TEHRAN - On Tuesday, May 27, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz delivered his most severe rebuke of Israel to date, saying massive air strikes on Gaza are no longer justified by the need to fight Hamas and "no longer comprehensible".

"The massive military strikes by the Israelis in the Gaza Strip no longer reveal any logic to me. How they serve the goal of confronting terror. ... In this respect, I view this very, very critically," Reuters quoted Merz as saying in a press conference in Turku, Finland.

Also, in a radio interview on Monday, May 26, Merz said: “Frankly, I no longer understand what the Israeli army is doing now in Gaza, or what its goal is.”

However, the question is why the criticism by Germany came so late.

Unfortunately, Germany stood on the wrong side of history in the Gaza war. Merz’s predecessor Olaf Scholz visited Israel on October 17, 2023, ten days after the outbreak of the war that was triggered by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel.

Scholz’s visit to Israel emboldened the Netanyahu regime in its apocalyptic war on Gaza, which is continuing relentlessly until this hour.

Even German philosopher Jurgen Habermas expressed his support for Israel’s horrible acts in Gaza in the early weeks of the war.

Germany has been the second biggest arms supplier to Israel. It comes after the United States.

Even now that voices are rising in Europe for an arms embargo against Israel, Germany's new Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul under Merz’s government snubbed Spain’s calls for an embargo, saying Germany will keep supplying weapons to Israel despite Israel’s intensified offensive in Gaza that has sparked international outcry.

“As a country that understands Israel’s security and existence as a core principle, Germany is always obliged to assist Israel in guaranteeing its security,” Wadephul told a joint press conference in Madrid alongside Spanish counterpart Jose Manuel Albares on Monday, May 26, according to the Defense Post.

“That naturally includes being willing to supply weapons in the future,” said Wadephul, citing Germany’s unique responsibility towards Israel after the Holocaust.

However, Germany that has been following a rather pacifist policy since the end of the Nazi rule must have used its influence to prevent another Holocaust by Israel and pressured Israel to accept a two-state solution for the decades-long conflict. 

Interestingly, during his visit to Israel on May 17, Wadephul cast doubt on the success of Israel’s 19-month war on Gaza, saying the conflict cannot be solved through military actions and stressed that Germany supports a political solution.

It seems that Germany has come to its senses, but too late. Its criticisms are coming after war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Though very late, the new stance by Germany is welcomed. It may help to repair Germany’s reputation in the world to some extent.

It is heartening that the Social Democrats, Merz’s junior coalition partner, has demanded a halt to arms exports to Israel, or Germany risks complicity in war crimes.

Whether Western countries, including Germany, acknowledge it or not, they are somehow complicit in the war crimes that have been taking place in Gaza since October 2023.

If it had not been for the West’s unquestionable and unwavering support, the extremists ruling Israel would not have committed this astonishing degree of crimes against the Gaza population.

There was and there is no justification to drop thousands of tons of bombs on 2.3 million people, dislocate them repeatedly from once place to another, cause famine and starvation, maim and orphan thousands of children, kill tens of thousands, and commit many other indescribable crimes to randomly kill some fighters who are seeking break suffocating chains around their neck.