Why Germany’s Israel support must never be unconditional

This week the Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar is coming to Berlin. The visit comes in a memorable moment. Due to the clear distancing from the politics of the Netanyahu government, Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Foreign Minister Johann WadePhul created the basis for an urgently needed re-adjustment of the Israel-political discussion last week. To this end, Germany should say goodbye to Angela Merkel’s formula of Israel’s security as a German state rush.

This has been increasingly used in recent years to speak unconditional support for the Netanyahu government enforced with right-wing extremists, although according to a recent survey, 80 percent of Germans does not for Israel’s procedure in Gaza after Hamas’ massacre against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023. Instead of the preliminary investigation, we need a differentiated debate to stand up for the security of Israel, a two-state solution and the urgently needed fight against anti-Semitism on a broader basis.

When Angela Merkel shaped the state-rank formula in 2008, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was called. As a supporter of the two -state solution, Olmert proposed an Israeli retreat from over 90 percent of the West Bank to the President of the Palestinian Authority Abbas. The difference to the Netanyahu government could hardly be greater. Netanyahu drives the settlement building massively in the West Bank and destroys livelihoods of the Palestinians. The Israeli-Palestinian documentary “No Other Land”, which was awarded at the Berlinale and won an Oscar, makes a certificate from the brutality of the procedure.

The Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz makes no secret of his contempt for the two -state solution represented by Germany. The French President Macron, who described the recognition of a Palestinian state “not only as a moral duty, but also a political necessity”, Catz in the occupied West Bank: “You will recognize a Palestinian state on paper-and we will build a Jewish-Israeli state on the ground. The paper will be thrown into the trash can of history.”

Already two days after the Hamas massacres and hostage frames on October 7, 2023, Katz ‘Premale Yoav Gallant had a “complete siege” with a view to Gaza: “There is no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and acting accordingly.” War crimes can hardly be announced more clearly.

Nevertheless, Chancellor Olaf Scholz criticized the Netanyahus warfare in homeopathic doses. And whenever Germany did not take a hundred percent side to Netanyahus, Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor demanded unconditional solidarity. “Now the state bundle is being tested – without ifs and buts”, Prosor, for example, according to the arrest warrants of the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu and Gallant and criticized the “wax -soft statements” on the part of the German government.

“Without ifs and buts”: You cannot formulate the instrumentalization of the state ranks for unconditional support from the Netanyahu government. Voices from Israel, as Merkel’s counterpart Olmert at the time, make it clear that this unconditional support should not exist. Olmert last week in a contribution in the Israeli newspaper “Haaretz” from the “slaughtered Palestine civilian” in the West Bank and clearly said that Israel commits war crimes in Gaza: “What we are doing in Gaza is a war of devastation: indiscriminately, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.”

It is only logical that Chancellor Merz last week clear words to the Netanyahu government: “But if boundaries are exceeded where humanitarian international law is now really violated, then Germany must also say something about it”.

Foreign Minister WadePhul became even clearer. To the Netanyahu government, he said that he was not “put under pressure” and “pressed”: “Our 100 % fight against anti-Semitism and our complete support for the right to exist and the security of the state of Israel” should not be “not” being “instrumentalized” for the support of the support of Israeli fighting in the Gaza strip. The “without any ifs and buts” the state-bound doctrine cannot be rejected in the interpretation of Prosors.

Merz and WadePhul’s termination of unconditional solidarity with the Netanyahu government has nothing with the attitude of those who want to free themselves to the imagined constraint of the German past. Last week, for example, journalist Gabor Steingart in a “Germany was a prisoner of the Hitler era” with a view of Merz and Israel: “Instead of submission, Germany is now demonstrating self -confidence”.

Instead, it is about a differentiated discussion of German interests with a view to Israel’s security. An example of this is arms deliveries. Iran continues to threaten Israel’s existence – and Germany also wants to benefit from Israeli innovative strength with a view of the drone technology and rocket defense. At the same time, Germany has no interest in supplying Israel with weapons that are used in the current campaign in Gaza in war crimes. Any decision on the restriction of arms deliveries should take into account this.

Another topic for a differentiated view is the two -state solution, which (at the end) also includes standing for the right to exist of a peaceful state of Palestine. Is it productive in a situation in which the Netanyahu government focuses on the expulsion of the Palestinians instead of state that Germany officially recognizes a Palestinian state together with EU partners such as France and Spain?

The debate about the urgently needed fighting of anti -Semitism in Germany also needs a nuanced view. It is unbearable if more and more Jews feel unsafe in this country due to the increasing anti -Semitism, which is also increasing after October 7, 2023. At the same time, it is wrong if the Bundestag and the Federal Government (such as in the last autumn of last autumn) stipulate an expansionary definition (the so-called SEHA employment definition), which is protected by the Netanyahu government), which allows legitimate criticism of Israel to brand as anti-Semitism. This only undermines the legitimacy of the procedure against real anti -Semitism.

According to a current Bertelsmann Foundation, 40 percent of under 40-year-olds in Germany would like to reduce relationships with Israel. Politics should see this as a alarm sign. Only when we come to a differentiated debate beyond the state bundle formula can we ensure the long-term basis for German-Israeli relations.