On October 12, five days after Hamas launched a war against Israel with its savage Simchat Torah attack, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addressed the Bundestag and set the tone for unparalleled German support for the Jewish state.
“The safety in Israel and for Israel must be restored, and that is why Israel must have the capacity to defend itself,” he said. “At the moment, there is only one place for Germany: side by side with Israel. This is what we mean when we say the security of Israel is Germany’s staatsräson [raison d’etre],” he added, employing the German word used by his predecessor, Angela Merkel, during a 2008 speech to the Knesset to describe Germany’s special responsibility toward Israel.
Five days later, Scholz reiterated that same message in Israel, where he came on a solidarity visit a day before US President Joe Biden made a visit of his own.
Since then, there has been a veritable airlift of senior German officials visiting the country, including the president, the defense minister, the speaker of the parliament, the chairman of the parliament’s foreign relations committee, the minister for development, and the foreign minister, Anna Barelock, who has visited four times.
German parties that don't support Israel have made exceptions in the wake of October 7
What makes all of this even more noteworthy is that the current German government is a center-left government, with Scholz a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and Barelock members of the Green Party, not a party generally associated with strong support for Israel.
Habeck himself released what Israeli diplomatic officials termed an “extraordinary” nine-minute video in support of Israel a month after the attack, saying that the phrase “staatsräson” is not an empty one and that it means Israel’s security is “necessary for us as a country.” He also decried expressions of antisemitism among some Muslims in Germany following the attack, as well as antisemitism on the Left and on the Right.
Habeck said that calling Hamas a freedom movement “is a reversal of the facts” and one that cannot be allowed to stand. “Hamas does not want reconciliation with Israel, but the extermination of Israel,” he stated.
Aron Schuster, the director of the Central Welfare Board of Jews in Germany (ZWST), one of the bodies representing the 100,000-strong Jewish community there, said the government has been “extremely supportive” and one of “the most supportive countries in Europe.”
“Germany took a front role in supporting Israel,” he said. “Their standing on Israel’s side is a very positive development, and I don’t think it is changing. This is very good for Israel, and very important for the Jewish community in Germany to see.” Germany denounced South Africa’s bringing genocide charges against Israel to the International Court of Justice in The Hague and said it would intervene as a third party before the court in Israel’s defense.
On the other hand, Schuster said, “There was a resounding silence from certain areas of the majority society, like the cultural sector, universities, aid, and human rights organizations.”
Alarming lack of education of the region in German youth
FALKO DROSSMANN is an SPD parliamentarian and member of Bundestag’s Human Rights Committee and Defense Committee, who has visited Israel on several occasions, including since October 7. He said in a Zoom interview from Germany that the reason for the government’s support is simple: “To be honest, Germany has six million reasons why we have to support a Jewish state. Full stop.”
That may be the rationale for him, born in 1973, but he pointed out it is not something that necessarily filters down to the youth. He stressed that it is not as if Germany’s youth is unaware of the Holocaust – they learn about it in school – it’s rather that they no longer see it as a defining component of modern German history.
“They say, ‘Why do we never talk about Europe in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s? Why do we just talk about this a lot?’ They know about the Holocaust, but what they tell me is it does not give Israel the right to do everything they want.”
Drossmann said he is also often stunned at the lack of knowledge so many people have about the region.
“If I talk about my constituency, everyday people I talk with in the market, the majority don’t have a clue about the Middle East.”
Social media is thrashing Israel's public image in Germany
In the immediate aftermath of October 7, there was widespread support in Germany for Israel and for the government’s unequivocal support, he said. However, as the war grinds on, public opinion is shifting, something he attributed to the unending flood of images of Palestinian suffering in Gaza coming across not in the traditional German media, which he said has been more objective than what he sees on BBC, but on social media.
“Israel, in my opinion, has lost the information war on social media, and even people who are really supportive towards Israel feel these pictures are disturbing. Everybody says, ‘Okay, Israel has to defend itself, but why do 20,000 civilians have to die? Why are these people becoming refugees or sent to the south without humanitarian aid? Why is Israel preventing that aid?’”
Drossmann said this is having an impact on the German political class as well. “Inside parliament, there are more and more people saying there has to be a ceasefire now – last week 13 members of my party came out for an immediate ceasefire.”
So far, he said, the government has not adopted this position, but the mood is changing, and “the longer the war lasts, this is changing against Israel.”
Drossmann stressed that Israel is not losing the war in social media but has already lost it.
“I’m talking about Instagram and TikTok, where you have thousands upon thousands of clips of crying Palestinian mothers, of dead children, over sad music. That is what the younger people are watching. You know, they don’t read newspapers; they don’t even watch television. That’s what they see. And they say, ‘Why are they doing this?’”
Asked if there is anything Israel can do to combat this, Drossmann’s answer was telling: “I don’t think it is on Israel to do something, it’s what I have to do.” He said this is why he goes to schools and even mosques in his heavily immigrant district in Hamburg and talks about the conflict.
Israel’s case is further not being helped, he said, by extreme statements coming from some government ministers, as well as by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent rejection of a two-state solution and no clear articulation of what he has planned for Gaza after the war.
“If the Israeli government says there will be no two-state solution, then we have to ask, ‘Okay, so what is your solution?’ And they don’t come up with an answer,” he said.
This, he commented, leaves Israel’s international supporters holding an empty bag.
“We don’t know what happens after the war, you know, anything. They don’t have a suggestion. We have a suggestion – a two-state solution. They say ‘no,’ but then they don’t offer anything else. And that’s what makes it really hard for us.”
THE WAR in Gaza has led to a spike in antisemitism in Germany, with leaders of the Jewish community at one point advising Jews to avoid certain areas and remove identifying symbols, such as kippot or Star of David necklaces.
As is the case elsewhere, in Germany, there are now three sources of antisemitism: the far Right – with the extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party gaining strength – the far Left, and the Muslim community. While the Muslim antisemitism today poses more of an immediate threat, many people – such as Drossmann – feel that the far-right antisemitism is the more significant threat in the future.
Interested in testing the mood toward Israel, the parliamentarian said he went to his gym on various occasions wearing either a Tel Aviv University or IDF T-shirt and even pinned a small Israeli flag on his backpack while traveling on Berlin’s public transportation to test the reactions.
Drossmann said the instances of people saying “it’s great you are wearing this T-shirt, it’s important to show support for Israel,” outweighed those people who shot him “vicious looks.” His conclusion from the nonscientific experiment: “I have hope about Germany.”
ZWST’s Schuster said that many Germans were shocked by the pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas demonstrations in Germany that took place even before the IDF began operating inside Gaza. These were protests where some brandished the Nazi salute, and others handed out sweets to “celebrate” the massacre.
This had an impact on people, Schuster remarked. “There were those who saw it and realized that these are people who are fundamentally fighting our way of free life in the Western world; people understood that they want a different society, and we have to stand up for our values.”
DANIEL SHADMY, the spokesman of ELNET, a nonprofit organization devoted to building Israeli-European ties that has an office in Berlin, said that German governmental support has been unique this time in that it has lasted far longer than during other rounds of fighting in Gaza.
He attributed this not only to the magnitude and scale of the October 7 massacre but also to a realization that Israel is fighting the same radicalism and extremism that are also gaining a toehold in Europe.
“They are seeing Israel’s fight as legitimate since they believe that it [the extreme radicalism Israel is fighting] may come to their borders as well,” he said, adding that this is not only a German phenomenon but something he is seeing throughout Europe.
One diplomatic official drew a direct line between Russia’s attack on Ukraine, something he termed a wake-up call for Germany, which came to realize that not all conflicts can be solved through dialogue, and Berlin’s current strong support for Israel.
Shadmy agreed, saying that, increasingly, Germans are seeing similarities between Russia’s designs on Ukraine and those of Hamas. He recalled that a month after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, a delegation from the Bundestag Defense Committee came to Israel as part of an ELNET delegation and visited Arrow 3 batteries, a weapon system Germany later bought from Israel in a record €4 billion deal.
“They understood that Israel and Europe, and Germany in particular, were fighting for the same interests, protecting the same values,” he said. “They are making that link: there are forces that are trying to undermine democracy, and they are seeing them as the same axis.”