Scholz announces further arms exports to Israel

As of: October 10, 2024 12:58 p.m

Germany wants to supply more weapons to Israel. Chancellor Scholz announced this in the Bundestag. The debate on the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel also focused on German asylum policy.

In the Bundestag debate on the anniversary of the attack on Israel by the militant Islamist Hamas on October 7th last year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced further arms deliveries to Israel.

“We have delivered weapons and we will deliver weapons,” Scholz made clear in his speech to MPs. The federal government has made decisions “that will also ensure that there will be further deliveries in the near future.” However, Scholz left it open to what extent which weapons should be delivered.

The Union parties had previously accused the traffic light coalition of a lack of support for Israel – including with regard to arms exports. The federal government has been refusing export permits for things like ammunition or spare parts for tanks “for weeks and months,” criticized CDU leader Friedrich Merz. According to him, “a large number of companies” have come forward with written documents stating that permits have been applied for but have not been processed by the federal government for months.

In her speech in the Bundestag, Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock emphasized that arms deliveries to Israel must be compatible with international law. She also criticized that the issue of support for Israel was not a matter of party politics. Support for Israel must be “German reasons of state” for the democratic parties, regardless of who governs the country.

Loud Federal Government Hardly any war weapons were exported

After the USA, Germany is one of the most important arms suppliers to Israel. Last year, the federal government approved arms exports worth 326.5 million euros – ten times more than the year before. Most of these exports were approved after Hamas’ October 7 raid.

In the current year, exports worth 14.5 million euros were approved by mid-August. According to the federal government, however, only two percent of these exports were war weapons. Most fell into a different category. These were, for example, helmets, protective vests or means of communication.

Since March, Germany has not approved any exports of military weapons to Israel. This emerges from answers from the Federal Ministry of Economics to inquiries from Bundestag member Sevim Dagdelen from the Sarah Wagenknecht alliance. The BSW is calling for a complete stop to arms exports to Israel.

MPs remember the victims of the Hamas attack

At the beginning of the Bundestag debate, a minute’s silence was held to remember the more than 1,200 victims of the Hamas attack on Israel as well as the hostages who are still in the control of the terrorist militia.

Bundestag President Bärbel Bas called October 7, 2023 a turning point for the people in Israel, for the entire region and for Jews all over the world. Your thoughts are with the relatives of the dead and the abducted hostages. “Time stood still for you on October 7th,” said the SPD politician. The war in the Middle East means great suffering for both sides – Israel and the Palestinians.

Bas affirmed Israel’s right to self-defense, but at the same time spoke of “an unbearable dilemma” between this legitimate self-defense on the one hand and the necessary protection of civilians on the other. What is needed are “steps towards de-escalation”, an end to the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza and a peaceful perspective for the region.

Baerbock also emphasized that Israel can only “live in peace in the long term if its Palestinian neighbors can also live in peace.” In addition, Israel must observe international humanitarian law in its self-defense.

Debate leads to dispute over asylum policy

In the Bundestag, Bundestag President Bas also denounced the increase in anti-Semitic attacks in Germany since the beginning of the war. “Anti-Semitism has spread uncontrollably in Germany,” she warned, also with a view to the hate speech and hostility against Jews at German universities that was spread on social media.

CDU leader Merz also stated that there have been around 8,500 anti-Semitic crimes nationwide since October 7, 2023. He once again insisted on his party’s call for a tightening of migration policy. “A significant contribution to limiting anti-Semitism in Germany is and remains the stopping of unhindered mass immigration, especially of men from the Arab region who are not in need of protection,” emphasizes Merz. In their countries of origin, “not the protection of Israel, but the destruction of Israel is part of political socialization.” CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt called for anti-Semitism to be established as a “particularly serious case of incitement to hatred” and for anti-Semitic crimes to be established as a regular reason for expulsion.

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