Merz says criticism of Israel in Germany has become pretext for hatred of Jews

BERLIN (Reuters) -Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Wednesday that criticism of Israel was increasingly being used in Germany as a pretext for stoking hatred against Jews.

Speaking at an event to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Central Council of Jews, Merz said that antisemitism had “become louder, more open, more brazen, more violent almost every day” since the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, that ignited the Gaza war.

“‘Criticism of Israel’ and the crudest perpetrator-victim reversal is increasingly a pretext under which the poison of antisemitism is spread,” he said.

Germany is Israel’s second biggest weapons supplier after the U.S., and has long been one of its staunchest supporters, principally because of historical guilt for the Nazi Holocaust – a policy kn