TEHRAN – German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has visited Israel for the first time since taking office in May. Merz’s visit came days after Germany decided to lift a three-month moratorium on arms exports to Israel.
Unfortunately, Germany left itself with a bad legacy during Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. Merz’s predecessor, Olaf Scholz, visited Israel on October 17, 2023, just 10 days after the October 7 attack. He was one of the first Western leaders to visit Israel.
Both Scholz and Merz have said that Israel has a “right of self-defense,” but UN experts say that as an occupying power, Israel cannot exercise that “right of self-defense” against Palestinians.
Germany is Israel’s second largest arms supplier after the United States. The arms flow into Israel took place despite the fact that the International Criminal Court (ICC) had ordered arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), between 2019 and 2023, the United States was the largest supplier of arms to Israel, providing 69% of military equipment, with Germany in second place, supplying about 30%. Together, these two countries account for 99% of Israel’s arms imports.
In 2023, Germany approved 308 military export licenses to Israel, worth a total of 326.5 million euros (about 38 billion yen), a tenfold increase from 32.3 million euros (about $38 million) in 2022, according to Al Jazeera. Since 2003, Germany has sold weapons worth 3.3 billion euros (about 380 billion yen) to Israel, the news channel said.
Furthermore, Germany remains an ardent supporter of Israel, whose crimes have shocked the world. However, Mertz said he does not consider Israel’s actions in Gaza to be genocide.
Mertz’s denial of genocide stands in stark contrast to the United Nations Commission of Inquiry, which reported on June 12, 2024, that Israeli authorities committed war crimes. The commission also found Hamas guilty of war crimes on October 7. However, the crucial difference is that Israel has continued to commit war crimes from October 7 to the present.
On August 8, Chancellor Mertz took steps to suspend the issuance of arms export licenses to Israel. This is widely seen as a major shift in German defense policy. He stressed that Germany can no longer ignore the growing number of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip. On November 24, Germany lifted restrictions on arms exports, citing the “stabilization” of Gaza after the ceasefire, but stressed that the move depended on the continuation of the ceasefire and widespread provision of humanitarian aid.
However, despite the October 10 ceasefire, Israeli genocide continues. Since then, Israeli attacks have killed at least 360 Palestinians and injured 922 others. The Gaza government media office also recorded 591 separate ceasefire violations by Israel. Aid remains stalled, with only 20 percent of needed trucks allowed into Gaza.
Britain, which laid the foundations for the creation of Israel through the 1917 Balfour Declaration on Palestinian land, has reduced its support and, along with nine other Western nations, supports recognition of a Palestinian state, while Germany has declared it has no intention of recognizing an independent Palestinian state.
Germany’s refusal to support a Palestinian state, despite the United States supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state under Democratic and Republican administrations (except for President Trump’s second term), emphasizes that Germany has lost its way and is now on the wrong side of history regarding the Palestinian issue.
Germany has suppressed domestic voices sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and cracked down on protests against Israeli actions in the coastal enclave.
Germany says it regrets the suffering of Jews at the hands of the Nazis during World War II, known as the Holocaust, but its policy is a reenactment of the Holocaust, with the difference that this time it is happening at the hands of people who claim to be descendants of Holocaust survivors.
Of course, Germany’s leaders are not so stupid as to not understand that a significant proportion of Israel’s population is the children of people who immigrated to Israel from countries whose families were not affected by the Holocaust, and that ultra-hardliners like Bezalel Smotrich and Itmar Ben Gvir want to completely clean Palestine of its original population.
Prime Minister Mertz must ponder this statement by Prime Minister Netanyahu on August 12, 2025, in which he said he felt he had a “historic and spiritual mission” to expand Israel’s borders, what he called the “Greater Israel” vision.
Germany in general, and Merz in particular, should realize that Berlin’s policies only embolden hardliners in Israel as well as in the United States, making peace in the Middle East difficult. Chancellor Merz must realize that appeasement of war criminals will further damage Germany’s reputation and lead to further bloodshed and chaos in an already unstable Middle East.