Undeclared Wars with Israel

Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989 is a book by Jeffrey Herf, published by Cambridge University Press in 2015.

The book argues that East Germany in particular was extremely hostile to Israel and waged "undeclared wars" against it by funding Arab militant groups and other anti-Israel actions.

[4] Using anti-Israel actions, East Germany was able to obtain diplomatic recognition outside the Eastern Bloc, from countries such as Iraq, Sudan, Syria, and Egypt.

Herf finds that the East German government distinguished between "moderates" and "extremists" in the Arab world:[7] An “extremist” was a terrorist who extended “the international class struggle” to include attacks in Western Europe while a “moderate” was a terrorist from the Arab states or the Palestinian organizations who focused attacks only against Israel, and perhaps “imperialist” targets outside Western Europe.Herf notes the difference between West Germany, which had an "eleventh commandment" of doing no harm to Jews, and East Germany, which had no such premise.

In contrast, Herf is critical of Willy Brandt, because "The West German chancellor who famously kneeled in an act of atonement at the memorial to the Jews killed in the Warsaw Ghetto declared his country to be neutral in the most dire days in Israel’s history since 1948 [the Yom Kippur war].