Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his government were fiercely attacked by Israel’s former Ambassador to West Germany, Asher Ben Nathan, who declared yesterday that he would resign as president of the Israel-German Friendship Association the moment the Bonn government signs an arms sales deal with Saudi Arabia.
He accused the government of hypocrisy when it justified the arms deal on strategic and political grounds. “A reference to economic interests would at least be the truth. Everybody knows how much Arab money was invested in West Germany and how much more is still expected,” Ben Nathan said in an interview with Die Welt.
He took issue with the Chancellor’s apparent view that the past plays no part in Germany’s present or future policies and denounced him for failing to repudiate a remark by one of his spokesmen, Peter Boenisch, that “one cannot make policy with Auschwitz.”
Ben Nathan also rejected the West German argument that if the U.S., Britain and France can sell arms to the Arab states, it cannot be taboo for Germany to do the same. If that is true, why doesn’t Bonn offer troops to the multinational force in Lebanon, the former envoy asked.
He sharply attacked what he considers unconscionable behavior by Kohl during his recent visit to Israel. According to Ben Nathan, the Chancellor failed to praise the Camp David accords but vigorously supported the 1980 Venice declaration by the European Economic Community (EEC) heads of state which he had previously rejected when he was leader of the opposition. Kohl’s statements in Jerusalem on the Arab-Israeli conflict were aimed at Arab capitals, not Israel, Ben Nathan charged.
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