Germany’s Betrayal of Israel: When Solidarity Becomes an Inconvenience

One of the most persistent myths is that Germany’s establishment is pro-Israel. The facts tell a very different story: Germany’s establishment is keen to ingratiate itself with the numerous countries that pursue a pro-Palestinian line. Solidarity with Israel has at best come to be considered an awkward, bothersome duty.

When German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited Israel last week, relations between the two countries were tense—more so than at nearly any point since Israel’s founding, wrote a commentator for the Jüdische Allgemeine. This says a lot, given Israel’s history as a refuge for Germany’s Holocaust survivors.

The reasons for this tension are easy to understand. There was Merz’s cowardly turn away from Israel this summer, when he announced that Germany would enact an arms embargo for weapons that might be used in Gaza—even though Hamas were still holding hostages in their tunnels, including German citizens. This was preceded by his statement in spring that he no longer understood Israel’s aims.

Then there was the awarding of one of Germany’s most prestigious journalist prizes to Sophie von der Tann, the Israel correspondent of the country’s public broadcaster, just days before Merz’s trip. The symbolism of the award couldn’t have been more stark. Von der Tann, after all, has a long-standing reputation as a particularly Israelophobic reporter. Her clear anti-Israel bias led Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor to refer to her as an activist, and an especially “perfidious” one.

This was not an exaggeration. Von der Tann highlighted Palestinian suffering almost from the October 7th attack onwards, while disregarding or ignoring the plight of the hostages. She also unashamedly relativized Hamas, whom she referred to as “militant fighters” rather than as an Islamist terrorist organization. At one point, she even said that Hamas’s attack on October 7th needed to be “put into the context of a longer history.” That the German establishment, despite the criticism from large sectors of its Jewish community, nonetheless found it appropriate to award her the Hanns-Joachim-Friedrich prize will not have gone unnoticed in Israel’s political circles—nor in pro-Hamas circles either.

A pattern of opportunism

But here is the point: None of this anti-Israel bias is truly new. It has merely become more explicit after the October 7th attack and its effects, including in our own countries. The war in Gaza has made it impossible to claim neutrality or to sit on the fence when it comes to Israel—a position the German government preferred to claim for itself.

The war has put Germany’s political class on the spot and exposed its long-standing opportunism, making it impossible to pursue a two-pronged strategy: claiming to support Israel as a way of demonstrating that the country had learned its lesson from history, while simultaneously trying to curry favor with Israel’s critics, both at home and in the so-called global south.

Is it a coincidence that Germany has always been one of the main supporters of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees), with the country paying hundreds of millions of euros to the organization? In 2023 alone, it was over €200 million.

German politicians continue to place importance on this organization. In March, the government announced that it would continue its support with a further €45 million, despite proof of UNRWA’s connections with Hamas—several of its employees have been exposed as supporters of the terror organization.

Sadly, Germany has a long history of flip-flopping, even when it comes to Israel’s worst enemy: Iran, the country that has been backing anti-Israel terrorism for decades. Though Germany now supports the sanctions—and Merz famously said that Israel was doing the dirty work for the West when it attacked Iranian nuclear sites—it was the German government that opposed stricter sanctions against Iran until quite recently. In 2020, during his first term in office, American President Trump threatened to impose high tariffs on cars in response to Germany’s refusal to initiate proceedings against Iran for its violation of the nuclear deal. To this day, Germany has also—unlike the US and other countries—not declared Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.

Half-measures and empty rhetoric

True, Germany has not gone down the same path as the worst anti-Israel states—yet, that is. Large parts of its establishment might applaud an anti-Israel activist working for its public broadcaster, but it hasn’t joined the team of countries that have decided to boycott next year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

And Merz, despite his opportunistic posturing, has also refused to join forces with Spain, France, and Britain in recognizing Palestine as a state. But he has parroted the chimera of a two-state solution during his visit to Israel, despite knowing full well that neither Hamas nor any of the other Palestinian terrorist organizations are campaigning for their own state but aim, rather, to destroy Israel and impose an Islamist system of rule.

He has also, albeit indirectly, embraced the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu. In February, just after his election as chancellor, Merz made headlines by criticizing the arrest warrant, characterizing it as a “scandalous ruling.” At the time, he even indicated that he might invite Netanyahu to Germany soon. Yet here too, any courage seems to have left him, and there has been no mention of a counter-visit since.

Indeed, it is in relation to supranational organizations that Germany’s opportunism has perhaps been exposed most clearly. As with UNRWA, Germany is one of the ICC’s biggest sponsors and remains so to this day.

Germany has also either supported or abstained from important votes in the UN when they were directed against Israel, such as its abstention in the 2023 vote demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and its 2024 vote to stop settlements.

The roots of betrayal

There are several reasons for this betrayal of a former ally. One has to do with developments within Germany itself. These developments have been well documented: with the rise of immigration from Muslim countries, an ‘acceptable’ antisemitism—acceptable because it doesn’t come from Germany’s own far-right—has gained ground. This imported antisemitism has been able to build a poisonous alliance with left-wing antisemitism, promoted by groups who see Israel as a settler-colonial state and who have embraced the old Stalinist slogan “Zionism is racism.”

But foreign political opportunism is also a decisive factor. As Israel is becoming increasingly isolated, German politicians across the board have made the conscious decision that standing by the beleaguered country is awkward and not worth the trouble. That’s why Germany’s foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, in a much-noted comment, said in May that the country would not allow itself to be bullied into solidarity with Israel. He used the term “forced solidarity.”

The increasing importance of countries like Brazil, South Africa, and Qatar is one reason for this sorry state of affairs. We should remember that Germany has made an agreement with Qatar to supply 2 million tons of liquefied natural gas to Germany from 2026 onwards.

But more importantly, Israel has come to represent values that the German elites reject and see as outdated. They don’t like the way Israel fights for its national sovereignty, and they feel embarrassed at Israel reminding them that wars are sometimes—sadly—necessary to defend freedom and democracy.

The consequences

The German establishment might still like to present itself as a friend and supporter of Israel when this is deemed proper. This is the case, for example, when reasserting that it has learned the lessons from the past, and especially when hitting out against the ‘far right’ and the populist challenge. But whenever this solidarity involves more than posturing—more than empty rhetoric—Germany has failed terribly.

This failure has deep impacts, especially on Germany itself. If more and more Germans view Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, critically while being unaware of the many other wars and struggles in the world, then this is due to this top-down Israel bashing.

It’s disingenuous to the core for our establishment to claim, as many do, that their turn away from Israel has not encouraged the pro-terrorist lobby at home and abroad. Indeed, while very few Germans would say they like Hamas, the idea that Israel is to blame for the war—despite it having been started by Islamist terrorism—has gained much ground.

The truth of the struggle, which is one between a democratic country fighting for its survival and a murderous Islamist terror organization, has been increasingly obscured. That’s why those who say that defending Israel should be a matter of principle for Germany because of its past are also missing the point. It’s only when we understand the wider importance of defending Israel—a country that stands at the forefront of the fight against the darkest of all ideologies—that we in Germany can regain our moral compass, a compass that our government has clearly lost.