Merkel and Her Alleged ‘Support’ For Israel’s Security

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Chancellor Merkel likes to tell the world how important Israel’s security is to Germany. A week before the German federal elections in 2013, she ringingly declared that Israel’s security is part of Germany’s national ethos. In an interview for the September 13, 2013 edition of the Jewish Voice from Germany, Merkel – when asked about the Iranian nuclear weapons threat directed at Israel – said, “That means that we’ll never be neutral and that Israel can be sure of our support when it comes to ensuring its security. That’s why I also said that Germany’s support for Israel’s security is part of our national ethos, our raison d’etre.”

Unfortunately, Merkel proceeded to welcome into Germany, in 2015 alone, one million Muslims who brought with them, undeclared in their mental baggage, the antisemitism that is part of Islam. And since then she has continued to admit Muslims (in less dramatic numbers) without ever considering how their large-scale presence affects the security of Jews in Germany. Her country has undeniably become, during the last five years, a less safe place for Jews. Addressing the 70th anniversary meeting of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Merkel on September 15, 2020 deplored the increase in antisemitism, without of course linking it to her own immigration policy:  “It is a disgrace and a source of deep shame for me to see the expressions of racism and anti-Semitism in our country in these times,” Merkel said, calling on German citizens to “never remain silent” over the phenomenon.

At the U.N., however, the representatives of Germany have indeed “remained silent” over the antisemitism that expresses itself in resolutions that single out the state of Israel for savage criticism. Given Merkel’s claims that “Germany’s support for Israel’s security” is “part of our national ethos,” our “raison d’etre,” how can Germany remain neutral in the face of the constant assaults at the U.N. against Israel?

On September 14, one more anti-Israel resolution was passed by the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The NGO U.N. Watch describes the kangaroo court farce here.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Belarus were among members of the UN’s 54-nation Economic and Social Council, a principal organ of the world body, who voted on September 14th to single out Israel as the only country in the world to be rebuked by the council this year for allegedly violating women’s rights.

In a resolution adopted 43 to 3, with 8 abstentions the Jewish state was accused of being a “major obstacle” for Palestinian women “with regard to the fulfillment of their rights, and their advancement, self-reliance and integration in the development of their society.”…

The three no votes were from the United States, Canada, and Australia. Germany abstained. Apparently having Israel’s security as its “raison d’etre” was not enough to make Berlin oppose this grotesque resolution.

In abstaining rather than opposing this resolution, Germany’s “neutral” position constitutes a betrayal of its pledge to uphold Israel’s security. For this resolution is a part – the diplomatic part – of a continuing war to undermine the Jewish state. These endless resolutions against Jerusalem at the U.N. serve to demoralize Israelis and to isolate Israel internationally.

The resolution in its preamble made global references to “violence against women and girls in all its different forms and manifestations worldwide” and to the need to “eliminate all forms of violence against women” in “all regions of the world.” However, Israel was the only country held up for criticism….

Out of 20 items on the UN Economic and Social Council’s 2020 agenda, only one — Item No. 16 against Israel — targeted a specific country. All the other focus areas concern global topics such as disaster relief assistance and the use of science and technology for development.

The resolution turns a blind eye to how Palestinian women’s rights are impacted by their own governing authorities — the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza. Nor does it make any criticism or any reference at all as to how women and girls are discriminated against within patriarchal Palestinian society. On the contrary, the resolution praises what it calls “Palestinian initiatives at the legislative, administrative and security levels to advance women’s rights.”

ECOSOC’s 2020 session completely ignored the world’s worst abusers of women’s rights, refusing to pass a single resolution on the situation of women in Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, DR Congo, Iran, Chad or Saudi Arabia, all of which ranked in the top ten worst countries in the 2020 Global Gender Gap Report, produced by the World Economic Forum,” said Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch.

And all of these states, such as Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, where women are so wretchedly treated, had no trouble sincerely, deeply, truly condemning Israel – “we are shocked, shocked” – for its supposed mistreatment of Palestinian women.

But how has Israel violated the rights of Palestinian women? It has no presence in Gaza. It has no presence in Area A of the West Bank. It has no control over civilians, but only over security, in Area B. More than 90% of the Palestinians live in Gaza, and Areas A and B, where Israel’s writ does not run.

Has Israel tried to force Muslim men – either Israeli Arabs or Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank — to mistreat their womenfolk? Has Israel prevented Muslim women from getting educations or working outside the house? Has it encouraged Palestinian men to “beat their wives” or to engage in “honor killings”? Has Israel forced Palestinian wives to accept polygamy? Quite the opposite. In Israel proper, women enjoy legal equality with men, and are encouraged to become educated; all professions are open to them. Palestinian men – just like Israeli Jewish men — are held legally accountable for physically mistreating their wives or daughters.

It is not Israel that determines the status of Palestinian women. It is not the Israelis, but the Muslims themselves, who allow “honor killings” by Palestinian men of relatives — wives, daughters – who have supposedly dishonored the family by their behavior, anything from refusing to wear a hijab to meeting a boy clandestinely. When Palestinian Muslim men treat their wives as mere breeders-of-children, deny them the right to higher educations, limit their vocational possibilities, none of that has anything to do with Israel. When a Muslim man “beats” his wife if he even suspects her of disobedience, he is following the Qur’an (4:34), not Israel’s civil code. When a Muslim woman’s testimony is worth only half that of a man in a shari’a court, when a Muslim daughter inherits only half that of a son, that has to do only with the Sharia. None of it has to do with Israel, where strict legal equality between the sexes is enforced. In the entire Middle East, Arab women enjoy true gender equality only in Israel, the one country that ECOSOC keeps absurdly denouncing for its supposed “violation of women’s rights” in what it tendentiously describes as ”occupied Palestinian lands.”

Neuer condemned the delegates’ “hijacking” of the UN body as a forum to target Israel. “At a time when Iran is imprisoning women’s rights activists like Nasrin Sotudeh and Narges Mohammedi, Saudi Arabia is imprisoning and torturing numerous women’s rights activists, Pakistan has the highest number of documented and estimated honor killings per capita of any country in the world, and Belarus is beating women protesters in the streets, it is the theater of the absurd for these misogynistic regimes to be singling out Israel — alone in the world — as an alleged violator of women’s rights,” said Neuer.

“We are also disappointed in other countries which joined the jackals in scapegoating the Jewish state, including France, Spain, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Norway and Uruguay.”

We should take special note of the hypocrisy of Germany, whose leaders talk endlessly of their deep solicitousness for Israel’s security, yet at the U.N.’s various committees, such as ECOSOC, and in the UNGA itself, they continue to vote against Israel, and only occasionally abstain rather than stand foursquare with Israel, together with such stalwart countries as the United States, Canada, and Australia.

And as only one Resolution against Israel is never enough at the U.N., another soon followed:

Shortly after adopting the text, ECOSOC then condemned https://undocs.org/en/E/2021/L.6

Israel in a second resolution for allegedly violating the economic and social rights of Palestinians.

I have read the endless “deplorings” and “expressing concern” and “gravely concerned” paragraphs of this fantastical document, I won’t inflict its contents on you here, but I urge you to use the link just above and read as much of this rebarbative resolution as you can stand. It might have been written in Ramallah.

Not all Germans are like Angela Merkel, or like her U.N. Ambassador Christoph Heusgen, who takes evident pleasure in joining the gang-up on Israel. Then there is someone quite different in his attitude toward Israel from those two. Uwe Becker, the commissioner to combat antisemitism in the German state of Hesse, has consistently denounced Germany’s anti-Israel voting record at the U.N.

Between 2017 and 2019 Germany engaged in an orgy of diplomatic attacks on the Jewish state including voting against Israel a total of eight times in just one month, November 2019. Germany voted 16 times at the UN in 2018 to condemn Israel.

Of particular note in the General Assembly discussions were the venomous remarks frequently directed at Israel by Heusgen. In one of his memorable displays of moral equivalence, he equated Israel’s counter-terrorism strategy with the US- and EU-designated terrorist entity Hamas: “Civilians must live without fear of Palestinian rockets or Israeli bulldozers,” said Heusgen. In Heusgen’s calculus, the bulldozing of terrorists’ homes, that is done only to deter future Hamas terrorists, is equivalent to the rockets Hamas launches in terror attacks to kill Israeli civilians. Thus does Heusgen place the terrorists and those fighting them on the same moral level.

Most outrageous of its recent votes at the U.N. was Germany’s voting, in November, 2019, for an anti-Israel resolution that declared the Western Wall (the holiest site in Judaism), along with Solomon’s Temple Mount, and the historic Jewish Quarter of the Old City, as “occupied Palestinian territory.” Germany thus declared itself in favor of a resolution that would deprive the Jewish people of the right to possess the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, and that insists these be considered as “occupied Palestinian territory.” And Chancellor Merkel let it happen. So much for Merkel’s hollow assurances about “never being neutral” when it came to Israel’s security which, she added, is the “raison d’etre” of German foreign policy.

That November 19, 2019 resolution that Germany voted for, the one declaring that the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City belonged by right not to the Jews but to the Palestinians, was titled “The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.” It was sponsored by such exemplary polities as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Egypt, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe and State of Palestine. Egypt helped draft the resolution on “behalf of the State Members of the United Nations that are members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation,” according to the resolution. A coven of witches. Whenever Israel is to be tarred and feathered, that coven quickly congregates.

Hillel Neuer wrote on Twitter in October 2020 that “Germany introduced 0 condemnations of China, Cuba, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Venezuela, etc.” He asked German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas why he is singling out Israel and ignoring repressive, closed nations for diplomatic rebukes.

Following Germany’s abstention last week [in mid-September 2020] at the UN on an anti-Israel resolution, he [Hillel Neuer ] told The Jerusalem Post: “Even in times of rapprochement between Israel and the Arab states, interested countries continue their smear theater at the United Nations and once again pillory the Jewish state. Now there must be an end to the ducking away. Germany’s abstention only strengthens Israel’s enemies at the UN and weakens the efforts for peace in the region.”

Becker was quietly furious at this latest vote, as he has been with the last three years of anti-Israel votes by Germany at the U.N.:

“I am very disappointed about Germany’s vote after a new resolution on the alleged violations of women’s rights by Israel,” said Becker, who is also president of the Germany-Israel Friendship Association.

“Germany is undermining solidarity with Israel if it does not finally take a clear and unequivocal stand at the United Nations against the politically staged permanent condemnation of Israel,” he added. “Neutrality is inappropriate when the moral verdict of guilt is passed on Israel.”…

“Attitude and backbone are required, not passivity and diplomatic kowtowing,” he said. “If, at the end of a vote, Israel is the only country in the world accused of violating women’s rights, and countries decide to do so [that is, vote against Israel] where women have virtually no rights, then the German side should finally wake up.”…

“The resolution completely distorts Israel’s policy and “is being used to create populist sentiment against the Jewish state,” Becker said. “It is not Israel that decides on the rights of women in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, but the Palestinian leaders there. Hamas and Fatah also bear the main responsibility for the economic and social situation on the ground.”

“The fact that Europe was only sitting on the spectator’s bench during the recent rapprochement between Israel and individual Arab states also has its reasons in the weak and faceless policy of the EU at the United Nations,” he said. “If Germany remains passive, Europe will remain on the spectator’s bench. I expect clear initiatives from the German presidency of the Council of the EU for a stronger solidarity of Europe towards Israel at the UN.”…

Why did the E.U. not celebrate the normalization of relations between Israel and both the U.A.E. and Bahrain, instead of “sitting on the spectator’s bench”? Becker wants Germany to applaud that development, and, as it now holds the presidency of the Council of the E.U., to use its considerable economic and political clout in order to push the E.U. toward greater solidarity with Israel, instead of the neutrality, or more often outright opposition, that the E.U. displays toward the Jewish state in international forums.

At the very least, Germany should have asked at the meeting of the ECOSOC an obvious question: how is it possible for members with a straight face vote to condemn only Israel, when there are more than 100 countries with far worse records of mistreating women? In fact, Israel stands at the very top, with the Scandinavian lands, in its record of equal treatment for women Yet these states are never cited in any U.N Resolution akin to that just passed against Israel. There has never been a single resolution at the UN denouncing the treatment of women in Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, Syria. Why? And meanwhile the representatives of these deeply misogynistic states, who are beyond hypocrisy, enthusiastically cast their votes to denounce tiny Israel for its mistreatment of women.

“Germany opposes unfair treatment of Israel in the United Nations,” the German Foreign Ministry told the Post by email on Thursday. “This applies to all UN bodies, including ECOSOC. As in the previous year, Germany abstained from the resolution mentioned by Mr. Becker.”

The German Foreign Ministry still displays moral myopia. It claims to “oppose unfair treatment of Israel” at the U.N., but then it accepts, without a syllable of protest, the constant singling out of Israel for denunciation by every U.N. body. The Jewish state is always in the dock, at the U.N. General Assembly and in its constituent bodies. Israel is relentlessly charged with sins it never committed. Why does Germany – Germany above all — allow this farce to continue without critical comment? Why is it always left to the Americans — think of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Nikki Haley — to state the truth? The passage of these anti-Israel resolutions, such as the latest one at a session of ECOSOC, by such lopsided votes, continues to appall. It is morally intolerable for any state to either abstain from (as too many advanced Western nations have done), or still worse, vote for, such a resolution. Germany has done both in the last three years, mostly voting against Israel, in a handful of cases managing to abstain. It has yet to do what Uwe Becker, Hillel Neuer, and you, and I, all want it to do, which is not only to express deep solidarity with Israel, at the U.N., and to vote against these obscene resolutions, but also to work to convince fellow members of the E.U. to follow suit.

Germany has a special duty, given its past, to defend Israel not by saying it will do so, for the deplorable Merkel has shown that talk is cheap – “we’ll never be neutral and Israel can be sure of our support when it comes to ensuring its security….Germany’s support for Israel’s security is part of our national ethos, our raison d’etre” —  but by actually casting votes that will support Israel against the jackals on the East River baying for its blood.

First published in Jihad Watch.