From the people who brought you two world wars and half a century of division at Checkpoint Charlie: a finger-wag at the Jews for daring to put bricks in the soil they fought to survive upon.
Germany, of all countries—now sees fit to lecture Israel on the matter of settlement construction. With a straight face, a spokesperson from Berlin’s foreign ministry declared that the Israeli government must desist from expanding Maale Adumim and the long-delayed E1 corridor, lest it impede the fantasy of a Palestinian state. One is tempted to ask: since when does the German government dictate the urban planning of Jerusalem? And by what moral alchemy does the perpetrator of Europe’s worst crime against the Jewish people now appoint itself their municipal overseer?
The sheer presumption deserves historical comparison. Imagine the French foreign ministry sternly demanding that the United States return Louisiana, lest Bourbon sovereignty be “complicated” by Texan suburbs. Or the Ottomans writing to Italy to demand a halt to new roads in Lombardy. In both cases, we would recognize the absurdity at once. Yet when it comes to Israel—the one Jewish state, carved painfully out of centuries of persecution—the world nods along while European chancelleries scold, as though Jerusalem were an outlying prefecture of Brussels.
It is instructive to recall that Israel did not seize land on a whim but as the outcome of wars it did not initiate. The West Bank fell under Israeli control in 1967, after Jordan and its allies launched what they imagined would be the coup de grâce against the Jewish state. That misadventure failed, as had the 1948 Arab invasion that sought to strangle Israel at birth. To this day, the so-called “occupation” exists because the Arab side has repeatedly refused peace agreements—from the partition plan of 1947, to Camp David in 2000, to more recent overtures.
And yet, the “international community” singles out Jewish housing as the obstacle. Not terrorism, not the refusal to recognize Israel’s legitimacy, not the billions in aid that vanish into corrupt Palestinian Authority coffers, but bricks and mortar on a hilltop. It is rather like blaming the Poles, in 1945, for “provoking tension” by moving into abandoned German houses.
Germany’s admonitions would be easier to endure if they were not delivered with such solemn hypocrisy. A nation that subsidizes Russian energy until the tanks roll into Ukraine, that sells arms to every Middle Eastern satrap with hard currency, now strikes a moral pose about the zoning board of East Jerusalem. This is the same Germany that only exists in its current form because the Allies—chiefly the United States—did not listen to the “international community” and instead imposed partition, reconstruction, and borders by force.
It is also worth remembering that Germany has spent the last seventy years in a state of tutelage, with NATO bases on its soil and Washington effectively underwriting its security. It has therefore enjoyed the unique luxury of preaching morality without ever having to enforce it. The Israelis, by contrast, cannot call on American divisions to hold their borders for them. They must rely on their own settlements, however controversial, as living proof of sovereignty.
Let’s not pretend, Germany does not give a damn about Palestinian freedom any more than it cares about Uyghurs in Xinjiang or women in Tehran. It cares about one thing: appearing pious while spending nothing. Israel, meanwhile, has learned the lesson that should have been written in Europe’s blood: build where you must, defend what you can, and never outsource your survival to another’s pity.
As for Germany’s advice? The Jews have heard enough of that already.
