The saying that nations have no friends, only interests, is correct in that it is always inadvisable to attribute to nation-states the ability to maintain relationships based on human emotions. While a nation may commit shameful acts, a nation cannot feel shame. The citizens of a country can be made to feel shame, of course, and this shame can be manipulated by business magnates and politicians to get the public to agree to a course of action it might not necessarily agree to otherwise. The citizens of many European nations may rightfully feel ashamed of their country’s history but, as we see today, this shame is being manipulated only to justify the repetition, or indeed the continuation, of historic crimes.
Again and again we are told that Germany must support Israel due its history – that is, the Holocaust. The real reason for the German government support for Israel, or “Staatsräson”, lies not in any abstract national shame but in Israel’s concrete purpose: as a source of corporate profit and geopolitical control.
As everyone knows, corporate profits come in the form of weapon sales. Germany accounts for 33% of weapon sales to Israel and is second only to the US in weapons delivery. The largest component of German arms sales to Israel is submarines.Every submarine ever operated by the Israeli Navy has been designed and constructed in Germany.
The current Israeli fleet consists entirely of the Dolphin-class, built by ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems. The submarines are believed to be able to launch nuclear-armed Popeye Turbo cruise missiles with a range of up to 1,500 km. Thus, the Israeli Navy’s dependence on German submarines is not just operational but strategic.
In summary, Germany is not just a supplier to the Israeli Navy; it is the founding architect and financier of its most strategic asset. The Israeli fleet is 100% German-made, making the country’s naval deterrent capability entirely dependent on German technology and political support.
German national guilt also is also cited when the German government splits the cost of the submarines with Israel. That is, the German citizens pay a large portion of the cost for Israeli submarines. But to ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems it makes no difference where the money comes from. It is corporate profit. And that is the whole point of a settler colony, that is, to socialise the costs and privatise the profits.
And when the settler colony is condemned by the world’s highest court, as Israel was by the ICJ, Western Democratic states are obliged to follow the law. This led to Germany’s vaunted freeze on weapons exports to Israel. The freeze was from August to September 2025, four months. It was lifted after an announced ceasefire which arguably never actually took place. Not that any of this matters because German submarines and naval equipment were explicitly exempted from this four-month freeze to begin with.
According to myth, Israel was created as a safe-haven for Jews. The irony is, of course, that Jews were living in peace for quite some time in Palestine – until the arrival of Zionism. As Israeli historian and Cambridge professor Avi Shlaim has noted, «There was no history of antisemitism in the Arab world. Antisemitism is a European disease.” And while some would conflate Zionism with Judaism, it cannot be stressed enough that Judaism is a religion, Zionism is an ideology. So while it is true that a majority of Jews are – still – Zionists, the majority of Zionists are not Jews. This just goes to show that you do not have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, you just have to be an imperialist.
Therefore, we must reverse the German Parliament’s decision to accept the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. To conflate Zionism with Judaism is to say that all white Americans are members of the Ku Klux Klan or that all Germans are Nazis. The decoupling of Zionism from Judaism is essential if we are to be successful in defeating the war machine. It is obvious that our current leaders want nothing more than war. To allow them to hide behind the Holocaust in this desire is to kill the victims for a second time.
Peter Eisenstein
Berlin, 30 May, 2026
(Translated from German)
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