Iran’s bombs at centre of German Chancellor Merkel’s visit to Jerusalem
German Chancellor Angela Merkel attended an Israeli government meeting on Sunday in Jerusalem, held especially for her at the King David Hotel, her seventh visit to the Jewish state as she steps down as chancellor after 16 years.
Angela Merkel and Naphtali Bennett Photo: Amos Ben-Gershom (GPO
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett welcomed her as a “dear friend of Israel.”
The special event celebrated Merkel’s close ties with the Jewish state, and Bennett told her that Israel “very much appreciates your ongoing friendship and commitment to the people of Israel. The relationship between Germany and Israel has been strong, but in your term, it has never been stronger.
Israel’s ties with Germany have “become more than just an alliance. It has become a true friendship thanks to your leadership.”
“‘Todah Lach’ [thank you] Angela, thank you,” said Bennett.
Merkel said she considered the visit “a great pleasure and great honour to be able to visit Israel once again at the end of my term in office.”
During her term in office, she “tried together with all members of my government to work hard to make the relationship between both our countries and peoples even stronger and broader.”
She underscored that “the topic of Israel’s security will always be of central importance and a central topic of every German government.”
Berlin and Tehran
Speaking in Hebrew, Bennett turned to a point of contention between Jerusalem and Berlin, the nuclear deal with Iran and its threat to Israel’s security.
In Israel, “we invest in ourselves, but our enemies, led by Iran, are obsessively dealing with us and are willing to pay very high prices, to cause real suffering to their people, to pose an existential threat to us,” he said.
He warned that Iran’s nuclear program has “reached a stage that requires leadership. Acceptance with the transformation of Iran into a nuclear threshold country will be a moral stain on the free world, and even more so – will threaten world peace.”
“We see how the Iranians are behaving right now, even without a nuclear umbrella, in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza and the Gulf. One can only imagine the extent of the damage they would cause if the world knew that behind this bullying was also a nuclear bomb,” he noted.
“There is no point in trying to appease the Iranians, they interpret conciliation as a weakness. They continue to thrive in the international community, buying time and constantly advancing uranium enrichment, and destabilizing the region. This is a critical point, and Germany’s position is particularly important,” he said.
Germany, one of the signatories on the 2015 agreement with Iran, has sought a path of discourse with Tehran, while Israel has warned that such an approach will enable the Islamic Republic to develop nuclear weapons.
Berlin and Ramallah
In the meantime, activists of the Im Tirtzu Zionist organization staged a protest outside the King David Hotel over Germany’s funding of political NGOs in Israel.
Similarly, a group of more than 120 bereaved families of the Choosing Life Forum sent a letter to Merkel blasting Germany’s funding of “far-left political organizations” in Israel.
“Over the past several years, Germany alone has funded 34 political organizations in Israel, all of whom are affiliated with the far-left,” stated the letter, which was written in German, English, and Hebrew.
From 2012 to 2021, Germany has provided these organizations with NIS 84,204,316, “a tremendous sum, especially by Israeli standards,” the letter noted.
Germany funds these organizations through both direct and indirect funding via the German Foreign Ministry and governmental organizations. Some of the organizations promote boycotts on Israel, work to exert international pressure on Israel, work to change Israel’s immigration policies, and work to change Israel’s policy against terrorism by means of legal and international pressure.
“Seventeen percent of the 22.5 million euro funded by Germany to these radical groups has gone toward organizations that provide legal protection to murderous terrorists and their family members in Israeli courts. These organizations include HaMoked, Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and Adalah.
For example, in recent years “HaMoked” has provided legal protection for 81 terrorists and their families. These terrorists are responsible for the murder of 77 people.
“Today, every potential terrorist knows that regardless of how many Israelis he will murder, he will receive top-line legal defence courtesy of the German taxpayer. Furthermore, Germany also provides funding to the Palestinian Authority, which infamously provides monthly salaries to terrorists for murdering Israelis. Thus, unwitting German citizens are being taken advantage of to promote terrorism,” the letter cautions.
The writers accuse Germany of “working subversively and undemocratically to change the character of another democratic state – a state that provides more human rights than any other in the Middle East – by funding domestic organizations that openly work to undermine it.”
“The hard-earned tax money of German citizens would be better spent on their own welfare, not on fueling the flames of the conflict in another country,” the letter concludes.
