Reluctantly Compassionate
Reluctantly Compassionate
The European states are fed up – not with genocide, but with the growing crisis of their rule, which is inextricably linked to supporting Israel. Netanyahu is symbolically threatened to turn back a gear – a farce, of course.
Gramsci and Gerhard Schröder can help.
Reminder: The words highlighted in red are links to corresponding critique articles.
In the spring of the election year 2002, the Union was up to 15% ahead of the SPD under Chancellor candidate Edmund Stoiber, which had been governing in coalition with the Greens since 1998 under Gerhard Schröder.
Schröder was unpopular not only because of a lack of charisma but was perceived as disastrous for the German economy; under the “Anti-Social Democrats,” the unemployment rate rose to 10.8%, the place of the “Dotcom Bubble” and the export downturn after September 11 was catastrophic for German companies – Schröder himself received the worst rating of his chancellorship on the perception scale from plus five to minus five: “Chancellor Schröder achieved a score of 0.2 points (minus 1.3), the worst ever measured for the SPD leader.” [1]
The broad political debate in Germany in 2002 was characterized by massive rejection of German involvement in a possible attack on Iraq; the overwhelming majority (80%, Forsa)[2] of the German population opposed any German participation in the Iraq war across party lines.
Thus, Schröder knew that, to secure his rule, he would have to transform the previously cautiously supportive stance of the SPD towards participation in the illegal war against Iraq into a position of firm rejection of German involvement – “also with UN mandate”.
The Iraq war thus became not only a core issue for the SPD in the election campaign but also the “decisive advantage over his challenger Dr. Edmund Stoiber (CSU)” – Schröder won the election by a margin of just 6,000 votes (0.01%).
Germany’s restraint isolated the Federal Republic of Germany from its allies – “Not only the European Union, NATO, and the United Nations have been weakened by his uncoordinated ‘No’ at the international level,” the politician lamented, “Germany is now also isolated. As long as Schröder governs in Berlin, Washington will see him as an opponent, and in Paris and London, he is regarded as an overambitious amateur,” Merkel said in the following year.
After 40 days, countless war crimes, and the fall of Saddam, US President announced on May 1 that the war against Iraq was “successfully concluded” – and began distributing contracts to the capital of the states that had participated in the war in the interest of the “Coalition of the Willing.” Germany was left empty-handed: “Alone in Iraq, the entire reconstruction volume amounts to 55 billion dollars, according to the World Bank.” (2004)[3]
Capital and Rule
Was Schröder therefore a consistent anti-militarist who rejected the interests of German capital and opposed the Irak safari?
No, of course not: In fact, German capital already had significant economic interests and footholds in Iraq long before the Iraq war began. As part of the UN-regulated “Oil-for-Food” program, the Federal Republic was one of the main trading partners of the Iraqi Baath regime. German companies – especially in machinery, pharmaceuticals, automotive, and plant engineering – were deeply embedded in Iraq’s economic structure, with widespread expectations of economic opening and profitable follow-up business after a possible political upheaval in the country. From an economic perspective, the chances for German capital to participate in a “post-Saddam” Iraq and to be involved in reconstruction and market openings were therefore highly favorable.
The decision of the Red-Green federal government not to participate in the illegal war against Iraq effectively meant a conscious renunciation of the prospect to expand these already existing capitalist interests or realize them through militarily secured contracts. Schröder’s foreign policy ‘No’ to the war was not an expression of a structural contradiction between German foreign policy and capitalist interests – it was rather a sign of an internal state of emergency, in which the continuation of bourgeois rule was acutely threatened. Approval of participation in the war could have led, at a historic moment of massive societal resistance – supported by up to 80% of the population – to an open crisis of the government’s legitimacy.
Schröder’s refusal to participate in the invasion of Iraq was a tactical measure to establish an internal political truce – an attempt to temporarily restore the socio-political legitimacy of a government burdened by extensive austerity programs (Agenda 2010). By strategically occupying an emotionally charged foreign policy conflict, it was possible to rally broad segments of the population behind the executive and to temporarily calm internal class antagonisms. The rejection of the war was thus less a break with imperialist logic than a means of stabilizing bourgeois rule under conditions of looming legitimacy loss.
German imperialism did not abandon geopolitical or economic interests at this moment but prioritized the long-term preservation of political hegemony internally over short-term external dividends.[4]
Viva Palestine?
On May 19 of this year, 22 states, including Germany, media-publicly demanded the “full resumption of aid to the Gaza Strip” – the population of Gaza must “receive the help they desperately need”: The following day, the heads of state and government of France, the UK, and Canada issued a statement warning of “concrete measures” if “Israel does not cease its renewed military offensive and lifts the restrictions on humanitarian aid” – “The human suffering in Gaza is unbearable,” the statement continues; they strongly oppose the expansion of attacks on the “partly indiscernibly destroyed” coastal strip. They will “not stand by idly while the Netanyahu government continues these outrageous measures.”
After 596 days of genocide, all European states, without exception, are experiencing a sustained increase in pro-Palestinian or at least Israel-critical sentiment.
According to the latest figures from ZDF’s political barometer, 80% of Germans perceive Israel’s military actions in Gaza as “unjustified,” similar numbers are found in all other European countries. The societal situation is so bleak that even Merz, the spokesman for transatlantic capital, spoke from Vilnius that he “is very concerned about the situation in Gaza and also about the escalation of the military operations of the Israeli army there. More than just concerned.”
For the respective states that are still directly involved in the genocide in Gaza, this signifies a serious and manifest crisis of the claim to rule.
Hegemony Crisis
As we have discussed in various articles, the Palestine-solidarity movement itself is new in that it is the first movement in decades that can actually be called a mass movement.
It cuts across all layers, origins, and ages of the working class, expressing itself through protests, strikes, and boycotts, through silent solidarity and individual epistemological ruptures – making it different from other solidarity movements, which usually focus on specific (often origin-based) communities.
The great danger is that almost all Western states have developed a very particular relation to Israel in their policy and rhetoric – especially Germany, whose “state raison d’être” is based on the protection of Israel, as well as all other EU states that have at least partially granted Israel a unique partnership.
This “special friendship” that many states maintain with Israel is, of course, a consequence of the unique capital advantages that a good relationship with Israel can bring – “Israel has served since its founding as a stationary aircraft carrier for the capital interests of Western corporations and their governments in the region.
Since its founding, Israel has been the bridgehead of capitalist interests of the Western-imperialist bloc in the Middle East, characterized by its Zionist nature as an active colonial project against the Palestinian indigenous population,” as we wrote in another article.
This special bond with Israel has persisted for many decades despite routine war crimes – but not in the age of information: “This rupture is now actively observable in the genocide in Gaza; the existence of an incredible amount of private footage, immediate recordings of Israeli war crimes, and constant news of new horrors faced by Palestinians (beyond the dominant news portals) contrast sharply with the actively hegemonic coverage by Tagesschau, The Guardian, Bild, and others, marking an unprecedented break with the cultural hegemony here in Germany.
Looking at the comment sections of Tagesschau, The New York Times, or other bourgeois outlets on Palestine, one encounters a level of critique that exists solely because of the development of information technology.” [5]
A societal break with Israel, therefore, equally signifies a break with itself; it poses a profound challenge to the ruling order itself. The political, economic, and military support of Israel by the states of the global North – especially the EU and the USA – reflects a material class interest: Israel as a bridgehead of capital in a resource-rich, strategically crucial region. If worldwide, including in Western centers, a societal consciousness develops that genocide is taking place in Gaza – and this consciousness no longer reduces to isolated cases or “errors in war,” but recognizes the Israeli project as systematically colonial, racist, and murderous – then a rupture with the entire legitimacy of the bourgeois state apparatus is at stake.
To maintain control, to resolve the contradiction between cultural hegemony and the subjective experience of the ruled, the ruling class must adapt its self-presentation in its crisis to secure internal stability – for the European states, this means, to do as Schröder did.
Backtracking
Between 2003 and 2023, 4,427 individual licenses for arms exports to Israel were granted, totaling approximately 3.3 billion euros, with 326 million euros in 2023 alone.
Export items include the diesel engines of the Israeli Merkava-4 tanks (by Rheinmetall), which have been on the ground in Palestine since the start of the ground offensive, and parts of the Sa’ar corvettes (by ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems), involved in the blockade of Gaza.
Other German arms manufacturers for Israel include Dynamit Nobel Defence, MTU Friedrichshafen, and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann.
Germany, alongside the United States, is the main exporter of Israeli military equipment – between 2019 and 2023, German weapons accounted for 30% of Israel’s imports. In 2023, the share even reached 47% of Israel’s heavy conventional weapons imports.[6]
The complicity only becomes a problem when it drives a wedge between the subject to be ruled and the ruling power – which can only happen if awareness of the complicity exists at all.
As Gramsci writes in the Prison Notebooks: “The crisis lies precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born: in this interregnum, various symptoms of sickness occur.” [7] The old, i.e., the consent to Israel’s special status and its consequences, is dying – the new, i.e., a consistent separation from Israel, is not possible because it would significantly harm German interests, even more than the Iraq war – from this contradiction, this pain, arises the serious risk of losing legitimacy of German foreign policy, a break with ideological hegemony. To prevent this rupture, European rulers are retreating; hypocrisy, of course.
[1] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/katastrophale-umfragewerte-schroeders-spd-in-historischem-tief-a-222923.html
[2] https://archive.globalpolicy.org/ngos/advocacy/protest/iraq/2002/1113german.htm
[3] https://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/artikel/a-302696.html
[4] The (also illegal) war against Yugoslavia three years earlier, at the start of the legislative period, posed significant tensions and potential voter losses for the SPD and Greens but also meant substantial shares in the Yugoslavian companies, which were 75% sold to foreign investors.
[5] https://kritikpunkt.com/de/2025/04/07/der-tod-der-hegemonie/
[6] https://www.sozialismus-von-unten.org/waffenexport-nach-israel-ins-visier-nehmen/
[7] Issue 3, p.353