Alsharq Tribune – world News
Berlin has imposed a de facto weapons embargo on Israel as Jerusalem vows to keep pounding Hezbollah with airstrikes to enable the return of as many as 100,000 displaced Israelis to their homes near the Lebanese border.
Germany’s Bild newspaper reported about the embargo on September 15. “However, sales of heavy weapons systems to the Emirate of Qatar—one of the most important supporters of the terrorist group Hamas—were approved,” the mass circulation daily added.
Four days later, Reuters reported that Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s left-center coalition government “put a hold on new exports of weapons of war to Israel.” When i24NEWS approached Scholz’s office, a spokesperson said "There is no ban on arms exports to Israel, “ and added, "Human rights and international humanitarian law are taken into account in all export control decisions.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper from the Simon Wiesenthal Center told i24NEWS, “The chancellor rushed to Israel after Oct. 7, for which the Jewish people is eternally grateful. Were those words just that—words? Israel faces an existential threat engineered by the Iranian regime and its terrorist lackeys. Israel needs help now. Which will it be, more words or actions of a reliable ally with historic responsibilities to the Jewish people?”
Governments lie all the time and play semantic games to disguise the truth. The raw data establishes that Berlin has largely stopped selling offensive weapons to Israel. According to Reuters, “approvals have dropped this year, with only 14.5 million euros worth granted from January to Aug. 21.” The news organization continued, “Of this, the weapons of war category accounted for only 32,449 euros.”
By way of contrast, Germany green-lighted “arms exports to Israel worth 326.5 million euros, including military equipment and war weapons,” to Israel in 2023.
Scholz seems to be an Act 2 of the former Social Democratic Chancellor Willy Brandt, who pledged to not remain neutral when Israel was on the ropes during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Brandt refused to let the American military use the Bremerhaven port to deliver sorely needed arms to Israel.
For the objective outsider, Germany’s hypocrisy mixed with its moralizing about “human rights” is salient. Israel, the only Mideast democracy, is fighting a seven-front existential war while many leading counter-terrorism experts consider Qatar to be the world’s worst state-sponsor of terrorism.
Yigal Carmon, the president of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), published on Monday a scathing indictment of Qatar’s sponsorship of Islamist terrorism and movements. He urged the US to relocate its CENTCOM military base from Qatar.
“One relatively simple move could change America's weak standing in the world into a strong one, and even prevent a looming world war, possibly resulting from the tensions created by Qatar worldwide—and that is moving the CENTCOM base from Qatar to the UAE or KSA [the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia],” wrote Carmon. “This would be a new approach by America—preferring its allies over its enemies in the Arab and Muslim world, fighting Islamism rather than embracing it, cutting off the flow of cash dollars for anti-Americanism, creating a real bloc against Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, denying the Iranian ayatollahs' regime a major ally worldwide, and ushering in a sane strategy of strengthening Western civilization over those who seek to destroy it.”
Germany has become addicted to Qatari gas ever since it weaned itself of Vladimir Putin’s supply. Qatar’s massive investments in the Central European nation also plays a role in influencing power politics in the Federal Republic.
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s lofty address to the Knesset in March 2008 about Israel’s security interests being part of Germany’s raison d’être turned out to be empty rhetoric, one can argue, for Scholz and his Social Democratic Party. Merkel said at the time that “Israel's security will never be open to negotiation. And that being the case, we must do more than pay lip-service to this commitment at this critical point.”
Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union has also betrayed Israel. When Bundestag deputy Roderich Kiesewetter, security spokesperson for the Christian Democrats, said Berlin might help refuel Israeli Air Force jets that are defending the Jewish state, and also use Eurofighter aircraft to fend off Iranian drones, his CDU party members shot down his active solidarity for Israel.
Scholz’s Green Party foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, appeared to stoke a classic antisemitic worldview by blaming Israel (read: the Jews) for the hostage crisis in Gaza during her recent visit to Israel. “Last weekend clearly showed that military action alone will not solve the situation in Gaza,” she said, according to a report in Bild. “Purely military pressure, as we have seen, endangers the lives of the hostages.”
Baerbock is currently embroiled in a series of anti-Israel scandals for inviting a motley crew of antisemites and haters of Israel for an exclusive dinner and a meeting.
Germany’s ambassador to Jerusalem Steffen Seibert, whom Israel’s government has twice reprimanded for anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian-terrorism activity, has gone silent about the weapons embargo and Baerbock’s embrace of antisemitic agitators.
Green Party politician Volker Beck, the controversial head of the German-Israel Friendship Association (DIG), has also stayed mum about the embargo and Baerbock’s scandals. The DIG, which is funded by Baerbock’s ministry, is supposed to advance the security of Israel. Beck advocated as early as 2014 for sanctions on weapons sales to Israel.
All of the moving parts taken together reveal official Germany’s profound indifference regarding the security of Israel.
Alsharq Tribune – world News
Berlin has imposed a de facto weapons embargo on Israel as Jerusalem vows to keep pounding Hezbollah with airstrikes to enable the return of as many as 100,000 displaced Israelis to their homes near the Lebanese border.
Germany’s Bild newspaper reported about the embargo on September 15. “However, sales of heavy weapons systems to the Emirate of Qatar—one of the most important supporters of the terrorist group Hamas—were approved,” the mass circulation daily added.
Four days later, Reuters reported that Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s left-center coalition government “put a hold on new exports of weapons of war to Israel.” When i24NEWS approached Scholz’s office, a spokesperson said "There is no ban on arms exports to Israel, “ and added, "Human rights and international humanitarian law are taken into account in all export control decisions.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper from the Simon Wiesenthal Center told i24NEWS, “The chancellor rushed to Israel after Oct. 7, for which the Jewish people is eternally grateful. Were those words just that—words? Israel faces an existential threat engineered by the Iranian regime and its terrorist lackeys. Israel needs help now. Which will it be, more words or actions of a reliable ally with historic responsibilities to the Jewish people?”
Governments lie all the time and play semantic games to disguise the truth. The raw data establishes that Berlin has largely stopped selling offensive weapons to Israel. According to Reuters, “approvals have dropped this year, with only 14.5 million euros worth granted from January to Aug. 21.” The news organization continued, “Of this, the weapons of war category accounted for only 32,449 euros.”
By way of contrast, Germany green-lighted “arms exports to Israel worth 326.5 million euros, including military equipment and war weapons,” to Israel in 2023.
Scholz seems to be an Act 2 of the former Social Democratic Chancellor Willy Brandt, who pledged to not remain neutral when Israel was on the ropes during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Brandt refused to let the American military use the Bremerhaven port to deliver sorely needed arms to Israel.
For the objective outsider, Germany’s hypocrisy mixed with its moralizing about “human rights” is salient. Israel, the only Mideast democracy, is fighting a seven-front existential war while many leading counter-terrorism experts consider Qatar to be the world’s worst state-sponsor of terrorism.
Yigal Carmon, the president of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), published on Monday a scathing indictment of Qatar’s sponsorship of Islamist terrorism and movements. He urged the US to relocate its CENTCOM military base from Qatar.
“One relatively simple move could change America's weak standing in the world into a strong one, and even prevent a looming world war, possibly resulting from the tensions created by Qatar worldwide—and that is moving the CENTCOM base from Qatar to the UAE or KSA [the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia],” wrote Carmon. “This would be a new approach by America—preferring its allies over its enemies in the Arab and Muslim world, fighting Islamism rather than embracing it, cutting off the flow of cash dollars for anti-Americanism, creating a real bloc against Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, denying the Iranian ayatollahs' regime a major ally worldwide, and ushering in a sane strategy of strengthening Western civilization over those who seek to destroy it.”
Germany has become addicted to Qatari gas ever since it weaned itself of Vladimir Putin’s supply. Qatar’s massive investments in the Central European nation also plays a role in influencing power politics in the Federal Republic.
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s lofty address to the Knesset in March 2008 about Israel’s security interests being part of Germany’s raison d’être turned out to be empty rhetoric, one can argue, for Scholz and his Social Democratic Party. Merkel said at the time that “Israel's security will never be open to negotiation. And that being the case, we must do more than pay lip-service to this commitment at this critical point.”
Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union has also betrayed Israel. When Bundestag deputy Roderich Kiesewetter, security spokesperson for the Christian Democrats, said Berlin might help refuel Israeli Air Force jets that are defending the Jewish state, and also use Eurofighter aircraft to fend off Iranian drones, his CDU party members shot down his active solidarity for Israel.
Scholz’s Green Party foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, appeared to stoke a classic antisemitic worldview by blaming Israel (read: the Jews) for the hostage crisis in Gaza during her recent visit to Israel. “Last weekend clearly showed that military action alone will not solve the situation in Gaza,” she said, according to a report in Bild. “Purely military pressure, as we have seen, endangers the lives of the hostages.”
Baerbock is currently embroiled in a series of anti-Israel scandals for inviting a motley crew of antisemites and haters of Israel for an exclusive dinner and a meeting.
Germany’s ambassador to Jerusalem Steffen Seibert, whom Israel’s government has twice reprimanded for anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian-terrorism activity, has gone silent about the weapons embargo and Baerbock’s embrace of antisemitic agitators.
Green Party politician Volker Beck, the controversial head of the German-Israel Friendship Association (DIG), has also stayed mum about the embargo and Baerbock’s scandals. The DIG, which is funded by Baerbock’s ministry, is supposed to advance the security of Israel. Beck advocated as early as 2014 for sanctions on weapons sales to Israel.
All of the moving parts taken together reveal official Germany’s profound indifference regarding the security of Israel.
Alsharq Tribune – world News
Berlin has imposed a de facto weapons embargo on Israel as Jerusalem vows to keep pounding Hezbollah with airstrikes to enable the return of as many as 100,000 displaced Israelis to their homes near the Lebanese border.
Germany’s Bild newspaper reported about the embargo on September 15. “However, sales of heavy weapons systems to the Emirate of Qatar—one of the most important supporters of the terrorist group Hamas—were approved,” the mass circulation daily added.
Four days later, Reuters reported that Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s left-center coalition government “put a hold on new exports of weapons of war to Israel.” When i24NEWS approached Scholz’s office, a spokesperson said "There is no ban on arms exports to Israel, “ and added, "Human rights and international humanitarian law are taken into account in all export control decisions.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper from the Simon Wiesenthal Center told i24NEWS, “The chancellor rushed to Israel after Oct. 7, for which the Jewish people is eternally grateful. Were those words just that—words? Israel faces an existential threat engineered by the Iranian regime and its terrorist lackeys. Israel needs help now. Which will it be, more words or actions of a reliable ally with historic responsibilities to the Jewish people?”
Governments lie all the time and play semantic games to disguise the truth. The raw data establishes that Berlin has largely stopped selling offensive weapons to Israel. According to Reuters, “approvals have dropped this year, with only 14.5 million euros worth granted from January to Aug. 21.” The news organization continued, “Of this, the weapons of war category accounted for only 32,449 euros.”
By way of contrast, Germany green-lighted “arms exports to Israel worth 326.5 million euros, including military equipment and war weapons,” to Israel in 2023.
Scholz seems to be an Act 2 of the former Social Democratic Chancellor Willy Brandt, who pledged to not remain neutral when Israel was on the ropes during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Brandt refused to let the American military use the Bremerhaven port to deliver sorely needed arms to Israel.
For the objective outsider, Germany’s hypocrisy mixed with its moralizing about “human rights” is salient. Israel, the only Mideast democracy, is fighting a seven-front existential war while many leading counter-terrorism experts consider Qatar to be the world’s worst state-sponsor of terrorism.
Yigal Carmon, the president of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), published on Monday a scathing indictment of Qatar’s sponsorship of Islamist terrorism and movements. He urged the US to relocate its CENTCOM military base from Qatar.
“One relatively simple move could change America's weak standing in the world into a strong one, and even prevent a looming world war, possibly resulting from the tensions created by Qatar worldwide—and that is moving the CENTCOM base from Qatar to the UAE or KSA [the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia],” wrote Carmon. “This would be a new approach by America—preferring its allies over its enemies in the Arab and Muslim world, fighting Islamism rather than embracing it, cutting off the flow of cash dollars for anti-Americanism, creating a real bloc against Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, denying the Iranian ayatollahs' regime a major ally worldwide, and ushering in a sane strategy of strengthening Western civilization over those who seek to destroy it.”
Germany has become addicted to Qatari gas ever since it weaned itself of Vladimir Putin’s supply. Qatar’s massive investments in the Central European nation also plays a role in influencing power politics in the Federal Republic.
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s lofty address to the Knesset in March 2008 about Israel’s security interests being part of Germany’s raison d’être turned out to be empty rhetoric, one can argue, for Scholz and his Social Democratic Party. Merkel said at the time that “Israel's security will never be open to negotiation. And that being the case, we must do more than pay lip-service to this commitment at this critical point.”
Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union has also betrayed Israel. When Bundestag deputy Roderich Kiesewetter, security spokesperson for the Christian Democrats, said Berlin might help refuel Israeli Air Force jets that are defending the Jewish state, and also use Eurofighter aircraft to fend off Iranian drones, his CDU party members shot down his active solidarity for Israel.
Scholz’s Green Party foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, appeared to stoke a classic antisemitic worldview by blaming Israel (read: the Jews) for the hostage crisis in Gaza during her recent visit to Israel. “Last weekend clearly showed that military action alone will not solve the situation in Gaza,” she said, according to a report in Bild. “Purely military pressure, as we have seen, endangers the lives of the hostages.”
Baerbock is currently embroiled in a series of anti-Israel scandals for inviting a motley crew of antisemites and haters of Israel for an exclusive dinner and a meeting.
Germany’s ambassador to Jerusalem Steffen Seibert, whom Israel’s government has twice reprimanded for anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian-terrorism activity, has gone silent about the weapons embargo and Baerbock’s embrace of antisemitic agitators.
Green Party politician Volker Beck, the controversial head of the German-Israel Friendship Association (DIG), has also stayed mum about the embargo and Baerbock’s scandals. The DIG, which is funded by Baerbock’s ministry, is supposed to advance the security of Israel. Beck advocated as early as 2014 for sanctions on weapons sales to Israel.
All of the moving parts taken together reveal official Germany’s profound indifference regarding the security of Israel.
