With Friends like these...

I suffered quite an ordeal yesterday attending an event on 40 years of diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel, jointly organized by three local chapters of the German Israeli Association. It seemed that many members of that organization had merely joined it in order to use their thus officially proven status as "Friends of Israel" for freely bashing the Jewish State.

The event was opened by a typical case of the uniquely German combined megalomania/inferiority complex: Former ambassador to Israel, Rudolf Dressler, explained that the "web of relations" between Germany and Israel was "clearly superior to that between Israel and the US" - on all fields, including science, civil society and the military. (Needless to say that this fact was mostly due to his personal achievements.)

He was followed by Peter Philipp, chief correspondent and "Middle East expert" of Germany's foreign broadcasting station Deutsche Welle, who devoted most of his speech to a denunciation of alleged Israeli crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, chief among them the construction of the "Wall" ("Against International Law!").

To top it all off, Philipp was later attacked by one listener for daring to second-guess the West's decade-long complacency towards Iran's declared intention of destroying Israel: "To criticize Iran would have been against the reason of state at that time! Against Germany's interests!"

All that was in full accordance with the mantra shared by most attendees: "The fact that we love Israel gives us the right and obligation to criticize." The Horror.