. If Tadamun is to become a true movement, it must remain adaptable.
This article traces the Janjaweed’s origins, the pathway from Janjaweed to RSF, and the financing, recruitment, and foreign ties that sustain them. It looks beyond a purely human-rights frame to examine the material and ideological foundations of the project.
In 2003, Darfuri rebels rose up against the Sudanese government, due to systematic oppression of non-Arab communities. The Janjaweed militia became the backbone of the government’s counter-insurgency. Despite official denials, state resources flowed into Darfur, and the Janjaweed were equipped and coordinated as a paramilitary force, with communications gear and even artillery support (from the Sudanese Army).
Between 2003 and 2008, Janjaweed militias carried out crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, widespread rape, and torture in Darfur, killing an estimated 300,000 civilians and displacing about 2.7 million. These atrocities formed the basis for the International Criminal Court’s indictments of Sudan’s then-president, Omar al-Bashir, on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
The Janjaweed evolved into a formidable militia. Despite disarmament efforts, they were reorganized into the RSF, which grew strong enough to rival the national army. In 2023, this culminated in a power struggle between the RSF under Hemeti and the SAF under al-Burhan.
On 28 October, El Fasher—the capital of North Darfur—fell to the RSF, with mass atrocities, destruction, and rape reported. Much coverage filters Sudan through a humanitarian lens that catalogs harm and lists actors but rarely probes motivations or the political economy behind them, dissolving agency into an ethical abstraction.
This article takes a different approach. It examines the material foundations (land, resources, war finance), the ideological narratives (racial hierarchy, center–periphery identity, Islamist/Arabist frames), and human agency—why people joined, stayed, and acted as they did. It also challenges the reduction of Sudan’s crisis to “tribal warfare” or “Arab vs. African,” a framing that has justified excluding Darfur’s Arabs from engagement and has entrenched the very conditions that fuel militia violence.
KABKABIYA, SUDAN – NOVEMBER 21: FILE, Arab militias, a pro government paramilitary group, called „janjaweed“, are responsible for helping the government in the raid of African villages that has left 1.6 million Africans in the Darfur region of Sudan homeless and tens of thousands dead in Kabkabiya, Sudan on November 21, 2004. Refugees like these who have been driven from their lands by militias, could lose their land if a law that allows the government to take over land abandoned for one year. Thousands of Darfurians approach the first anniversary away from their villages many families in the refugee camps are still too scared to go home. (Photo by Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The Sudanese state’s “militia strategy” dates back at least to the 1980s under Jaafar Nimeiri and persisted through later regimes. In Darfur, many recruits were drawn from criminal bands and marginalized groups within so-called “Arab” tribes, then organized and armed. These militias also tapped cross-border mercenary networks in Chad and Darfur—some shaped under Gaddafi’s patronage and infused with Arab-supremacist ideas.
The Sudanese government funded and organized the Janjaweed in 2003 (and even before) to counter the Darfur rebellion after the regular army proved ineffective. The government did so despite clear evidence that these militias were committing severe human rights abuses, including forced displacement and widespread land clearance. Entire villages were burned on suspicion of rebel ties.
The British colonial administration had recognized dars (homelands) for most farmer groups in Darfur but left some nomad Arabs reliant on customary use rights—later strained by drought, desertification, and rising inter-communal violence. Some leaders then sought formal land for their people; others accepted promises of money and power, disregarding consequences. Not all Arab constituencies joined the „Janjaweed“; many tried to remain neutral, and a number of leaders refused to participate.
Over time, Janjaweed campaigns shifted land from largely settled farming communities labeled “African” to nomadic groups who, in a modern capitalist sense, were not traditional landholders. This dispossession created a lasting legitimacy problem: living on seized land demands continual force, outside patrons, and a steady flow of weapons to entrench and expand control. From afar, the conflict can appear as an “ethnic civil war,” yet victims included both groups marked as “Arab” and those marked as “African.”
Violence hardened identities: the more coercion was used and justified, the more communal labels were fixed and politicized, turning fluid social boundaries into rigid fronts. In this spiral, violence did not merely follow identity—it helped make it, as coercion and dispossession produced racialized boundaries that were then invoked to justify further violence.
Ethnicity has been manipulated by all sides, and lines have been sharpened by portraying the conflict as a genocidal war against “Africans.” Yet when government steps back and neighbors with long histories of coexistence meet to settle disputes, local politics and material interests outweigh imposed “racial” identities. Conflating „Janjaweed“ with „Arab“ helps perpetuate those narratives that seek to draw the conflict among tribal ethnic lines.
Mohamed Hamdan Daglo (C), known as Hemeti, deputy head of Sudan’s ruling Transitional Military Council (TMC) and commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries, waves a baton to supporters on a vehicle as he arrives for a rally in the village of Abraq, about 60 kilometers northwest of Khartoum, on June 22, 2019. (Photo by Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP) (Photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images)
Mirroring the international conflation of “Arab” with “Janjaweed,” the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) signed in Abuja in 2006 left many nomadic “Arab” communities feeling betrayed. It sidelined their concerns and failed to address nomadic land ownership. With land at the core of the conflict, the agreement was seen as disadvantaging nomads and deepening distrust of the government.
The DPA called for disarming the Janjaweed. Yet nomadic groups—the backbone of many militias—have long fought to protect migration routes and, when necessary, force access to pasture and water. Fearing reprisals and lacking credible guarantees of security or land, many concluded that retaining their weapons was essential. At the same time, the Janjaweed had fragmented into multiple, often indistinguishable groups with overlapping interests, leaving the government unable to stop or disarm them.
Frustration among government-aligned militias simmered after 2006 and culminated in late 2007 with the mutiny of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemeti”). Khartoum appeased him to prevent wider defections: Hemeti received a brigadier general’s rank and command, his men were issued military IDs and salaries, and a large cash infusion effectively turned his organization into a capitalist enterprise.
With Hemeti back on side, President Omar al-Bashir moved to reorganize Darfur’s militias under tighter control. In 2013 the government created the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) from the Janjaweed militias and put Hemeti in charge. The RSF was later granted regular-force status (2015) and incorporated as an auxiliary within Sudan’s armed services (2017), positioned in part to protect Bashir against internal coups. While the Janjaweed were renamed as the RSF, their tactics did not change and were used to crush uprisings in Darfur.
After mass protests in 2019, the army removed Bashir. Hemeti did not defend his former patron and acknowledged protesters’ demands as legitimate, but the RSF soon participated in violent repression, including the June 2019 Khartoum sit-in dispersal—echoing methods previously used in Darfur. An uneasy RSF–SAF power-sharing arrangement followed.
That alliance collapsed on April 15, 2023. General al-Burhan cast the RSF as bandits; Hemeti presented himself as pro-democracy. Beyond personal rivalry, the war reflects longer dynamics: the marginalization of Darfur, competition over economic and natural resources, and the state’s long-term use and arming of militias to quash resistance in the peripheries.
This picture shows the shop window of a jewelry store in Dubai on March 10, 2025. Sudan’s gold industry is booming thanks to Emirati financing, but instead of helping end the war, it is fuelling it by enriching both the army and paramilitaries, according to official and NGO data. Demand for the country’s massive gold reserves is „a key factor in prolonging the war,“ Sudanese economist Abdelazim al-Amawy told AFP. (Photo by Giuseppe CACACE / AFP) (Photo by GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP via Getty Images)
Initially intended as Bashir’s loyalists—as his legitimacy waned—the RSF was deployed nationwide under intelligence oversight to deter internal threats. In parallel, it assumed border-enforcement roles within Sudan–EU migration-control frameworks. That role was often opportunistic: units alternated between stopping migrants and trafficking or ransoming them—whichever paid more. Becoming Sudan’s border guard in chief proved an effective cover for smuggling.
The RSF and Hemeti understood that money and resources were the keys to power and loyalty in Sudan’s peripheries. He and his family built a financial empire behind the RSF, leveraging official clout to capture natural resources and state contracts. A turning point came around 2017, when his forces took control of the Jebel Amer gold mines in North Darfur. With Bashir’s approval, Hemeti’s firm gained export rights; soon a large share of Sudan’s gold trade was in RSF hands. Profits funded RSF expansion, enriched the Hemeti clan, and provided financial incentives for further recruitment.
The RSF also delivered geopolitical leverage. By deploying forces to Yemen in support of Saudi Arabia and the UAE—reports cited figures up to 40,000 by 2017—Hemeti secured external patrons. After Bashir’s ouster, Saudi Arabia and the UAE pledged $3 billion to back the army–RSF junta. The partnership extended to Libya, where in 2019 about 1,000 RSF fighters supported Khalifa Haftar’s offensive on Tripoli.
As Hemeti’s prominence grew, so did his business interests, aided by Bashir’s patronage. The family expanded into gold mining, livestock, and infrastructure, creating a revenue base independent of the regular state budget and the Sudanese Armed Forces. This autonomy strengthened the RSF’s bargaining position in Khartoum and in regional dealings.
The RSF also paid better than the army or other militias—a decisive factor amid economic decline after South Sudan’s secession, falling oil revenues, and gold’s rise as a pillar of the economy. For many young men in Darfur and beyond, RSF salaries, access to spoils, and protection networks outweighed scarce alternatives in a shrinking labor market. The scale of RSF-linked gold extraction even helped fuel a surge in gold flows to the UAE, underscoring the force’s economic reach.
As the RSF–SAF war unfolded, external finance remained central. Hemeti had become the UAE’s preferred partner, which sought to expand its regional influence through a proposed $6 billion port-and-agriculture project on the Red Sea coast announced in 2022, with Emirati firms holding a majority profit stake. Such deals fit a broader Gulf strategy along the Red Sea and offered the RSF prospective funding streams outside formal state channels.
As the war has progressed, the RSF has come to resemble the Bashir-era model: minimal pay for fighters and permission to pillage as de facto wages. This is not incidental. Revenue and coalition maintenance depend on the continuous appropriation of public and private resources. Such flows are largely immune to sanctions because they are sourced on the ground. Looting is also organized, not random.
In Wad Medani, the December 2023 raid on the World Food Programme warehouse—stocked to feed 1.5 million people for a month—was not the work of “hungry residents,” as the RSF claimed, but was organized by RSF commanders to provision their troops. Other plunder is more localized but still regulated: new recruits are encouraged to raid homes and villages as a form of payment for their participation in fighting.
RSF soldiers turned traders now sit at the intersection of predation and production. From influential positions, they broker the RSF’s new economic frontiers, taking lucrative cuts to keep goods moving. A reshaped social hierarchy gives the RSF an edge, enabling external alliances through labor and commerce—both as merchants selling to the public and as brokers moving goods to and within markets. Other occupations have been pulled into the same extraction-tied-to-production logic.
Five job types structure the RSF’s labor hierarchy: soldiers, informants, drivers, thieves, and day laborers. Recruits from tribes close to Hemeti sit at the top, serving as field commanders and economic entrepreneurs who manage markets and oversee supply chains.
Members of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries led by General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, also known as Hemeti, deputy head of Sudan’s ruling Transitional Military Council (TMC) and commander of the RSF paramilitaries, stand guard during the General’s meeting with his supporters in the capital Khartoum on June 18, 2019. (Photo by Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP) (Photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images)
As the RSF–SAF war unfolded, external finance remained central. Hemeti had emerged as Abu Dhabi’s preferred partner as it sought to expand influence along the Red Sea’s key trade route, via a proposed $6 billion port-and-agriculture project with a majority Emirati profit stake. The deal fits a broader Gulf strategy on the Red Sea and promised off-budget revenue streams for the RSF beyond formal state channels.
Since independence, Sudan’s ruling elites drew on hierarchies that cast “Arab” as civilization and “African” as other. This framing helped justify unequal wealth distribution toward “Arab” elites in Khartoum, even as the country’s major resources lay in non-Arab peripheries—oil largely in what is now South Sudan, gold heavily in Darfur. The state, dominated by northern elites, sidelined Darfur and other provinces, while successive regimes in Khartoum—and allied currents in Libya—circulated Arab-supremacist and Islamist narratives that naturalized center–periphery inequality.
These ideas fed a national identity crisis after British colonialism: who belongs, on what terms, and which regions count as the country’s core. Peace processes—from the Darfur accords to the Juba Agreement—could not undo decades in which violence, marginalization, racialization, and centralizing rule decided who had access to land, protection, and revenue; many in Darfur felt excluded. As violence escalated, identities hardened, turning once-fluid lines between “Arab” and “African” into rigid identities.
Within this landscape, Hemeti and the RSF sought an ideological pivot. They recast themselves not as a militia born of repression but as spokesmen for neglected peripheries. In public statements—“a Sudan that belongs to all Sudanese… from Darfur to Kassala”—Hemeti styled himself a “son of the people,” rooted in the experiences of Darfur, Kordofan, and the East. The message targeted two audiences at once: peripheral communities long dismissed by the center, and external patrons looking for a post-Bashir interlocutor.
In an apparent attempt to echo the Sudanese revolution, the RSF brands itself as its continuation—a pro-democracy, anti-Khartoum-elite force promising to redirect wealth from the center to Darfur’s marginalized. Yet the branding is contradictory: in practice, Hemeti moves to replace Khartoum’s elites with his own clan, offering no program for governance—only extraction and short-term gain.
However, reports suggest that even Hemeti struggles to control the RSF’s Arab militia core. He now resembles Bashir decades earlier: maintaining a fragile coalition of militias with divergent aims that often clash with his own ambitions for a political career. Distinguishing opportunists from true believers is difficult. RSF operations have been largely extractive and looting-driven, with fighters stripping areas of resources and moving the spoils to Darfur or local markets—producing an ebb and flow of fighters at the front as profit opportunities shift.
TOPSHOT – Makeshift shelters erected by displaced Sudanese who fled El-Fasher after the city fell to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), make up the Um Yanqur camp, located on the southwestern edge of Tawila, in war-torn Sudan’s western Darfur region on November 3, 2025. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)
This article traced the material and ideological foundations of the Janjaweed, from which the RSF later emerged. One question remains: agency. The Janjaweed and the RSF have been responsible for grave human rights violations for decades—so why do fighters continue to fight for them?
Hemeti built a capitalist empire that rivals Khartoum’s elites and used that wealth to finance the RSF. The loop is straightforward: the RSF secures resources; those resources fund Hemeti’s businesses; profits flow back into the RSF. This explains capacity and endurance but not the core question: how was the violence justified? A gun does not fire itself; roughly 100,000 fighters chose to join and remain. Pay and material benefits matter, but do they justify mass atrocities, rape, and the destruction of civilian life? While Hemeti’s family captured the revenues, most fighters saw them only as salaries, protection, and status—not ownership or control.
As economically profitable as the system created by the RSF is, it creates a political crisis for the RSF. The cost of keeping the RSF together is a sort of infinite expansion—one that is necessary to produce the looted goods and checkpoint taxes that sustain its payment system. This expansion means that the RSF is forever in crisis—always in need of new territory to conquer, and always at risk of its structure falling apart.
Hemeti presents himself and the RSF as champions of the oppressed against corrupt elites in Khartoum, yet the conduct of the war undercuts that claim. He is open about his business ambitions and his ownership of gold mines. After seizing large parts of Khartoum early in the conflict, the RSF left the city in ruins and did not attempt governance—signalling short-term extraction rather than a plan to rule.
To address the opening question of agency, there isn’t one sufficient reason. Affiliation brings privileges and protection that make continued association advantageous; what is taken by force must be held by force, so violence becomes self-perpetuating; violence also forges identities; social and command networks bind recruits to units; an ideology of dehumanisation lowers barriers to harm; and external funding and resource access reduce the need for local consent. Even together, these factors remain unsatisfying given the scale of the atrocities.
These factors may explain how the RSF machinery operates, not why its fighters, commanders, and supporters accept its actions. What could ever make atrocities on this scale understandable?
El Fasher has fallen. The last resistance gun fell silent on October 28th, 2025. This is not a „civil war“, this is an external war of aggression with multiple foreign actors supporting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) or the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), with minimal concern for the safety or freedom of the people of Sudan.
Today we declare the fall of the city. In this moment, the last sound of gunfire faded when the last resisting soldier fired his final bullet at the militia inside the city of El Fasher, then fell a martyr—standing, as he was born standing, a guardian of the land he loved until his last breath.
The city fell, but its dignity did not. Bodies have vanished, but the spirit still flutters over the walls and streets, guarding what remains of memory. Every stone here testifies that its people did not surrender, and that El Fasher was not defeated but betrayed—and has paused to write a new chapter in its history.
Glory and everlasting remembrance to the martyrs. Glory to those who stood firm to the end. And to all who kept the pledge and stayed the course.
EL FASHER, SUDAN — OCTOBER 26, 2025: SEQ 02 — Vantor close-up satellite imagery reveals dense black smoke rising from a fire in a residential area near El Fasher airport. Please use: Satellite image (c) 2025 Vantor.
With hearts wracked by pain and filled with anger, we follow the horrific massacres committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia against unarmed civilians in the city of El Fasher. These crimes began with systematic siege and starvation and escalated to the most extreme forms of violence: mass killings, rape, arson, looting, the destruction of places of worship, the targeting of journalists, the killing of children, women, and the wounded, the pursuit and killing of civilians fleeing the fighting, and the complete violation of the city.
This is an extension of a long path of terror and brutality that this militia has practiced against our people across Sudan. What is happening in El Fasher is a fully fledged crime of ethnic cleansing aimed at erasing human existence in Darfur. It makes clear to the world that this militia represents nothing but a project of organized killing and looting, bearing no relation to patriotism or to humanity.
Accordingly, and out of our revolutionary and humanitarian responsibility, we declare the following:
Our total condemnation of the massacres in El Fasher and of all crimes committed by the Janjaweed militia against civilians.
We hold the leadership of this militia fully criminally responsible for these crimes before the people and before history.
We explicitly call on the international community, the United Nations, the African Union, and free human-rights organizations to designate the Janjaweed militia as a terrorist organization that commits war crimes and crimes against humanity.
We demand the immediate imposition of the harshest, most deterrent sanctions on its military and political leaders, and their prosecution before international courts.
We call for urgent humanitarian corridors to protect civilians and deliver aid to those affected in El Fasher and in besieged areas.
The blood of our people in El Fasher is a trust upon our shoulders. We will remain faithful to our martyrs until justice is achieved and the killers are held to account.
Finally, we call on all Sudanese, and all Sudanese components at home and abroad, to elevate the spirit of tolerance, to put the country’s interest above all else, and to build a broad national alignment that seeks to achieve peace in Sudan according to an internal national vision—one that does not reproduce the same problems and strives to sow the seeds of a modern, civil, democratic state.
We also call on the international and regional community to intensify efforts toward a true peace, lasting stability, and complete justice for Sudan and the Sudanese people.
We will not forget, we will not forgive, and we will not be silent. Glory and eternal honor to the martyrs. Freedom, peace, and justice for the entire homeland.
Signatories:
Coordination of the Resistance Committees – El Fasher
Coordination of Al-Kalaklat and South Khartoum
Coordination of the Resistance Committees – Karari
Neighborhood Committees – Bahri
Gathering of the Committees – Jabal Awliya
Coordination of the Resistance Committees – Old Omdurman
We do not resemble any group or current that merely seeks to preserve the state and its institutions, nor do we derive our message from anyone else. We represent the voice of the homeland and strive to build a true state free of militias—a state founded on the rule of law, justice, and equal citizenship. Our message is not directed against any social group, sect, or tribe; it is a unifying national stance that rejects injustice in all its forms and stands against anyone who tries to fragment this country or steal its sovereign decision-making. We harbor no hatred toward anyone, but we hold a deep conviction that homelands are not built on narrow loyalties and tribalism, nor safeguarded by unchecked weapons.
We recognize that the militias imposing their dominance over people today represent nothing but a project of chaos, seeking only to undermine the state and weaken society. Hence our discourse is one of resistance to these forces that want to hijack the homeland and distort its meaning—a resistance through words, awareness, and principle, not through incitement or revenge.
We are hostile to no one, but we will not compromise on the homeland.
ANKARA, TURKIYE – NOVEMBER 3: An infographic titled „More than 62,000 people displaced in recent days in El-Fasher“ created in Ankara, Turkiye on November 3, 2025. The UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that more than 62,000 people were displaced within four days after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took control of El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur State in western Sudan, on Oct. 26. (Photo by Mehmet Yaren Bozgun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Background
Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and effectively the country’s president, is at war with his former deputy, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, who leads the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The RSF was created in 2013 from Janjaweed networks and commanders, keeping much of their personnel, tactics, and local power structures.
The Janjaweed were central to the Darfur war (2003–2020) and were widely accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing against Arab and non-Arab communities. By October 2007, the United States had labeled the Darfur killings genocide, citing an estimated 200,000–400,000 civilian deaths over the prior three years.
In Darfur, the term “Janjaweed” historically meant bandits or outlaws; victims use the word „Janjaweed“ for camel- and horse-mounted raiders who attacked villages—often alongside government troops with air support.
The RSF still often gets called „Janjaweed“ by locals indicating that the relabeling of the „Janjaweed“ into RSF was done only in name.
These „Janjaweed“ militias are often powerful local actors with strong incentives to defend gains in land and livestock—key economic and political assets that bring authority over those who live on and use them.
After its formation, the RSF was deployed against rebels in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile, and today stands as the main rival to the SAF.
Several foreign powers—Iran, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—have fueled Sudan’s civil war by supplying drones to opposing sides for over a year. Iran has provided drones to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), reportedly seeking a Red Sea naval base in return. Russia first leveraged Wagner’s ties to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to deliver drones and other weapons in early 2023, then switched sides in spring 2024, offering aid to the SAF in exchange for reviving a 2017 deal for a small Russian Red Sea base. Meanwhile, the UAE has backed the RSF to protect its economic and political influence in Sudan and the Red Sea through its relationship with RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo. Both warring parties have used these foreign-supplied drones to gain battlefield advantages and strengthen their hands in ceasefire talks.
The UAE has backed the RSF to secure its economic and political influence in Sudan and across the Red Sea, leveraging close ties with RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo. The UN, the United States, and other observers have accused the UAE of funding and supplying the RSF through logistics hubs in neighboring states—Central African Republic, Chad, Libya, and Uganda. In September 2024, The New York Times reported the UAE had begun using Chinese drones comparable to the U.S. MQ-9 Reaper, operating from Chad, to provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support to the RSF.
Hemedti and the RSF built strong links with Abu Dhabi by joining UAE-aligned military coalitions in Libya and Yemen, ties that have since deepened into an economic partnership. Hemedti’s grip on Sudan’s gold sector—Dubai is the leading importer of Sudanese gold—further cements his value to the UAE. These relationships position him as Abu Dhabi’s preferred partner for a $6 billion port and agriculture project on Sudan’s Red Sea coast announced in 2022, in which Emirati firms hold a 65% profit stake—part of a wider UAE strategy to expand power through client ports along the Red Sea.
A March 2022 UN report found that many entitlements in Egypt are not effectively available to all: Sudanese and other East Africans often face discrimination and xenophobia, living in “parallel informal communities” in cities with poor access to education and healthcare. Since April 2023, the war in Sudan has displaced millions—around 25 million people now need aid. Refugees and NGOs report Egyptian security searches in neighborhoods with many Sudanese, with detentions and deportations even for people holding UNHCR cards or pending UNHCR appointments—protection that “used to mean safety” no longer does. At the same time, the EU announced in March 2024 a €7 billion package for Egypt, including at least €200 million for migration control. Critics warn that funding “migration management” while abuses persist risks implicating Brussels and EU states in rights violations.
Legal and procedural barriers deepen refugees’ vulnerability. Visas are largely unattainable for Sudanese, pushing many to enter irregularly. Asylum seekers must travel over 1,000 km to Cairo to apply, then wait eight to twelve months for UNHCR registration; to stay regular, they are supposed to obtain six-month residence permits, yet by March 2025 the wait for an appointment had reached 29 months, according to civil society groups. Without UNHCR paperwork and residence permits, refugees and asylum seekers live under constant threat of detention.
European—especially German—policy on Sudan has focused on stopping migration and keeping “stability.” Sudan is a main route from Ethiopia and Eritrea, this has meant deals were struck with strongmen instead of addressing the material reasons underpinning migration.
The result is the opposite of what Europe officially desires: hundreds of thousands are trying to migrate, often „illegally“.
Even after sanctions against Sudan, the EU (including Germany) kept some security and economic ties with Khartoum, especially on migration and counterterrorism. German involvement went beyond words: reports point to indirect arms transfers through third countries, migration-control projects that strengthened militias, and aid sent through unaccountable state bodies. Despite an arms embargo, German-made weapons (like Heckler & Koch) have been seen in Sudan via intermediaries.
The RSF was not officially hired, but still gained from EU-backed border programs such as GIZ’s Better Migration Management. EU funding effectively outsourced parts of border control to Sudan’s security forces—including the RSF—by providing surveillance tools and vehicles (Toyota Hilux and Land Cruiser). These were meant for borders but were later used to crush protests, including the June 2019 Khartoum sit-in massacre (at least 186 killed).
A website was founded to be a platform for documenting the RSF militias violations, and to witness what innocents have been up to from killing, displacing and violating. It also contains a comprehensive record of victims, survivors and missing, and a search engine enables families to find their relatives who have arrived in safe and secure areas.
Demonstration
Sudanese society has overthrown military regimes three times—1964, 1985, and 2019—through broad, popular mobilization. This history sustains today’s civilian rejection of military rule and offers a basis for political renewal, even amid the destruction in Sudan.
The setback in El Fasher is only one battle in the Sudanese people’s path to dignity, justice, and freedom. We stand in solidarity with the people of Sudan against all who threaten their dignity and self-determination. Sudan will rise. We honor the people’s resolve.
Die Einführung von Palantir in Baden-Württemberg ist kein neutrales IT-Projekt: Das Unternehmen ist in Israels Krieg gegen Gaza und in US-Migrations-/Protestrepression eingebunden, während seine Software voreingenommene Polizeidaten verknüpfen und Diskriminierung automatisieren kann—besonders gefährlich bei Rechtsruck. Testbetrieb ab Ende 2025, Vollbetrieb im 2. Quartal 2026. Die Zeit läuft.
Hintergrund
In Baden-Württemberg wird die Polizei künftig die Datenanalyse-Software des US-Unternehmens Palantir einsetzen. Das Projekt mit dem Namen VeRA (Verfahrensübergreifende Recherche- und Analyseplattform) kombiniert Gotham mit einer eingeschränkten Version von Foundry. Der Vertrag hat eine Laufzeit von fünf Jahren und ein Volumen von rund 25 Millionen Euro. Ziel ist es, bislang getrennte polizeiliche Datenbanken in einer einheitlichen Recherche- und Analyseumgebung zusammenzuführen1.
Phase 1 – Projektphase (bis Ende 2025): Koordination, Aufbau und Inbetriebnahme des Gesamtsystems; Anbindung der gesetzlich definierten Quell- und Fachsysteme; Herstellung der technischen Einsatzbereitschaft. Phase 2 – Betriebsphase (bis zum 2. Quartal 2026): Verwaltung, Wartung und Fehlerbehebung; Beginn des produktiven Einsatzes mit enger Begleitung des Systembetriebs und fortlaufenden Optimierungen bis zum stabilen Regelbetrieb2.
Germany, on May 7, 2024 (Photo by Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP) (Photo by TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP via Getty Images)
Rechtlich stützt sich die Einführung auf die Regelungen zur automatisierten Datenanalyse nach dem Polizeigesetz zum Zweck der Gefahrenabwehr. Wenn die gesetzlichen Voraussetzungen erfüllt sind, können die dabei gewonnenen Informationen auch in Strafverfahren verwendet werden. Nach § 147 StPO besteht ein allgemeines Recht auf Akteneinsicht, das auch Daten umfasst, die durch automatisierte Analyse erhoben oder ausgewertet wurden3.
Das Maßnahmenpaket4 sowie die Pressemitteilung vom 24. September 2024 („Umfassendes Sicherheitspaket beschlossen“5) legen die Leitlinien von „Sicherheit stärken, Migration ordnen, Radikalisierung vorbeugen“ fest – und verankern Palantirs System (Gotham/Foundry) bzw. VeRA als zentrale Bausteine dieser Strategie. Damit wird die polizeiliche Datenintegration politisch priorisiert, rechtlich gerahmt und zeitlich terminiert (Testbetrieb Ende 2025, Vollbetrieb im 2. Quartal 2026). Das Paket ist daher zentral, um die Reichweite, Legitimation und Beschleunigung der Einführung zu verstehen.
Gleichzeitig ruft die Einführung des Systems erhebliche Bedenken hervor. Kritiker*innen warnen vor der möglichen Legitimierung und Normalisierung polizeilicher Gewalt, der Verstärkung rassistischer Polizeipraktiken und Racial Profiling, der gezielten Überwachung von Asylsuchenden und Migrant*innen, der Ausweitung staatlicher Kontrolle über soziale Medienund digitale Räume sowie der Unterdrückung politischer Meinungsäußerung – insbesondere der Solidarität mit Palästina. Dies birgt die Gefahr einer allgemeinen Einschüchterung und Einschränkung von Dissens.
Der folgende Abschnitt untersucht die Tragweite und Berechtigung der gennanten Befürchtungen.
Über Palantir
CHINA – 2024/06/21: (Photo Illustration by Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Palantir ist ein US-amerikanisches Überwachungs- und „Defense-Tech“-Unternehmen, das vom Tech-Milliardär Peter Thiel mitbegründet und in seiner Anfangsphase vom CIA-Risikokapitalfonds In-Q-Tel finanziert wurde6. Das Unternehmen entwickelt Software zur Integration und Analyse großer Datenmengen, die von Nachrichtendiensten, Militärbehörden sowie US-Strafverfolgungs- und Einwanderungsbehörden ebenso genutzt wird wie von israelischen Militär- und Geheimdienststellen7.
Palantir89ist ein äußerst undurchsichtiges Unternehmen; aus öffentlich zugänglichen Materialien lässt sich nur schwer erkennen, was seine Systeme konkret leisten oder zu welchem Zweck sie eingesetzt werden. Eines wird jedoch aus der eigenen Vermarktung deutlich: Palantir bewegt sich klar im Umfeld von Verteidigung und Geheimdiensten. Gotham wird in der Sprache von Waffen, Schlachtfeldern, Zielerfassung und Kommandoeinsatz beworben, während Foundry als die datenbasierte Grundlage dargestellt wird, die solche Operationen ermöglicht. Beide Systeme bilden die zentralen Bausteine des VeRA-Systems, das – wie zuvor beschrieben – von der Polizei in Baden-Württemberg eingesetzt werden soll.
Im Jahr 2020 kam Amnesty International zu dem Schluss, dass Palantir seinen menschenrechtlichen Sorgfaltspflichten gemäß den UN-Leitprinzipien für Wirtschaft und Menschenrechte (UNGPs) nicht nachkommt. Diese Prinzipien verpflichten Unternehmen dazu, die Menschenrechte in allen Geschäftsbereichen und Wertschöpfungsketten zu achten, und fordern von Staaten, verbindliche Regeln zu schaffen und deren Einhaltung – insbesondere bei öffentlichen Aufträgen – sicherzustellen10.
Komplizenschaft im Genozid
GAZA CITY, GAZA – SEPTEMBER 14: (Photo by Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Nach dem Beginn des genozidalen Krieges Israels gegen Gaza im Oktober 2023 schloss Palantir eine „strategische Partnerschaft“ mit dem israelischen Verteidigungsministerium, um die Kriegsführung zu unterstützen, und berichtete anschließend von einer „stark gestiegenen Nachfrage Israels nach neuen Werkzeugen“. Seitdem liefert das Unternehmen Gotham und Foundry – dieselben Systeme, die auch in Baden-Württemberg eingesetzt werden sollen.
Palantir steht auf der BDS-Desinvestitionsliste, was die anhaltenden zivilgesellschaftlichen Bedenken hinsichtlich seiner Verstrickung in Menschenrechtsverletzungen widerspiegelt11.
Der UN-Bericht „From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide“12 führt Palantir unter den am Völkermord beteiligten Unternehmen auf. Es bestehen demnach begründete Anhaltspunkte, dass Palantir
automatisierte Predictive-Policing-Technologien,
zentrale Verteidigungsinfrastruktur für den schnellen und großflächigen Einsatz militärischer Software, sowie
eine KI-Plattform zur Integration von Echtzeit-Schlachtfelddaten für automatisierte Entscheidungsprozesse bereitgestellt hat.
Palantir-CEO Alex Karp erklärte als Reaktion auf den Vorwurf, dass Palantirs Systeme zum Töten von Palästinenser*innen in Gaza beigetragen hätten: „Meistens Terroristen, das stimmt.“ Diese Äußerung verdeutlicht eine bewusste Kenntnis und Billigung auf Führungsebene im Hinblick auf den rechtswidrigen Einsatz von Gewalt durch Israel sowie das unterlassene Handeln, um sich von diesen Verbrechen zu distanzieren13.
Rassismus
BERLIN, GERMANY – MAY 11: (Photo by Maryam Majd/Getty Images)
Das Maßnahmenpaket „Sicherheit stärken, Migration ordnen, Radikalisierung vorbeugen“14 stellt Migrant*innen und „gefährliche Ausländer“ als Sicherheitsrisiko dar. Wird dieses Framing mit Palantirs Software verbunden, führt es zu einer stärkeren Erfassung, Verknüpfung und Nutzung polizeilicher Daten über rassifizierte Gruppen.
Palantirs Software kann Personen erfassen, ohne dass sie etwas getan haben: ein Zeugenbericht, eine Routinekontrolle am Bahnhof oder die bloße Nähe zu einer gesuchten Person können ausreichen, um im System zu erscheinen. Datenschutzexpert*innen warnen, dass ein bundesweiter Einsatz große Gruppen unbeteiligter Menschen zusätzlichen Kontrollen und Maßnahmen aussetzen würde15. Mit dem Erstarken der AfD besteht die Gefahr, dass solche Systeme zur Abschiebung oder breiten Migrationsüberwachung genutzt werden – ähnlich wie in den USA unter Trump16.
Dies trifft auf eine bereits bestehende Realität rassistischer Polizeigewalt in Deutschland. Angehörige, Überlebende und migrantische Communities machen seit Jahrzehnten auf diese Gewalt aufmerksam. Fälle wie Lorenz A., der in Oldenburg von der Polizei erschossen wurde, und Nelson, der mit 15 Jahren in der Justizvollzugsanstalt Ottweiler starb, zeigen, dass Schwarze Menschen und andere rassifizierte Gruppen durch staatliches Handeln besonders gefährdet sind. Ihre Familien fordern Aufklärung und Verantwortung17.
Zwischen 1990 und 2022 hat die ISD gemeinsam in der Kampagne Death in Custody recherchiert und dokumentiert: Mindestens 203 Menschen starben in Deutschland in polizeilichem oder justiziellem Gewahrsam18.
Die Integration von Palantir in diese Praxis übernimmt die bereits in polizeilichen Datensätzen vorhandenen Verzerrungen durch Racial Profiling. Automatisierte Analysen verbreiten diese Vorurteile weiter über verknüpfte Systeme. So entsteht ein Kreislauf: voreingenommene Daten führen zu erweiterten Verdächtigungen. Ohne klare Grenzen, unabhängige Kontrolle und Transparenz wird VeRA den Umfang diskriminierender Polizeiarbeit und das Risiko von Polizeigewalt vergrößern.
Migrationspolitik
TOPSHOT – View into rooms in lightweight construction where clothes are hung up at the refugee accomodation at the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin on December 9, 2015. (Photo by TOBIAS SCHWARZ / AFP) (Photo by TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP via Getty Images)
Laut dem Maßnahmenpaket19 wird die geplante Einführung von Palantir-Software in VeRA ausdrücklich als ein Frühinterventionsinstrument dargestellt, das „kriminellen Karrieren“ unter ausländischen Staatsangehörigen vorbeugen und den Aufenthalt straffälliger Ausländer so früh wie möglich beenden soll. Diese Fallbearbeitungseinheit soll unterhalb des Sonderstabs Gefährliche Ausländer angesiedelt werden und damit den Fokus auf ausländische Straftäter*innen in aufenthaltsbeendenden Verfahren weiter verstärken20.
Die Formulierungen des Dokuments – insbesondere die Verknüpfung von VeRA mit der Bekämpfung „zunehmenden islamistischen Terrorismus“ und „gefährlicher Zuwanderung“ – spiegeln dabei deutlich US-amerikanische Sicherheits- und Migrationsnarrative wider.
Angesichts dieser Zielsetzungen ist ein Vergleich mit den Vereinigten Staaten naheliegend. Palantir-gestützte Systeme stehen dort seit Langem in der Kritik wegen ihrer Rolle bei der Durchsetzung von Einwanderungsgesetzen, insbesondere an der US-mexikanischen Grenze. Auf Grundlage von Unterlagen des Department of Homeland Security sowie Beschaffungs- und Datenschutzdokumenten zeigt Amnesty International, dass KI-gestützte Systeme – darunter auch Palantir-Technologien – eine permanente, großflächige Überwachung und Risikobewertung ermöglichen, die sich häufig gezielt gegen Nicht-US-Bürger*innen richtet21.
Darüber hinaus dokumentiert Amnesty, dass diese Systeme zur Überwachung und Nachverfolgung von Migrant*innen, Geflüchteten und Asylsuchenden eingesetzt werden und ein hohes Risiko bergen, in Programmen wie „Catch and Revoke“ verwendet zu werden. Frühere Untersuchungen belegen zudem den Einsatz von Palantir-Systemen durch die US-Einwanderungsbehörde ICE zur Umsetzung menschenrechtswidriger Maßnahmen gegen Migrant*innen und Asylsuchende – ein Beispiel für das erhebliche Risiko, dass Palantirs Technologie zur Ermöglichung von Menschenrechtsverletzungen beiträgt22.
Palästinasolidarität
LONDON, ENGLAND – DECEMBER 21:(Photo by Guy Smallman/Getty Images)
Die im Maßnahmenpaket23 geplante Desinformationsdimension ist besonders beunruhigend: Angesichts der systematischen Leugnung der Fakten über Gaza, der Normalisierung von Handlungen Israels, die einen Völkermord darstellen, und der anhaltenden Weigerung der deutschen Regierung, ihren verfassungsrechtlichen und historischen Verpflichtungen nachzukommen – Mitverantwortung zu beenden und wirksame Schritte zum Schutz der Zivilbevölkerung zu ergreifen – stellt sich die Frage, wer die Wahrheit kontrolliert. Wie Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking-Glass formuliert: Wörter bedeuten, was diejenigen in Machtpositionen bestimmen – „wer der Meister ist“.
„Wenn ich ein Wort benutze“, sagte Humpty Dumpty in einem ziemlich verächtlichen Ton, „dann bedeutet es genau das, was ich will – nicht mehr und nicht weniger.“ „Die Frage ist“, sagte Alice, „ob man Worte so viele verschiedene Dinge bedeuten lassen kann.“ „Die Frage ist“, sagte Humpty Dumpty, „wer der Meister ist – das ist alles.“
In den Vereinigten Staaten hat sich der Einsatz von Palantir-Software bereits mit der Repression gegen die Palästina-Solidaritätsbewegung überschnitten. Am 8. März 2025 verhafteten die Behörden rechtswidrig Mahmoud Khalil, einen ehemaligen Doktoranden der Columbia University und ständigen US-Residenten, der als Sprecher der Campusproteste fungiert hatte; Präsident Trump erklärte, dies sei „die erste von vielen Verhaftungen“. Kurz darauf wurden Visa oder Aufenthaltsgenehmigungen von neun ausländischen Studierenden widerrufen, die an Protesten teilgenommen oder sich gegen Israels Handeln in Gaza ausgesprochen hatten; weitere Fälle dokumentierte Amnesty International24.
Vor diesem Hintergrund – polizeiliche Gewalt bei Demonstrationen und pauschale Antisemitismusvorwürfe gegen die Bewegung in Deutschland – bergen erweiterte Datenfusionswerkzeuge erhebliche Risiken. Eine solche Semantik staatlicher Deutungshoheit zeigt sich bereits in Veröffentlichungen des Bundesamts für Verfassungsschutz, das Palästina-Solidarität pauschal in den Kontext „dogmatischen Linksextremismus“ rückt und damit den Boden für Überwachung und Kriminalisierung bereitet25.
Ein System, das Erfassung, Querverknüpfung und automatisierte Auswertung zentralisiert, kann unter dem Etikett „öffentliche Sicherheit“ zur Überwachung, Einschüchterung und Kriminalisierung von Dissens eingesetzt werden und semantische Kämpfe um Bedeutung in operative Kategorien staatlicher Repression übersetzen.
Schlussfolgerung
(Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP) (Photo by ODD ANDERSEN/AFP via Getty Images)
Die Einführung von Palantir und VeRA in Baden-Württemberg steht nicht isoliert, sondern in einem größeren politischen und historischen Zusammenhang. Das Unternehmen ist direkt in militärische und sicherheitspolitische Operationen verwickelt, die in Gaza zu Kriegsverbrechen und Völkermord beigetragen haben. Seine Technologie wurde in den USA eingesetzt, um Migrant*innen zu überwachen, abzuschieben und Proteste gegen Israels Politik zu unterdrücken. Diese Erfahrungen zeigen, dass solche Systeme nicht neutral sind – sie dienen der Kontrolle, nicht dem Schutz.
In Deutschland trifft Palantirs Technologie auf eine politische Landschaft, in der Palästina-Solidarität kriminalisiert, Migration sicherheitspolitisch behandelt und rassistische Polizeipraxis seit Jahrzehnten ignoriert oder geleugnet wird. Das Maßnahmenpaket „Sicherheit stärken, Migration ordnen, Radikalisierung vorbeugen“ setzt diese Logik fort: es verschiebt gesellschaftliche Konflikte in den Bereich von „Sicherheit“ und schafft die technischen Grundlagen für Überwachung, Selektion und Ausschluss.
Palantir Software verbindet diese Ebenen – Kriegstechnologie, Migrationskontrolle und innere Repression – zu einem einheitlichen Überwachungsinstrument. Es institutionalisiert ein Denken, in dem soziale Probleme als Risiken erscheinen, Dissens als Bedrohung und ganze Bevölkerungsgruppen als potenziell gefährlich. In Kombination mit bestehenden Datensätzen, rassistischen Polizeistrukturen und dem politischen Klima der Angst entsteht ein Apparat, der Diskriminierung nicht abbaut, sondern automatisiert.
Die Einführung von Palantir in die deutsche Polizeiarbeit ist daher kein bloßer technischer Schritt, sondern ein politischer. Sie markiert eine Verschiebung – weg von Rechtsstaatlichkeit und öffentlicher Rechenschaft, hin zu algorithmischer Kontrolle und selektiver Sicherheit. Eine demokratische Gesellschaft kann sich solche Systeme nur leisten, wenn sie bereit ist, sich selbst in Daten zu zerlegen. Wer das zulässt, überlässt die Deutung der Wirklichkeit – und damit die Macht – jenen, „die die Wörter beherrschen“.
Was tun?
Wir nehmen die Straße. Wir stehen dagegen.
Schließ dich uns an. Lasst uns von unten eine Bewegung aufbauen.
Gemeinsam, solidarisch, organisiert – vereint sind wir nicht zu besiegen.
Die für eine der Solidarität verpflichteten Bewegung teilweise unerträgliche Kritik an unseren Kolleginnen von der Histadrut auch in gewerkschaftlichen Bünden verurteilen wir scharf. Nirgendwo anders werden Gewerkschaften mit dem Handeln ihrer Regierung gleichgesetzt und dafür verantwortlich gemacht. Die Histadrut steht immer wieder an der Spitze von Protesten gegen die israelische Regierung und setzt sich für ein friedliches Miteinander und den Austausch zwischen allen Beschäftigten ein.
In English:
We sharply condemn the at times unbearable criticism of our colleagues from the Histadrut, even within trade union federations, which claim to be committed to solidarity. Nowhere else are trade unions equated with the actions of their government and held responsible for them. The Histadrut has repeatedly been at the forefront of protests against the Israeli government and advocates for peaceful coexistence and exchange among all workers.
Taking a step back: why is the Histadrut subject to criticism at all? This article addresses that question by examining the Histadrut’s role, practices, political positioning, and its role in Israeli the war machine. On this basis, it argues that criticism is not only well-founded but necessary. Moreover, if the DGB is genuinely committed to “peace in the Middle East,” it must fundamentally reassess—and ultimately sever—its partnership with the Histadrut.
Founded in December 1920, the Histadrut—the General Federation of Hebrew Workers in Palestine—was established to secure the economic foundations of the Zionist project. Its core mission was not simply to organize workers, but to create and protect a Jewish labor force by excluding Palestinian Arab labor from key sectors of the economy. Through the doctrine of avodah ivrit (“Hebrew labor”), the Histadrut turned labor organization into a mechanism of colonization, linking employment to national belonging and transforming the workplace into a frontier of settlement.
From the outset, the Histadrut was both a union and an employer, owning enterprises, land, and industries that advanced Zionist colonization. Its companies—most prominently Solel Boneh—constructed roads, military outposts, and settlements, embedding the federation in the material infrastructure of the emerging Jewish state. As a central pillar of the Yishuv’s economic system, the Histadrut coordinated with the Jewish Agency and other state-building organs to exclude Palestinian workers, dismantle mixed unions, and monopolize employment through Jewish-only cooperatives and hiring halls.
After 1948, the Histadrut’s dual role as labor federation and development agency deepened. It became one of Israel’s largest employers, controlling major industrial, construction, and financial firms under its holding company Hevrat HaOvdim. These enterprises built the new state’s infrastructure while entrenching a racially segmented labor market that privileged Jewish citizens and relegated Palestinians—whether citizens of Israel or residents of the occupied territories—to precarious, low-wage positions outside collective representation.
By 1967, this institutional model had merged seamlessly with Israel’s occupation regime, subordinating Palestinian labor to Israeli regulatory power. Histadrut-affiliated firms such as Solel Boneh and Bank Yahav extended their activities into settlements in the West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem, while Palestinian workers in these same areas remained unrepresented. The federation’s continued integration with the settlement economy made it a direct participant in the consolidation of occupation.
The Military Role of the Histadrut
The Histadrut anchors organized labor inside Israel’s military-industrial complex, chiefly through its Metal, Electrical and High-Tech Workers Union, which represents employees at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, and Elbit Systems. These firms produce core war-fighting systems—IAI’s missiles, UAVs, and C2 platforms; Rafael’s air and missile-defense and precision munitions; and Elbit’s electro-optics and battlefield electronics—central to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
In this capacity, the Histadrut does not merely coexist with Israel’s war economy; it enables and sustains it, ensuring that labor power remains fully mobilized in the service of Israel’s continuing assault on Gaza.
The DGB has never been blind to the Histadrut’s historic role in the colonization of palestine, or its role in the . In its brochure “50 Jahre Partnerschaftsabkommen zwischen DGB und Histadrut”, it notes that “the Histadrut was practically a ‘state within the state.’” The federation’s support for Israel’s labor movement was not merely symbolic but consistently material—especially at pivotal moments. During the 1967 Six-Day War, for example, the DGB purchased an additional 3 million DM in development-aid bonds (Israel Bonds), publicly expressing confidence in Israel’s survival and democracy.
As the DGB Youth explicitly stated in Motion E011 “Boykotte boykottieren”, they branded BDS “anti-Israeli,” reaffirmed a two-state line, and distanced themselves from cultural, political, scientific, and economic boycotts of Israel. In practice, that stance delegitimized a key non-violent accountability tool and helped sideline BDS in labor forums. Coupled with defending the Histadrut while Palestinian workers remain excluded, and with German industry’s ongoing ties to Israeli firms (including war- and settlement-linked sectors), this posture shields the institutions underpinning Israeli apartheid—criticizing only its most visible violence while leaving its foundations intact.
Conclusion
What began as a gesture of postwar reconciliation has long since turned into complicity with a colonial project. The DGB’s partnership with the Histadrut — an institution that functions not as a vehicle of workers’ liberation but as a pillar of Zionist state power — embodies a deep contradiction at the heart of German labor internationalism. The Histadrut has never been a neutral trade union. From its founding, it has operated as an instrument of Jewish settlement, exclusion, and militarization. It is part of the political and economic structure that sustains Israel’s apartheid regime and its war economy.
By bargaining for the well-being of soldiers and reservists, by stabilizing Israeli civil society amid war, repression, and global outrage, and through its silence on the ongoing Gaza genocide, the Histadrut actively reinforces the occupation and the colonial order it depends upon. It negotiates not for the emancipation of all workers, but for the maintenance of privilege within an ethno-national state. To continue cooperation with such an institution — while Palestinian workers remain dispossessed, unrepresented, and exploited — is to abandon the principle of class solidarity in favor of nationalist loyalty.
It simply goes against the very concept of international worker solidarity to stand with a colonial labor federation that denies labor rights to those under occupation. It is not enough to condemn “extremism” or criticize “individual settlers” while ignoring the systemic role of Zionism and the Histadrut in perpetuating Palestinian exclusion and dispossession. The struggle for justice demands a break with this complicity.
If the DGB is serious about its proclaimed commitment to peace, it must act accordingly. That means ending its partnership with the Histadrut, supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and exerting pressure on German industry to sever all ties with Israel’s military-industrial complex and companies profiting from occupation and settlement. This is not simply a suggestion — it is an imperative of international worker solidarity.
To remain silent or neutral in the face of colonial and genocidal violence is to side with the oppressor. True solidarity lies with the Palestinian working class — those whose land, labor, and lives have been stolen, and who continue to resist against overwhelming power. Breaking with the Histadrut would not betray the principles of labor internationalism — it would restore them, aligning the German labor movement with the global struggle for justice, liberation, equality, and decolonization, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean.
The German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) talks peace while backing rearmament and defending arms-industry jobs—this article maps the contradictions.
Background
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, German politics has been marked by a sharp turn toward rearmament. The government’s €100-billion “Sondervermögen Bundeswehr,” NATO’s 2% spending target, and the EU’s ReArm Europe program all point to a new era of militarization. Trade unions, traditionally part of Germany’s peace movement, have been forced to position themselves in this landscape.
The German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) publicly continues to stress its commitment to peace, diplomacy, and disarmament. Its annual Antikriegstag statements, as well as the 2025 Easter March declaration, warn against a “spiral of blind militarization” and call for a broader understanding of security that includes diplomacy, crisis prevention, and social investment.
Yet at the same time, the DGB and its affiliates — especially IG Metall — are deeply entangled with the arms industry and have supported policy shifts that expand Germany’s military capacity. They endorse loosening the debt brake for defense, defend jobs in arms companies, and accept the logic of a stronger European military role.
The DGB presents itself as both a champion of social investment and a voice for peace. In its campaign against the debt brake, it warns that austerity is strangling the future:
“Die Schuldenbremse verhindert Investitionen in die öffentliche Infrastruktur und den Klimaschutz. Sie ist eine Zukunftsbremse für Deutschland.” (“The debt brake prevents investments in public infrastructure and climate protection. It is a brake on the future for Germany.” )
The unions demand nothing less than a fundamental reform:
“Wir fordern eine grundlegende Reform der Schuldenbremse, damit Deutschland die wichtigen Zukunftsaufgaben meistern und gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse für alle schaffen kann.” (“We demand a fundamental reform of the debt brake so that Germany can master important future tasks and create equal living conditions for all.”)
Yet when it comes to defense, the language shifts. In its 2025 Easter March statement, the DGB simultaneously calls for “peace” while endorsing a build-up of Europe’s military capacity:
“Vor diesem Hintergrund sehen auch der DGB und seine Mitgliedsgewerkschaften die Notwendigkeit, in Deutschland und Europa verstärkte Anstrengungen zu unternehmen, um gemeinsam verteidigungsfähiger zu werden.” (“Against this background, the DGB and its member unions also see the need to make greater efforts in Germany and Europe to become more defense-capable together.”)
At the same time, the union federation warns of the dangers of militarization:
“Es wäre grundfalsch, damit in eine Spirale der blinden Militarisierung einzusteigen.” (“It would be fundamentally wrong to enter a spiral of blind militarization.”)
This dual stance highlights the contradiction: while opposing the debt brake for blocking social and climate investments, the DGB welcomes its loosening for military budgets — even as it insists it wants to “stop militarization.”
Partnership with the Arms Industry
The contradictions in the DGB’s position on militarization become clearest when looking at its largest affiliate, IG Metall, which organizes tens of thousands of workers in the arms sector.
A recent example is the conflict around LITEF in Freiburg, a company producing avionics systems used in both civilian and military applications. When peace activists criticized the firm as part of the war industry, IG Metall defended its members by insisting on the company’s civilian profile:
“LITEF produziert zivile Produkte – und genau deshalb ist es richtig, die Arbeitsplätze zu schützen.” (“LITEF produces civil products – and that is precisely why it is right to protect the jobs.” )
IG Metall Freiburg, Statement on the Antikriegstag controversy, RDL, 2019
At the same time, IG Metall openly celebrated securing 100 jobs at LITEF, emphasizing its role in protecting employment in the sector:
“Zusammen nötigen Druck aufgebaut … und 100 Arbeitsplätze bei LITEF gesichert.” (“Together we exerted the necessary pressure … and secured 100 jobs at LITEF.” )
These positions sit uneasily alongside DGB’s Antikriegstag declarations against rearmament and militarization. While unions issue statements condemning militarization, they simultaneously act as institutional guarantors of the arms industry’s workforce and production capacity.
The contradiction is even sharper when looking at IG Metall’s broader network: it organizes workers at Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (submarines, warships), Rheinmetall (tanks, artillery, ammunition), and Airbus Defence & Space (combat aircraft, drones, satellite systems). These companies are pillars of the German and European arms industry — and IG Metall plays a key role in defending their jobs, production, and expansion plans.
In practice, this means the DGB’s peace rhetoric is consistently undercut by its function as a social partner in the arms economy. By protecting and institutionalizing jobs in weapons production, the unions help stabilize precisely the militarization that they claim to oppose.
Towards a True Working Class Solidarity
“Solidarity” cannot just mean protecting jobs in any sector, including those tied to war production. As long as unions remain bound to the government’s agenda—and the DGB has largely echoed state policy since its founding—the result is a narrow, national form of solidarity that stabilizes militarization rather than challenging it.
A true, internationalist working-class solidarity would require more: independence from the state, an extension of solidarity across borders to those who suffer under militarization, and the courage to connect workplace power with peace demands. Without this, union participation remains trapped in symbolism, repeating the pattern of the 1980s—loud in protest, but structurally aligned with the militarized status quo.
Before Auschwitz, Germany perpetrated its first genocide (1904–08) in South West Africa against the Herero and Nama—desert expulsions, poisoned waterholes, concentration camps, starvation, sexual violence, forced labor, identity badges, land seizure, and leadership suppression. This article centers the Namibia genocide, situates it in its colonial background, and traces its mechanisms and enduring legacies in land, memory, and reparations.
Together with many other groups, the Herero and Nama contribute to Namibia’s diverse heritage—while many individuals choose to identify first and foremost simply as Namibian, given the sensitivities shaped by the apartheid past.
The Herero are a historically cattle-herding society that developed from peoples, cultures, and economies already present in Namibia before European arrival in the 16th century1. Never a monolith, Herero politics included internal divisions that German colonial authorities later exploited to facilitate conquest2. Cattle remain central to social life and concepts of wealth, a symbolism reflected in the distinctive women’s attire—Victorian-influenced gowns and a horn-shaped headpiece often interpreted as evoking cattle horns.3
The Nama are among Namibia’s oldest population groups and one of more than a dozen ethnic, cultural, and linguistic communities. Traditionally pastoralist, they historically occupied wide areas in the country’s south and center4. Interactions with neighboring Herero included periods of conflict, after which German colonial authorities confined both peoples to reserves. Music, poetry, and storytelling are central to Nama cultural life, sustained by a rich oral tradition5.
Among Herero and Nama pastoral communities, land and vital resources like waterholes were held in common under customary authority, with seasonal movement of herds and households between pastures and water sources based on flexible, overlapping use rights. Colonial appropriation imposed private freehold and rigid, officially surveyed property lines, reinterpreting temporary permissions as permanent “sales” and restricting access to those with registered title—often on contested claims. This shift, foreign to local tenure, dismantled seasonal herd mobility and its ecological adaptation, making private ownership central to dispossession6.
The Bremen merchant Adolf Lüderitz hoisted the German flag in the bay of Angra Pequena and thus acquired Deutsch Southwest Africa, today Namibia, Historic, digitally restored reproduction of an original artwork from the early 20th century, exact original date not known. (Photo by: Bildagentur-online/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Initial contact between Germans and the Herero and Nama came via missionaries, followed by traders, concession hunters, and other colonial ventures. Even before formal colonization, these ventures undermined Herero and Nama socio-economic life through fraudulent trading practices, coercive “protection” treaties, and land deals that dispossessed communities7. In 1884–85, Bismarck directly convened the Berlin Conference to codify European claims and manage rivalries during the “Scramble for Africa.” Excluding African representatives, the conference legitimized the partition and expropriation of African territories— described as the organized commission of a crime against Africa’s peoples8.
Colony
On 30 April 1885, the German South West Africa Company (Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft für Südwestafrika) was founded and soon absorbed earlier private concessions in the territory9. Its shareholders included some of Germany’s wealthiest magnates—Hansemann, Bleichröder, the Duke of Ujest, and Count Henckel von Donnersmarck—and finance capital was prominently represented by the Disconto-Gesellschaft, Deutsche Bank, Delbrück, Leo & Co., Dresdner Bank, and Bankhaus Oppenheim10.
The main factions of the Herero and Nama were led by Samuel Maherero, and Hendrik Witbooi respectively.
After nearly a century of conflict between the Herero and Nama, a peace concluded in November 1892—spurred by the growing threat of German and Boer expansion—realigned forces and, by early 1893, presented a united African front that alarmed German colonial authorities, who could no longer exploit inter-African divisions. In the early hours of 12 April 1893, German troops reached Hornkranz (a Nama encampement)—described by Captain François as tranquil—and, on his orders, opened fire from three directions, expending roughly 16,000 rounds from 200 rifles in about thirty minutes; seventy-eight women and children were killed. When the incident was raised in the Reichstag, the government advanced a fabricated claim that Witbooi fighters had used women as cover to explain the high civilian toll.
Theodor Leutwein standing with Samuel Maharero and Hendrik Witbooi circa 1900. (Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images).
Subsequently, Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi waged a vigorous campaign against German forces, inflicting significant losses and contributing to the recall of Major Curt von François, who was replaced in 1894 by Theodor Leutwein11. On 15 September 1894—after roughly eighteen months of fighting and confronted by German superiority in firearms—Witbooi was compelled to sign a “treaty of protection and friendship.” The war left the Witbooi impoverished, a condition Leutwein exploited by lending them 150 head of cattle for three years to bind them more closely to colonial authority12.
In 1896, the rinderpest epidemic reached Namibia just as colonial pressure was confining the Herero to ever smaller quarters, crowding herds and making them acutely vulnerable13; moreover, German vaccination campaigns were misused to hasten the destruction of Herero cattle and to acquire land14. Socially, rinderpest transformed Herero society: the collapse of the cattle economy forced commoners into wage or indentured labor, while chiefs sold large tracts to traders and land companies, opening more territory to settler occupation and deepening dispossession15. In its wake the Herero lost land, people, and herds, sank further into debt, and became dependent on the colonial state for reserves, food, and employment; on traders and settlers for credit and work; and on missions for religious guidance1617.
With an approximate 90 per cent of cattle wiped out by the pandemic many pastoralists in the central and southern parts of the territory were forced into wage labour for the first time. By 1904, Herero communities had become scattered groupings clustered around garrison towns under German control and their associated chiefs—effectively stripped of independence as the colonial state prevailed.18
In 1904, the Herero, led by Samuel Maherero rose up in resistance19.
German authorities manufactured atrocity propaganda—especially lurid, unproven claims that Herero had raped or “butchered” white women—to furnish a moral pretext for annihilation; internal cables show pressure on Governor Leutwein to label vague “ill-treatment” as rape despite no evidence, and even after missionary J. Irle publicly debunked named cases the narratives persisted. This drumbeat conditioned soldiers and the public, normalizing calls for collective reprisals, encirclement and destruction by artillery, and even poisoning wells. Amid a jingoistic settler climate—and with the Kaiser Wilhelm II’s endorsement—Berlin ordered an immediate offensive, forbade negotiations with the Herero, removed Leutwein, and installed Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha to prosecute an exterminationist campaign20.
While Leutwein did not “want to see the Herero destroyed altogether”; beyond the practical difficulty of annihilating “a people of 60,000 or 70,000,” he deemed such a course “a grave mistake from an economic point of view,” insisting that “we need the Herero as cattle breeders, though on a small scale, and especially as laborers,” and that “it will be quite sufficient if they are politically dead.” By contrast, Lothar von Trotha set out a different procedure: “to encircle the masses of Hereros at Waterberg, and to annihilate these masses with a simultaneous blow,” then establish stations “to hunt down and disarm the splinter groups who escaped,” “lay hands on the captains by putting prize money on their heads,” and “finally to sentence them to death.”21
In early August 1904, von Trotha issued battle orders to his troops. What followed is genocide…
Genocide
NON SPECIFIE – 1905: Portrait de Lothar von Trotha, général allemand des forces coloniales, en Afrique en 1905. (Photo by Keystone-France\Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
The Herero are no longer German subjects. They have murdered and stolen, they have cut off the ears, noses and other bodyparts of wounded soldiers, now out of cowardice they no longer wish to fïght. I say to the people anyone who delivers a captain will receive 1000 Mark, whoever delivers Samuel will receive 5000 Mark. The Herero people must however leave the land. If the populace does not do this I will force them with the Groot Rohr [Cannon]. Within the German borders every Herero, with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I will no longer accept women and children, I will drive them back to their people or I will let them be shot at. These are my words to the Herero people.
General von Trotha, Sunday 2 October 1904 (der Vernichtungsbefehl) 22
Men, women, and children were forced into concentration camps; starved and malnourished; whipped, raped, and compelled to perform backbreaking labor. Many were “tattooed and forced to wear identity badges”; the Herero were coerced to change religion, their land was seized and sold to German settlers, and their ruling structures were banned. Waterholes were poisoned, and people were hunted and lynched. Herero prisoners of war—and later Nama prisoners—were deployed across civilian firms (from laundries and transport contractors to breweries and shipping companies), while military units used prisoners, often children, to maintain livestock—building kraals, pumping water, cutting fodder, and herding—and to build railway lines232425.
it has been and remains my policy to exercise the violence with gross terrorism and even with cruelty. I annihilate the African tribes by floods of money and floods of blood; it is only by such sowings that a [new permanent German state] will be there to stay.
By early 1905, Herero society as it had existed prior to 1904 was destroyed, the majority were confined to camps and left propertyless, landless, and leaderless, and legislation sought to perpetuate this condition; when the camps were abolished in 1908, Imperial Germany aimed to reshape the survivors of the genocide into a single, amorphous Black working class27.
Germany established a network of concentration camps in South West Africa; Shark Island—opened first for Herero prisoners whose forced labor was exploited for colonial infrastructure, including the Lüderitz–Aus railway and harbor—later received Nama inmates in 190628. Between 1,000 and 3,000 people died there, chiefly from exposure, disease, and exhaustion under brutal conditions, while terror practices included rape, torture, poisoning, medical experiments, and public executions; captive women were forced to clean the skulls of the dead for shipment to Germany for pseudo-scientific research29. Among those who perished was the Nama Cornelius Fredericks, decapitated on 16 February 1907, his skull sent to Germany. When the camp closed in April 1907, survivors were transferred to a “Burenkamp” at Radford Bay30.
(Eingeschränkte Rechte für bestimmte redaktionelle Kunden in Deutschland. Limited rights for specific editorial clients in Germany.) German South-West Africa: Herero rebellion, captives in chaines – 1904/5 (Photo by ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
Between 75 and 80 per cent of the Herero and about 50 per cent of the Nama were exterminated by the German forces31.
Resistance
From the standpoint of Ovaherero and Nama communities, German rule meant near-total rightlessness. Openly racist dehumanization normalized violence—from routine whipping to killings—often excused as “tropical frenzy.” Courts rarely punished German perpetrators, discounted African testimony (even proposing ratios that devalued it), and imposed only light sentences when cases proceeded at all. Stripped of legal protection and credibility, Herero and Nama experienced life as slavery in their own country32.
All our obedience and patience with the Germans is of little avail, for each day they shoot someone dead for no reason at all. Hence I appeal to you, my Brother, not to hold aloof from the uprising, but to make your voice heard so that all Africa may take up arms against the Germans. Let us die fighting rather than die as a result of maltreatment, imprisonment or some other calamity. Tell all the kapteins down there to rise and do battle.
Letter of Samuel Maherero to Hendrik Witbooi, 11 January 1904 33
On 12 January 1904, the Herero rose in arms, swiftly seizing most of their ancestral land—fortified posts excepted, which came under siege—and capturing the bulk of settlers’ livestock; over 100 German settlers and soldiers were killed. In October 1904, the Nama joined the uprising. Employing guerrilla tactics—ambushes, hit-and-run raids, and disruption of lines of communication—the resistance forced German forces onto the defensive and, for a time, severely constrained their operations34.
Battle Between Herero Warriors & German Colonials or Colonists Windhoek Namibia (Feb 1904) (Photo by Chris Hellier/Corbis via Getty Images)
The memorial site for Captain Corlnelius Fredricks on the Shark Island peninsula near Luderiz, Namibia, is seen in this April 24, 2023 image. Captain Fredricks, who died in 1907 at the camp in Shark Island, was one of the indigenousleaders who fought a guerrilla-style war against the Germans in the German South-West Africa, now Namibia. – A genocide memorial tombstone has been unveiled during a three-day event on Shark Island, a peninsula off the southern city of Luderitz that hosted a camp of the same name — one of several set up during German rule as part of a system of repression. Namibia has no official day designated to commemorate what some historians have described as the 20th century’s first genocide. German settlers killed tens of thousands of men, women and children belonging to indigenous Herero and Nama people who rebelled against colonial rule in the southwest African country between 1904 and 1908. (Photo by HILDEGARD TITUS / AFP) (Photo by HILDEGARD TITUS/AFP via Getty Images)
1893–1903 saw a systematic transfer of Herero and Nama land and cattle to German settlers, culminating after the 1904–07 uprisings were crushed. Colonial acquisitions proceeded under colonial legal forms. These sales were completed amid documented protests by Herero and Nama, who contested their legality35. The large scale dispossession of black Namibians was as much intended to provide white settlers with land, as it was to deny black Namibians access to the same land, thereby denying them access to commercial agricultural production and forcing them into wage labour36.
Vast land seizures and the expropriation of more than 205,640 head of cattle (1884–1915) dismantled Herero and Nama livelihoods, entrenched long-term land inequality, and drove dispersal and diaspora, while extractive gains in minerals, diamonds, and forced labor enriched German settlers, companies, and the colonial state. These structures persist today in unequal access to land and the concentration of ownership in the hands of white German-speaking Namibians and foreign nationals, reinforced by ongoing German financial ties and influence. The removal of human remains for scientific and medical research—some still retained in Germany—marks a continuing cultural and epistemic dispossession. Together, the loss of economic and political power, damage to cultural identity, and intergenerational trauma continue to burden Herero and Nama communities, with inadequate land access compounding present-day socio-economic marginalization37.
To quote Edward Said, “To think about distant places, to colonize them, to populate or depopulate them: all of this occurs on, about, or because of land. The actual geographical possession of land is what empire in the final analysis is all about”38. When you take that quote and the fact that white Namibians still hold most of the privately owned land in the country, you see that the colonial “empire” and its strength have hardly been reduced at all. The structure that empire created remains fundamentally intact. And as long as this remains so, inequality can never be overcome39.
SWAKOPMUND, NAMIBIA – MARCH, 27: A memorial stone in honor of the OvaHerero/OvaMbanderu and Nama people that were victims of the genocide by German colonial forces on the begining of the 20th century stands at the Swakopmund Concentration Camp Memorial, in Swakopmund, Namibia, on March 27, 2019. Located on the coast of Namibia, Swakopmund is one of the most populous cities in the country and one of the best preserved examples of German colonial architecture in the world. Since 2007, every year, at the end of March, people of the Herero and Nama communities take part on the „Swakopmund Reparation Walk“, organized to honor the victims of the German colonial power over the country and to demand reparation from the German state. (Photo by Christian Ender/Getty Images)
Postscript
Selecting sources for this article has been unexpectedly difficult. I have chosen to cite only works that explicitly name the events a genocide. More troubling is how little accessible scholarship exists online about Herero and Nama before German colonization; much of the record makes their histories appear to begin with the colonial encounter. This reflects structural biases—digitized collections dominated by colonial archives, scarcity of materials in Otjiherero and Khoekhoegowab, paywalled journals, and search algorithms that privilege widely cited European-language sources. As a result, most available references are authored by Germans or, more broadly, by scholars of European heritage. There are important exceptions, however, and I make a point of foregrounding and citing those works more heavily.
This article compares Histadrut (Israel), DGB (Germany), and NUMSA (South Africa) to show how unions navigate between state alignment and emancipatory solidarity. NUMSA practiced material leverage—sanctions, disinvestment, mass shop-floor action—while Histadrut built exclusionary labor regimes and the DGB favored regulation that softened boycotts. Read against Palestine today, the contrast is decisive: “codes of conduct” accommodate power, but disrupting profits and state strategy advances rights. The piece argues unions should center Palestinian unions’ demands and revive an internationalism grounded in enforceable pressure, not commemorative rhetoric.
I. Introduction: Labor Unions and Global Solidarity
Labor unions have historically been conceived as collective organizations designed to defend workers’ rights, improve working conditions, and embody the principle that “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Beyond the national arena, unions often present themselves as vehicles of international solidarity, linking workers’ struggles across borders against systems of exploitation, colonial domination, and authoritarian repression.1 Yet in practice, labor unions’ international engagements have been uneven, shaped not only by class struggle but also by nationalism, state power, and global geopolitical alignments.
This article examines three major labor federations: the Histadrut, the DGB, and NUMSA. Each represents a distinct historical trajectory and illustrates the broader tensions between solidarity and complicity.
The Histadrut (General Federation of Labor in the Land of Israel), founded in 1920 under the British Mandate, was unique among labor unions in that it functioned simultaneously as a union and as one of the largest employers in the country. It became integral to Zionist state-building, structuring a system of labor market exclusion that marginalized Palestinian workers while consolidating settler-colonial institutions.2
The Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB), established in West Germany in 1949, consolidated most postwar German unions into a single umbrella federation. Built on the “social partnership” model of the Federal Republic, the DGB positioned itself as a stabilizing force for capitalist democracy and aligned closely with the West German state. Its approach to international relations was strongly conditioned by Cold War imperatives, often subordinating solidarity with workers abroad to the priorities of anti-communism and transatlantic loyalty.3
By contrast, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), founded in 1987 through the merger of metal and engineering unions, quickly became one of the largest and most militant labor organizations on the African continent. Explicitly Marxist in orientation, NUMSA played a central role in the struggle against apartheid, linking economic exploitation to racial oppression and situating its politics within a broader anti-imperialist and internationalist framework.4
Taken together, these cases raise a central framing question: how have labor unions navigated the tension between international solidarity with oppressed peoples and loyalty to state power and capital? This inquiry is particularly urgent today, as contemporary struggles—most notably the Palestinian question—once again test the credibility of the labor movement’s universalist claims.
II. Apartheid and Labor Internationalism
Miners stand by two mine cars on their track at one of the De Beers mines, Kimberley, South Africa, early 20th Century. (Photo by FPG/Getty IMages)
Apartheid in South Africa was a state-engineered system of racial domination built on the control and super-exploitation of Black labour: pass laws and migrant-labour compounds restricted movement and family life; job reservation and colour bars rationed skilled work; and strikes by African workers were criminalised for decades. Only after the 1979 Wiehahn reforms did the state begin to legally recognise Black trade unions—still under heavy registration controls—so even “reform” reproduced coercion in the workplace.5
Inside the country, unions were central to breaking apartheid’s labour order. The 1973 Durban strike wave ignited a modern, Black-led union movement that built shop-steward structures in strategic sectors; it coalesced into FOSATU (1979) and later COSATU (1985), linking plant-level struggles to township mobilisations and broader democratic fronts despite bannings and repression. This “from the shop floor up” organising made key workplaces ungovernable without conceding worker rights and turned labour into a national force against the regime. 6
Internationally, union power helped translate apartheid’s labour regime into a global target. Multilateral pressure mounted—from the UN’s mandatory arms embargo (UNSC 418, 1977) to U.S. economic sanctions (Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, 1986)—while labour and anti-apartheid networks coordinated boycotts, disinvestment, and supply-chain actions. European governments promoted “codes of conduct” for firms operating in South Africa, improving some shop-floor conditions but also keeping many multinationals in place—highlighting the strategic split between regulation and rupture as COSATU/NUMSA and allies pressed for comprehensive sanctions. 78
i. Histadrut
The Histadrut in Israel developed significant and long-standing ties to the apartheid regime in South Africa, both as a labor federation and as an economic conglomerate. Although Israeli officials sometimes claimed that the Histadrut “refused to have any dealings with the South African regime,” in reality several of its enterprises were central to Israeli–South African economic relations. The most prominent case was the Histadrut-owned Koor Industries, which entered a 51 percent joint venture with the South African Steel Corporation to create Iskoor, a manufacturer of steel products including armor plating for tanks used by apartheid security forces.9 Similarly, the construction company Solel Boneh, another Histadrut enterprise, became active not only in South Africa but also in the Bantustans — the so-called “tribal reserves” that the apartheid state used as a cornerstone of racial segregation and dispossession. In supporting these institutions, the Histadrut and the Israeli Foreign Ministry acted as “open benefactors” of one of apartheid’s most notorious instruments of domination.10
This economic partnership was embedded in the broader convergence of Israel’s and South Africa’s settler-colonial projects. In 1948, the year of Israel’s establishment, South Africa’s Afrikaner-dominated National Party came to power and began codifying apartheid; despite the antisemitic history of many of its leaders, the National Party quickly adopted a pragmatic policy of supporting Israel and accommodating South Africa’s Jewish population.11 The relationship intensified after 1976, when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and South African Prime Minister John Vorster signed agreements that expanded military and industrial cooperation. A particularly sensitive dimension was nuclear collaboration, in which Israel provided technical expertise in exchange for South African uranium and access to open spaces for weapons testing; the infamous 1979 “double flash” in the South Atlantic was widely understood as the result of this cooperation.12
Taken together, this record shows that the Histadrut functioned less as a vehicle of worker solidarity than as an institution embedded in, and servicing, a racialized labor order—most clearly in South Africa. Through its conglomerates, it was not a passive shareholder but an active partner in apartheid’s war-economy and “separate development”: Koor/Iskoor supplied strategic steel, including armor plate, and Solel Boneh took contracts in the Bantustans, lending material capacity and political legitimacy to one of apartheid’s core instruments of control.13
These ties helped cushion the regime against growing isolation and undercut the impact of sanctions and disinvestment campaigns led by the ANC and COSATU. Seen in this light, the Histadrut’s role in South Africa was an external extension of the same institutional logic it honed at home—Zionism’s “conquest of labor,” Hebrew-only employment, and tight state–capital–union entanglements that organized the settler workforce while excluding colonized labor. Framed within contemporary legal analysis of apartheid as a system of institutionalized domination, the Histadrut’s South African ventures appear continuous with its colonizing project in Palestine, standing as a stark counterpoint to any claim that it represented universal worker solidarity.14
ii. DGB
The Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB) occupied a contradictory position during the struggle against apartheid. Within its ranks, IG Metall, the powerful German metalworkers’ union, played the most active role in South Africa. In the late 1970s and 1980s, IG Metall established direct relations with black trade unions at the Volkswagen plant in Uitenhage, where many militant workers later joined NUMSA. Through these contacts, the union helped develop the “Minimum Standards” agreement, a set of 14 points adopted in 1987 that addressed wages, health and safety, union recognition, and workplace segregation. The adoption of Minimum Standards represented a significant intervention: it strengthened the position of NUMSA in German-owned plants, forced companies like Volkswagen to acknowledge black unions, and created mechanisms to circumvent restrictions imposed by South Africa’s labor relations system.15
Yet the policy also reflected ambivalence. By negotiating codes of conduct for German firms rather than pushing for outright withdrawal, IG Metall and the DGB avoided costly disinvestment that might have led to job losses in both South Africa and Germany. This raised the question of whether such agreements undermined the international sanctions and disinvestment campaigns spearheaded by the African National Congress (ANC) and COSATU. NUMSA officials who negotiated the Minimum Standards sought to resolve the tension by insisting that the code was not a substitute for sanctions, but rather a tool to secure immediate gains for black workers while remaining fully committed to COSATU’s policy of comprehensive disinvestment.16
In retrospect, the ambivalence of IG Metall’s approach becomes clearer when placed against the backdrop of West German business interests in South Africa. While the union sought to improve conditions for black workers through Minimum Standards, German corporations deepened their ties to the apartheid regime at the very moment when US companies were divesting.17 The arms industry even violated the UN embargo, with firms such as Daimler-Benz described as “vital partners” of South Africa’s war machine.18 That these same corporations now face lawsuits for supporting apartheid crimes underscores the limits of a purely reformist strategy.19 IG Metall’s initiatives brought tangible gains on the shop floor, but they coexisted with a wider pattern of German economic collaboration that blunted the impact of international sanctions and raised enduring questions about the boundaries of solidarity.
iii. NUMSA
NUMSA was a cornerstone of the anti-apartheid fight in the strategic auto and metal sectors: founded in May 1987 through a merger of metal and motor unions, it built dense, black-led shop-steward structures that turned wage, safety, and grading disputes into mass leverage against employers and the state. 2021 Anchored in COSATU, it linked factory struggles to township stay-aways and national defiance, helping make production “ungovernable” without conceding worker rights. 22 Internationally, NUMSA pressed for sanctions and disinvestment—insisting that codes of conduct could not substitute for material pressure—while coordinating with allies in global auto supply chains (notably around Volkswagen’s Uitenhage plant). 23 Scholars have captured this orientation as “social-movement unionism”: a fusion of shop-floor power and community mobilization that treated workplace victories as part of a broader project to dismantle racial-capitalist rule. 24
iv. Remarks
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA: Supporters of South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), wearing on their sleeves the colors of their party, gather 12 August 1952 in Johannesburg as part of a civil disobedience campaign to protest the apartheid regime of racial segregation. The protesters were later arrested. (Photo credit should read AFP via Getty Images)
In sum, the record reveals a sharp divergence in labor internationalism. NUMSA treated unions as instruments of liberation—pressing for sanctions and disinvestment—while the Histadrut, through enterprises like Koor/Iskoor and Solel Boneh, materially serviced apartheid’s political economy. IG Metall’s Minimum Standards fit uneasily between these poles: they delivered tangible shop-floor gains and, as NUMSA emphasized, were never meant to replace sanctions, yet in practice they helped German firms remain in South Africa and thereby softened the bite of the broader boycott. The DGB’s and IG Metall’s choice to regulate rather than rupture reflects a strategic ambivalence—stabilizing employment and corporate operations even as the ANC/COSATU campaign sought to isolate the regime. The contrast is instructive: solidarity measured by codes of conduct tends to accommodate power, whereas solidarity measured by the willingness to disrupt profits and state strategy aligns with emancipatory struggle.
III. Palestine and the Question of Solidarity
TOPSHOT – A Palestinian youth stands on a street strewn with rubble following an explosion in the Saftawi neighbourhood, west of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on August 25, 2025. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz vowed on August 22, to destroy Gaza City if Hamas did not agree to disarm, release all remaining hostages in the territory and end the „war“ on Israel’s terms. (Photo by BASHAR TALEB / AFP) (Photo by BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)
Palestine concentrates the central dilemmas of labor internationalism in a concrete labor regime. Historically, the Zionist labor movement organized the “conquest of labour,” promoting Hebrew-only employment and institutional links between state, capital, and the dominant union—foundations that structured later relations with Palestinian workers.25 A permit and surveillance apparatus has governed Palestinian access to Israeli labor markets, producing dependence, precarity, and selective incorporation without equal civic or industrial rights.26 The broader political economy—marked by de-development in Gaza, subcontracting and outsourcing across the West Bank, and the entanglement of “ordinary” commerce with settlement infrastructure and security industries—has fragmented workforces while normalizing business ties to occupation.27 The Oslo era did not resolve these contradictions; rather, it codified an “imposed integration” that kept Palestinian labor subordinate to Israeli regulatory, fiscal, and spatial power.28
Against this backdrop, the next three subsections examine how major labor actors position themselves vis-à-vis Palestine: the Histadrut (its historic role in exclusion and settlement integration), the DGB (partnership diplomacy framed as reconciliation, and its silences on occupation), and NUMSA (an explicitly anti-colonial internationalism aligning with boycott, divestment, and sanctions). The question throughout is whether unions mobilize their transnational power to confront systems of domination—or default to national and corporate alignments when principles meet geopolitical constraint.
i. Histadrut
JERUSALEM:David Gryn, better known as David Ben-Gurion, in file picture dated 1948. Ben-Gurion, the Israeli first Prime Minister who signed the proclamation of Israel’s creation on 14 May 1948, was born in Plonsk (Poland) 16 October 1886. Zionist, he immigrated to Palestine in September 1906. Young socialist farmer, Ben-Gurion founded in 1919 a labour party, Mapai and in 1922 the first trade union, Histadrut. (Photo credit should read AFP via Getty Images)
From the late nineteenth century into the Mandate era, a European idea of Jewish “productivization” was translated onto colonial ground as the conquest of labor (avodah ivrit): employment policy became an instrument of nation-building through the organized exclusion of Palestinian Arab workers. Read through Patrick Wolfe’s thesis—settler colonialism as a structure that seeks the elimination and replacement of the native—this was not a marginal tactic but a constitutive technology of rule. In Palestine, the imperative was to create a Jewish workforce for a Jewish economy, even when this ran against market efficiency.29
Empirically, early plantation and settlement economies experimented with a tiered labour market—higher-priced Jewish labour alongside lower-priced Palestinian labour—but Jewish employers could not compete with the skills and subsistence base of Palestinian peasants. The result, as Gershon Shafir and Michael Burawoy both emphasize, was a strategic move toward exclusion: the consolidation of cooperatives such as the kibbutzim, and, in December 1920, the founding of the Histadrut to fence off jobs, organize hiring, and embed Hebrew labour across sectors.3031
Across the Mandate and into statehood after 1948, the Histadrut fused union, employer, and developmental roles. Its enterprises—most notably Solel Boneh—built core infrastructures while entrenching segmented labour markets that privileged Jews and marginalized Palestinians. By the time Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, this institutional pattern meshed with a territorial regime that subordinated Palestinian workers to Israeli regulatory power and settlement expansion. As trade-union advocates later summarized, the Histadrut’s record includes dismantling mixed unions, discriminating against Palestinian workers, and intertwining its firms with the settlement project (e.g., Solel Boneh’s settlement construction; Bank Yahav’s operations in annexed East Jerusalem and West Bank settlements; membership extended to settlers while their Palestinian neighbours remained excluded). These practices underpinned Palestinian trade-union calls for international labour to boycott the Histadrut until it ended complicity and recognized Palestinian workers’ rights.32
Internationally, Israel’s Labour-Zionist institutions also forged partnerships that reflected this internal logic. As Jane Hunter documents, Histadrut-owned conglomerates such as Koor took a controlling stake in the Iskoor venture with the South African Steel Corporation, while Solel Boneh worked in the Bantustans—arrangements that echo the racialized segmentation at home and show how a colonizing labour regime could be externalized. Antony Loewenstein’s account of the broader Israeli–South African relationship in the 1970s underscores the strategic, not merely commercial, character of these ties—context that helps explain why Palestinian unions later framed their struggle within an anti-apartheid, anti-colonial horizon.3334
In the present, this institutional orientation remains visible in the Histadrut’s public positioning. Its 2011 critics drew a straight line from Mandate-era exclusion to contemporary complicity in occupation; legal analysis by John Dugard and John Reynolds situates the ongoing system as one of institutionalized domination that meets the international-law threshold of apartheid. Against rising union solidarity with Palestine, the Histadrut’s August 2025 statement reframes settlement-trade bans and related measures as “selective” or “partisan,” recoding rights-based accountability as bias and urging a depoliticized “consistency” that leaves the material structures of domination intact. The through-line, from conquest of labour to today’s diplomacy, is labour power mobilized to build and shield a settler project—and a counter-current in international unionism insisting that effective solidarity requires material pressure, not managed engagement.353637
For over fifty years, the DGB and the Histadrut have cultivated a celebrated partnership—formalized in 1975 and publicly renewed in April 2025 with speeches, awards, and plans for further cooperation. Framed by remembrance and youth exchange, this history shapes a public posture that leans on universalist language about “peace,” “democracy,” and “diversity” while eliding occupation, settlement expansion, and Palestinian workers’ rights; the DGB’s October 2023 letter to the Histadrut exemplifies that register, invoking Nie wieder, praising essential workers, and welcoming Berlin’s “unconditional support,” but naming none of the structural asymmetries Palestinians face. 3839
The pattern was underscored by the February 2025 delegation: a wreath-laying at Yad Vashem—“otherwise reserved for heads of state”—a meeting with President Isaac Herzog, and announced talks with Histadrut leadership, all presented as continuity rather than rights-based scrutiny of labor under occupation. This embrace came even as the International Criminal Court had issued arrest warrants for sitting members of Israel’s government (Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant); yet there was no hesitation to meet Israel’s president.4041
That stance dovetails with Histadrut’s August 2025 argument that measures like settlement-trade bans “single out” Israel and risk making unions “partisan”—a reframing that casts accountability tools (boycott, divestment, targeted trade measures) as bias. Falling in line with that narrative also fits Germany’s climate, where BDS is already institutionally shunned: the Bundestag’s 2019 resolution—and subsequent reaffirmations—urge withholding public funding and space from groups backing BDS. The effect is to normalize a status quo from which Palestinian workers derive few enforceable rights, while the DGB’s preferred “engagement and balance” tracks state priorities more than it advances internationalist solidarity. 424344
iii. NUMSA
SOWETO, SOUTH AFRICA – JUNE 21: Mural at the first ever solidarity walk for Palestine on June 21, 2025 in Soweto, South Africa. The group is calling for the promotion of Palestinian people human rights, self-determination, and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. (Photo by Fani Mahuntsi/Gallo Images via Getty Images)
NUMSA frames Palestine through the lens of South Africa’s own anti-apartheid struggle, explicitly naming Israel an apartheid state and endorsing boycott, divestment, and sanctions as unions’ proper instruments of solidarity. In statements over the last decade, the union has backed BDS and urged allied movements “on the continent and around the world” to do the same; during earlier assaults on Gaza it coupled that stance with calls for diplomatic rupture, including expelling the Israeli ambassador.45
In the current cycle, NUMSA has pressed for concrete state action: sanctions on Israel, the severing of diplomatic ties, and a permanent ceasefire—positioning these demands as the logical extension of South Africa’s historical experience with international pressure against apartheid. It has also reiterated solidarity language that centers Palestinian rights and accountability for Israeli state violence. These commitments appear consistently in NUMSA’s public communiqués and campaigns across 2023–2025. 46
Beyond statements, NUMSA has worked to translate solidarity into trade-union praxis: advancing motions in international union fora, encouraging workers to resist complicity in the logistics of war, and aligning with calls to escalate targeted economic measures until Palestinian rights are realized. In this register, Palestine is not an abstract “conflict” to be neutrally managed but a living test of labor’s willingness to deploy disruptive power against a system identified—by South African unionists themselves—as apartheid. 4748
iv. Remarks
In closing, the roles are stark: the Histadrut functions as a gatekeeper that recodes rights-based pressure (BDS, settlement-trade bans, conditionality) as “partisanship,” the DGB largely mirrors that register through ceremonial partnership and “engagement and balance,” and NUMSA models a different labor internationalism grounded in material leverage—sanctions, divestment, procurement exclusions, and arms embargoes—rooted in an anti-apartheid tradition. If solidarity with Palestine is to mean more than symbolism, unions should center Palestinian unions’ demands, make any cooperation with the Histadrut contingent on clear rights benchmarks (ending complicity in settlements, defending Palestinian workers’ organizing and mobility), and adopt enforceable measures rather than neutral language that treats an unequal regime as a conflict between equals.
IV. Conclusion: Lessons for Today
BETHLEHEM, PALESTINE – 2018/02/12: Nelson Mandela drawing seen on the separation wall in Bethlehem. (Photo by Jana Cavojska/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
International solidarity is a practice, not a posture. Read across a century of labor politics, the contrast is instructive: Histadrut and, in Germany, the DGB show how unions can be folded into state priorities and remembrance rituals that depoliticize structural domination; NUMSA shows that labor can still act as a protagonist of emancipation. Palestine is today’s touchstone. To meet it honestly, unions must move from symbolism to leverage: center Palestinian trade-union demands, condition relations with Israeli institutions on enforceable rights benchmarks, and adopt concrete measures—settlement-trade bans, divestment, procurement exclusions, and arms embargoes—alongside shop-floor organizing and cross-border coordination. The record is clear in miniature: NUMSA wielded sanctions and disinvestment; the Histadrut materially serviced apartheid through corporate ventures; IG Metall’s “Minimum Standards” won workplace gains yet kept firms in place and softened boycotts; and the DGB/IG Metall choice to regulate rather than rupture exemplified the limits of managerial “engagement.”
Returning to labor’s emancipatory core—“an injury to one is an injury to all”—means refusing neutrality between unequal parties. It means aligning international work with universal worker rights rather than national alignments, and treating anti-racism at home and anti-colonialism abroad as one struggle. Solidarity measured by codes of conduct tends to accommodate power; solidarity measured by a willingness to disrupt profits and state strategy aligns with emancipatory struggle. Anything less is commemoration without consequence.
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” — Desmond Tutu
V. Footnotes
Silver, B. J. (2003). Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870. Cambridge University Press. ↩︎
Shafir, Gershon. Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1914. ↩︎
Dribbusch, H., & Birke, P. (2011). Gewerkschaften in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. ↩︎
tadamun 