I was away from Berlin for almost a month, and I returned just in time for a whiplash-inducing shift in Germany’s official discourse. For 19 months, all politicians and journalists offered unwavering and passionate support for the genocide in Gaza, not just in the form of declarations about “Israel’s right to defend itself” and “Hamas command centers under hospitals,” but also in the form of bombs and bullets.
This extremely unpopular policy (with around 80 percent of the country disagreeing) has been reinforced with unprecedented repression, including assaults, firings, and deportations. Supposedly, this was about “learning from history” and “protecting Jewish life” — yet Jews have been vastly overrepresented among the victims of police violence and official cancellations
From one day to the next, however, the entire German regime changed its position. This started with a video from the Greens last Friday. Luise Amtsberg, who denied Israel was committing war crimes only last year, suddenly expressed concern that “there are hardly any hospitals left” in Gaza (I wonder what happened to them!). This is the same Green Party whose leader declared last October that bombing hospitals was ok (“civilian sites could lose their protected status if terrorists abuse this status”).
It’s easy for the Greens, thrown into opposition, to rediscover their humanitarian conscience. But this was followed by the conservative chancellor Friedrich Merz, who spoke on TV the following Monday about a “humanitarian tragedy” in Gaza that could “no longer be justified with the struggle against Hamas terrorism.” The same politician who insisted on inviting Netanyahu to Berlin despite an ICC arrest warrant is now accusing Israel of violating international law. The next day, Merz’s foreign minister made vague threats of “further steps” that could include a stop to weapons shipments.
Even Felix Klein, the government’s non-Jewish “Antisemitism Czar,” who not long ago endorsed Trump’s plan to expel two million people from Gaza, started criticizing Israel. This is strange, because Klein’s job is defaming anyone who protests against the genocide in Gaza, including Jews. By Tuesday, he spoke of Israel “starving the Palestinians and deliberately, dramatically worsening the humanitarian situation.”
Newspapers and TV stations have also abruptly changed their line, just like Oceania in 1984.
These politicians and journalists have been supporting war crimes for 19 months — what explains the sudden shift? When asked directly (“Where does this … criticism suddenly come from? The things we see now, we have been seeing for weeks and months”), Klein could only stammer unintelligibly.
So where does this really come from? Der Spiegel published a ridiculous title about Merz “long remaining silent” — even though a brief look at the magazine’s own reporting shows Merz being very loud about his support for genocide.
This definitely has nothing to do with morals. Germany’s capitalist politicians have long abandoned any claim to defending humanitarian principles. But it also has little to do with fears of future ICC persecutions. These imperialist politicians can be certain that the institutions of so-called international law will never go against the interest of imperialism.
This has more to do with banal electoral schedules, with politicians more willing to take risks after the voting is over. All of them were terrified of being accused of antisemitism by the far-right tabloid BILD or any of the numerous state-funded pro-Zionist NGOs. There are herd dynamics at work: As soon as one of them sticks out their neck, others are less afraid.
I suspect the main reason, however, is a shift in U.S. foreign policy under Trump, who has been increasingly giving Netanyahu the cold shoulder in pursuit of his own interests in the Middle East. This is a notable difference to Biden, who had a deep ideological commitment to Zionism. With U.S. interest in Gaza waning, the Europe’s rulers don’t want to be the last ones holding the bag when it comes to supporting genocide.
This is not about morals and not about public opinion in Germany — it’s more about German imperialism’s investments and “soft power” in the Arab world, which are suffering terrible losses.
Despite the new rhetoric, the Greens, the CDU, and the rest of the bunch have declared their intention to keep sending weapons to Israel. They might be “concerned” about the “humanitarian catastrophe” — but they want to keep facilitating it. This is all empty posturing.
As the full account of the carnage becomes harder to deny, politicians want to get their opposition on the record. Omar El Akkad predicted: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. We are witnessing the first careful steps in this direction. This rhetorical shift is not accountability — it is the German bourgeoisie’s latest attempt to avoid accountability.
Red Flag is a weekly column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel Flakin has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears at The Left Berlin.
