When she’s gone
Herb Keinon on what Merkel’s future departure means for Israel
Following a very disappointing showing for her Christian Democratic Union Party in a regional election in Germany this week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel met the press in Berlin on Tuesday and said it was time for her to “start a new chapter.”
“This fourth term is my last term as chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the next Bundestag election in 2021, I will not run again as chancellor. I will not run for the German Bundestag any more, and I do not want any other political office.”
She also said she will not run for her party’s chairmanship in December.
For some in Jerusalem, Merkel could have saved her words and just come out singing that Anna Kendrick popular remake of a 1931 song called “When I’m gone.”
“When I’m gone, When I’m gone,You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone,” the song goes. “You’re gonna miss me by my walk,You’re gonna miss me by my talk, oh, You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”
Indeed, said Ron Prosor, who served as Israel’s ambassador to the UN and to Britain and served from 1988 to 1992 in its embassy in Germany, Israel – as well as many others – will miss Merkel when she goes.
According to Prosor, during her 13 years so far in office, Merkel represented not just Germany but the “voice of reason,” and was the most influential leader in Europe. That was an even more extraordinary feat, he maintained, considering her background and her personality.
“Here is a Protestant woman from East Germany, taking over a Catholic Party, mostly in western Germany, and basically able to lead it in a way that was anti-charismatic, anti-German,” he said. Though soft-spoken and without a striking physical appearance, she was an “amazing political operator,” he added.
Nevertheless, Merkel’s policy of opening the country up to Mideast refugees – something she explained as Germany’s responsibility in light of its history – led to a significant loss of popularity, and Prosor said he is doubtful she will outlast 2019.
And her loss, he said, will be felt in Israel.
Prosor characterized Merkel as the most pro-Israel German leader since Konrad Adenauer, the legendary first chancellor of postwar West Germany.
“She feels genuinely a responsibility for Israel and the Jewish people, and has a huge degree of respect for what Israel stands for,” he said, even if she disagrees with Israel’s policies on the West bank.
Merkel, he said, gets Israel “in her gut – it is very strong.”
This strongly pro-Israel sentiment, he said, has to with her upbringing in East Germany before German reunification in 1990.
“She basically was part and parcel of a world where they were told for years that the world was black, and that Israel is an extension of the American capitalist pigs,” he said.
When the Berlin Wall fell and the Iron Curtain was lifted, there was a “counterreaction.”
“There was antisemitism in East Germany, even though there were barely any Jews in East Germany,” he noted. “For years it was hammered into the whole education system how bad Israel was. When the
Iron Curtain rose, most of the things that were defined as black became white, then they became gray – but she looked at this and challenged the existing paradigms.”
Challenging existing paradigms is part of her, Prosor maintained, adding that when there is a sentiment in Europe that Israel is “horrible, and carrying out apartheid policies,” she says that just because everyone is chanting the same mantras does not make them true, and will go look at everything on her own.
“This is something that comes from who she is,” he said.
Although many countries in Europe give lip service to Israel’s security, Prosor – who as a former ambassador to Britain knows the intricacies of the military and security cooperation with key European states – said that Germany under Merkel “is the only country in Europe that helps Israel on the security side, not just with the sale of submarines.”
Declining to provide details, Prosor said that “Germany is the only one on security in Europe that in essence stands with Israel.”
According to Prosor, the up-and-coming generation of German leaders, those who will replace Merkel, represent a “new generation that does not have the same guilt feelings” over the Holocaust that has fueled the two countries special relationship, and led Merkel to famously say in the Knesset in 2008 that Germany’s responsibility for Israel’s security was part of her country’s raison d’être.
She echoed those sentiments in Jerusalem in October, when she led the German side of the seventh government-to-government talks between the two countries, an annual forum she set up in 2008 and which underlines the close ties between the two countries. Germany, she said at a press conference, is committed to “everlasting responsibility” to Israel “due to the crimes of the Holocaust.”
IN 1984, another strongly pro-Israel chancellor – Helmut Kohl – was the first German leader to address the Knesset, and in a controversial address spoke of the “grace of a late birth” (Gnade der späten Geburt), which many understood as an expression of gratitude – because of his young age at the time of World War II – for not having had to decide whether to serve in the Nazi army.
Prosor said that this phrase has been taken by ensuing generations to mean that because they were born after the Holocaust, they are “exonerated,” they don’t have to carry around the guilt of Germany’s past forever. And this is a sentiment, he said, that could cause problems in the relationship going forward.
“You have a new generation with a whole education of a multicultural society, and feeling that the issue of human rights is a religion, basically putting pressure on the German-Israel relationship,” he said. “Israel should work now, use the time as long as Merkel is still there, to reach out to parts of the German population that we have to engage with to ensure that this relationship remains strong.”
But veteran German journalist Henryk Broder, who for years wrote for Der Spiegel magazine and since 2010 is reporter at large for Die Welt newspaper, disagrees.
Broder – who has written extensively on Israeli-German ties – disagrees not only with the idea that Israel will miss Merkel, but also with the notion that Israel benefits from German guilt over the Holocaust.
“Israel is becoming an important ally for Germany in the Middle East,” he said in a phone conversation from Germany. “And that is more important than Auschwitz.”
Guilt vanishes, he said; pragmatic interests remain.
“I much more like the idea that Israel is important because of its technology, because of its hi-tech culture, because of patent inventions in Israel, rather than historical guilt. There are so many things that German industry needs to buy from Israel, and that is a very good reason to have relations with Israel – not the Holocaust.”
Broder also takes a much less romanticized view of the Israel-Germany relationship under Merkel, and disputed Prosor’s contention that she is the most pro-Israel chancellor since Adenauer.
He said her comments about Israel’s security being Germany’s raison d’etre were disingenuous, especially in light of the country’s relationship with Iran and its bustling business ties with the Islamic Republic, a country that carries the standard of wanting to destroy the Jewish state.
“What she said about Germany’s historic responsibility [toward Israel] was only a kind of lip service. Because when it got serious, when there was a vote in the United Nations, or in the European Union, Germany either abstained or voted against Israel,” he said.
Broder said that Merkel embodied in one person a “good cop, bad cop” approach toward Israel. This same policy will continue when Merkel leaves the stage, he predicted, “nothing will change.”
However, as Israel becomes more important for Germany’s interests, Broder added, the relationship may actually improve.
DORE GOLD, the former Foreign Ministry director-general who heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said that the refugee crisis that has washed over Europe is altering the view of the continent – and Germany – toward the region, and is making Israel look different.
“Up until a few years ago Europe was guided by a view that if you solve the Palestinian issue, the problems of the Middle East will disappear – something that was clearly refuted by the Arab Spring,” he said. “Today the primary point of departure in Europe, and of Germany, is what will be the effect of any line of policy on the future of Mideast migration into Europe.”
Gold said this concern about migration even carries over to how the Europeans look at the situation in the Gaza Strip. “They ask not whether the situation there will lead to escalation, but rather if it will lead to migration. And that affects the analysis of everything, from Gaza to Algeria.”
Gold noted that Israel has over the years been combating Islamic State and helped prevent a scenario in Egypt whereby tens of thousands of Egyptians – Coptic Christians, for example – would flee ISIS terrorism across the Mediterranean and into Europe.
“Up until now the large numbers of migrants into Europe came from Syria, Iraq and to some extent Afghanistan – Egypt has not been a factor. The more terrorism succeeds in Egypt, the more this very dangerous scenario has to be considered – and Israel is the only country that has its eye on that ball.”
Asked whether Europe and Germany appreciate that fact, he replied: “I think when the doors are closed it’s appreciated”
Gold, who has sat in on meetings between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Merkel, said that she always brought a “very healthy dose of realism into any political discussions. She strongly understood that Israel was a country that was threatened and that it was Germany’s responsibility to help offset the dangers of the Middle East.”
Asked if he is concerned about where the relationship will go after Merkel leaves the stage, Gold said Israel needs to be concerned more generally about “how Europe will define its primary interests.” •