{"id":190691,"date":"2025-06-17T03:56:16","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T03:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/190691\/"},"modified":"2025-06-17T03:56:16","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T03:56:16","slug":"german-government-supports-israeli-war-of-aggression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/190691\/","title":{"rendered":"German government supports Israeli war of aggression"},"content":{"rendered":"

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz arrives for the cabinet meeting at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, June 11, 2025 [AP Photo\/Markus Schreiber]<\/p>\n

The German government has pledged its full support to Israel following its attack on Iran. Chancellor Friedrich Merz (Christian Democrat, CDU), Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil (Social Democrat, SPD) and Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (CDU) have justified the unprovoked assault on the country of 90 million people with Israel\u2019s \u201cright to self-defence.\u201d<\/p>\n

In doing so, they not only scorn the facts, but also international law. Their support for Israeli aggression shows they will stop at no crime in pursuit of their geopolitical objectives. Having already backed the bombing, starvation and displacement of two million Palestinians, they are now defending the targeted assassination of senior Iranian military figures, politicians and scientists, the bombing of Iranian high-rises, industrial facilities and fuel depots, and Israel\u2019s attempt to set the entire region ablaze.<\/p>\n

Merz commented on Friday\u2019s first wave of Israeli attacks with the statement: \u201cWe reaffirm that Israel has the right to defend its existence and the security of its citizens.\u201d He described Iran\u2019s nuclear program as an \u201cexistential threat\u201d to Israel, effectively giving it a blank check to wage war.<\/p>\n

Wadephul is touring the Middle East to bolster Israel by affirming its right to self-defence and to signal Germany\u2019s solidarity with the Zionist regime.<\/p>\n

In a Sunday evening interview on broadcaster ZDF\u2019s \u201cBerlin direkt\u201d programme, Klingbeil claimed there was no doubt that Iran wanted to wipe Israel off the map. This, he argued, gave Israel \u201cthe right to defend its right to exist.\u201d If that right were at risk, he said, then given Germany\u2019s historical responsibility, he \u201ccould not imagine\u201d a situation in which Berlin would withhold its support for Israel\u2014even by supplying weapons.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Merz, Wadephul and Klingbeil occasionally call for restraint and diplomatic solutions, but these appeals are solely aimed at placating public opinion and have no practical consequences.<\/p>\n

Virtually all leading experts in international law agree that Israel\u2019s attack on Iran violates the UN Charter\u2019s prohibition on the use of force. This charter allows military action only in self-defence after an armed attack. Preemptive strikes are only permissible in narrowly defined circumstances when an attack is imminent. But \u201cnot even an attack is being claimed that would meet these criteria,\u201d as Tom Dannenbaum, professor of international law at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, noted.<\/p>\n

Matthias Goldmann, a professor of international law in Wiesbaden, argued that even if Iran possessed nuclear weapons, that would not justify an attack: \u201cThe Israeli assault on Iran is a textbook case of an illegal pre-emptive strike.\u201d<\/p>\n

And according to Kai Ambos, professor of international law in G\u00f6ttingen, \u201cthe prohibition on the use of force\u2014a fundamental norm of international law\u2014becomes practically meaningless\u201d if one were to view Israel\u2019s attack as a legitimate preemptive strike. In that case, \u201cany state could decide to use military force on the basis of a mere sense of threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

The German government routinely invokes this prohibition when justifying its war drive against Russia. But in Israel\u2019s case, \u201creason of state\u201d takes precedence over law. The phrase \u201cIsrael\u2019s right to exist is part of Germany\u2019s reason of state,\u201d coined by then-Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2008, is also found in the new government\u2019s coalition agreement.<\/p>\n

The term \u201creason of state\u201d was coined 500 years ago by Italian political theorist Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli and revived during the Weimar Republic by Carl Schmitt, later known as the \u201ccrown jurist of the Third Reich.\u201d It means that the law protects not democratic freedoms, but the state order\u2014and is subordinate to it. To defend state interests, the holder of state power may disregard formal legal norms. Schmitt, who joined the Nazis in 1933, became the most important theoretical architect of Hitler\u2019s dictatorship.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

When today\u2019s German government declares the defence of Israel\u2019s war crimes to be a German \u201creason of state,\u201d it is following this tradition. But this has nothing to do with responsibility for the Holocaust or the protection of Jewish life in the Middle East. The Holocaust does not obligate Germany to support genocide in Gaza or the other crimes committed by Netanyahu\u2019s far-right regime, which maintains close ties with fascist parties across Europe.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu\u2019s policies are increasingly taking on suicidal dimensions. The idea that Jewish life can be protected by expelling and exterminating Palestinians, destroying Iran\u2014a country with 10 times Israel\u2019s population\u2014and turning the entire region against Israel is delusional. Peaceful coexistence of all nationalities and religions in the Middle East is only possible on a socialist basis.<\/p>\n

Germany\u2014like the US, the UK and other imperialist countries\u2014supports Israel because it serves as a military and political bridgehead in a region of major geopolitical and economic interest.<\/p>\n

German policy in the Middle East follows the same logic as in Ukraine and other regions of the world. After decades of enforced military restraint, Germany is now rearming on a massive scale to defend its imperialist interests\u2014access to raw materials, markets, trade routes, cheap labour and profits\u2014by military means.<\/p>\n

Driven by the insoluble contradictions of the capitalist profit system, the imperialist powers are lurching toward a third world war\u2014unless they are stopped in time by a socialist movement of the international working class.<\/p>\n

Join the fight against the Gaza genocide and imperialist war!<\/p>\n

Fill out this form and we\u2019ll contact you soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German Chancellor Friedrich Merz arrives for the cabinet meeting at the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, June 11,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824,774,837,24861],"class_list":{"0":"post-190691","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-militarism"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114696696608570842","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}