{"id":335027,"date":"2025-08-11T06:21:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T06:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/335027\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T06:21:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T06:21:18","slug":"germany-divided-over-plan-to-limit-weapons-for-israel-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/335027\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany divided over plan to limit weapons for Israel \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chancellor Friedrich Merz<\/a> was supposed to be on his summer holiday but on Sunday afternoon he was in a Munich television studio in full damage-limitation mode.<\/p>\n

In a hastily-arranged interview, Merz insisted his decision on Friday to halt German arms deliveries to Israel<\/a> did not mark a major policy shift.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a dissent with the Israeli government involving Israel\u2019s approach to the Gaza Strip<\/a>,\u201d said Merz on ARD public television explaining Friday\u2019s decision, \u201cbut we continue to stand, without any doubt, at the side of this country\u201d.<\/p>\n

Merz said he and his officials had been grappling for weeks with how best to stand by Israel while responding to its effective aid blockade and the growing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The Israeli decision to expand its war in Gaza, Merz said, came as a \u201csurprise\u201d and forced him to act.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot supply weapons in a conflict that is now being fought exclusively to be resolved by military means and which could claim hundreds of thousands of civilian victims,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For the 69-year-old, Sunday\u2019s 11-minute interview was a belated attempt to escape from a very German post-October 7th trap.<\/p>\n

For nearly two years many politicians such as Merz and his centre-right Christian Democratic Union<\/a> (CDU) have conflated the state of Israel and the Netanyahu government\u2019s Gaza strategy \u2013 denouncing critics of the latter as enemies of the former.<\/p>\n

For Merz and his allies, this strategy went beyond defending Israel\u2019s right to self-defence: it was about defending Germany<\/a>\u2019s six decades of post-Holocaust bilateral relations.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Israel has \u2018no choice but to finish the job and complete the defeat of Hamas\u2019, says NetanyahuOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

As a frame for this narrative they used a 2007 remark by ex-chancellor Angela Merkel, in a speech about Iran\u2019s nuclear programme, that Israel\u2019s security was part of German \u201cStaatsr\u00e4son\u201d, or \u201creason of state\u201d.<\/p>\n

After months denouncing those who questioned the Netanyahu government\u2019s Gaza strategy, Sunday\u2019s interview saw Merz hoist by his own petard.<\/p>\n

The CDU leader said he was anxious to \u201cprevent misunderstandings\u201d about what halting arms deliveries means \u2013 and doesn\u2019t mean.<\/p>\n

But his interview came 48 hours too late \u2013 and after an unprecedented weekend assault. His right-wing Bavarian coalition sister party, the Christian Social Union, insisted it \u201cwasn\u2019t involved in\u201d and \u201cwouldn\u2019t support\u201d this \u201cquestionable decision\u201d.<\/p>\n

That was mild compared with the response of the Israel-friendly Springer media group, whose journalists sign up to an ethos that includes \u201csupporting the right of Israel to exist\u201d.<\/p>\n

Since October 7th, 2023, Springer\u2019s Bild tabloid has consistently described Israel critics as \u201cJew haters\u201d and, on Saturday, accused the chancellor on its front-page of \u201ccaving\u201d.<\/p>\n

On Sunday it argued Merz had \u201ctorn down overnight a decades-old CDU [political] pillar without telling anyone, then gone back to his holiday\u201d.<\/p>\n

In Sunday\u2019s interview, Merz insisted his shift was motivated by strategic and humanitarian concerns and not popular opinion. Yet three recent opinion polls tell their own story.<\/p>\n

Just 36 per cent of Germans say they hold a positive view of Israel, according to a Bertelsmann Foundation survey, down 10 points from the same survey in 2021. Meanwhile a second poll for Stern magazine last week suggested three-quarters of Germans want a tougher German stance towards Israel over Gaza.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile a third survey released on Sunday indicated 54 per cent of Germans now favour recognising Palestinian statehood, while 31 per cent remain opposed.<\/p>\n

After three months as German leader, and nearly two years pushing one line on Israel, Merz now faces a revolt among CDU party members who refuse to accept his new memo.<\/p>\n

CDU foreign policy spokesman Roderich Kiesewetter described the weapons pause as \u201ca serious political and strategic mistake\u201d that saw Merz yielding to Hamas propaganda and \u201cthe anti-Semitic mob on the streets\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chancellor Friedrich Merz was supposed to be on his summer holiday but on Sunday afternoon he was in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[33784,29134,2000,299,1945,10982,1824,835,837,20418],"class_list":{"0":"post-335027","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-binyamin-netanyahu","9":"tag-christian-democratic-union","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-friedrich-merz","13":"tag-gaza-strip","14":"tag-germany","15":"tag-hamas","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-israel-hamas-conflict"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115008692750938456","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335027","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=335027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}