A loyal Israel ally, Germany shifts tone as the toll in Gaza mounts

Days after Hamas launched its Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was one of the first Western leaders to arrive in Tel Aviv. Standing beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Scholz declared that Germany had “only one place — and it is alongside Israel.”

That place now feels increasingly awkward for Germany, Israel's second-largest arms supplier and a nation whose leadership calls support for the country a “Staatsräson,” a national reason for existence, as a way of atoning for the Holocaust.

Last week, with Israel's deadly offensive continuing in the Gaza Strip, the chancellor again stood next to Netanyahu in Tel Aviv and struck a different tone. “No matter how important the goal,” he asked, “can it justify such terribly high costs?”

With international outrage growing over a death toll that Gaza's health authorities say exceeds 32,000 and the looming prospect of famine in the enclave, German officials have begun to question whether their country's support has gone too far.

“What changed for Germany is that it's untenable, this unconditional support for Israel,” said Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. “In sticking to this notion of Staatsräson, they gave the false impression that Germany actually offered carte blanche to Netanyahu.”

Berlin's hardening tone is partly a response to fears over Israel's continued insistence that it must enter Rafah to pursue Hamas operatives it says are in the southern Gaza city. The change in stance also tracks with the evolving position of Germany's most important ally, the United States, which has shown increasing displeasure with Israel's actions, including through an abstention in a U.N. Security Council vote that allowed a cease-fire resolution to pass.

The change in the German stance has made itself felt in a matter of weeks.

In January — just months after the Hamas-led attacks that Israeli officials say killed some 1,200 people — Germany intervened in defense of Israel against South Africa's charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice.