German chancellor Friedrich Merz has characterized Israel’s most recent war against Iran as a service to the Western world. While Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, Germany continues to offer support — and to jeopardize the post-World War II order — despite its tentative criticism.
Hanno Hauenstein studied philosophy and literature in Tel Aviv and Berlin. As a freelance journalist, he has written for, among others, the Guardian, The Intercept, Zeit Online, Haaretz and taz.
On 14 October 2024, 19-year-old Palestinian Shaban al-Dalou burned to death in a hospital bed in Gaza following an Israeli attack on the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Because it was recorded on video, his death gained international attention. Four days earlier, Annalena Baerbock, who was Germany’s foreign minister at the time, gave a speech in the Bundestag marking the anniversary of 7 October. In it, she said, “Self-defence, of course, means not only attacking terrorists, but destroying them”. She continued, “If Hamas terrorists want to entrench themselves behind people or schools, then that puts us in a very difficult position. … Then even civilian locations can lose their protected status — because terrorists are abusing them. That is Germany’s view. That is what Israel’s security means to us.”
During Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar’s most recent visit to Berlin in early June 2025, Germany’s new Christian Democratic foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, who has a high profile on both sides of the Atlantic, reiterated German support for Israel in no uncertain terms, stating that Israel “obviously has the right to defend itself against Hamas and other enemies”. As a result, he said, Germany will continue supporting Israel by supplying weapons. According to Wadephul, this was “never in doubt”.
At the same time, Wadephul spoke out against recognition of a Palestinian state, as it would send “the wrong signal”. In the wake of a vote on the review and possible suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, he also said that the agreement should remain untouched. Anyone who had begun to hope in recent weeks that Wadephul’s cautious criticism of Israel’s actions might indicate a change in his thinking was disappointed. His statements during Sa’ar’s visit reversed everything he had previously hinted at.
Contradictory Statements, Unchanged Stance
Yet German consensus regarding Israel actually appeared to be crumbling in the weeks before that moment. In an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, for instance, Wadephul said it was questionable whether Israel’s actions in Gaza could still be “brought in line with international humanitarian law”. In that context, he also announced that weapons exports to Israel were to be reviewed. And in late May, Chancellor Friedrich Merz told Re:publica that he could no longer recognize any clear strategic goals in Israel’s prosecution of the war.
These statements contradict other assertions made by both politicians. During his trip to Israel in early May, Wadephul still appeared sympathetic to the blockade of supplies — a war crime on Israel’s part. He justified that stance with reference to the claim that Hamas was abusing these goods — a narrative spread by Israel, but one that has not withstood any serious scrutiny to date.
In practical terms, Germany’s line remains clear: its government continues to support Israel’s military deployment by supplying weapons and diplomatic cover.
Merz also recently caused a stir with dubious statements concerning international law. In an interview with German television broadcaster ZDF, he described Israel’s illegal attack on Iran as the “dirty work” that Israel was doing “for us all”. He expressed his “great respect” for the “courage” of the Israeli army and governmental leadership. Merz did not mention the fact that the Israeli airstrikes on Iran have already claimed hundreds of civilian casualties, nor that dozens of Israelis were killed in Iranian counterattacks.
Germany at a Dead End
The German government’s stance toward Israel can perhaps be best summarized as a kind of new pragmatism: it can no longer remain entirely silent and uncritical with respect to Israel’s actions in Gaza because that is no longer palatable at the international level. Nonetheless, Germany also refuses to draw any concrete consequences from its criticism, which has been very late in coming. It has therefore manoeuvred itself into a dead end. Perhaps the clearest expression of this is Nicaragua’s well-founded charge before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Germany is abetting the genocide in Gaza.
Nonetheless, the question remains: why the rhetorical change of heart? One obvious reason is Israel’s growing isolation. UN representatives, any number of human rights organizations, and now even conservative media figures like British commentator Piers Morgan, a long-time defender of Israel, are saying with increasing clarity that Israel’s actions in Gaza show all the signs of genocide.
In light of all this, Germany’s credibility has long since been tarnished. Defending human rights only in places where it does not affect one’s own allies undermines the liberal international order. For authoritarian regimes from Ankara to Moscow to Washington, Berlin has been sending out a crystal-clear signal over the past year and a half: systematic violence on a historic scale can continue without any consequences, as long as you have the right allies.
By contrast, several EU member states, including Spain, Ireland, and Norway, have recognized Palestine as a state in the last year. It is a symbolic step that directly contradicts Israel’s expansionist trajectory. Merz seems eager to at least rhetorically contain this growing diplomatic pressure on Israel and thereby also counteract Germany’s own isolation.
Staatsräson Is Not Above International Law
Much has been said about Germany’s Staatsräson (reasons of state) over the past few years, from its origins in the 1950s — as a project of reintegrating the new Federal Republic of Germany into the community of Western states — to what are perhaps its most grotesque excesses in the past year and a half: de-financing Israeli and Palestinian civil society, indirectly strengthening far-right entities like Alternative for Germany (AfD) and, not least of all, actively abetting genocide.
Since Angela Merkel went to the Knesset in 2008 and declared that Israel’s security was part of Germany’s Staatsräson, that phrase has increasingly become foreign policy dogma. It shapes Germany’s Middle East policy as well as parts of the political left, whose unconditional solidarity with Israel remains in effect up to the present day — mostly irrespective of the government’s concrete actions, to say nothing of facts. In his governmental policy statement on 24 June, Merz even went a step farther than Merkel and declared that “our Staatsräson is the defence of the state of Israel as it exists”.
Surveys show that a majority of the German population opposes Israel’s actions. This stance has solidified despite reporting from numerous German media outlets that has downplayed or actively trivialized the reality in Gaza.
But what does Staatsräson mean when Israel is systematically destroying the territory it occupies, killing tens of thousands of civilians, blocking aid deliveries for months, and deliberately shooting Palestinians at aid distribution sites? What does it mean when leading Israeli political, military, and media representatives are openly calling for genocide? How does the German government square that with its obligations under international law?
The last two years allow us to draw a painfully simple conclusion: Germany’s Staatsräson has become as detached from moral standards and the politics of remembrance as they can get. They no longer serve the critical realization of historical responsibility. On the contrary, they undermine it.
Europe Has to Act
In practical terms, Germany’s line remains clear: its government continues to support Israel’s military deployment by supplying weapons and diplomatic cover. At the meeting of EU foreign ministers in late May, most of the member states spoke out in favour of reviewing and possibly suspending the association agreement with Israel because of Gaza.
Such a suspension could actually bring significant economic consequences for Israel. It is one of the strongest political tools the EU could employ in response to Netanyahu’s course of action, be it in Gaza or the West Bank, where forced evictions and new settler homes have increased at a more drastic rate in the past few months than they have in decades.
But the debate about a possible review of the agreement drew widespread attention in Israel. Of the 27 EU member states, 17 of them — including France and Sweden — voted for an investigation. Germany was among the few states that explicitly voted against it. However, an investigation would only be a first step — a signal that starvation and mass state murder will not go unanswered.
The UK chose a different path. In late May, the British government placed sanctions on the two most prominent representatives of the far-right wing of Netanyahu’s government, Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. The rationale was that both had “repeatedly called for violence against Palestinian communities” — a highly euphemistic choice of words: both ministers have repeatedly, openly (directly or indirectly) called for the expulsion or even the annihilation of Palestinians.
The sanctions, which involve entry bans and freezing any assets the ministers may have in the UK, are part of an initiative that also involves Australia, Canada, Norway, and New Zealand. In Germany, by contrast, steps like these are not discussed by politicians or in the media.
Narratives Cannot Hold Up Against the Abyss in Gaza
In this context, the fact that individual Christian Democratic politicians occasionally distance themselves from Israel’s actions is less indicative of a shift in foreign policy than of a state of suspended discourse. The present narrative can no longer hold up against the abyss in Gaza. That is partly due to the images: emaciated young children, starving people being shot dead by the Israeli military at the Gaza Humanitarian Relief (GHF) aid distributions sites, or the bodies of aid workers being recovered from improvised mass graves.
Surveys show that a majority of the German population opposes Israel’s actions. This stance has solidified despite reporting from numerous German media outlets that has downplayed or actively trivialized the reality in Gaza. But facts cannot be suppressed forever. According to Gaza’s health ministry, the Israeli army has killed around 56,000 Palestinians since 7 October — including nearly 16,000 children, over 8,000 women, and almost 4,000 elderly people. More than 116,000 other people have been injured, many undergoing amputations or suffering other life-altering injuries.
The fact that Germany, of all places, not only is not impeding these crimes, but is actually actively contributing to them through weapons supplies, diplomatic support, and a veto policy represents a political and moral failure on a historic scale.
Independent estimates suggest that the actual scale of the violence far exceeds the official numbers. The Costs of War Project research group, for instance, starts from the premise that the figures are much higher, and numerous experts share that estimate. In an open letter to US president Joe Biden, a group of American doctors put the number of people directly killed at about 118,000. That was in October 2024.
The fact that the precise number is so difficult to determine is partly due to the fact that thousands upon thousands of people are buried under rubble. In Gaza, an estimated 50 million tonnes of debris have accumulated at this point. The United Nations estimates that rebuilding Gaza will take almost two decades. All of this has been meticulously documented by Palestinian journalists, independent observers, medical staff — and sometimes even by Israeli soldiers.
Erosion of a Values-Based Global Order
The fact that Germany, of all places — a country that so eagerly invokes the principles of the post-World War II order — not only is not impeding these crimes, but is actually actively contributing to them through weapons supplies, diplomatic support, and a veto policy represents a political and moral failure on a historic scale. It is symptomatic of an erosion of the universal norms and principles that the international order was built on after 1945. That order was already fragile before Gaza. After Gaza, it looks outright irreparable.
One cannot seriously claim to have derived a sense of responsibility from Germany’s history while simply downplaying the systematic expulsion and killing of hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza, the annexation of the West Bank, or the deaths of hundreds of civilians in Tehran as a mere necessity. In light of current developments, it would be absurd to speak of a paradigm shift in Germany’s policies toward Israel. On the other hand, it would be anything but absurd to finally demand such a change.
Translated by Joseph Keady and Anna Dinwoodie for Gegensatz Translation Collective.