Merkel’s gov’t supports 'warmongers' in Middle East - EU's largest paper

‘Good that Germany plays no role in the Middle East'

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on during the first faceto-face EU summit since the coronavirus disease outbreak in Brussels on July 20 (photo credit: REUTERS)
German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on during the first faceto-face EU summit since the coronavirus disease outbreak in Brussels on July 20
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The largest circulating newspaper on continental Europe—the German Bild—on Wednesday published two hard-hitting commentaries against German Chancellor Angela’s Merkel’s Middle East foreign policy, declaring her government aids the warmongering countries in the region against the Jewish state.
“Berlin stands on the side of the warmongers,” wrote Björn Stritzel, a Bild reporter who specializes in the Middle East. He added that “the federal government…is currently trying to soften an arms embargo against the mullahs' regime.”
The US and Israel advocate for an extension of the UN weapons embargo against Iran’s regime.
Stritzel wrote that “the federal government completely missed the decisive breakthrough at a Middle East conference in Warsaw.”
In 2019, the US held a conference in Warsaw, Poland that was designed to blunt Iran’s malign activities in the Middle East and helped lay the foundation for peace agreements between Israel and the two Gulf Arab states, Bahrain and the UAE.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas skipped the event and sent his controversial deputy minister Niels Annen, who has celebrated the Islamic Republic of Iran’s revolution and was opposed to a ban of the terrorist organization Hezbollah.
In a second Bild commentary, journalist Filipp Piatov celebrated that “Germany no longer plays a role in the Middle East. After the peace agreement [on Tuesday] that is indeed the second best news.”
Piatov’s remark recalls the long-standing view of the best-selling author and German-Jewish columnist Henryk M. Broder, who has maintained that Germany’s involvement in the Middle East damages Israel and the security of the wider region.
Take the recent example of  Germany’s Bundestag that singled out only Israel in July for opprobrium in an anti-Jewish state resolution that condemned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration for considering sovereignty over parts of the Judea and Samaira.
The tone of the Piatov’s Bild commentary echoes the advice of Dan Schueftan, chairman of the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa, who famously said: “Whenever you don’t know what to do, ask the Europeans. Then do the opposite.”
Piatov wrote Israel’s peace agreements with Bahrain and the USA are good “for the security of the Jewish state, and for the entire region in the fight against the terrorism of the mullah regime” in Iran.
Stritzel issued a scathing indictment of German politicians who ridiculed Jared Kushner, president Trump’s senior advisor, because of his lack of experience in the diplomatic world. Kushner brokered the peace deals between Israel and the Gulf countries — an achievement of historic dimension, according to Netanyahu and scores of Middle East experts who live in the region.
The journalist lampooned the German concept of a “neutral mediator” in the region that is reserved for German diplomats and experts.
Stritzel took "the self-confident German peace experts” to task for being divorced from the reality on the ground in the Middle East.
He added that “the Israeli settlements were to blame for this [lack of peace with Arab countries], according to the truth set in stone by German middle east experts. Until the West Bank is Jew-free, there can be no peace between Israel and the Gulf states, because apparently there is no more pressing problem in the region than Jewish farmers who farm somewhere between Jerusalem and Jericho.”
Stritzel said that “It must have been an enormous slight for these peace experts that, alongside Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, it was precisely this inexperienced Jared Kushner who accomplished in a very short time what had failed them for decades.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, wrote The Jerusalem Post by email:
 
"Chancellor Merkel’s government will do nothing to hurt economic ties with murderous Ayatollah Khamenei, not his genocidal hate for Jewish state, not murders of innocent Iranians like the wrestler who was tortured and executed. Where does Germany and EU leaders stand on UAE/Bahrain/Israel peace treaties?"


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