The guests agree that there is no alternative to Israel’s self-defense. How and whether Hamas can be broken remains unclear. Unwavering optimism comes from, of all people, Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer.
At some point in the course of this sad broadcast you briefly become very angry with Angela Merkel. Not because of any specific political failure – to be honest, we don’t even remember what the Chancellor did wrong in the Middle East conflict, although there must have been a lot of things, simply because no one has figured out how for decades you are doing something right in the Middle East. But because it was Angela Merkel who, at some point between the euro rescue and Stuttgart 21, put the word “no alternative” on everyone’s lips, and even more than three legislative periods later it seems impossible to get rid of it.