Germany prostrates before Trump.
Germany grovels to Trump
Rights and Accountability 28 January 2026
A German government delegation grovels to Donald Trump. (White House photo)
Germany’s pretense that it upholds one or two principles on the international scene looks increasingly false.
Earlier this month, the Berlin government announced that it was sending a “high-level” police team to assist the US-led Office of the Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The announcement omitted a salient fact: the “security coordinator” works closely with the embassy that the US opened in Jerusalem during Donald Trump’s first presidential term.
Like most other European Union countries, Germany registered its opposition in 2017 to the US decision recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The objections are meaningless today. By teaming up with a “security coordinator” in Jerusalem, Germany is accommodating Trump’s neocolonial machinations.
The plan, it seems, is that Germany will train police operating in Gaza.
Based on the previous experience of US and EU “security” missions for Palestine, we can make an educated guess about how those cops will be expected to behave. Far from advancing the cause of freedom, the police will be required to act in consort with the Israeli occupation.
Significantly, the new announcement follows reports that Germany is stepping up its cooperation with Yamam, a covert unit in Israel’s highly militarized Border Police. Through such cooperation, Germany is ensuring that Palestinians will be placed under even greater surveillance than they are at the moment.
The new announcement was accompanied by a German-Israeli cybersecurity accord – which is almost certainly a topic of conversation at a major technology exhibition taking place this week in Tel Aviv.
The US and Germany, lest it be forgotten, are the world’s two main exporters of weapons to Israel.
Warning signs?
Germany is a valued client, too, of Israel’s arms industry.
An agreement concluded in the past few weeks will expand the Arrow 3 “missile defense” system which Germany has ordered from Israel. Predicted to be worth over $6.5 billion – considerably more than previously estimated – the contract is Israel’s largest ever arms export deal.
The “trade” between Germany and Israel isn’t limited to physical hardware.
Germany has shown considerable enthusiasm in helping Israel to weaponize anti-Semitism. Use of the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is even being treated as a terrorist offense in Germany.
The weaponization has the backing of Ursula von der Leyen, the German politician who is president of the European Commission.
Two years after first requesting it via freedom of information rules, I have finally obtained speaking notes drawn up for a January 2024 discussion held between von der Leyen and Dani Dayan, who heads Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum.
According to the speaking notes – see below – von der Leyen told Dayan that “we are addressing the explosion of anti-Semitic hate speech and conspiracy myths online.”
The speaking notes do not cite examples of the “hate speech” von der Leyen’s aides had in mind. But a report from discussions of the EU’s working group on anti-Semitism held that same week – discussions in which Dayan participated – is a little more detailed.
That report refers to “the explosion of anti-Semitic incidents across the EU, in particular Israel-related anti-Semitism.” Several participants in the discussion, it says, regarded the term “genocide” as “misuse to describe the war in Gaza, which is fought in Israel’s self-defense.”
The dishonest phrasing betrays the agenda behind the EU’s work on anti-Semitism – which is undertaken in tandem with Israel and its lobbying network. Rather than protecting Jews from persecution, its overriding objective is to shield Israel from accountability.
The meeting between von der Leyen and Dani Dayan was held on 24 January 2024. Just two days later, the International Court of Justice delivered an interim ruling which deemed as plausible South Africa’s case that Israel was violating the Genocide Convention.
The speaking notes make no reference to how Dayan had previously led the Yesha Council, an umbrella group for Israel’s largest settlements in the West Bank. An accompanying biographical note on Dayan has been censored by the EU officials handling my freedom of information request.
If these speaking notes provide an accurate flavor of the conversation, then it seems that von der Leyen did not raise any complaints about how Dayan had sought to justify Israel’s settlement activities, even though they constitute war crimes.
As well as heading Yad Vashem, Dayan chaired the club known as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) last year. That organization has just issued an updated guide called IHRA recommendations for teaching and learning about the Holocaust.
The guide lists various questions which educators should address. One question reads: “What can learning about the Holocaust tell us about the process of genocide, its warning signs, and possibilities for intervention that might strengthen contemporary efforts to prevent genocide?”
As Israel is a leading player in the IHRA, it should come as no surprise that the guide only deals with a hypothetical genocide. Nothing is said about the genocide which Israel is actually carrying out in Gaza.
The warning signs that a genocide was taking place could be seen by anyone who was paying attention.
On 13 October 2023, Jewish Currents published an article by the Holocaust scholar Raz Segal, in which he called Israel’s violence against Gaza “a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes.”
That same day, Ursula von der Leyen paid a visit to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. “Europe stands with Israel,” von der Leyen assured him.
Not only have the warning signs been ignored, Germany and the EU’s most powerful politicians have backed the Gaza genocide. That they have done so while uttering solemn inanities about the Holocaust makes their culpability all the worse.
In a discovery that has sent ripples through the archaeological world, researchers have unearthed approximately 30 inscriptions in Tamil-Brahmi and other Indian scripts inside rock-cut tombs in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, providing definitive proof that Tamil merchants travelled deep into the Egyptian interior nearly two millennia ago. Outdoor Clothing | Designed to Perform. Built to Endure. Trek Kit India · Ad The findings, presented at the four-day International Conference on Tamil Epigraphy in Chennai earlier this month by Professor Ingo Strauch of the University of Lausanne and Professor Charlotte Schmid of the French School of Asian Studies (EFEO) , document inscriptions dating between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD across six tombs, including that of Pharaoh Ramesses VI. Of these, 20 inscriptions are in Tamil-Brahmi script, with the remaining 10 in Sanskrit and Prakrit, indicating visitors from various regions of the Indian subcontinent made the journey to Thebes, the ancient Egyptian capital. The Tamil Merchant Who Left His Mark The most significant discovery is the name ‘Cikai Korran’, which appears eight times across five different pyramids. One inscription specifically reads “Cikai Korran – vara kanta,” translating to “Cikai Korran came and saw” – remarkably mirroring the style of Greek tourist graffiti found throughout the same complex. The name suggests a person of considerable status within merchant guilds, with ‘Cikai’ meaning tuft or crown and ‘Korran’ signifying leader. Top 5 Term Insurance Plans Term Life Insurance Plans · Ad Professor Strauch noted that while earlier evidence of Tamil presence in Egypt was confined to port cities like Berenike on the Red Sea coast, these inscriptions prove that Indian merchants were not merely transient sailors. “They stayed for extended periods and possessed the curiosity to visit inland heritage sites far from the coast,” he told delegates. Two-Way Trade Confirmed The discovery resolves a long-standing historical question about the nature of ancient Indo-Roman trade. Senior epigraphist Y. Subbarayalu explained, “Through the writings of Ptolemy and Pliny, we know that the Romans came to India for trade. But it was not clear whether it was one-way or two-way. This new evidence gives proof of two-way trade that happened during the Roman period.” The inscriptions correlate with recent excavations at Berenike, where archaeologists from Tamil Nadu joined Polish researchers last year and found similar Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions on pottery. Professor Schmid observed that among more than 2,000 Greek graffiti marks left by visitors from across the Mediterranean world at the Valley of Kings, “none of them came as far as Indian traders.” Kickstart Your Career 2.0 in the Social Sector ILSS – India Leaders for Social Sector · Sponsored Tamil Nadu Minister Thangam Thennarasu, who inaugurated the conference, expressed pride in the findings on his X platform. “This discovery once again tells the world that the Tamil nation is a proud nation that has crossed the seas and left its mark on world civilizations. The name of a Tamil merchant named ‘Sikai Kottan’ found 8 times in 5 different pyramids reminds us of how deeply the footprint of the Tamils was imprinted on the world trade map. These are another testament to the fact that the Tamil civilization was a progressive civilization that crossed the seas to Egypt during the Roman period and implemented the globalization we speak of today thousands of years ago.” Global Implications Professor K. Rajan, academic and research adviser to the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology, emphasized the importance of the discovery. “It brought to light that Tamil traders went to the interior parts of ancient Egypt during the Roman period. This is important evidence of the trade links between ancient Tamil Nadu and the Roman Empire, which are located on the Malabar coast.”
