The message in Merkel's swan-song trip to Israel - analysis

• Author: HERB KEINON
• Published date: 04 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

As a lame-duck chancellor – Merkel did not stand for a fifth term in the September elections in which her center-right Christian Democrat party (CDU/CSU) was narrowly defeated by the center-left Social Democrats (SDP) – there is no pressing political or diplomatic reason for her visit.

Though it is unclear who exactly will be able to form a government and replace her, the SPD's Olaf Scholz or perhaps the CDU's Armin Laschet, it is certain that the German chancellor is not coming to Israel to launch any last-minute policy or diplomatic initiatives that may or may not be backed by her successor or the German government still in the making.

cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: '36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b' }).render('4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6'); });

>

No, Merkel is not coming here for policy reasons, but rather for symbolic ones. That Merkel wants to make an eighth and final visit here as German chancellor, and that she will make one final visit in this capacity to Yad Vashem, shows the importance she attributes to the German-Israeli relationship.

And that is a message that is more important for the German public than the Israeli one.

While neither of the two likely candidates to form a government and succeed Merkel represents a generational change in German leadership – Scholz is 63 and Laschet is 60, while Merkel is 67 – a generational shift can be seen in the Bundestag.

According to a New York Times story, whereas only one in seven of the outgoing members of the German parliament is under 40, one in three of the 735 members voted into parliament in September was born after 1981. And that does represent a generational shift.

What that means for Israel is that as German parliamentarians get younger, their commitment to Israel's security as a result of Germany's responsibility for the Holocaust is likely to be considerably less than it has been for Merkel and her generation, for whom the Holocaust and the Third Reich are fresher memories.

Merkel famously was the first German chancellor to address the Knesset in 2008 and declared that Germany's responsibility for Israel's security was part of its raison d'être [staatsräson]. A decade later, in another visit to Jerusalem, she said that Germany is committed to "everlasting responsibility" to Israel "due to the crimes of the Holocaust."

As the memory of the Holocaust fades, one wonders whether the younger generation of Germans – the ones who will rule the country in 10, 15 and 20 years...