Germany Breaks the Logjam
Germany’s recent decision to lift its partial arms embargo on Israel marks a long-overdue return to strategic clarity. Chancellor Friedrich Merz deserves credit for recognizing what should have been obvious from the start: Israel’s defense capabilities are not a liability to European security, they are essential to it. But Germany’s reversal shouldn’t be the end of the story. It should be the beginning of a broader reckoning across Europe.
With a ceasefire now holding in Gaza, the remaining embargoes imposed by Spain, Slovenia, Belgium, and others have lost whatever threadbare justification they once claimed. More importantly, Europe faces security threats that demand deeper, not more distant, cooperation with Israel.
Since Hamas’s October 2023 massacre that killed more than 1,200 people, European governments have been eager to use pressure to end the ensuing war. Rather than targeting the perpetrators of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Hamas, they instead sought to stop Israel from defending itself.
Europe’s Double Standard
Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom imposed varying degrees of export restrictions. Spain and Slovenia banned all military trade outright. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund divested from Israeli defense companies. The United Kingdom barred Israeli officers from its defense college. At first, European leaders claimed these measures would last only as long as the war. Now, with the ceasefire holding for over a month, Germany has followed through. But others have not.
The double standard was always glaring. The same governments that rightly rush tanks and missiles to Ukraine denied Israel, arguably the only democracy in the Middle East, the tools to defend itself against Iranian-backed terrorism. As the European Union’s (EU) foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas recently warned, Europe must “strengthen the EU to be a more muscular geopolitical player” to survive in a tougher world - one in which Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea increasingly coordinate to counter the West.
The embargoes that some European states maintain directly contradict this imperative. Here is what makes the embargoes self-defeating: Europe cannot build the stronger, more resilient defense posture Kallas demands without Israel. European nations purchased $8 billion worth of Israeli defense equipment last year, more than half of Israel’s total defense exports. Germany alone has committed billions: $4.3 billion for the Arrow 3 air defense system, $1 billion for Heron drones, $350 million for Litening 5 fighter jet targeting pods, and $57 million for PULS rocket launchers. These systems are combat proven in ways European alternatives simply are not.
Europe’s Hidden Shield?
The surge in hybrid threats makes Israel’s importance even clearer. Russian drones have entered North Atlantic Treaty Organization airspace, forced airport closures in Poland, and appeared near critical infrastructure in Belgium and Denmark, prompting talk of a European “drone wall” stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, with Kallas warning such attacks “cannot be accepted as the new normal.”
But the technologies Europe needs for that wall come from the very state some embargo. Israel leads in drone detection, from quantum sensors to artificial intelligence systems, and its defenses boast near-perfect interception rates against Houthi and Iranian drones. Europe faces the same threats from Russia that Israel faces from Iran, yet some European governments still block the systems that could protect their own airspace. As Merz himself admitted in June, Israel is doing “the dirty work for all of us” by striking Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Denying Israel the weapons it needs while expecting it to bear the costs of confronting shared threats is not policy, it’s freeloading.
Even as some European governments maintained their embargoes, their defense ministries kept buying Israeli technology. Germany approved a $2.3 billion Spike missile deal just weeks after announcing its partial embargo. The gap between political posturing and strategic reality could not be wider. Cutting cooperation with Israel doesn’t hurt Jerusalem, it denies Europe access to technologies vital to protecting its own citizens. Germany’s decision creates momentum for a broader reset. Berlin should press remaining holdouts to follow suit immediately. Germany should make clear that provisional legal proceedings at the International Court of Justice are not legitimate grounds to sever defense cooperation with a democratic ally.
European leaders across the continent must recognize what their own defense ministries already know: Israel is not a problem to be managed but a partner whose capabilities are essential to European security. Europe’s security challenges, from Russian drones to Iranian nuclear advances, demand the technologies Israel has spent decades perfecting under fire. Germany accepted this strategic reality. Other European states with restrictions on Israel should do the same. With a ceasefire in place, the embargoes have no justification left. Lifting them and deepening defense ties with Israel is not a concession, it’s the minimum required to secure Europe in an age of converging threats.
Jonah Brody
Policy Analyst | Jewish Institute for National Security of America
