Putting one’s money where one’s mouth is: this idiom is meant to describe the translation of words into deeds and is often used as a means of motivating those who engage in performative virtue-signaling to get off their comfortable posteriors and take concrete action.

In the context of "Israel’s" ongoing genocide in Gaza, this saying can be applied to both activists in the service of justice and the reactionaries who oppose it: on the one hand, you have people backing up their rhetorical solidarity with Palestinians by marching in their hundreds of thousands in cities across the world, or by donating dutifully and generously to Gaza emergency appeals and engaging in disruptive direct actions.

Sadly, on the other end of the spectrum, you have Euro-Western governments such as the US and the UK bolstering their moral support for "Israel’s" wholesale massacres of Palestinian civilians with tangible military assistance in the form of munitions, air defence systems and the deployment of warships to the region.

The latest European country to follow suit in expediting material support to an already hopelessly über-militarised apartheid regime that is also in possession of unregulated nuclear arms is Germany, "Israel’s" staunchest ally in continental Europe, due to their shared history of despicable political ideologies: Nazism’s Aryan supremacy, which led to the holocaust of six million European Jews, and Zionism’s Jewish supremacy over Palestine, which in the last month alone has managed to murder over 11,000 Palestinians out of nothing else but cold-blooded racial hatred.

According to Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs, which oversees foreign weapons sales, German arms exports to "Israel" have increased tenfold in 2023 when compared to the previous year, the overwhelming majority of these export permits being approved after Hamas’s October 7 incursion into "Israel". When measured by value, this exponential surge becomes even more evident: from 32 million euros in 2022 to a whopping 303 million today.

German news agency dpa has reported that "only" 6 % of that export volume is made up of actual weaponry (a 4% increase compared to last year), while the rest is made up of warfare-aiding equipment such as bulletproof vehicles and military trucks. In line with its utter disregard for transparency, the German government does not disclose details of the deals in order to protect the manufacturers who are making a veritable killing off of their killing machinery (Germany’s military exports totaled 8.76 billion euros in the first three quarters of this year).

The not-so-subtle message underlying the country’s current military-industrial hustle and bustle is clear, as if to say: “We see you, Israel, as you engage in genocide against a people we also couldn’t care less about. And since we Germans know a thing or two about racist mass murder, yet cannot openly assist you because we have, you know, “learned from our history”, we will do the next best thing: supply you with the equipment needed for your racist orgies of indiscriminate bloodshed.”

Germany’s rewarding of genocidaires by fast-tracking defence export approvals to "Israel" is by no means surprising: the former’s staunch moral support for "Israel" following Hamas’s October 7 attack in the form of effusive solidarity rhetoric has turned out to be a prelude to more sinister things to come. And what is more sinister apart from committing genocide than arming its executors?

Furthermore, Germany’s Ministry of Economic Affairs, which in 2021 added climate action to its portfolio and name, is headed by the virulently pro-"Israel" Robert Habeck, an increasingly anti-climate justice Green party politician: he has repeatedly attacked the environmental protest group Letzte Generation for its impressive direct actions, and has in all seriousness said that the so-called “Klimafrage” (the question of climate change), should not be put above everything else.

With regards to the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and the violent repression of pro-Palestinian solidarity in Germany, the self-important economy minister recently overstepped the boundaries of his jurisdictional authority by airing a ten-minute video message on antisemitism in which he, like most of his country’s debauched political ruling class has done already, defamed Palestinian-led anti-war protests as examples of Jew-hatred.

It seems as if Habeck, a senior card-carrying member of a party that once stood for pacifism and universal human rights, is not much more than an externally controlled dummy of the war-mongering master ventriloquist that is the Israel lobby: he recently gave in to the pressure of an open letter signed by over 300 Israeli businesspeople demanding he cancel his participation at this month’s Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal.

Why? Because its Irish co-founder, Paddy Cosgrave, had dared to publicly condemn "Israel’s" war on Gaza by posting the following to social media platform X: “I’m shocked at the rhetoric and actions of so many Western leaders & governments, with the exception in particular, of Ireland’s government, who for once are doing the right thing. War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are.”

The post has since been deleted and Cosgrave forced to step down from his position as CEO amidst the reactionary backlash he has faced for daring to do the right thing. As for Habeck: isn’t it remarkable how German politicians who routinely slander the BDS movement as antisemitic have no beef with boycotts when they are implemented in the service of Israeli settler colonialism, apartheid and genocide?

The German coalition government’s tenfold increase in arms exports to "Israel" is not only an indictment of the ethical bankruptcy of the co-governing Green Party, but also of the blatant double standards at play in the murky realm of Germany’s weapons exports approval regime: the former government under Angela Merkel did not hesitate to implement a near total arms export ban on Saudi Arabia in November 2018 for its leading role in the war in Yemen, yet Germany’s current leaders have failed to act similarly with regards to "Israel" as it flattens Gaza by air, land and sea.

After the profuse moral support for "Israel’s" psychopathic war against Palestinians on their own land, now comes Germany’s military support in the form of expedited arms sales. In doing so, the world’s fourth largest merchant of death is aiding and abetting a genocide in Gaza where Palestinian civilian deaths in one month have surpassed the reported total in almost two years of war in Ukraine.

For shame, Germany. For shame.