For the past few years, it has been a condition for anyone who seeks to become a German citizen to explicitly recognize Israel\u2019s right to exist. This is one of several questions related to Israel on the citizenship application form, and there aren\u2019t any multiple-choice answers inviting nuance.<\/p>\n
Such is the culture of memory that dominates Germany\u2019s thinking about the past and dictates its policies of the present. This was always fraught terrain, but since Hamas\u2019s attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the near destruction of Gaza that Israel has meted out in revenge, it has dominated German public life. And now with Israel preparing a new full-frontal assault, and with Europe being more sharply critical than at any time in years, the new chancellor faces a test of strength.<\/p>\n
For the past few years, it has been a condition for anyone who seeks to become a German citizen to explicitly recognize Israel\u2019s right to exist. This is one of several questions related to Israel on the citizenship application form, and there aren\u2019t any multiple-choice answers inviting nuance.<\/p>\n
Such is the culture of memory that dominates Germany\u2019s thinking about the past and dictates its policies of the present. This was always fraught terrain, but since Hamas\u2019s attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the near destruction of Gaza that Israel has meted out in revenge, it has dominated German public life. And now with Israel preparing a new full-frontal assault, and with Europe being more sharply critical than at any time in years, the new chancellor faces a test of strength.<\/p>\n
Several issues have merged or, rather, collided in Germany in recent months: the Holocaust, antisemitism, the Israeli state, and the actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s far-right regime. Successive German governments have sought to link all the above and disentangle them at the same time.<\/p>\n
Critics\u2014and there are many, including in Germany\u2019s Jewish community\u2014say that legitimate criticism of Israel is silenced. There is much evidence of that, of authors being uninvited to the Frankfurt Book Fair (one of the world\u2019s most prestigious), of cultural organizations being defunded, of pro-Palestinian demonstrators being hauled away.<\/p>\n
I have witnessed the curiosity of the situation many times. On several occasions, social and professional, I have been admonished by German interlocutors for \u201cnot showing Israel enough support.\u201d My stock response\u2014apart from challenging their evidence\u2014is to ask whether any of them have forebears who, like mine, died in the concentration camps? Usually there is an awkward silence, and then I request that they don\u2019t lecture me on such issues in the future. I describe their approach as guilt-laden virtue signaling.<\/p>\n
The debate is both reductive and laden with apprehension. Many Berliners I know are wary of entering into the debate for fear of the consequences. When they do, I have heard comments such as \u201cthe Palestinians are responsible for their own plight\u2014they could have thrown out Hamas long ago\u201d from senior German politicians and others from some who wonder whether pictures of starving children in Gaza were fabricated. Such views are amplified in some German media (usually, but not always, on the right) and then reamplified by Israeli politicians, citing them as vindication of their position.<\/p>\n
The cause of the present German conundrum is a 2008 speech by then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the Israeli Knesset. Merkel declared the defense of Israel to be Germany\u2019s staatsr\u00e4son, reason of state. Germany would support Israel, no matter what. That became the default position right up to the present crisis.<\/p>\n
One statistic brought the horror of Oct. 7 home to Germans and connected it to their past. More Jews were killed on that single day than any day since the Holocaust. \u201cIn these days, we are all Israelis,\u201d declared Annalena Baerbock, Germany\u2019s foreign minister at the time, during a visit to Israel after the attack.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian flags raised in front of government buildings were joined by Israeli ones, two countries seemingly united in a shared sense of jeopardy in the face of evil enemies.<\/p>\n
And so it has continued, Germany demonstrating its unflinching support even as Israel repeatedly bombs Gaza and even as Israeli settlers attack Palestinians in the West Bank under the sympathetic gaze of the Israel Defense Forces. (According to the Gaza Health Ministry, the estimated Palestinian death toll is more than 60,000.)<\/p>\n
In the run-up to Germany\u2019s elections last February, Friedrich Merz suggested<\/a> that he would invite Netanyahu to Berlin and, in defiance of the International Criminal Court\u2019s arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, would \u201cfind ways and means for him to visit Germany and also to be able to leave again without being arrested.\u201d<\/p>\n As chancellor, Merz has not proceeded with that promise, and relations between Germany and Israel have gradually cooled. A series of fractious phone calls with Netanyahu\u2014 sometimes on his own, sometimes with French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer\u2014have left Merz feeling increasingly frustrated.<\/p>\n Merz has issued a series of statements, each a notch or two more critical than the one before. Even though the E3\u2014Germany, France and the United Kingdom\u2014have coordinated on Ukraine policy almost daily, Merz was blindsided by the announcements from Macron and Starmer that they plan to officially recognize a Palestinian state in September. He has made clear that Germany will not follow suit.<\/p>\n However, his recent statement that Germany will \u201cnot authorize any exports of military equipment that could be used in the Gaza Strip until further notice\u201d is the most significant move for some time. Merz paused his summer vacation to put the statement together hurriedly, and it emerged that hardly any key figures, except for Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, had been consulted.<\/p>\n Even though the decision would make virtually no impact on the ground\u2014the previous chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and his government had quietly stopped providing Israel with weapons that might be used in Gaza back in 2024\u2014it was redolent with meaning. Strong criticism followed from parts of the governing party, the Christian Democratic Union, and in parts of the media, including the influential Bild and Die Welt of the powerful right-wing Springer publishing house.<\/p>\n