Gaza War | Steinmeier's visit to Israel: absolution instead of responsibility

On May 12, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will receive Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Berlin. The occasion: 60 years of diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel. The following day, the two will travel together to Israel , where Steinmeier will also meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – the man against whom the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, has requested an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. According to a statement from the Federal Foreign Office, the German government sees itself as "united in its commitment to shared values" in this anniversary year.

The symbolic impact of this visit is obvious. Under Netanyahu's leadership , Israel's war in Gaza escalated into an attack that military and government officials link to the goal of expelling and exterminating Palestinian life. The result is hard to deny: What is happening in the Gaza Strip meets the criteria of genocide , as defined by the jurist and Holocaust survivor Raphael Lemkin. This assessment is now shared by numerous human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Against this backdrop, Steinmeier's visit seems like absolution – a handshake over the graves of tens of thousands . At the same time, he normalizes the fact that Israel is now using hunger as a weapon of war by blocking humanitarian aid. The visit sends a signal: Germany is not just standing with Israel, but with an internationally wanted war criminal – and with a government under whose leadership, by all indications, genocide is taking place . This symbolic proximity lends legitimacy to Netanyahu's course. For many Palestinians and critical observers, this is a declaration of moral bankruptcy – and for authoritarian regimes from Ankara to Moscow to Washington, it is a clear signal: systematic violence can remain without consequences as long as the alliances are right.

The visit is a signal: Germany is not only standing on the side of Israel, but also on the side of an internationally wanted war criminal.

Since Angela Merkel declared in the Knesset in 2008 that Israel's security was part of Germany's raison d'état, this phrase has become a foreign policy dogma—and the leitmotif of a section of the German left, whose unconditional solidarity with Israel continues to resonate today. But what does raison d'état mean when Israel razes a territory it occupies, deliberately kills civilians, rescue workers, and journalists, and blocks humanitarian aid? In light of Steinmeier's visit, the answer seems painfully simple: German raison d'état has become detached from any moral standards.

It no longer serves – and perhaps never did – to critically reflect on German responsibility as it arises from the Shoah. On the contrary: reasons of state undermine remembrance today. In his book "Absolution?", political scientist Daniel Marwecki shows that German-Israeli relations had little to do with coming to terms with the past from the very beginning. It was a matter of foreign policy calculation: the young Federal Republic was seeking a path into the Western community of nations – not out of a sense of responsibility, but to rehabilitate its reputation after the Holocaust. Israel, in turn, not yet under the protective umbrella of the USA at the time, was dependent on support for state-building. A sober deal: absolution in exchange for recognition. Only later did this become the supposedly moral foundation of German foreign policy – ​​a foundation that has long since detached itself from ethical demands.

Those who remain silent about the war crimes in Gaza today in the name of historical responsibility—or, as Steinmeier is now demonstratively normalizing them—while tens of thousands of children are being buried under rubble by Israeli bombs, are turning memory into an instrument of turning a blind eye. Invoking the Shoah becomes a hollow gesture when it fails in the face of the horrors of the present.

Anyone who remains silent about the war crimes in Gaza today in the name of historical responsibility is turning memory into an instrument of turning a blind eye.

It's obvious that Germany, as a perpetrator country, maintains a different relationship with Israel than, for example, France or Ukraine. Special diplomatic relations can be justified historically. But Germany is complicit today – through rhetorical support, through arms exports, and through the growing willingness to use domestic criticism of Israel as a litmus test of political loyalty and a template for exclusion.

Even by its own logic, German policy has long since maneuvered itself into a dead end. While the transatlantic alliance continues to erode under Trump, the German government's moral failure in dealing with Gaza undermines its credibility. Anyone who defends human rights and international law so selectively loses authority. The much-vaunted "rules-based order" is devalued when the standard is so openly applied in two ways.

Anyone hoping that Steinmeier will find critical words in Jerusalem will likely be disappointed. Theoretically, the Federal President could at least use his trip to visit not only Israel but also occupied Palestine. However, even such a visit to the West Bank is not planned – even though the situation there has dramatically worsened in recent months due to settler violence and military repression by the Israeli army.

What is needed is a German Middle East policy that no longer hides behind symbolic maxims, but rather looks, names – and, when in doubt, contradicts.

In the northern West Bank, Israeli attacks on cities like Jenin and Tulkarm led to the displacement of over 40,000 people – the largest forced displacement in the region in decades. None of this seems to interest the German Federal President – ​​at least not enough to want to see it with his own eyes. This is despite the fact that right-wing extremist ministers like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gwir are openly pushing for a de jure annexation of the West Bank – a step that would definitively bury the two-state solution.

A change of course is needed. A German Middle East policy that no longer hides behind symbolic maxims, but rather observes, names, and, when in doubt, contradicts – and commits itself to universal principles, not strategic loyalties. As long as that doesn't happen, German solidarity with Israel will remain not a lesson from history – but a distortion of it.