Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, is today the most veteran, senior and experienced of Israel’s diplomats worldwide. One may assume that his public rebuke of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was made with the explicit approval of the prime minister and foreign minister. Otherwise, it is hard to imagine that an official, however senior, would publicly attack a minister in such a manner.
The German government, together with other European governments, has condemned the decision to build in the settlements, as it has done in the past. Smotrich’s response, using Holocaust Remembrance Day to speak about ghetto borders in reply to the German condemnation, was inappropriate, inflammatory and populist, and caused further damage to Israel. Will this be enough to put relations with Germany back on track? There is no way to know, because the Germans have already absorbed insults from Netanyahu’s government from every direction in recent years.
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Israel is losing its last friends in Europe as diplomatic collapse deepens
(Photo: Ugis Riba/S hutterstock, Tom Nicholson/ AFP, Remo Casilli/ Reuters, Sean Gallup/Getty Images, Shalev Shalom)
More broadly, when looking at Israel-Europe relations, it is not far-fetched to say our position has never been this bad. Wherever you look in Europe, with the possible exceptions of Serbia and the Czech Republic, our situation has become very poor. Even Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a close friend of Israel, has decided to downgrade a security and defense agreement with Jerusalem.
Other countries such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovenia and others were lost to us long ago. We are now in a unique situation, one we have never faced before, in which almost every European country is expressing very harsh public criticism of the State of Israel. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said today, in response to Spain’s removal from the joint headquarters in Kiryat Gat, that “international law is currently being fundamentally violated by one state, and that is the government of Israel.” The same Sanchez only this week reopened Spain’s embassy in Tehran, while Spain has no ambassador in Israel.
The last fortress was Hungary, and that fortress fell on Sunday. New Prime Minister Peter Magyar has already said he will examine every decision regarding Israel on its own merits and has no interest in continuing the policy pursued by his predecessor, Viktor Orban. Does that mean we have lost the European continent? It is a bit early to say that. But there is no doubt that Israel has now lost the goodwill of governments and countries that were historic friends of Israel, and has also lost what little support it still had in public opinion.
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Never misses a chance to criticize Israel: Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez
(Photo: Haruna Furuhashi/ Reuters)
When we look at polling data, the rise in antisemitism and the figures on sympathy for Israel in Europe, it is darkening beyond belief. Our position is steadily worsening on a continent that one may choose to dismiss, but which is also Israel’s leading trading partner. It is also the continent to which we feel the closest ideologically. It is also the continent from which tens of percentage points of Israel’s population originate, and ultimately it is the continent closest to us. With all due respect to the important and vital relations with the United States, those too have in effect narrowed into relations with President Trump, and it may be that we are mortgaging our future for a few good years with Donald Trump.
Losing Meloni and Merz
So with all due respect to the United States, Asia, India and the Gulf states, in the end the European continent is Israel’s nearest and most immediate support base. One may argue that Europe is in decline, that Europe is no longer as strong as it once was, that Muslim immigrants are taking over, but that does not make Europe any less important to us, if only in critical areas such as trade and academic and scientific cooperation. The recent developments between Israel and Europe are above all a certificate of failure and an admission of the failure of Israeli diplomacy, of the prime minister and his close circle, and of the Foreign Ministry as well.
Over the years, Europe was neglected. Europe got the Israeli message that it was less important, that we were investing in the United States, India and around the world, and as a result we also belittled Europe and assigned it less importance. That message seeped in, and now we are receiving Europe’s response in the form of disregard for Israeli needs and a rising level of criticism and hostility. Nothing good will come of this for Israel. We are too small a country to allow ourselves to quarrel with a large continent that lies near us. Even if that continent is not at its best, and even if we have other friends right now. We have already seen how a friendly leader we thought we could rely on without question, like Orban, can disappear in an instant, leaving us in a new situation in the European Union without a veto to stop sanctions, as Orban did.
Because in the end, the secret of diplomacy is knowing not to put all your eggs in one basket and understanding that while interests matter, and matter greatly, there is also deep friendship. There is also ideological or intellectual closeness. And that is what we believed we had with Europe over the years, as Western democracies, as peoples of Jewish-Christian culture. We thought we had much in common, and now we are losing that common ground. It may become a calamity for generations. The State of Israel may regret this for years to come, when a Democratic president arises in the United States who is as hostile as the Europeans are, perhaps even more so. When in a country like India, Narendra Modi is replaced by someone less sympathetic to us and more inclined toward interests with Iran and the Arab world, we may be left alone. An undesirable situation that could cause us strategic harm.
A word about Giorgia Meloni and Friedrich Merz: They are Israel’s best friends in Europe, and even them we are managing to lose. It takes a special talent to take a man like Friedrich Merz, a friend of Israel heart and soul, who has proven it time and again, and push him away from us, insult him and offend him, all in the name of the narrow interests of the far right. Today, from a diplomatic standpoint, it can be said plainly that Israel’s current government, and especially its right-wing messianic wing, is causing us irreversible damage in the world and is in fact the greatest enemy the State of Israel has as a member of the family of nations.
Italy is a microcosm of how bad our position in Europe is today. Meloni is under major pressure after losing the referendum on constitutional change, and the opposition there smells blood. Criticism of Israel in Italy is soaring. Meloni announced the suspension of the defense agreement with Israel that was signed in 2005 and is automatically renewed every five years. A written notice of the suspension was sent the day before by the Italian defense minister to Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz. This comes in addition to Italy’s earlier decision to suspend authorizations for defense exports to Israel, a policy in place since 2024.
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We lost France long ago: President Emmanuel Macron
(Photo: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP)
At Israel’s Foreign Ministry, officials rushed to calm matters by saying: “We have no defense agreement with Italy. We have a memorandum of understanding from many years ago that never had any real substance. This will not harm Israel’s security.” The dismissive Israeli response is almost automatic. They spit on us and we say it is rain. Israel also responded dismissively on July 31, 2025, when Slovenia, an unimportant country, declared a full arms embargo. True, it does not sell weapons to Israel, but it was a symbolic step that joined other such moves by other countries.
Spain has already declared an arms embargo on Israel. Israel at first responded dismissively, but at the end of March this year, after France barred American military aircraft carrying munitions to Israel for use against Iran from crossing its airspace, Israel announced a total halt to all defense procurement from France. Israel was also preparing to expel France from the joint headquarters in Kiryat Gat, though that move has meanwhile been frozen. What Israel did do was veto French involvement in negotiations between Israel and Lebanon. You will not mediate in our schoolyard.
Italy could sever ties
And back to Italy. A few days ago, the extreme left-wing Italian weekly “L’Espresso” published a shocking cover image using antisemitic stereotypes, showing an IDF soldier with sidelocks smiling broadly at a young Palestinian woman walking past him. The cover line read “Abuse.” In Israel, people first thought it was fake, but after checking it turned out to be a real image that had been distorted through editing.
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Will Italy sever ties? Protest against Israel and the US in Rome
(Photo: Filippo Monteforte/ AFP)
Israel’s ambassador to Italy, Yoni Peled, condemned the paper. Video footage from the actual incident showed that the young Palestinian woman had provoked the soldiers, cursed at them and pushed them, and that the soldier had simply pulled out his cellphone and filmed her. The incident was not violent and certainly not humiliating, but the image unquestionably reinforced the narrative that the IDF is securing extremist settlers rather than protecting Palestinians.
The situation in Italy is very difficult. If the left comes to power there next year, Israel should prepare even for the possibility that Italy could sever relations. Already today, leaders of the far left in Italy are saying Israel has no right to exist. In that climate came the cover of the far-left weekly portraying Israel as a Nazi state.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid said Italy’s decision to suspend the defense cooperation agreement with Israel was another embarrassing failure by the prime minister and the nonexistent foreign minister. “Meloni is not a leftist-progressive European leader. She belongs to the right-wing conservative camp and understands the need to fight terrorism. The government failed to advance Israel’s interests even מול people who are supposed to be our friends and natural allies. We will return, form a government, and Israel will once again be the country everyone wanted to love,” Lapid said.
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar responded to those remarks, writing in part: “It is not the love of the world we should seek. We will settle for respect, appreciation and safeguarding our vital interests. That is how we opened new embassies around the world, cultivated alliances and forged new relations, brought additional embassies to Jerusalem, our eternal capital, and pulled the Foreign Ministry out of many long years of paralysis and weakness. All this during an unprecedented and exceptionally difficult security campaign. We will continue to act in the diplomatic arena מתוך commitment to the eternity of Israel, not to the ‘love of the world.’ Statesmanship is an arena for serious people, not clowns.”
There are also a few isolated bright spots. As Italy suspends the automatic renewal of its defense agreement with Israel, good news comes from another friend of Israel, Serbia. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced that Serbia and Israel will establish a joint venture to produce unmanned aerial vehicles, jointly owned by the two countries.
In addition, Netanyahu met today in his Jerusalem office with Czech Foreign Minister Petr Machinka and told him that he “wonderfully represents that friendship. I thank you, and of course Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis as well, for the support, which is part of a long tradition between the Czech people and the Jewish people.”
And now to the incident involving German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The chancellor and Netanyahu spoke by phone yesterday. Afterward, the chancellor posted that in the conversation he had expressed concern to Netanyahu over developments in Judea and Samaria and made clear that there must be no de facto annexation. In response, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich posted: “The days when Germans dictated to Jews where they could live are over. You will not push us back into ghettos, certainly not on our own land.”
Asked about this in an interview on Kan Reshet Bet this morning, the ambassador replied that precisely on a day like this he condemns the finance minister’s statement in unequivocal terms. It is possible and legitimate to argue with the Germans. Clearly this is an emotional day, but the two things must not be mixed because that is what erodes Holocaust memory and presents matters in a distorted way. The ambassador added that this does not contradict the fact that he, and others in the State of Israel, have strong criticism of the Germans because Jews in Germany today are afraid to walk the streets displaying Jewish symbols.
There is legitimate criticism over the rise in antisemitism and violence against Jews and Israelis, including the lack of an adequate response to discourse denying the State of Israel’s right to exist. The ambassador stressed that it is Germany’s responsibility to address these phenomena, and that the criticism directed at Germany concerns insufficient action and insufficient allocation of resources to protect Germany’s Jewish citizens.