“We appreciate the fact that you are here with us, that you are standing by our side,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on October 17, after the “worst crime against Jews since the Holocaust.”
The Israeli state was formed in 1948 immediately following that even-greater crime against the Jews. That Holocaust, perpetrated by Germany, killed 6 million Jewish men, women, children and babies. Prior to that, Jews have been persecuted for millenniums in Europe, including crusades, inquisitions and pogroms.
The State of Israel was to be a safe haven—largely from the Germans. A lifetime later, a rebuilt Germany, once again at the head of Europe, is standing alongside Israel.
Germany led the United States in sending its head of government to Israel and lighting up its capital landmarks in blue and white. Most European Union foreign ministers tried to limit Israel’s response, but the German European Commission president refused to impose such a limit. Meanwhile, a poll revealed that 70 percent of Germans agreed Israel had the right to defend itself. Germany and Austria suspended their development aid to Gaza, which is completely controlled by Hamas.
Germany has been growing closer to the embattled Jewish state for years. Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a historic address in the Israeli legislature in 2008, saying, “Every federal government and every chancellor before me were committed to Germany’s special historical responsibility for Israel’s security. This historic responsibility of Germany is part of my country’s reason of state.”
Germany has worked with Israel in military exercises, sold it nuclear-capable submarines, and purchased its Arrow-3 missile defense system. Following the attack, Israel turned to Germany for warship ammunition, and Germany provided two advanced drones to fight Hamas.
In a major war, the Israel Defense Forces always needs munitions and supplies, not to mention political support, from outside the country. The United States fulfilled that role in the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War and other conflicts.
But Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s treatment of Israel and of Netanyahu have shown a change of course. In many ways they have demonstrated hostility toward Israel and other longtime allies. And after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, America’s tarnished credibility and obvious strategic limitations have left its allies fearful.
Expect this trend to continue—and expect Israel to look more and more to Germany.
The day after Hamas’s attack, a huge majority of the German legislature resolved, “Israel’s right to exist and its security are nonnegotiable for the members of the German Bundestag.” Its foreign minister stressed, “Any help Israel needs, it will get from Germany. Even military support.”
This promise of support will draw Germany into the battle and into a potential conflict with Iran.
To the Bundestag on October 12, Chancellor Scholz said, “Without Iranian support over the past several years, Hamas would not have been capable of these unprecedented attacks on Israeli territory.” After Iran subsequently issued threats, a German Foreign Office spokesman replied on October 16: “Anyone who plays with fire in this situation, pours oil on the fire, or otherwise ignites it, should think twice.” It was quite a contrast to Biden and the U.S. suggesting Iran wasn’t responsible for this particular massacre.
This is a dramatic shift for Germany. In recent years, it has been Iran’s largest European trading partner. Is Germany now prepared to support Israel in war with not only Hamas but Iran?
In a 2013 Wall Street Journal article (“Germany Must Have Israel’s Back”), former Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg urged the German government to consider what happens “if diplomacy fails and Israel is compelled to take military action against the Iranian nuclear threat. … Berlin should also start thinking about how to support Israel in the wake of potential air strikes on Iran. … The stakes are high. Germany cannot afford to be on the wrong side of history.”
In a 2019 Fox Business discussion about Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, Guttenberg noted that Mideast leaders had told him “there is no chance to confront Iran, the way they’ve been pampered militarily, just with one country. And there has to be built an alliance.”
For years, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has detailed how Germany is forging exactly such an alliance and that the Bible prophesies a violent clash between Iran and its allies and Germany and its allies.
Daniel 11 revolves around a power struggle over Jerusalem. In The King of the South, Mr. Flurry writes: “And it appears they go to war again over the land of Judah, specifically Jerusalem.”
Today the Jews possess the Holy Land, but Islam and Catholicism eye it greedily. Radical Islam, led by Iran, is determined to seize that land, but Bible prophecy reveals this attempt will lead to war. Iran’s aggression is awakening a sleeping lion in Europe.
The prophecy of Daniel 11:40 for “the time of the end” has not yet been fulfilled. Europe will amass an overwhelming force to destroy Iran and its allies.
But as Guttenberg noted, radical Islam, led by Iran, cannot be stopped without an alliance. Germany has been exporting weapons to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other moderate Arab nations to lay a foundation for an alliance. And its alliance with NATO, which held military exercises in the Mediterranean a week after the Hamas massacre, provides it with access to nuclear weapons to counter potentially nuclear-armed Iranians.
“If you watch Germany closely, you can see that it is already positioning itself for its ‘whirlwind’ attack on Iran,” Mr. Flurry notes. “And some of these preparations are laying the groundwork for this future alliance with Arab states” (ibid).
Psalm 83 describes a future alliance between Germany, Turkey and various Arab countries. Besides Edom (Turkey), the Ishmaelites (Saudi Arabia) and Assur (Germany), the psalm also mentions Moab and Ammon (Jordan), the Hagarenes (Syria), the Philistines (Palestinian Arabs), Gebal and Tyre (Lebanon). These are the nations that surround Israel!
Mr. Flurry explains that Lebanon’s “alliance with Iran is about to be broken, and Germany will be the main cause. The Philistines—the Palestinians of Gaza and even those in the West Bank—will shift their alliance to Germany as well.”
But Psalm 83 has a plot twist. “[T]his prophecy reveals a crucial truth: This alliance is primarily and ultimately concerned not with countering Iran but with destroying Israel” (ibid). The Bible reveals that Germany will replace Iran as the dominant Mideast power and commit the greatest national betrayal in history!
This twist is also prophesied in Daniel 11: After Israel invites European forces into Jerusalem as peacekeepers, Germany, in a deadly double cross, will violently seek to seize it (verses 41-45).
But there is good news (see Isaiah 19:23-25). These same prophecies that have proved and are proving true forecast that the next war over Jerusalem will be put down by overwhelming force, by a power greater than Islamic Iran or Catholic Germany. This power will stop all rebellion, set up a new, literal government over Israelis, Germans, Iranians and all other nations, and enforce peace across the globe, all from this very city that is at the epicenter of so much suffering today: Jerusalem!