Germany’s Political Class Is Still Giving Unconditional Support to Israeli Apartheid
Israel’s far-right government has made its oppression of the Palestinians more blatant than ever. German politicians still won’t budge in their uncritical support for Israel, but public opinion in Germany is shifting in the opposite direction.
German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock (R) and Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen make remarks at a press conference after meeting in Berlin, Germany, February 28, 2023. (Bernd von Jutrczenka / picture alliance via Getty Images)
In May 2023, an opinion poll commissioned from the polling company YouGov by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag found that the German people “are clearly on the side of the Palestinians. Only 13 percent see Israeli policy toward the Palestinians as (somewhat) just, 54 percent as (somewhat) unjust.”
This has dismayed Germany’s political elite, who are accustomed to lauding Israeli “democracy” without concern for the fate of its Palestinian victims. Omid Nouripour is the coleader of the Greens, who are currently in government with the Social Democrats (SPD) and the neoliberal Free Democrats. He expressed alarm at the survey findings and conflated support for Israel with opposition to antisemitism:
Less than half of Germans still perceive the special responsibility for the security of the State of Israel today . . . It is necessary for the law-bound state [Rechtsstaat] to adopt a clear stance against antisemitism in all its forms.
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