The lack of a highly organized pro-Israel community in Germany has enabled the Federal Republic’s Social Democratic Party-led coalition government to endanger the security of the Jewish state in the year and a half since 10/7.
Pro-Israel activists in Germany desperately need a concrete plan of action to be able to effectively oppose the anti-Israel political class.
The most telling examples of Germany’s abandonment of the Jewish state during its seven-front war against Iran-backed terrorist movements and proxies were Berlin’s freeze of weapon deliveries to Israel and its continuation of aid to the Israel-designated terrorist entity UNRWA.
Wolfgang Pohrt (1945-2015), a German social scientist and political journalist, described the caretaker antisemitism targeting Israel and Jews as German perpetrators claiming to have learned the lessons of the Holocaust by embracing the role of moral policemen tasked with preventing “their victims from relapsing.”
Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, is one of key enforcers of the perverse system of playing the probation officer for Israelis. He went as far as to tweet in December antisemitic pro-Hamas talking points, sparking a harsh rejoinder from Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
The government of Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Green party Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has been a sordid mix of hypocrisy, moralizing and arrogance
After Hamas-led terrorists massacred some 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023, including German nationals, Scholz said on October 12 that “Security in and for Israel must be restored, and that is why Israel must be able to defend itself. There is only one place for Germany at this time, and that is by Israel’s side. This is what we mean when we say: Israel’s security is part of Germany’s raison d’état."
“Our own history, our responsibility deriving from the Holocaust, makes it our permanent duty to stand up for the existence and security of the State of Israel. This responsibility guides us.”
Yet Scholz quickly betrayed Israel. His anti-Israel Foreign Minister Baerbock spent her time hosting antisemitic and anti-Israel activists instead of working to secure the release of the hostages held in the Gaza Strip.
What can Germans do to establish real checks and balances on the wildly out-of-control anti-Israel political climate in the Federal Republic?
First, pro-Israel Germans need to form a street-fighter-style organization that is independent of the German government and willing to punish and discipline politicians for their anti-Israel rhetoric and conduct. In short, the new pro-Israel group should replicate AIPAC’s strategy of supporting candidates who are pro-Israel and seek to counter rising radical Islamism and anti-Israel fanatics in the Bundestag. Put simply, the new organization needs to campaign to elect pro-Israel candidates and oust anti-Israel MPs.
The nearly 9,000 members of the German Foreign Ministry-financed German-Israeli Society (DIG) should swiftly dissolve their organizations and create a pro-Israel group along the lines of AIPAC. The DIG is pro-Israel on paper but a Trojan horse of anti-Israel activism in practice.
Volker Beck, the Green party politician who is president of the partly anti-Zionist DIG, frequently attacks Israel’s government and supports Seibert’s attacks on the Jewish state. He spends the bulk of his time on X when he should be mobilizing DIG members to run multi-pronged campaigns against the government’s pro-Iran regime and anti-Israel policies.
Beck has endorsed BDS actions against Israel during the current war. I have reported on Likud MKs, including in Arutz Sheva prior to 10/7, who criticized Beck’s anti-Zionism and the misguided DIG.
The new pro-Israel organization’s point of departure should be the same as that of the great African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglas (c1818-1895): “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
It is impossible to have a meaningful pro-Israel organization that accepts government funding. That also holds true for the shrinking German Jewish community (which numbers roughly 100.000 members), whose positions frequently mirror the German government’s.
Dr. Josef Schuster, the lackluster head of the government-subsidized Central Council of Jews in Germany, has not called on the government to close the Iranian embassy in Berlin and end the robust trade relationship with Iran’s regime.
Barbara Traub, the partially anti-Zionist chairwoman of the Jewish community in Stuttgart, has not objected to the city’s mayor, Frank Nopper, enabling a pro-Hamas group on the municipal website.
Traub along with Susanne Jakubowski from the Jewish community openly cooperate with the antisemitic Turkish Islamist organization DİTİB in the city’s misguided interreligious dialogue experiment, the Council of Religions. To Schuster’s credit, he rejects cooperation with DİTİB. Traub snubbed Schuster.
Traub also promotes a German bureaucrat, Michael Blume, who blames Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for mushrooming antisemitism in Germany and Europe because he is waging a war of self-defense against Hamas. What makes this even more outrageous is that Blume’s job is to fight antisemitism on behalf of the government of Baden-Württemberg, the German state that includes Stuttgart.
Last year, the Munich-based Holocaust survivor Roman Haller, who served as the head of the Jewish Claims Conference, urged Blume to resign because of his classic antisemitic position that the Jews are to blame for antisemitism.
The standard for calling oneself“pro-Israel” in Germany is painfully low. For example, the journalist Alan Posener attacked AIPAC because it works with Christians United for Israel—a powerful movement in the US that has advanced Israel’s security.
Posener claims to be pro-Israel and writes for the pro-Israel newspaper, Die Welt, but he sought to whitewash the antisemitism of Michael Blume in the pages of the paper. Posener, like Winfried Kretschmann, the Green party governor of Baden-Württemberg, embraced the psychotic Maoist communist movement in China. Both men have now allegedly distanced themselves from their Maoism.
The fragmented pro-Israel scene in Germany needs to coalesce around a robust organization and elevate the standard for what constitutes pro-Israel policy prescriptions and actions. German Christian Zionists should play a key role in the new organization.
A list of demands should include legislation to sanction Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC); the closure of Iran’s embassy and Iranian banks in Germany; a ban on trade with Tehran; shuttering Iranian regime organizations such as the Al-Mustafa Institute in Berlin; anti-BDS legislation in each of the 16 German states that sanctions companies for conducting business with pro-BDS companies and regimes; the eviction of all DİTİB centers; and the swift deportation of pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah and pro-Iran regime students who are not German citizens.
The aforesaid list is, of course, not comprehensive. The abolition of the system of government-funded antisemitism commissioners such as Felix Klein is long overdue. Klein, who has filled the role on the federal level since 2018, has largely refused to criticize the Iranian regime for its role as the “world’s chief trafficker in antisemitism” and the foremost state sponsor of Holocaust denial.
However, in 2019, Klein blasted President Donald Trump as “dangerous for the Jewish community.” He omitted Palestinian- (including Hamas-) and Iranian regime-sponsored antisemitism in his first report on how to combat Jew-hatred prior to 10/7. In his post-10/7 report, he refused to include Iran’s lethal antisemitism. This is the same Iran that aided Hamas in the buildup to 10/7 and celebrated the mass murder of Jews.
Too many well-meaning pro-Israel Germans spend their time critiquing the largely anti-Israel German media instead of working to secure political power. Others such as Karoline Preisler engage in solo counter-demonstrations during pro-Hamas rallies. Those laudable efforts will not alter the balance of power.
The result is often nothing more than virtue-signaling-style speeches declaring “There is no space for antisemitism in Germany.” The time is ripe for a pro-Israel organization and movement in Germany that seeks to achieve genuine political power.
Benjamin Weinthal is a Writing Fellow for the Middle East Forum
