Chancellor Friedrich Merz was supposed to be on his summer holiday but on Sunday afternoon he was in a Munich television studio in full damage-limitation mode.
In a hastily-arranged interview, Merz insisted his decision on Friday to halt German arms deliveries to Israel did not mark a major policy shift.
“We have a dissent with the Israeli government involving Israel’s approach to the Gaza Strip,” said Merz on ARD public television explaining Friday’s decision, “but we continue to stand, without any doubt, at the side of this country”.
Merz said he and his officials had been grappling for weeks with how best to stand by Israel while responding to its effective aid blockade and the growing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
READ MORE
The Israeli decision to expand its war in Gaza, Merz said, came as a “surprise” and forced him to act.
“We cannot supply weapons in a conflict that is now being fought exclusively to be resolved by military means and which could claim hundreds of thousands of civilian victims,” he said.
For the 69-year-old, Sunday’s 11-minute interview was a belated attempt to escape from a very German post-October 7th trap.
For nearly two years many politicians such as Merz and his centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) have conflated the state of Israel and the Netanyahu government’s Gaza strategy – denouncing critics of the latter as enemies of the former.
For Merz and his allies, this strategy went beyond defending Israel’s right to self-defence: it was about defending Germany’s six decades of post-Holocaust bilateral relations.
As a frame for this narrative they used a 2007 remark by ex-chancellor Angela Merkel, in a speech about Iran’s nuclear programme, that Israel’s security was part of German “Staatsräson”, or “reason of state”.
After months denouncing those who questioned the Netanyahu government’s Gaza strategy, Sunday’s interview saw Merz hoist by his own petard.
The CDU leader said he was anxious to “prevent misunderstandings” about what halting arms deliveries means – and doesn’t mean.
But his interview came 48 hours too late – and after an unprecedented weekend assault. His right-wing Bavarian coalition sister party, the Christian Social Union, insisted it “wasn’t involved in” and “wouldn’t support” this “questionable decision”.
That was mild compared with the response of the Israel-friendly Springer media group, whose journalists sign up to an ethos that includes “supporting the right of Israel to exist”.
Since October 7th, 2023, Springer’s Bild tabloid has consistently described Israel critics as “Jew haters” and, on Saturday, accused the chancellor on its front-page of “caving”.
On Sunday it argued Merz had “torn down overnight a decades-old CDU [political] pillar without telling anyone, then gone back to his holiday”.
In Sunday’s interview, Merz insisted his shift was motivated by strategic and humanitarian concerns and not popular opinion. Yet three recent opinion polls tell their own story.
Just 36 per cent of Germans say they hold a positive view of Israel, according to a Bertelsmann Foundation survey, down 10 points from the same survey in 2021. Meanwhile a second poll for Stern magazine last week suggested three-quarters of Germans want a tougher German stance towards Israel over Gaza.
Meanwhile a third survey released on Sunday indicated 54 per cent of Germans now favour recognising Palestinian statehood, while 31 per cent remain opposed.
After three months as German leader, and nearly two years pushing one line on Israel, Merz now faces a revolt among CDU party members who refuse to accept his new memo.
CDU foreign policy spokesman Roderich Kiesewetter described the weapons pause as “a serious political and strategic mistake” that saw Merz yielding to Hamas propaganda and “the anti-Semitic mob on the streets”.
