The latest comments by Bundestag (Federal Parliament) Vice President Omid Nouripour (Greens) once again make clear that the Greens are among the most aggressive warmongers in German politics. After Christian Democrat Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently announced a purely symbolic “partial halt” to arms exports to Israel, Nouripour railed against this gesture and warned that Germany must not deviate one iota from its military partnership with Israel.
“The decision to stop arms deliveries to Israel sounds understandable given the devastating situation in Gaza, and many in my party also think it is right. But it is short-sighted,” Nouripour told the Funke Media Group. German weapons played no role in the Gaza war, he claimed. This was “symbolism for the domestic audience” and did not help “any child in Gaza.” Instead, he emphasized that Germany was “very dependent on Israel” in matters of military and intelligence cooperation. “In these matters, we need the Israelis more than they need us. That is the brutal reality,” he said.
Nouripour’s claim that German weapons play no role in Gaza is a blatant lie. Germany is Israel’s largest arms supplier after the US, and numerous German components are used in the weapons deployed in the genocide in Gaza.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Germany has supplied more than 1,000 tank engines to Israel in recent years. German arms companies such as Rheinmetall, MBDA Germany and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann also work closely with Israel in the development of missiles and other ammunition. Between 2019 and 2023, 30 percent of all Israeli arms imports came from Germany, including corvettes, submarines, tank parts and missiles. Since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza alone, Berlin has supplied weapons worth almost half a billion euros.
Nouripour’s defence of the war alliance with Israel is not just limited to the Middle East. He explicitly links German support for Israel’s campaign of destruction in Gaza to NATO’s war against Russia. Israeli arms technology and intelligence expertise are indispensable for Berlin, especially “at a time when we don’t know how things will develop in Ukraine and with the European peace order.” In other words, support for Israel’s genocide is part of Germany’s comprehensive war strategy to re-emerge as a major military power.
The fact that Nouripour is railing against a decision that does not represent any real change underscores the Greens’ belligerence. Chancellor Merz merely announced that “until further notice, no new exports of military equipment that could be used in the Gaza Strip” would be approved. Weapons that have already been approved but not yet delivered are not affected, nor are deliveries for naval and air defence. “In all these areas, Israel will of course continue to be supported to the best of our ability,” explained Chancellor’s Office Chief Thorsten Frei (CDU).
Merz himself assured that there would be no change in Germany’s policy toward Israel. “The principles of Germany’s policy toward Israel remain unchanged. We will continue to help this country defend itself,” he stated. The alleged “halt” serves Merz merely as a political alibi in the face of growing outrage among the population. Nouripour, on the other hand, makes it clear that even symbolic moves away from Israel are unacceptable to the Greens.
Significantly, Nouripour’s statements came on the same day that the UN-affiliated Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) officially declared a famine in Gaza City for the first time. The IPC stated that “this famine is entirely man-made.” Over half a million people are living in catastrophic conditions of hunger, misery, and death. By mid-2026, at least 132,000 children under the age of five will suffer from acute malnutrition.
The famine is a direct consequence of the Israelis’ starvation blockade, which Berlin and the other imperialist powers fully support. For months, Israel has systematically halted aid deliveries and expelled aid organizations. Instead, with US help, it established a “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” that uses food as bait to lure crowds into deadly traps.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the famine “a man-made disaster, a moral indictment, and a failure of humanity itself.” The ruling class in Germany bears full responsibility for this crime—above all the Greens, who justify every arms delivery and every barbaric war crime in the name of “German national interest” and Israel’s “right to self-defense.”
It is no coincidence that the Greens, who presented themselves as pacifists in the first years after their founding, are now among the most vocal advocates of rearmament and war. With Joschka Fischer as foreign minister, they supported the first German military intervention since the end of World War II—the bombing of Serbia—as a governing party in 1998. Since then, they have always been at the forefront of German military interventions, whether in Afghanistan, Mali or the Middle East.
As part of the coalition government led by the Social Democrats and including the Free Democrats, they were among those pushing for tougher military action against Russia in Ukraine and a massive increase in German military spending. At the beginning of the year, Robert Habeck, then Minister of Economics and Green Party candidate for chancellor, called for a tripling of the military budget—plans that are now being implemented by the Merz government with the support of the Greens.
Nouripour’s crocodile tears over the “devastating situation” of children in Gaza are hard to beat in terms of hypocrisy. He and the Greens not only support arms deliveries but explicitly justify the slaughter of civilians. Former Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stated in a notorious speech in the Bundestag on October 10, 2024:
Self-defense naturally means not only attacking terrorists, but destroying them... When Hamas terrorists hide behind people, behind schools, then we enter very difficult territory. But we do not shy away from this. That is why I made it clear to the United Nations: then civilian locations can also lose their protected status.
We commented at the time:
Everyone should take note of these words. The former pacifists of the Green Party, who for a long time used phrases about human rights and democracy to justify imperialist wars, are now openly defending the ‘destruction’ of hospitals and schools and the mass murder of civilians.
The transformation of the Greens from a pacifist protest party into a militaristic state party is an expression of fundamental social processes. They represent the wealthy, academic petty bourgeoisie, which in recent decades has benefited from social attacks on the working class, and rising stock and property prices. Today, this milieu defends its privileged position through militarism, rearmament and complete identification with the predatory interests of German capital.
The Greens’ shift toward war is thus not a “mistake” or a “break” with their origins, but the logical consequence of their petty-bourgeois character. As early as the 1990s, they played a central role in the return of German militarism with their human rights rhetoric. Three decades later, they belong to the most aggressive wing of the ruling class and are prepared to openly justify any genocide and any war of aggression if it serves the interests of German imperialism.