Germany’s pro-Netanyahu “Staatsräson”

When Angela Merkel was German Chancellor, she made an unusual declaration speaking to the Israeli Knesset (parliament) in Jerusalem about Germany’s understanding of its historical responsibility for the Holocaust and its legacy meant: “This historical responsibility of Germany is part of my country's raison d'être [Staatsräson]. This means that Israel's security is never negotiable for me as German Chancellor.”

Staatsräson can also be translated as “national interest,” but it has broader implications, too, such as “reason of state”:

The principle of “reason of state” (the term comes from Latin: "ratio status" means "state reason") was of great importance in earlier centuries, when kings and princes still ruled the states. It stated that the interests of the state were placed above all other interests. If the state believed that it would serve the interests of the state, laws could be overturned and even the rights of individuals could be disregarded. The state stood above everything.

In democratic states, the reason of state as described here no longer plays a role. In recent years, terrorists have repeatedly tried to blackmail states by taking hostages or hijacking airplanes. Then many people say: "The reason of state demands that one should not give in to the demands, because a state must not be susceptible to blackmail." This means that it must not be the case that individual perpetrators of violence can force a state to do things that are against the law. [my emphasis] (1)

Merkel’s statement was obviously meant as a statement of strong support for Israel’s security. But calling the security of another state part of the “reason of state” of one’s own country is an unusual construction. It doesn’t really make sense in the normally understood meaning of “reason of state.”

Markus Kaim explained in 2015 that Merkel’s declaration didn’t itself mark any notable change in German policy:

But also the fundamental question of whether Germany has a special responsibility for Israel or that Israel's security is part of Germany's Staatsräson is increasingly answered differently by large parts of the German public than by the political elites. The much more critical attitude is particularly striking in eastern Germany – the difficult relationship between the GDR [German Democratic Republic/East Germany] and Israel without having had formal diplomatic relations may be having an effect here. In addition, it is striking that younger people in particular reject a special responsibility for Israel. Here one can assume that the growing historical distance is having an effect: what has become a cornerstone of German foreign policy for large parts of the generation of Germans who still have their own memories of National Socialism and the Holocaust is increasingly losing its binding effect for the younger generation. [my emphasis] (2)

But the current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated repeated his endorsement of the concept in Israel a few days after the October 7 attacks. And in the context of Israel, it’s a problematic concept for Germany or any other country to adopt as a conceptual and diplomatic framework. It actually has to do with the way in which, over time, German acknowledgment in government policy of German responsibility for the Holocaust has come to include the concept of defending Zionism, the ideology that formed the theoretical basis for the current State of Israel.

And since Israel has made the Holocaust part of its own national narrative, as we have seen in the polemics by the State of Israel and by partisans of Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on the civilians of Gaza, the idea that Germany’s responsibility for the Holocaust means that Germany today should support Israel diplomatically and militarily even when it is committing war crimes and is credibly accused of genocide in the current Gaza war becomes particularly disturbing, or even downright bizarre.

The war supporters understandably focus on the horrors of the October 7 attack last year and often insist on comparisons to the Holocaust. The rightwing Zionist position represented by Netanyahu among others is that a new Holocaust against Jews can break out at any time and only by supporting the most brutal practices against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank can hold off that danger. Which, in the rightwing Zionists narratives, will always be on the verge of happening in any case.

As Israeli peace activist Yael Berda recently put it:

I’m just saying not to forget that there are people trying to make other people more afraid than they already are: those who are constantly mobilizing October 7 and all the horrors again and again, to make sure that no one can have any belief in humanity. We have to notice and challenge that. This is not about moral lecturing, but about being willing to be critical. We need the critique and also the compassion. (3)

The rightwing Zionists – and not exclusively the right wing – have found it helpful to promote a general narrative that the existence of the State of Israel is and essential guarantee that Jews all of the world will be safe from a new Holocaust. While the political goal may be understandable, one of the widely discussed results of the October 7 massacre was that that Israel had not made even Israeli Jews safe from what they still like to describe as the largest number of Jews killed at one time since the Holocaust.

Eylon Levy, previously a spokesperson for Israeli President Isaac Herzog, posted soon after, “It’s no exaggeration to say yesterday was the darkest day in Jewish history since the end of the Holocaust.” (4) US President Joe Biden has also used that description. “On a sacred Jewish holiday, the terrorist group Hamas unleashed the deadliest day of the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” he declared in last month’s Holocaust Remembrance Day speech. (5)

Is criticizing Israel and/or Zionism antisemitic?

The US House of Representatives recently passed a bill endorsing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which seeks to stigmatize criticism of Israel or Israeli policies as antisemitic. An (undated) State Department webpage states, “As a member of IHRA, the United States now uses this working definition and has encouraged other governments and international organizations to use it as well.” (6) Jan Deckers and Jonathan Coulter in a 2022 study, long before attack of October 7, 2023, found – as many other have – serious problems with the IHRA definition:

We conclude that the definition and its list of examples ought to be rejected. The urgency to do so stems from the fact that pro-Israel activists can and have mobilised the IHRA document for political goals unrelated to tackling antisemitism, notably to stigmatise and silence critics of the Israeli government. This causes widespread self-censorship, has an adverse impact on freedom of speech, and impedes action against the unjust treatment of Palestinians. We also identify intrinsic problems in the way the definition refers to criticism of Israel similar ‘to that leveled against any other country’, ambiguous wording about ‘the power of Jews as a collective’, lack of clarity as to the Jewish people’s ‘right to self-determination’, and its denial of obvious racism. [my emphasis] (7)

The German government in 2017 adopted an official definition of antisemitism that “is almost identical to the one proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) used by countries around the world, including, for instance, Britain and Austria.” (8) This was part of a drift into a more and more uncritical posture toward an Israeli policy that has become much, much worse.

In an analysis to which I plan to return in a later post, Hans Kundnani points out that the Green leader Joschka Fischer, who also served as German Foreign Minister, also used the Staatsräson idea for German support of Israel before Merkel proclaimed it in 2008. (8) But, as Kundnani explains, Fischer understand German’s Staatsräson in that context to be first and foremost taking a stand against genocide.

He argues that Fischer’s foreign-policy perspective since the 1990s has been essentially a liberal-interventionist one, which is a distinct perspective from the neoconservative stance. And he writes:

To my surprise, what has emerged in the last decade is not so much a post-Zionist Germany as a hyper-Zionist Germany. Even as the collective memory of the Holocaust is complicated by generational and demographic change, German elites have doubled down on their commitment to Israel. In fact, part of the reason they seem to have done so is that they fear their understanding of the lessons of the Nazi past is no longer widely shared, and they want to make it nonnegotiable before it is too late.

Joschka Fischer’s successors in the Green Party have not only acceded to the shift from a universalist understanding of the lessons of the Nazi past to a particularist one, but have become its most aggressive defenders. Leading Green politicians, such as foreign minister Annalena Baerbock and economics minister Robert Habeck, are among the staunchest supporters of Israel and the harshest critics of anti-Zionist and pro-Palestine voices. Unlike American conservatives, however, they see their unconditional support for Israel as an expression of anti-Nazism—in other words, as a progressive position. Fischer is remembered for his clash with American neoconservatives in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which he opposed. But today, some Greens are closer to neoconservatives than to the left. [my emphasis]

But this tilt by the German center-left parties (SPD and Greens) is not reflective of a general general position by the left and center-left policies EU-wide. So, we’re seeing headlines like this one from Haaretz (9):

Notes:

(1) Gerd Schneider, Gerd & Toyka-Seid, Christiane (2024): Das junge Politik-Lexikon von www.hanisauland.de, Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung 2024. <https://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/lexika/das-junge-politik-lexikon/321175/staatsraeson/> (Accessed: 2024-12-06). My translation from German.

(2) Kaim, Markus (2015): Israels Sicherheit als deutsche Staatsräson. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 65:6, 8-13.

(3) Abed, Sally et. al. (2024): A Historic Junction: The Israeli Left After October 7. Dissent 71:1, 63.

(4) JTA (2023): Was Hamas’s attack on Saturday the bloodiest day for Jews since the Holocaust? Times of Israel 10/09/2023. <https://www.timesofisrael.com/was-hamass-attack-on-saturday-the-bloodiest-day-for-jews-since-the-holocaust/> (Accessed: 2024-12-06). Note: The Hamas attack on October 7 also killed Arabs and non-Jewish foreign workers.

(5) Remarks by President Biden at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Annual Days of Remembrance Ceremony 05/07/2024. White House website. <https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/07/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-u-s-holocaust-memorial-museums-annual-days-of-remembrance-ceremony/> (Accessed: 2024-12-06).

(6) Defining Antisemitism. US Department of State n/d. <https://www.state.gov/defining-antisemitism/> (Accessed: 2024-12-06).

(7) Deckers, Jan & Cozulter, Jonathan (2022): Res Publica 2022:28(4), 733–752. Published online 05/01/2022.<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9092927/> (Accessed: 2024-12-06).

(8) Chase, Jefferson (2017): Germany adopts anti-Semitism definition. Deutsche Welle English 09/20/2017. <https://www.dw.com/en/german-government-adopts-international-anti-semitism-definition/a-40608166> (Accessed: 2024-12-06).

(9) Kundnani, Hans (2024): The Failure of Germany’s Memory Culture. Dissent 71: 2, 67-73. <chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/article/929031/pdf> (Accessed: 2024-12-06).

(10) Sommer, Allison Kaplan (2024): Israelis' Myopic Rejoicing Over the Rise of Europe's 'pro-Israel' Far Right. Haaretz 06/10/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/haaretz-today/2024-06-10/ty-article/.highlight/israelis-myopic-rejoicing-over-the-rise-of-europes-pro-israel-far-right/00000190-031d-d5ad-ad93-275d113b0000> (Accessed: 2024-12-06).