In a Bundestag speech this morning, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared full solidarity with Israel as obligatory from the history of the Holocaust. “At this moment, there is only one place for Germany — the place at Israel’s side,” he said. “Our own history, our responsibility arising from the Holocaust, makes it a perpetual task for us to stand up for the security of the State of Israel.”
Scholz also announced a ban of Hamas activities and of the pro-Palestinian organization Samidoun in Germany. Statements and activities in support of Hamas will be prosecuted, Scholz announced.
He furthermore put blame on Iran, saying he sees Iran as partly responsible for the large-scale attack on Israel by the militant Islamist Hamas. “To be sure, we have no tangible evidence so far that Iran has provided concrete and operational support for this cowardly attack by Hamas,” Scholz said. But “without Iranian support over the past several years, Hamas would not have been capable of these unprecedented attacks on Israeli territory.”
