German Chancellor Issues Historic Rebuke of Israel

Because of the Nazi Holocaust in which 6 million European Jews were murdered, German governments have felt a need to provide Israel with unqualified support. Without German persecution of Jews in the 1930s and then the genocide of the 1940s, Israel arguably would never have come into existence. There were Zionist immigrants to Ottoman and then British Palestine, but not in the numbers that would have made for a state. The big immigration began only in the 1930s as the Nazis came to power in Berlin and other far right movements arose in neighboring countries.

The actions of the extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu since his re-election in late 2022, however, have put Berlin in a dire conundrum. The liberal democratic government of the Federal Republic of Germany has defined itself against the horrors of Nazism, standing instead for democracy and human rights. But there are no human rights for Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Germans have been forced into the uncomfortable choice of upholding their liberal values and commitment to the post-war order of international humanitarian law, or of slavishly and guiltily granting Israel impunity.

Signs are emerging that Germans are beginning to face their responsibility to denounce not just the Nazi past but all Nazi-like atrocities, whoever commits them. And while the Israeli killing fields in Gaza are numerically speaking not on the scale of Nazi atrocities, they are sometimes similar in kind. The International Court of Justice has issued a preliminary injunction against some Israel tactics as plausibly genocidal, as it considers the case against Israel brought by South Africa and other countries for violating the Genocide Convention. Germany can hardly condemn the genocide in its own past while turning a blind eye to contemporary genocide.

The recently installed chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, gave voice to these contradiction at the WDR-Europaforum in Berlin. The comments were carried by Focus:

“What the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip — I honestly no longer understand what the goal is. The extent to which the civilian population is being affected, as is ever more the case in the last few days, can no longer be justified as a struggle against the terrorism of Hamas.

“When boundaries are transgressed, when, simply put, international humanitarian law is now really being violated, then Germany must also — then the German chancellor must also say something about it.”

He underlined Germany’s commitment to stand by Israel, given that it is Israel’s most important partner in Europe. He added,

“But the Israeli government must not do things which at some point its best friends are no longer prepared to accept.”

Julius Betschka at Stern observes that in January, Germany exported €2 million worth of weaponry to Israel, including tank parts. In the previous two years, it provided munitions worth €487 million [$553 million], including helmets, body army and communications equipment. In the past, i.e. before Oct. 7, 2023, Germany provided anti-tank weapons and ammunition.

Germany has come under increasing pressure from European allies such as France and Spain to get off the fence, as the ongoing genocide and the prospect of ethnic cleansing have grown ever more evident. The previous government of Olaf Scholz simply continued sending military equipment and avoided criticizing Israel, hoping the conflict would subside.

Merz is also under pressure from his coalition partners, the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Betschka quotes Adis Ahmetovic, the SPD parliamentary caucus’s spokesman on foreign policy, as saying, “German weapons must not be used to spread humanitarian disasters and violate international law.”

Merz’s remarks were unprecedented in post-war history. German authorities are reluctant to utter even the most minor criticism of Israel. For one thing, they don’t enjoy the diatribes aimed at them in return by Israeli politicians reminding them that their grandparents or great-grandparents were mass murderers.

Only a world-historical event of prime importance could have provoked such statements by a sitting chancellor of Germany.

And that event is the ongoing Gaza genocide.