The Tears of Friedrich Merz

The Tears of Friedrich Merz

When the German chancellor gave his speech for the reopening of Munich’s traditional old synagogue in the Reichenbachstrasse, he was visibly moved and struggled to hold back his tears. It was an authentic, emotional, almost historical moment. It was a moment that bears witness to the chancellor’s true dedication both to the memory of the Shoah and to the importance of Jewish life in Germany today.

But Jewish life in Germany and Europe today is deeply and directly intertwined with what is happening in Israel today. Since October 7, 2023, antisemitism has risen to unprecedented heights. Israelis and non-Israeli Jews alike are being cancelled and disinvited and are afraid to show their identity in public.

All the while, terror is being glorified as resistance in mass demonstrations in the streets of Europe’s cities, with organizers increasingly calling for the targeting of so-called Zionists. Jews are being attacked in public spaces, often accompanied by calls of “Free Palestine”, or “stop genocide!”, Jewish children forced off aircraft, Jewish guests refused service in restaurants, Jewish institutions smeared with the red triangle symbols of Hamas.

Mr. Merz, I respect your tears and am moved by them. I admire your ability to express compassion and your fearlessness in showing vulnerability. I believe in the honesty of your words. However, if you really want to protect Jewish life in Germany and Europe, I expect much more than tears.

I expect you to make it crystal clear, not just in words, but in all your actions, policies and resolutions and those of your government members that the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state is non-negotiable. This certainly does not mean not criticizing the Israeli government and its disastrous handling of the war in Gaza or its expansionist settlement policies.

What does it mean?

Not supporting a one-sided United Nations resolution calling for a Palestinian state, especially not at a time when Hamas needs to be under maximum pressure from Western democracies.

Not supporting a resolution – that same one – that “reiterates the right of return,” a right that does not exist in legal terms. In fact, it means Germany should be taking the lead in unequivocally recognizing and publicly acknowledging that there can be no “right of return” for millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees, because it would invariably mean the dissolution of the only Jewish state and turn the Jews into another minority in an Arab country.

It means Germany must give up its ambiguous stance in the UN and fully recognize the glaring UN bias towards Israel, whose General Assembly has passed 154 resolutions against Israel, versus 71 against all other nations combined, since 2015. Germany should also actively lobby against the appointment of officials to leading UN bodies who have a history of supporting terrorist organizations and making antisemitic statements, such as Francesca Albanese.

It means Germany must stop financing schools and educational institutions led by UNRWA, which have been proven not just by Israel, but also by European institutions, to systematically plant antisemitic narratives in Palestinian children’s minds. And not least because UNRWA directors and teachers are affiliated with, and even members of, Hamas.

Germany needs to take the lead in undoing the ongoing perpetuation of inherited refugee status that UNRWA embodies and work on finding, constructing and funding a viable and practical alternative to promote a free and democractic political culture in a future Palestinian state.

It should be a German priority to help provide deradicalization programs to Palestinian youth, based on its own rich and successful experience of democracy building – not just because that is part of what it means to make sure Israel is secure. But because helping other peoples build a free and democratic state is part of your historical responsibility.

Mr. Merz, if you are able to cry tears over the Shoah, I expect you to cry over the seven German-Jewish hostages, a few of whom are believed to still be alive – Rom Braslavski, Tamir Adar, Gali and Ziv Berman, Itay Chen, Tamir Nimrodi, and Alon Ohel – who have been tortured and starved for almost two years now and remain in the captivity of Hamas and other terror organizations in Gaza.

More than that, I expect you to talk about them publicly and lobby for their release. And I sadly wonder why you cry when reading out a sentence about Jews not being helped in the Holocaust – when you are not doing enough to help them.

And, Mr. Merz: It should be one of your number one priorities to fight radical Islamism and right-wing extremism in all its forms in Germany. Germany has a responsibility not just to fight antisemitism, no matter where it comes from – but also to lead that fight in Europe and globally.

What does that mean? Reaching out to your Spanish counterparts when the deputy premier publicly announces “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as Yolanda Diaz did in 2024, and calling them out for making a statement that effectively erases Israel from the map. Reaching out to Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez when he applauds as morally virtuous protestors who radically disrupt a major sports event, causing people to get injured, and insulting an Israeli sports team who has no affiliation with the Israeli government.

It means finally taking the lead in Europe to label Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) what it is, a terrorist organization. It means immediately taking all the legal and political steps necessary to stop IRGC activity in Germany, and finally ending the decades-long ambiguous policy of appeasement and trade relationships with the mullah regime which is seeking loudly and clearly to destroy the world’s only Jewish state.

It means setting up commissions to examine and fight the influence of states that offer support for terror groups, such as Turkey or Qatar, and organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which are pursuing a radical, anti-Western, anti-liberal and anti-feminist agenda, on German institutions.

It means shutting down Al Jazeera: the Qatari channel that glorifies Hamas, lauded October 7, and is instrumental in spreading false narratives about the massacre and anti-Israel propaganda to swaths of the Muslim world – including Muslim communities in Germany. Shutting down Russia Today wasn’t a problem, so why should this be?

It means finding the clearest of words and policies against the AfD party, which has whitewashed the Holocaust and has been proven to be an extreme right-wing organization with an anti-democratic agenda – as a recently published report by the political foundation Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which is associated with your own party, found. In fact, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung warned your party, the CDU, in this very report against cooperating with the AfD in any way – as you are doing, for example, in the European parliament.

And yes, while fighting the AfD also means correcting a failed migration policy, it does not mean making populist moves like shutting down Germany’s borders, as you have done – to the chagrin of your EU neighbors and certainly to the despair of those migrants who are fleeing persecution in their countries of origin. Because these are the migrants whom Germany should be granting refuge to, as warranted by its history and as an extension of its responsibility to persecuted people everywhere.

Some of these migrants who are being turned away or deported actually belong to the Middle Eastern minorities who are being threatened by Islamist terror. As, for example, the Yazidi family who was deported to Iraq in July despite having done nothing wrong and having well-integrated teenage kids in German schools. Despite being faced with threats in their home country. And despite having a Berlin court overturn the decision that forced their deportation. That’s not a migrant policy to be proud of, and not one that will support the goal of promoting democracy and fighting prejudice.

Mr. Merz, to fight antisemitism means to promote democratic values. Germany is a “streitbare Demokratie,” a democracy that will not allow undemocratic forces to dismantle it – a democracy that will stand up for itself and defend its own basic values, in a lesson learned from Germany’s first failed democracy, the Weimar Republic. I expect you to show the world what that means, so that German Jews will feel safe in Europe again.