Israeli officials on Monday declined to comment on a German newspaper’s report that, in order to lift a silent ban on weapons exports to Israel, the Jewish state promised to not commit genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Spokespeople from Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office told JNS that their offices were declining to comment on the details of Sunday’s report in the Bild newspaper.
According to the report, Israel agreed last week to promise to not commit genocide despite concern in Israel and by its allies in Germany that doing so would validate fanciful genocide claims by Israel’s critics.
Israel and its allies have denied outright the claims that there was ever any such possibility, calling them slanderous anti-Israel propaganda that defies any fact-based analysis of the situation. Diplomatic sources in Germany told Bild that the request for Israel to provide such assurances was “absurd.”
According to Bild, Israel’s alleged agreement to commit to this principle cleared the path for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s statement at the Bundestag on Oct. 10, when he said: “We have delivered weapons and we will deliver weapons” to Israel. He added that the government had made decisions “that will also ensure that there will be further deliveries in the near future.”
Although Germany did not join the United Kingdom and France in declaring a weapons export ban on Israel, in practice such shipments have been held up by Economic Affairs Minister Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, both from the left-wing Alliance 90/Greens political bloc, Bild reported. That bloc is a coalition partner of Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party.
According to disputed statistics from the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, about 42,000 Gazans have died as a result of the current war. Israel says it has killed some 19,000 terrorists in Gaza and another 1,000 inside Israel on or immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion.
