Germany has supported Israel during the conflict in Gaza and has cracked down on the Palestine solidarity movement more actively than many other countries. These days, it is difficult to have a pro-Palestine protest in Berlin or anywhere else in Germany without being attacked by the police, threatened by the government, and accused of being anti-Semitic by the media. In April, hundreds of police officers shocked the Palestine Assembly, a popular pro-Palestine event in Berlin. British Palestinian Glasgow University rector Ghassan Abu Sitta was deported back to the United Kingdom after being denied entry into Germany to attend the conference.
Subsequently, he was even banned from moving anywhere in the Schengen area. Abu Sitta, a surgeon who has been volunteering in various Gazan hospitals since last year, intended to give a lecture about the terrible state of the Strip’s healthcare system as a result of Israeli attacks. A German court later revoked the ban. Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, was also barred from entering Germany and was not allowed to attend the congress over a video link.
History of Germany with Israel
Germany began making reparations to the state of Israel in 1953, not to specific Holocaust survivors, but in the form of industrial items, notably weapons. At the time, the Western bloc, including Germany, was focused on countering the influence of the Soviet Union. As Germany joined NATO in 1955 and was incorporated into Western military alliances, de-Nazification was quietly forgotten. Instead of the original goal of eradicating the genocidal mentality that led to the Holocaust, an unqualified support of Israel was adopted. Germany views Israel as its “raison d’état.”
This rejection of de-Nazification turned the Nazi Holocaust from a result of the Weimar Republic’s social and economic crises in Germany into an unexplainable, ahistorical anomaly that had no origins in the national consciousness of the German people. It prioritized Hitler and the Nazis’ ascent over politics and class.
Germany has committed genocide before the Holocaust. General Lothar von Trotha’s German army massacred 80% of the Herero and 50% of the Nama peoples in Southwest Africa between 1904 and 1907. Most of the thousands who were herded into concentration camps perished there.
Hermann Goring, Hitler’s deputy, was the son of Heinrich Goring, the colony’s imperial administrator. After performing horrific experiments on the prisoners and sending their severed heads back to Germany, Eugen Fischer, a German professor of medicine, anthropology, and eugenics, trained the Nazi SS physicians, notably Josef Mengele, the leading SS physician at Auschwitz.
Why does Germany support Israel?
Germany is fighting anti-Semitism and defending Jewish rights by not stifling pro-Palestinian opinions. This is evident not only in the speech’s content but also in Germany’s treatment of anti-Zionist Jews who advocate for Palestinian rights. For instance, Iris Hefets, a German-Israeli psychologist in Berlin, was detained on anti-Semitic allegations in October. Walking by herself while holding a poster that said, “As an Israeli and as a Jew, stop the genocide in Gaza,” was her only “crime.”
In the same month, over a hundred German-Jewish writers, artists, academics, journalists, and cultural workers released an open letter denouncing Germany’s suppression of pro-Palestinian speech and charges of anti-Semitism against anyone who criticizes Israel’s actions, including Jews like them. The dominant climate of racism and xenophobia in Germany, coupled with a restrictive and paternalistic philo-Semitism, is what worries us. It specifically opposes the association of criticism of the state of Israel with anti-Semitism.
International and legal perspectives on Germany’s support
After World War II, a de-Nazification process was required before the German state could be reintegrated into the international community. But this procedure was quickly dropped. The Cold War took its place. By giving the newly established “Jewish state,” the Western military outpost in Palestine, unrestricted and unconditional support, Germany atoned for its sins against Jews, but not against the Roma. It would have been incompatible with the necessity to combat the Soviet Union to eradicate the political institutions that gave rise to the Nazis, namely imperialism and the German military-industrial complex.
Strong opposition to German rearmament existed in the West immediately following the war. Supported by US President Roosevelt at the time, the Morgenthau Plan of 1944 called for the total abolition of the German arms industry as well as any other businesses that would aid in the reconstruction of the German military. Germany was to be a pastoral and agricultural nation after the war. However, due to the Cold War, Germany was forced to belong to the Western camp. The most significant assistant to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Hans Globke, had been instrumental in the implementation of the 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws. Prosecutor Gideon Hausner made efforts to ensure that the name of Globke remained secret during the 1961 Eichmann trial.
Why is Germany supporting Israel’s Holocaust?
The German government’s support for Israel’s present assault on Gaza stems more from the urge to normalize and relativize the Holocaust than from guilt over it. By defending Israel’s Holocaust as an act of “self-defense,” Germany can maintain the myths it made up about its atrocities. German officials have initiated this conflict with the goal of ethnically cleansing and eradicating the Palestinian people, and they are fully aware that Israel is committing genocide.
They’ve watched the video from Gaza. They know about starvation and the indiscriminate bombing. The evidence that South Africa brought to the ICJ has been heard by them.
They are aware of how Defense Minister Yoav Gallant started the genocide by calling Palestinians “human animals,” which is the same term Himmler used to refer to Jews in a speech to SS generals on October 4, 1943. They certainly know that Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, talked about how “justifiable and moral” it would be to starve two million Palestinians. In a nutshell, German leaders know what Israel is up to and that their friend is conducting another Holocaust. They are only trying to make this look as ordinary, just, and unavoidable as they have made it several times in the recent past.
Why does Germany continue to support Israel despite humanitarian concerns in Gaza?
The primary reason that Germany still supports Israel despite the humanitarian issues in Gaza is its “reason of state” (Staatsraison): the security of Israel is a vital national interest and a historical burden imbibed in Germany. This assistance is not unconditional and without internal debate, however. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has become the latest leader to come out publicly and condemn the Israeli military actions in Gaza when he stated that the Israeli army operations in Gaza have overshot the mark regarding international humanitarian law and that he does not understand what they are aiming to achieve.
In addition, Germany has to perform a tough diplomatic balancing act. It has to reconcile its adherence to international law, humanitarian concerns, and its historical connections and obligations with Israel. Fearful of what they perceive as an obligatory uniformity with Israel, a few representatives of the German government have tried to encourage a more questioning relationship, such as proposing an end to military transfers.
