Like President Joe Biden, Chancellor Olaf Scholz Biden emboldened Benjamin Netanyahu to commit crimes in Gaza. However, they both are expressing concern about Israel’s plan to attack the southern city of Rafah which is sheltering more than half of the internally displaced Gazan population.

Meeting Netanyahu 10 days after the Hamas attack on southern Israel, Scholz wrote in German, English, and Hebrew: “My visit to Israel is a visit to friends. Germany stands firmly by Israel’s side.” On Nov. 18, Scholz also assured Germany’s “unfailing support” for Israel.

Scholz on Monday harshly criticized Israel’s plan to launch a ground offensive in Rafah. The German leader also “unequivocally” warned about the consequences of such an attack.

Netanyahu has said despite negotiations for a truce the Israeli army is planning a ground offensive in Rafah.

Scholz said a large number of Gaza’s 2.3 million population have “fled there and there is no other alternative for them… and a human catastrophe must be prevented,” the Persian service of DW reported.

On Feb. 10, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also warned against attacking Rafah. "An offensive by the Israeli army in Rafah would be a pre-announced humanitarian catastrophe," Baerbock wrote on social media platform X on Feb. 10. "People in Gaza cannot just vanish into thin air."

Such remarks cannot whitewash the record of the chancellor and his lieutenants’ unequivocal and unwavering support for the most extremist cabinet in the history of Israel under the pretext that Israel has the right to “defend itself”.

Contrary to what the German leader claimed, what the far-right cabinet of Netanyahu has been doing since Oct. 7 is not defense. Rather, it has been ethnic cleansing, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

It is for this reason that lawyers in Germany on Feb. 23 filed charges against some of the country’s most senior politicians, including Chancellor Scholz, accusing them of “aiding and abetting genocide” in the Gaza Strip.

After Biden, Scholz has been the most ardent supporter of Israel in its collective punishment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Scholz’s strong criticism of Israel cannot absolve him of being an indirect accomplice in the crimes being committed by the Israeli war criminals in Gaza. Given the history of the Second World War in which Germany was the chief instigator and victim, it was not expected that Scholz, who is now running Germany, would express such strong support for Israel while the regime’s 75 years of history is full of crimes, apartheid, occupation, land theft, extreme human rights violations, etc.

These remarks by Scholz after about 30,000 Palestinians lost their lives in less than five months, hundreds of thousands were displaced and starved, and 70 percent of homes in Gaza were destroyed, will not exonerate him before the court of human history.