German Chancellor Angela Merkel has just made an important visit to Israel. Germany is the largest and most important member of the 27-strong European Union, and it has a population of 82 million, compared, for example, with the United Kingdom’s 60 million. Merkel’s intelligence, good sense, moderate opinions and diplomatic skills have helped make her the most important national leader in the European Union.
The relationship between Germany and Israel today is no ordinary relationship between states. At its heart it still has the memory of the Holocaust, which took place in the first half of the last century. Germany has been remarkably slow, in my view, to move on. It has become frozen in a grim aspect of its history. It has a relationship with Israel which is based on a sense of mass guilt. That makes it very odd.
Germany by any standard in 2008 is a highly successful nation, with a brilliant export performance. It is a tolerant society, and few nations at the United Nations have made great progress over the last 50 years. By contrast Israel is floundering. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been seriously criticized by the Winograd inquiry for the handling of Israel’s failed war against Hezbollah and he faces new sleaze charges.
I am a supporter of the two-state solution but fear time is running out for it. Some of Israel’s closest friends are starting to wonder if it has a long-term Jewish future, as its enemies multiply, get stronger and more effective.
The deeply shocking massacre of some six million Jews by the Germans came to an end with the Allied victory of 1945 — 63 years ago. In this decade the politicians, diplomats, civil servants, industrialists and service commanders who run Germany are thus, without exception, from a postwar generation with no direct personal responsibility for what happened in Nazi Germany. A man who was 20 in 1945, and who served the state in a most junior capacity, would be 83 today and long retired.
One is bound to ask how much longer are German politicians going to feel chained by the past and forced thus to ignore the changing world and, in particular, the present— day face of Israel? Many Israelis are alarmed by their country’s vicious actions against the civilian population of Gaza, which are being described in the international press as possible war crimes. The United Nations Security Council has tended to focus, not on the improving range and explosive power of the rockets hurtling out of Gaza, but the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Retired British diplomats have told me that Germany tends to drag its feet in the deliberations of the European Union when there is an attempt to obtain a concerted policy on Arab-Israel. The immediate and inevitable German reaction is how will such a change of policy go down in Israel? Younger German diplomats must wonder if Germany is correct in concentrating on the interests of the six million Israelis rather than on the interests of some 240 million Arabs and, frequently, the wider international community. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s official visit to Israel was seen as strengthening the ties between the two countries and the perception that Germany is at present Israel’s best friend in the European Union. As with most official guests, she was taken to see the Yad Vashem, which remembers the victims of the Nazis. I went around it some years ago; it is a somber and solemn place and it would make a major impression on a German visitor.
Part of its powerful message is that because of the Holocaust the State of Israel needed to be created. This, of course, disregards the thinking and the actions of the Zionists going back into the 19th century. However, the Holocaust did have an influence on the international community when the concept of a State of Israel was being considered after 1945. I have wondered for years if the Israelis are wise to concentrate on this aspect of their history rather than, for example, the cultural achievements of Israel since 1948. The chancellor attended a joint German-Israeli Cabinet meeting, and had the honor of addressing the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament in Jerusalem. However, I read in my newspaper that some Israelis objected to the fact that her official speech was in German! To criticize a German chancellor for speaking in German on a formal occasion is absurd.
I am convinced Germany needs to rethink its links with Israel, and consider carefully what is in the interests of Germany in 2008 and the wider world.
