By Remko Leemhuis, JNS
Chancellor Friedrich Merz has severely weakened his ability to prevent harmful E.U. measures against the Jewish state from being passed.
Earlier this month, talks between Israel and Hamas for a ceasefire and hostage release agreement collapsed, once again, due to the terror group’s intransigence. Hamas walked away from the negotiating table while still holding 50 hostages, including seven German citizens. After another failed attempt to free the remaining hostages from Hamas captivity, the Israeli cabinet decided to increase the military pressure on the terror group.
Yet at a time when maximum pressure on Hamas and its enablers, including from Israel’s allies, is more vital than ever, Germany has chosen to impose an arms embargo on Israel.
This is not a minor shift in policy. It is a fundamental break with one of the main foreign-policy concepts and a guiding principle of the Federal Republic almost since its founding in 1949—that Germany has a historical responsibility to ensure the existence of the Jewish state and its ability to defend itself. In a speech to the Knesset in 2008, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel encapsulated this idea in the term Staatsräson (or "reason of state"), meaning that Israel’s security is in Germany’s national interest.
That commitment has now been broken, and the consequences are hard to overstate. The arms embargo signals to Israel and the enemies of the Jewish State that Germany’s support is conditional and no longer ironclad.
The consequences extend far beyond bilateral relations between the two countries. In the European Union, Germany has, for decades, been a key voice opposing anti-Israel resolutions and boycotts. With its embargo, Germany has given E.U. sponsors of such measures political cover and left itself with no leverage to block additional sanctions and boycotts.
No country will listen now when Berlin asks it to vote a certain way. Why would it? Hasn’t Germany itself declared an embargo? By abandoning a core element of German foreign policy, which was defined as being in Germany’s national interest, Chancellor Friedrich Merz has severely weakened his ability to prevent harmful European Union measures against Israel from being passed.
And what about the German citizens who are still held by Hamas? A government’s primary duty is to protect its people, wherever they are. The rational and moral response of the Federal Republic must be to bring its full political and economic weight, as the European Union’s leading power, to exert maximum pressure on Hamas and its supporters, namely the Iranian regime and other extremist forces, and show that there is a price to pay if you harm its citizens.
Germany could do much more to impose financial pressure on Hamas since it is a hub for the terror group’s fundraising and money-laundering operations. At the same time, Berlin must continue to support Israel as it works to free all the hostages and defeat Hamas, instead of weakening the one country in the region capable of doing so.
The domestic consequences in Germany are just as dangerous. Support for Israel’s right to self-defense has been one of the rare nonpartisan constants in German politics and a core tenet of the Christian Democratic Union of which Merz is the party leader. Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of post-war Germany, instilled in the party the unquestioned and undisputed position that Germany bore a responsibility and commitment toward Israel and its security, guiding principles for every party member and officeholder since.
This makes Merz’s reasoning for his decision, that the embargo is necessary given “deepening of societal conflicts in Germany and Europe,” even more troubling. It sends a dangerous signal, intended or not, that the hateful antisemitic mobs that have marched through Germany’s streets since Oct. 7 have influenced foreign policy, which should be based on historical principles and national security, not the whims of antisemitic mobs that threaten Jews, regularly attack the police and destroy and vandalize.
And as with such mobs, this will not pacify them. Quite the opposite. They will double down and demand harsher measures. The implications for Jews in Germany are ominous.
Berlin still has time to do damage control. It should do so not for diplomatic convenience, but because some principles are too foundational to be compromised. If the Staatsräson is to mean anything going forward, it must mean that when the Jewish state is under existential threat, Germany stands by it without hesitation, not just in speeches, but in deeds. It must also mean that Israel will receive every support it needs in its existential fight.
