Polarization and Opportunism: How Germany escorts the Israel-Palestine crisis on Twitter

In May 2021, a 15-day lasting violent crisis between Israel and Jihadi groups from the Gaza strip ignited, mainly engendered by two incidences in Jerusalem - a decision by the Supreme court of Israel who decided to evict four Palestinian families near Sheikh Jarrah, and the repeated storming of the al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli police forces. Embedded in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, worldwide waves of public indignation, commiseration but also condemnation for both conflict parties could be observed across social media channels, including Twitter. Hashtags supporting either Palestine or Israel registered a steep increase starting around May 10th, the day Hamas launched the first rockets toward Israel. On the surface, it seems that citizens of most Western countries exhibit more empathy for the Palestinian side and tend to perceive Israel as the aggressor. Interestingly, Germany on the other hand does not seem to adhere to this pattern, as prevalence for anti-Palestinian opinions also increased during the crisis. This study aims to investigate how the Israeli-Palestinian crisis is reflected within the German Twitter-sphere and why it diverges from the international debate. More specifically, we analyze the prevalence, content, and sentiment of the main narratives with respect to pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel as well as pro-Israel/anti-Palestinian sentiments according to different political factions. Another focus lies on the strategic use of communication by politically fringe actors. Previous work showed that violent incidents, such as terror attacks, are strategically utilized by radical or extremist actors to push ideologically fueled or even extremist attitudes to the forefront of public perception. Thus, the current work also aims at dissecting the strategic use of the public discourse across political parties, such as far-left and far-right actors. Against the background of Germany's historically evolved relationship with Israel, the crisis has reignited the perennial debate on anti-Semitism in Germany. Especially as the debate was accompanied by many street protests by communities originating from the Middle East, this study places a special focus on the spread, its polarizing effect as well as strategic use of the crisis and the accompanying anti-Semitic sentiment by far right and other politically extreme actors in their attempt to mainstream their radical sentiment. Eventually, we aim to identify some of the key catalysts that have fueled the discourse in the German Twitter sphere by associating social media trends and themes to critical offline events, such as missile launches, police violence, territorial destructions, fatalities, or collateral damages.