What's behind Germany's Unconditional Support for Israel?

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lthough modern German foreign and security policy has periodically evolved at critical junctures in the international system, especially after the unification of Germany, overall, the country has elicited respect in the eyes of the international community as a power with a considerable anti-militarist and “multilateralist” tradition. However, as of October 7, 2023, Germany has begun to gradually lose credibility in the global public opinion.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a large-scale military offensive by land, air, and sea against the Gaza Strip, a narrow strip of land measuring about 365 square kilometers and one of the most densely populated places in the world. Israel is carrying out one of the heaviest conventional bombing campaigns in the history of modern warfare in Gaza, home to some 2.3 million people, almost half of them children. Israel drops an average of 6,000 highly destructive bombs on Gaza every week. These disproportionately heavy Israeli attacks have caused more destruction in just two months than the damage inflicted on the Syrian city of Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, or the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II.

Since the start of the Israeli military operation, more than 26,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 10,000 children, and nearly 65,000 Palestinians have been injured, most of them seriously. Added to this, 120 journalists, 167 humanitarian workers, and 135 UN workers have been killed, and more than 355,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed, representing more than 60% of all buildings. The internal displacement of 1.9 million Palestinians—about 85% of the total population—and their forced migration to less-populated areas, the failure to protect civilians, and the collapse of the health system as hospitals turned into war zones have made Gaza uninhabitable. The experience of epidemics, the deliberate collapse of the humanitarian aid system by Israel, and the increasing pressure for mass migration to neighboring countries have put Gazans at even greater risk.

Israel’s case before the International Court of Justice and international pressure

Based on the fact that Israel’s attack on Gaza constitutes a war crime in all its dimensions, South Africa, which with the strong support of the global public opinion, has been a signatory to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on December 29, 2002. Knowing that Israel was violating the UN Genocide Convention, South Africa filed a complaint against it at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on December 29, 2023, in The Hague, the UN’s highest court. South Africa also sought an injunction to prevent Israel from committing genocide in Gaza. The case is based on the UN Genocide Convention, which Israel has signed. The Convention defines genocide as an act “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

The ICJ announced its decision on South Africa’s request for precautionary measures on January 26, 2024. Although it did not accept South Africa’s request for an immediate ceasefire, it ruled that South Africa was justified in a number of precautionary decisions and upheld the suspicion of genocide by ordering Israel to refrain from genocidal acts in Gaza. Within the framework of the ICJ’s decisions, a period of one month was set for Israel to take and report measures in accordance with the ICJ’s binding instructions to prevent and stop Israeli activities that may constitute genocide. The point to note here is that the Israeli government must report all statements that constitute the crime of genocide to the ICJ prosecution. Therefore, starting with Netanyahu himself, he will have to report the genocidal rhetoric of his radical Zionist and religious extremist ministers to the ICJ.

The court’s decision is a valuable exception to the failures and double standards of many Western countries which remain silent and complicit in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The ongoing case against Israel before the ICJ for its crimes against the Palestinians has the potential to raise awareness of justice in Western countries and will also provide support for increasing international pressure on Israel’s disregard for international law and norms, as well as trigger the growth of solidarity with the Palestinian cause. More than 50 countries, led by Turkey, are already supporting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. On the other hand, other countries, including the U.S. and Germany, see Israel’s attacks in Gaza as part of the fight against terrorism. The ICJ’s decision on preventive measures, however, has prompted the German government to retreat somewhat from its unconditional solidarity with Israel.

Staatsräson: Germany’s mobilization for Israel at home and in the world

The German state uses the concept of “Staatsräson” to describe its sense of “special responsibility” towards Israel, which was established as a Zionist Jewish state just three years after the systematic murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust. Former German chancellor Angela Merkel used this concept in her speech to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in 2008. Her successor, Olaf Scholz, also emphasized the concept in the government statement issued on October 7, following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. The statement read, “There is only one place for Germany to stand now: next to Israel. This is what we mean when we say: Israel’s security is part of Germany’s raison d’état.” Scholz used the phrase “raison d’état,” or, in German, Staatsräson. However, although Germany’s guarantee of state responsibility towards Israel is a serious responsibility in terms of international law, what this means for the German public has never been explained in its legal dimension. The state obligation towards Israel, although an integral part of the German state, has not been given constitutional status despite being internalized.

The main meaning of “national interest” is the principle that a state has the right to invoke the primacy of its own interests to legitimize its own policies, to priorities state interests over other values, and to exempt itself from accountability to its own people. At this point, Merkel’s move towards Israel can be interpreted as a prescient and masterful one. In its relations with Israel, the German government has used the seal of state sovereignty to exempt itself from the responsibility of explaining to the public why it supports Israel, even though it is a state that has committed war crimes since its foundation.

After October 7, German politics, especially leading media organizations and the most important institutions and actors of German society, took hyperactive and coordinated action in line with Israel’s interests as the executor of the state seal. These actors’ aim is to silence any internal criticism of Israel in the eyes of the German public through anti-Semitic McCarthyism—a witch hunt, in other words— and to absolve Israel of its war crimes in Gaza through active diplomacy in the international arena.

Anti-Semitic McCarthyism in German public opinion

“McCarthyism” refers to the politics of fear and the design and widespread use of this policy, and more specifically to the anti-communist skepticism that began in the late 1940s and continued in the United States until the late 1950s. Allegations of having left-wing convictions or associations, which often turned out to be unproven or false, plunged the United States into an anti-communist hysteria. McCarthyism led to many people being fired, discredited, and even imprisoned, and the campaign and accompanying political repression posed a serious threat to free speech and political liberties in the United States. In Germany, the basis for McCarthyism with anti-Semitic motives was provided by the introduction of the “securitization paradigm.”

In international relations and national politics, securitization is the process of transforming political issues that need to be controlled by state actors into “security” issues. This allows the use of extraordinary means in the name of security. More specifically, since the early 1990s, securitization has been a central concept of the group known as the “Copenhagen School.” Securitization shows how dominant political actors present relevant issues as “security issues” in order to mobilize public interest and support for their sanctions. By referring to a so-called exceptional or threatening security situation, it is argued that problems can only be controlled and solved through extraordinary measures, partly bypassing democratic rules and procedures. The first of these extraordinary measures is the introduction of anti-democratic practices.

Thus, at the beginning of the October 7 process, the German government, with the support of the majority of the civil society and the mainstream media organizations loyal to the state, started to apply anti-democratic sanctions and began targeting the masses that could cause trouble with intimidation and criminal sanctions.