German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called on the population to uphold the principle of “Never again,” as the country marks one year since the unprecedented terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7.
Steinmeier, who is set to address a memorial service in Berlin on Monday evening, is expected to urge citizens against thoughtlessly condemning Israel.
The war in Gaza “has killed too many people already and caused too much suffering – for Israelis and Palestinians, and now also for the people of Lebanon,” Steinmeier is expected to say in a transcript seen in advance by dpa.
“I would like to see an end to the dying in the Middle East, but I would like to campaign against relying on simple, simplistic advice in a desperate situation,” Steinmeier said. “The deaths in Gaza, the hunger, the destruction would not have happened without the attack and the massacres of October 7 last year.”
For Germans, the obligation remains to uphold the principle of “Never again” to ensure that reality becomes a better one, he added.
A reality in which Israelis and Palestinians can live peacefully side by side will not be achieved by military means alone, Steinmeier said.
Steinmeier expressed his horror at anti-Semitism in Germany and the feeling of insecurity among Jews in Germany, some of whom were sitting on packed suitcases, he said.
In German schools and universities, in cultural institutions, on the streets and in the media, one can see “how this war in the Middle East threatens to tear us apart.”
“But however troubled we may be, we must not lose our bearings,” Steinmeier warned. Attacks and threats or demonstrators calling for a Middle East without Israel amounted to hatred of Jews, he added. “We must not and will not tolerate that.”
