TEHRAN - Feeling repentant for initiating the devastating Second World War and its cruel treatment of Jews known as the Holocaust during the war, Germany succeeded in repairing its damaged reputation.

It followed a balanced and wise foreign policy after the war. It also emerged as the most successful country in terms of economy in Europe.

People around the world, including Iran, were citing Germany as an example of a successful country in the world. Even at the height of the Cold War, West Germany had a relatively good relationship with the Soviet Union.

The jubilant breakdown of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent reunification of West and East Germany were recorded as great events of the late 20th century. Although these events happened due to the wise approach of the late Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the moderate policies of then West Germany were instrumental.  

However, after 78 years Germany lost the direction and badly sided with the most hawkish government in the history of Israel that its crimes against civilian Palestinian people in Gaza have astonished the world.

Though Hamas first launched an attack on southern Israel, which its cause must first and foremost be sought in the decades-long apartheid policy against Palestinians, Germany’s unstoppable delivery of arms to Israel, which has been committing indescribable crimes in Gaza for more than a year, is extremely unexpected, shocking, saddening and a source of great concern.

Regrettably, Germany is the second-largest arms supplier to Israel after the United States. In a report on July 19, 2024, DW reported that according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) 99% of arms imports for Israel between 2019 and 2023 came from the US (69%) and Germany (30%).

Officials in Berlin are well aware that Israel has badly violated the principle of proportionality in the war on Gaza and has so far killed 37 people in Gaza for each person killed in the October 7 attack on Israel.  This is just the tip of the iceberg. All the dimensions of the horrific crimes that bloodthirsty officials in Israel have been committing since October last year in the small territory of Gaza can never be clarified.

German officials are well aware that Israel has been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Now, they are also seeing that Israel has started ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza. Officials in Berlin are not even listening to their own people in which a majority of them, 60 percent, oppose sending arms to Israel.

Germany regrets the Second World War and the Holocaust but now it is helping Israeli ultra-extremists who are now committing a Holocaust against the Gazan civilians.

On October 10, 2024, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced further arms deliveries to Israel during a debate in the country’s parliament.  “We have delivered arms and we will deliver arms,” he made clear in his speech to German MPs, Euronews reported. 

By facilitating Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Germany left another dark legacy in its history after nearly eight decades. The first dark point was in Europe and this one in the small strip of Gaza.