Genocide, Nukes, and Germany’s “Dirty Work”

By Omnia Magdy

Israel is continuing to commit genocide in Gaza. Over 61,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli military. Recently published reports show that the official death toll is most likely much higher, as over 377,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been “disappeared.” Just a few days ago, the Israeli Occupying Forces killed at least 51 Palestinians in Gaza while they were waiting for aid to be distributed. In order to distract from the genocide in Gaza, but also realizing the weakness of the axis of resistance with Israeli bombing of Lebanon and Syria, on the 12th of June, Israel began striking Iran.

For decades, Benjamin Netanyahu has decried that Iran is close to developing an atomic bomb and that Iran (and in the early 2000s also Iraq) must be toppled and a regime change instituted. Israel itself is estimated to have 90 to 400 nuclear warheads, which it does not disclose. The only country to have ever used an atomic bomb was the USA in World War II in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, through which 246,000 Japanese civilians were brutally killed. On June 22nd, the US military bombed three nuclear facilities in Iran, claiming that the US needed to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons. Trump’s own director of national intelligence stated that Iran is not developing a nuclear bomb, which Trump himself corroborated, later claiming this to be false intel.

Before Iran retaliated to the Israeli airstrikes on its territory that killed military personnel and civilians in what would seem to be a classic case of self-defense in international law, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, stated that Iran (not Israel) should stop the escalation. After hundreds of Iranian civilians had already been killed by Israeli airstrikes, Merz voiced a few days later that Israel was doing the “dirty work” for “us all” in Iran. He praised the Israeli military for having the “courage” to attack Iran.

The term “dirty work” (Drecksarbeit) in German is politically loaded, as the Nazis used the term to legitimize their war of annihilation against the Soviet Union in World War II. During the Nazi’s “dirty work” 27 million Soviet citizens were killed. Not only is the connection to Nazi terminology striking, but also how openly the German ruling class has shifted from lipservices to international law to factually arguing that international law does not apply to all.

Pundits have written op-eds in German newspapers stating that international law must be pushed aside for the law of the strongest. The CEO of the notorious media group Axel Springer, Mathias Döpfner, noted that the Israeli attacks on Iran are a “liberation strike” and that “if Israel falls, Europe and the US will be in the line of fire. Without a clear stance, we will lose the war of civilization.” Going on to regurgitate bourgeois propaganda that always, without exception, talks of “the terror organization Hamas” and the “Mullah Regime Iran”, the attempt here is to manufacture consent for an apparent breach of international law by invoking Islamophobic terminology.

Yet the German state and its bourgeois media propaganda have legitimized the Israeli regime’s genocidal actions since the beginning. Invoking “Israel’s right to self-defense,” it was the former Greens foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, who is not the president of the UN General Assembly, who stated in 2024 that civilian infrastructure in Gaza loses its “protective status” if terrorists are in its midst. Justifying the further slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza with crude references to international law has been the status quo of the German ruling class since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza.

Just last month, the new German foreign minister of the conservative CDU party, Johann Wadephul, met with the internationally wanted war criminal Netanyahu in Israel, while the German president, Frank Walter Steinmeier of the Social Democrats (SPD), met with Isaac Herzog in Berlin. Bemoaning that Israel must be a “good friend” and abide by international law, the Wadephul clarified that Germany would continue to send weapons to Israel. Since October 7, 2023, until May 2025, Germany has sent half a billion euros worth of weapons to Israel (485 million weapons).

Yet it is not only for lucrative military expenditure that Germany supports the Israeli regime’s genocide and aggression unconditionally. Merz’s comments regarding Iran are very telling. Israel is the watchdog of Western imperialism in the region; it represents the geopolitical interests of the West by taking out any form of resistance to it. The German term “Staatsräson” (reason of state), which denotes Germany’s unwavering support for Israel, with supposed reference to its past, was actually first coined in 2008 in a speech by Angela Merkel in the Knesset, where she warned against the dangers posed by Iran. Hence, the Imperialist “Staatsräson” which justifies the terrorism caused by the Zionist entity, has always been part and parcel of representing Western interest against any rivals in the region, into which the Palestinian resistance, Iran, but also Hezbollah and the Houthis are bunched.

Polls in Germany show that 80% of the population is against Israel’s actions in Gaza. Yet, due to severe police violence and criminalization of pro-Palestine and anti-genocide voices in Germany, this rejection of Israel’s actions has remained relatively passive. While mass demonstrations in Berlin constitute 30 to 50,000 people in a country of over 80 million people, in other Western imperialist countries like the UK, up to a million people take to the streets for Palestine in a country of 60 million.

Now that the hypocrisy of the German ruling class is crystal clear and more and more people are against Germany’s support for Israel, Socialists must continue to fight to transform passive solidarity for Palestine into active solidarity for Palestine. Demanding an end to German weapons deliveries to Israel is one crucial point that can be rallied around and which many Palestine solidarity groups have been pushing for. As the German state is the second largest weapons deliverer to the Israeli regime after the US, fighting German imperialism at home can have huge ripple effects and be a crucial point in fighting for a free Palestine.