German Bundestag (Parliament) President Julia Klöckner (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) became the first leading European politician Thursday to visit the Gaza Strip since the start of the military onslaught, accompanied by Israeli military officials. In doing so, she underscored the role of the German government and the German ruling class in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.
Berlin has provided political cover and actively supported with arms deliveries the genocide that has turned the Gaza Strip into a wasteland and cost the lives of well over 70,000 people, the majority of them women and children. Now Klöckner has openly declared her solidarity with the fascist Netanyahu regime and travelled to the scene of the crime “embedded” with the Israeli military.
The visit followed a clear script. It served not to enlighten, but to conceal—not to end, but to continue the mass murder. While Klöckner was in Israel, the far-right Israeli security cabinet decided on sweeping measures to extend control over the occupied West Bank, thereby initiating its formal annexation.
The propagandistic nature of the trip was so obvious that it was reminiscent of the absurd spectacle staged by the Nazis during a visit by a delegation from the International Red Cross to the Theresienstadt ghetto on 23 June 1944.
At that time, the commission was guided along a precisely planned route. Accompanied by the camp commander and the so-called Jewish elder, it was presented with a carefully rehearsed performance featuring selected prisoners in front of an artificially constructed backdrop. The aim was to conceal the Holocaust and to deceive the world public into believing that this was a “normal” Jewish settlement area.
Preparations included renaming the ghetto “Jewish settlement area,” establishing a semblance of “self-government” with its own bank and worthless banknotes, and opening shops selling stolen belongings. Suddenly there was a children’s playground and a coffee house.
In the course of this “city beautification,” prisoners who “no longer looked good” were removed from view—that is, deported to Auschwitz and murdered. The delegation was presented with a “city population” of strong, healthy inmates. Streets were decorated and apartments were refurbished.
After the visit, the representative of the International Red Cross, Dr. Maurice Rossel, wrote a report in which he described the living conditions in the ghetto as “adequate” and “satisfactory.” This assessment played directly into the hands of Nazi propaganda.
Klöckner’s statements were less openly euphemistic. She acknowledged that there was a lack of medical care in the Gaza Strip and that the civilian population was living “under harsh conditions.” But her visit served the same political purpose: it normalised the crime and strengthened a regime that systematically starves, bombs and expels the population.
In the midst of a genocide that is now openly spreading to the West Bank, the second-highest representative of the German state demonstratively sided with the perpetrators.
The images of Klöckner wearing dark sunglasses, a steel helmet and a bulletproof vest, surrounded by soldiers armed to the teeth in the ruins of Gaza, were so militaristic that even parts of the mainstream media and individual representatives of the Left Party, the Greens and the Social Democrats felt compelled to offer symbolic criticism. The trip sent “a fatal signal,” wrote Der Spiegel. The Left Party spoke of “disaster tourism.”
This tame outrage is deeply hypocritical. The same parties and media outlets have accompanied Israel’s campaign of destruction with propaganda and political support from the outset.
Immediately after the Israeli attack began in October 2023, the Bundestag passed a pro-Israeli resolution proposed by the Social Democrat/Green Party/Free Democratic Party coalition government and the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union opposition—with the votes of all (!) members of the Left Party. The then parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch described the motion as “Germany’s contribution to the fight against terror.”
Heidi Reichinnek, the current leader of the Left Party parliamentary group, was also particularly aggressive in her support for the war. In a speech to the Bundestag on March 21, 2024, she repeated the official war propaganda about the “brutal massacre by Hamas” and declared that its “brutal violence against children and sexualised violence against women” was “comparable to only a few other events.” Hamas, she said, were “terrorists who must be disarmed.” Israel, she said, “naturally has the right to defend itself.”
The Greens also played a central role. The then foreign minister and current president of the UN General Assembly, Annalena Baerbock, openly justified the destruction of civilian infrastructure in October 2024. “Self-defence naturally means not only attacking terrorists, but destroying them,” she explained. If Hamas fighters “hide behind people, behind schools,” then “even civilian locations could lose their protected status.”
This logic effectively removes the protection of the civilian population and legitimises mass murder.
Berlin’s support for Israel’s war of annihilation does not stem solely from ideological delusions. It is an expression of definite imperialist interests. For Washington, Berlin and Brussels, Israel serves as a military bridgehead for enforcing their economic and geostrategic goals in the Middle East. The escalation against the Palestinians is part of a broader war offensive that currently has Iran in its sights and aims to subjugate Russia and China.
German imperialism does not want to be left on the sidelines in this new redivision of the world. It strives to massively expand its military and political influence and to rise to become a global power. And it is prepared to commit barbaric crimes to achieve this, as it did in the First and Second World Wars—even genocide. That is the real significance of Klöckner’s trip.