Dear Michael Pugliese,
One of the problems with the few fragmented pieces there are in English concerning the "anti-Germans" are the novelty character they hold for English-speaking audiences. Namely: the professed "solidarity with Israel" by self-described communists is generally taken to be an exotic, interesting tidbit about the German radical left.
What this tends to obscure is that support for Israel is pretty much a *consensus* position in most parts of the German Left, even amongst groups who would consider themselves enemies of the anti-Germans. The only exception tend to be marginal sects of a Leninist bent.
To wit: Robert Kurz, long-time leading figure of the journal Krisis and currently of the journal Exit, is one of the most vociferous critics of the anti-Germans around. Yet in his polemic against the Antideutschen, "die antideutsche Ideologie," Kurz clearly states his position that he views Israel as the only nation-state on the planet with a right to existence, on the basis of the historical singularity of the Shoa.
So support for Israel is not some bizarre position limited to the anti-Germans. It's a position that reaches from groups like the Antifaschistische Linke Berlin (a decidedly non-anti-German group) all the way to groups like ATTAC, who support a two-state solution for peace in the Middle East and tend to walk on eggshells concerning the whole issue. I believe even the PDS is oriented towards a two-state solution, and supports Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
The other thing that should be noted is that "Anti-Germans" are nothing like a unified political tendency. Throughout the 1990s, "anti-German" positions were pretty much hegemonic in the Antifa milieu, which was the main arena of Autonomist political activity in the 1990s.
It's only with the radically pro-Bush and pro-Sharon turn of the journal Bahamas (www.redaktion-bahamas.org) that a particular tendency within the broader anti-German millieu (which is far broader than merely the Bahamas crew) have managed to achieve some notoriety as a result of their professed support for the Iraq war and other nasty things, all the while employing communist rhetoric which is 1/3 Frankfurt School, 1/3 Council Communism, and 1/3 classical sectarian interventionism (e.g. disruptive marches with American and Israeli flags and such).
But anti-german refers to a rather heteregenous spectrum of political positions. For example, the mass-distributed glossy Konkret (the publication Ulrike Meinhof wrote for in the 1960s), was part of the original wave of "anti-German" agitation in the 1990s, and their official editorial position is one of opposition to both Bush's warmongering and the German peace movement (a sort of plague on both your houses position).
Incidentally, Moishe Postone professes ignorance about the fact that the German translation of his book is published by Ca-Ira-Verlag, a publishing house which generally belongs to the more Bahamas-near side of the anti-German spectrum. Ca-Ira has a rather schizophrenic publishing program. On the one hand, they bring out classical Council Communist texts by the likes of Pannekoek, Cajo Brendel, Willy Huhn, and the complete works of Johannes Agnoli. On the other hand, they publish works on Iraq and Israel which contain contributions by American neo-conservatives.
Whenever I discuss any of this with American friends and comrades, the reaction ranges from bemusement all the way to outraged indignation to the effect that Israel is an "apartheid state." I think it's interesting that most American leftists never seem to entertain the notion that any nation-state is by definition an apartheid state.
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