GERMANY’S COMPLICITY WITH THE GAZA GENOCIDE
Germany’s complicity with Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is an undeniable fact. The following are four evidence that support that statement.
1. Weapons supply
Data published by investigative outlet Forensic Architecture from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute shows that Germany supplied 47% of Israel’s total imports of conventional arms in 2023.
According to data from Germany’s own Economy Ministry, which approves export licences, in 2023 the country approved arms exports to Israel worth $363.5 million, including military equipment and war weapons, a 10-fold increase from 2022.
Latest numbers obtained by a German MP show that arms exports to Israel are worth US$101 million since August 2024 alone. To date in 2024, Germany has provided 30% of Israel’s weapons supply.
All these despite claims that approval for export licences for arms to Israel has stopped due to legal and political pressure from legal cases arguing that such exports from Germany breached humanitarian law. A very notable instance of such legal cases is the action by Nicaragua in April this year at the International Court of Justice accusing Germany of breaching the United Nations genocide convention by sending arms to Israel.
2. German government’s explicit declarations of support for Israel
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the German government will ensure the delivery of more weapons to Israel. Addressing the parliament on the first anniversary of the October 7 2023, he said: “We in the government have made decisions that will ensure the delivery of more weapons soon.”
This is despite ever increasing documented evidence available publicly that Israel is unrelenting in its perpetration of war crimes against Palestinian civilians in Gaza. A sizable amount of the evidence is provided by the Israelis themselves drunk by the impunity granted by the US and Germany.
On October 10 2024, Germany’s foreign secretary Annalena Baerbock declared at the German Federal Parliament that self-defence means not only attacking terrorists but destroying them and Hamas ‘terrorists’ hide behind people, behind schools those civilian places lose their protected status because terrorists abuse it. She stated: “That’s why I clearly conveyed to the UN that civilian areas could lose their protected status because they are being abused by terrorists.”
Not once in her speech did she furnish any shred of credible evidence that the schools and civilian places she referred to were being abused by ‘terrorists’. Presumably, standing up for Israel means being gullible and ever ready to swallow any Israeli claim, however tenuous and evidence-free. The nett effect of her speech is to give a blank cheque to Israel to continue slaughtering civilians. And presumably that is acceptable since those are brown civilians, not white ones.
The German Foreign Ministry declared on October 14th 2024 that it does not see any signs that Israel is committing a genocide in the besieged Gaza Strip for the last year.
The declaration came on the same day the Israeli occupation forces burned displaced Palestinians in their tents by Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in Gaza and footage of the atrocity was widely circulated on social media showing harrowing scenes in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of the tents. The inferno followed the killing of 22 Palestinians including 15 children in a separate airstrike on a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school housing displaced Palestinians in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
3. Germany’s crackdown on pro-Palestine movements, protest rallies and individuals
In April this year, German police used brutal and excessive force as they broke up a pro-Palestinian protest camp outside the Bundestag parliament building in Berlin and several demonstrators were arrested.
Also in April, both Palestinian and pro-Palestine Jewish protesters bore the brunt of police crackdowns on protests in Germany. Said one protester, “We Jews are just getting arrested, the Palestinians are being beaten”. A hijab-wearing protester at a sit-in in Berlin central station this past weekend was manhandled before being arrested, which was captured on video and posted to social media channels.
Free expression and academic freedom in Germany are being repressed in the service of Israeli interests. Students and university staff say that their right to free expression has come under assault from hostile media coverage, repressive legal measures taken by universities and politicians, and the use of police violence against peaceful pro-Palestine anti-genocide demonstrators.
On April 12 2024, Germany blocked Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah, a British-Palestinian medical doctor who saw first-hand the atrocities taking place in Gaza, from entering the country. He was due to deliver a speech at a Palestine conference in Berlin on his experience and observations in Gaza.
On October 9 2024, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg said German police were threatening and silencing pro-Palestine activists. The accusation was made a day after police in Dortmund shut down a four-month-old protest camp that Thunberg had been invited to join. According to her, the police said that they would arrest her if she went there. Thunberg further said that Germany is threatening and silencing activists who speak out against the genocide and occupation.
All the above instances and episodes of repression of domestic dissent are irrefutable evidence of Germany’s collaboration with the genocide in Gaza.
4. German flag for MV Kathrin
MV Kathrin is a vessel carrying eight containers of military-grade explosives intended for use by the Israeli occupation forces. She was banned by several countries from docking at their ports during her voyage to Europe because her cargo would implicate them with war crimes. For the same reason, the Portuguese government had withdrawn permission for her to use the Portuguese flag which was her original flag. Without a flag, she would not have been able to continue her voyage. She has now resorted to flying the German flag – with no apparent objection from the German government. Such is Germany’s efforts to enable the genocide in Gaza to continue.
Legal implications of Germany’s policy of complicity
The following are international law and UN resolutions, as they now stand, that govern the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They have grave implications on Germany’s policy towards Israel and the genocide in Gaza.
• 26 January 2024: the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rules that Israel is conducting ‘plausible genocide’ and orders it to take measures to cease and desist.
• 20 May 2024: the International Criminal Court (ICC) applies for arrest warrants for war crimes against the prime minister and the defence minister of Israel
• 10 June 2024: UN Security Council adopts Resolution 2735 which calls on Israel to implement a ceasefire immediately.
• 20 June 2024: the UN Human Rights Council issues call on all member states and corporate bodies to stop supplying Israel with weapons because of Israel’s war crimes and human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
• 30 July 2024: the ICJ declares that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal.
• 18 September 2024: the UN General Assembly adopts a resolution demanding Israel bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
It is clear that Israel is showing and continuing to show that it has total disregard for all the above resolutions and international law.
UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, warned that if Germany has indeed chosen to align itself with a state committing international crimes, it is a political decision that carries significant legal consequences. In her report dated July 1st 2024 entitled ‘Anatomy of a Genocide’, she recommends that UN member states immediately implement an arms embargo on Israel, as it appears to have failed to comply with the binding measures ordered by the International Court of Justice on 26 January 2024, as well as other economic and political measures necessary to ensure an immediate and lasting ceasefire and to restore respect for international law, including sanctions.
It is glaringly clear that Germany not only ignores the above recommendation; it has a deliberate policy that runs counter to it: no sanctions on arms supply to Israel despite mounting evidence that those weapons are enabling countless war crimes.
80 years ago, German leaders were held to account in Nuremberg. It may well be that in the near future German leaders will be held to account in The Hague.
German domestic popular opposition to supplying arms to Israel
According to a poll by Forsa, 60 percent of Germans oppose arms exports to Israel, with a majority of voters from the country’s three ruling coalition partners supporting restrictions.
In April 2024, a group of about 600 German civil servants wrote to the chancellor and other senior ministers calling on the government to cease arm deliveries to the Israeli government with immediate effect.
The letter further states that “Israel is committing crimes in Gaza that are in clear contradiction to international law and thus to the Constitution, which we are bound to as federal civil servants and public employees.” It went on to cite the International Court of Justice’s ruling in January that Israel’s military actions are “plausible acts of genocide”.
It is reprehensible that Germany’s policymakers have chosen to wilfully ignore the majority of its population in the question of arms supply to Israel.
Germany on the wrong side of history — As usual?
As it is, the Global South looks askance at Germany and wondering why a nation that claims to have atoned for genocide is supporting an ongoing genocide. One is not certain whether to laugh or cry when Germany steps in to defend Israel before the ICJ on the basis of its expertise on genocide when Israeli and non-Israeli scholars have explicitly given their expert opinion that what is happening in Gaza is textbook genocide.
Historical guilt may explain Germany’s obligation to support the Jewish state. But it cannot explain its blind support even there are irrefutable evidence that such unquestioning support has led to war crimes and an ongoing genocide in which more than 45,000 civilians have been massacred including about 16,000 innocent children.
What may explain that blind support is that Germany has learned the wrong lessons from history. ‘Never again’ should not mean ‘never again’ only for Jews. It should mean ‘never again’ for anyone, no matter the nationality or ethnicity or creed or religion.
The German government has also undeniably made the mistake of conflating the Israeli state with ‘Jewishness’ when millions of Jews around the world have rejected the notion that Zionism represents world Jewry and the Jewish religion.
It is high time that Germany accepted that criticising Israel is not anti-Semitism and that German foreign policy towards Israel should be revised to be aligned with the goals of the UN charter, international law and fundamental human rights of all parties, not just Israelis.
Under such conditions, the only viable option is for Germany to impose sanctions on and end its complicity with Israel – and thus be on the right side of history, humanity and international law.
BDS Malaysia