Once more, the world appears transfixed by the latest melodrama unfolding in the Middle East. Germany’s Foreign Minister, Johann Wadephul, in a flourish of diplomatic platitudes during his visit to Jerusalem, has deemed Israel to stand at some ostentatious “critical juncture.” Apparently, Israel now stares down the barrel of international isolation, a fate supposedly to be averted by selfless German intervention. Ever the over-achieving school prefect, Wadephul insists upon bridging the rift between Israel and the European Union, as if any real gravitas could be found among the chattering bureaucrats of Brussels.
He now demands that Israel urgently open land corridors for humanitarian aid into Gaza, and, in a fashion typical of those eager to virtue signal on the world stage, calls for broad clarity—what a vague, bourgeois word—promising no displacement or annexation. And of course, everyone is to unite around the imperative that hostages held by Hamas must be released, the war must cease, and ending the conflict is, above all, Hamas’s responsibility. Good heavens, I’m sure Hamas will leap from their bunkers, positively delirious that Berlin disapproves.
Wadephul, unable to restrain himself, clasps his pearls over the “unimaginable” catastrophe in Gaza, deploying the predictable humanitarian language of calamity and mass death to urge for more “swift, secure aid.” Germany’s air-dropping of biscuits and bandages, he admits, is mere symbolism—a “stopgap.” He wants dynamic ground operations, as if this were an afternoon delivery of caviar to one’s country estate, and, naturally, he insists that Israeli officials risk UN aid workers’ cherished safety if their movement is even slightly hindered.
The spectacle turns to the West Bank, where Wadephul will commiserate with Mahmoud Abbas about violence from Israeli settlers and the ever-ominous threat of annexation—a maneuver which, inconveniently for Berlin, enjoys majority support in the Israeli parliament. Yet the Germans, perched loftily on their historical guilt and moral pedestal, must, of course, oppose.
On the other side, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, unencumbered by the tedium of guilt-ridden conscience or diplomatic niceties, fires a salvo decrying European “double standards.” He—quite rightly, if I may—laments the world’s infinite outrage when it comes to Gaza, but total apathy when it’s Sudan or Syria. Predictably, Saar squashes any hope of a Palestinian state, pointing out the obvious security hazards. But he is very happy, one sees, that Germany at least holds its tongue on this front—restraint, at least, is something these people still know.
Meanwhile, the Americans dither about with their own envoys; ceasefire negotiations have collapsed into the mud because, as usual, the most vociferous parties refuse to even countenance compromise.
Ah, how typical it all is—how deeply human and stunningly unremarkable. The masses, ever so sentimental, weep into their morning coffee over the “unimaginable” plight of Gaza, as if the world has not always been a stage for clashing interests. Politicians—those who could never dream of affording a single candelabrum in my summer home—strut about, convinced their press releases are riveting history in the making.
My own view, naturally, must be informed by a certain expectation of competence—an attribute forever absent from the simpering gestures of second-tier bureaucrats and UN do-gooders. Nations, like families of standing, must act in their own enduring interest. Israel is not some adolescent in need of pointy-fingered European guidance; it is an ancient nation surrounded by those ready to dance on its grave. The Germans, so desperate to atone for their past at every possible diplomatic soirée, must always find a cause célèbre. It is beneath their dignity, really, this relentless hectoring.
Humanitarian aid is, of course, a most civilizing instinct—one we practice among the deserving poor of our own provinces after all, and which speaks to our benevolence. But to demand a nation open itself to existential danger, to dilute its sovereignty and security for the approval of bureaucratic onlookers, is the height of presumption. Do let the diplomats busy themselves with high-minded pronouncements and carefully arranged press photos, but for those of us who have inherited something of value—land, stability, the capacity to think beyond the next emotive headline—it is nothing more than the seasonal pantomime of lesser men desperate for relevance.
In short: Israel will do what it must to survive, Europe will preen, Germany will post a self-aggrandizing letter to history, and the world will remain as indifferent and divided as ever. I pity those who think otherwise.