No one blinked - Netanyahu canceled meeting with German FM Gabriel

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel went ahead with this meetings with extreme anti-Israel groups B'Tselem and Breaking the Silence (and another one to boot) and Prime Minister Netanyahu followed through on his threat to cancel his meeting with Gabriel.

Israeli official says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has canceled meeting with visiting German foreign minister. https://t.co/8eBcJhdq8g

— The Associated Press (@AP) April 25, 2017

Netanyahu's office said the prime minister wouldn't meet with foreign dignitaries who meet "groups that slander IDF soldiers as war criminals," referring to Breaking the Silence, a whistleblower group critical of Israeli military actions in the West Bank.

The German minister, Sigmar Gabriel, was set to meet with members of the organization during his visit to Israel and said Netanyahu's cancellation was "relatively surprising" since such meetings were "rather standard" for foreign diplomats.

Gabriel said he didn't want to be turned into "a plaything for Israeli domestic politics," using unusually frank language in light of the sensitive nature of Israel-Germany ties.

Israel and Germany have had a long, close and complicated relationship. Israel was established in 1948 in the wake of the Holocaust, when Nazi Germany killed 6 million Jews. The countries only established diplomatic relations in 1965.

Today, Germany is a key Israeli trade partner and ally in Europe, and assumes responsibility for the crimes committed during the Holocaust. Both Gabriel and former president Joachim Gauck took part in Holocaust memorial events in Israel on Monday.

When he met with Rivlin, Gabriel called the Holocaust "the most criminal action we did in the history of humankind."

But tensions occasionally flare up over Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, as well as settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem. Germany, along with most of the international community, considers Israeli settlements illegal.

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Netanyahu's office said that foreign dignitaries are welcome to meet with civil society representatives, but that the prime minister "will not meet with those who lend legitimacy to organizations that call for the criminalization of Israeli soldiers."

But Germany more than any other country appears to be obsessed with financing the establishment of a 'Palestinian state,' and many ordinary Germans appear to be determined to finish the job that Adolph Hitler started.  This is from a 2013 review of Tuvia Tenenboim's I Sleep in Hitler's Room.

Then, Tuvia and Isi schlepped their sacks full of laughs and chutzpah and important ideas from one German city to another. He had not intended to write about Jews at all. He had been commissioned to write about Germany Today. “But the subject of Jews and Israel kept coming up. It turned out to be a German obsession. Everyone wanted to talk about it, fight about it.”

According to Tuvia, the Turks and Muslims in Germany hate Jews. But so do the Germans. “At least the Muslims are open about it. The Germans deny and deny and then fly into a rage.” The German peace-loving, progressive left - including “the feminists who believe in women’s liberation,” -  is colluding with Muslims who veil their women, keep them in the kitchen, and refuse them prayer access in the mosque.

“The Germans can’t look at themselves in the mirror.”

I (and others) have written about the nature of European Jew-hatred for many years now, especially about why Europeans are ostensibly embracing the violent and hostile “Semites” among them after having murdered six million of their assimilated or non-violent “Semites.” European Jew-hatred still expresses itself by taking the “Palestinian” side against the evil, Nazi Israeli Jews. They can feel guilt-free, superior—even justified in having murdered so many Jews.

“They don’t know the names of their own political leaders, but they hang photos of Mahmud Abbas in their offices and march for Palestine. They do not care about what Putin did in Chechnya. They care only about Palestine.”

Tuvia took this message across Germany. The young people of Germany wanted to hear him speak and crowded the auditoriums. And they bought his book in record numbers. He told them: “Hitler understood the Germans. He said: You hate them (the Jews). Okay. Let’s kill them. Let’s act on what we believe.”

I'd bet that Gabriel thinks the same way. If the shoe fits....