Has Germany Really Fully Learned the Lessons from Its Past?

On June 12, 2026, I watched an episode of Lazar Focus in which Lazar Berman interviewed Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert. The interview was thoughtful and, at first, seemed reassuring. Seibert reaffirmed Germany’s commitment to Israel’s security, condemned antisemitism, and acknowledged the horrors of October 7.

Germany has done more than perhaps any other nation to confront the crimes of its history. It has built memorials, funded Holocaust education, paid reparations, and repeatedly acknowledged its responsibility for the murder of six million Jews. German leaders frequently speak of a special obligation to Israel arising from that history.

Yet by the end of the interview, I was left with a disturbing thought. If Germany has worked so hard to confront its antisemitic past, why did its ambassador seem so confident in criticisms of Israel’s conduct of the war when many respected military experts regard the matter as far from settled?

The question has stayed with me ever since.

A number of highly respected military professionals have argued that the Israel Defense Forces took extraordinary measures to reduce civilian casualties in one of the most difficult combat environments in modern military history. These include urban warfare expert John Spencer, retired British commander Richard Kemp, retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General David Deptula, former British Army officer Andrew Fox, and members of the High Level Military Group—a body composed of former senior military officers and national security officials from democratic countries.

These experts do not claim that every Israeli action was lawful or that mistakes never occurred. Nor do they deny the terrible suffering experienced by Palestinian civilians. Rather, they argue that Israel faced an extraordinarily difficult battlefield created in large part by Hamas’s strategy of embedding fighters, weapons, command centers, tunnels, and rocket-launching infrastructure within civilian areas. They point to the IDF’s extensive use of warnings, evacuation notices, phone calls, text messages, legal review procedures, and other measures designed to reduce civilian casualties. Some have gone so far as to argue that no military in history has taken comparable precautions on a similar scale.

Reasonable people can disagree with these assessments. Military experts themselves sometimes disagree. But their views are serious, informed, and deserve consideration. Yet rather than engaging with the substantial body of military analysis that views Israel’s conduct differently, Seibert largely echoed criticisms that have become commonplace in European diplomatic and media circles.

I expected greater intellectual caution. Given Germany’s oft-stated special responsibility toward Israel and the Jewish people, I expected greater humility and greater engagement with these competing assessments. Instead, I was left wondering whether Germany’s commitment to the Jewish people runs as deep as its rhetoric suggests. 

Another moment in the interview troubled me. Seibert criticized Israeli media for insufficiently covering Palestinian suffering in Gaza. Human suffering should never be ignored, and Palestinian civilians have undoubtedly endured enormous hardship. Yet I found his criticism oddly detached from the reality Israelis are living through.

Israelis do not inhabit an abstract moral debate. They are a nation still traumatized by October 7. Their sons and daughters are serving in combat against organizations openly committed to Israel’s destruction. Many are grieving loved ones, still living with the trauma of October 7 and its aftermath, or wondering whether future attacks can be prevented. In that context, it should not be surprising that Israeli media and the Israeli public devote significant attention to their own society’s survival and suffering.

Moreover, Israelis are hardly isolated from international reporting on Gaza. They have access to the BBC, The New York Times, and countless other outlets that devote extensive coverage to Palestinian suffering and are often sharply critical of Israeli actions. Seibert’s criticism seemed to assume that Israelis have a moral obligation to focus more heavily on Gaza. But from the perspective of many Israelis, survival itself remains the more urgent concern.

That raises a question for Germany.

Germany has devoted enormous effort to reckoning with its past. But confronting history and being transformed by it are not necessarily the same thing. The question that lingered in my mind after the interview was whether Germany’s long process of remembrance has produced the intellectual humility and moral caution that such a history ought to inspire.

Germany, of all countries, understands the power of narratives that portray Jews as uniquely malevolent. Nazi propaganda did not merely dehumanize Jews; it presented them as the source of society’s problems and persuaded millions of ordinary people to accept extraordinary accusations that ultimately helped make genocide possible. The lesson is that people, especially Germans, should approach claims of Jewish wrongdoing with caution, intellectual humility, and a willingness to consider competing evidence. Today, accusations are directed not at individual Jews but at the world’s only Jewish state. Israel, like every democracy, makes mistakes and deserves scrutiny. Yet too often, when allegations are made against Israel, evidence pointing in another direction is dismissed, minimized, or ignored, while experts who challenge prevailing narratives are portrayed not as serious analysts but as apologists. 

To be fair, Germany’s response to Israel has often been more supportive than that of much of Europe. Germany has generally recognized Israel’s security concerns, acknowledged the horrors of October 7, and resisted some of the more extreme accusations leveled against the Jewish state. These are not trivial distinctions. They suggest that Germany has, in important respects, absorbed lessons that some of its neighbors have not. But the question that remains is whether it has fully embraced the responsibilities that flow from them. 

This is where I wonder whether Germany’s confrontation with its past may still be incomplete.

Memorials, museums, educational programs, and public expressions of remorse are important. But they are not the same thing as introspection. They can create the comforting belief that the work of moral reckoning has already been completed. A society can become so focused on demonstrating that it has learned the lessons of history that it stops asking whether it has truly internalized them. The danger is not forgetting the past. The danger is believing that because one remembers the past, one is no longer susceptible to the habits of thought that helped create it.

If Germany’s confrontation with its past is to mean more than remembrance, it must include vigilance against the patterns of thinking that once made antisemitism possible. One of those lessons is that societies should be wary of narratives that portray Jews as uniquely malevolent. In the modern era, that caution should extend to the Jewish state as well. Germany’s unique responsibility toward the Jewish people should therefore involve more than memorials, ceremonies, and declarations of solidarity. It should require the intellectual humility, moral caution, and moral courage to apply those lessons when judging the Jewish state today. Part of that responsibility should be a willingness to extend Israel a measure of trust—not blind trust, and certainly not immunity from criticism, but the recognition that a democratic ally fighting for its survival deserves careful and even-handed consideration. It should also mean giving serious consideration to the assessments of respected military professionals who have concluded that Israel has made extraordinary efforts to reduce civilian harm, rather than too readily embracing more condemnatory interpretations of its conduct. 

Across Europe, Jews increasingly report feeling unsafe. Israeli tourists have faced harassment. Anti-Israel demonstrations frequently feature rhetoric that would be recognized as antisemitic if directed at any other Jewish collective. And when accusations are leveled against the Jewish state, evidence in its defense is often ignored while the most damning interpretations are readily embraced.

Germany could choose a different path. It could insist that discussions of Israel’s conduct include the assessments of respected military professionals who challenge prevailing narratives. It could speak more forcefully against hostility toward Jews and Israelis when it appears in public life. It could be willing to stand apart from allies and international institutions when fairness demands it.

That would require moral courage. Germany has shown great willingness to remember the failures of the past. The harder test is whether it is willing to challenge prevailing assumptions in the present.

The real test of whether Germany has learned the lessons of its past is not what it says about the Jews of yesterday. It is what it does when the Jews of today need its support.

That is the question Steffen Seibert’s interview left me asking.