Merkel regrets Netanyahu’s snub of her foreign minister
PM’s allies blame Sigmar Gabriel for canceled meeting, saying he shouldn’t have sat down with left-wing rights group
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday it was “regrettable” that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied her foreign minister a meeting after the diplomat held talks with rights groups.
Merkel’s spokesman said that talks with non-governmental organizations were common during foreign travel and should not set off a rift between allies.
“The chancellor finds it regrettable that a meeting between Foreign Minister (Sigmar) Gabriel and Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Netanyahu did not take place,” he told reporters at a regular government briefing. “It should not be problematic for foreign visitors to meet with critical representatives of civil society.”
Netanyahu’s allies sought to blame Berlin’s top diplomat for the tiff.
“It was his choice,” Deputy Minister for Diplomatic Relations Michael Oren said of Gabriel in an interview with Army Radio. “He is the one who made the inexplicable decision not to go ahead with the state meeting.”
On Tuesday, Netanyahu’s office presented Gabriel with an ultimatum: either he cancel his meeting with Breaking the Silence — an Israeli NGO that publishes the testimonies of former Israeli soldiers who report on human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza — or the prime minister will refuse to receive him. When Gabriel refused to cancel his meeting with the group, the prime minister made good on his threat.
“We placed a red line and that red line must be adhered to. It’s unacceptable for European leaders to come here to help those who degrade our soldiers as war criminals, and that’s what Breaking the Silence does,” Oren said of the group.
Oren is a Knesset member in the center-right Kulanu party but is seen as a close associate of the prime minister, particularly on diplomatic issues, having served as his ambassador to Washington DC from 200 to 2013.
In his own defense of the decision, Netanyahu, in a speech Tuesday evening before National Bible Quiz participants, said it has long been government policy not to “meet with diplomats who visit Israel and meet with organizations that slander IDF soldiers and seek to put our soldiers on trial as war criminals.”
Oren, who also canceled his own scheduled meeting with the foreign minister, suggested Gabriel may have even been looking for a fight, hoping to gain publicity and domestic German support for the move. “We have seen in the past that there are European leaders that have challenges at home and come here to try and interfere in our own problems for their own benefit,” he said.
Environmental Affairs Minister Ze’ev Elkin, a longtime Netanyahu loyalist, said the prime minister was “completely right” to set an ultimatum in the face of “rude” conduct by Gabriel.
“I served for a year as deputy foreign minister, and I would never have dared not to get the authorization for a meeting from the country I was going to, or even more gravely, to meet with organizations that work against the country I was visiting,” he told Army Radio after Oren.
Writing on Twitter in apparent defense of Netanyahu’s decision, minister without portfolio Ayoub Kara likened meeting Breaking the Silence before the prime minister to meeting the Iranian opposition before President Hassan Rouhani.
After his meeting with Netanyahu was canceled, Gabriel told reporters the episode would not affect Germany’s relationship with Israel but said the move was “a surprise,” as German visitors had met with left-wing NGOs in the past and meeting them was a vital part of his trip to the country.
Gabriel also noted that if Netanyahu came to Germany and met with NGOs critical of the government — they do exist, he said — and Germany cut the visit short, “[the Israelis] would think we’re crazy.”
When the announcement that Netanyahu was canceling their talk was issued, Gabriel was in a meeting with President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem, where he vowed he would not allow the incident to affect relations between Germany and Israel.
“We are committed to the friendship, partnership, and special relationship with Israel, and nothing will change that,” Gabriel said.
Rivlin raised the controversy regarding Breaking the Silence, saying that as a democratic state Israel had no problem with criticism, but it had to be based in reality. “Our army is the most moral army in the world,” the president said, adding that “it is an army made up of all our children. We know how to maintain our army as the most moral in the world, and we will continue to do so.”
Gabriel met late Tuesday with leaders of Breaking the Silence and another left-wing Israeli human rights NGO, B’Tselem.
Gabriel came to Israel a day ahead of his Tuesday meetings in order to be here when the Jewish state marked Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely rejected the notion that the German visitor had not been told in advance of the Netanyahu ultimatum, saying that Netanyahu had made his position clear well in advance of the visit. She differentiated between B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence, saying it was the latter group that prompted the ultimatum. Breaking the Silence, which presents often anonymous testimony from soldiers alleging abuse by the IDF, wants to get Israeli soldiers put on trial in The Hague for war crimes, she said, and is “an enemy” of Israel.
Marissa Newman and Raphael Ahren contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.