Germany announces a ‘cyber and security pact’ with Israel, including cooperation on ‘cyberdefence’ and a closer intelligence partnership. Meanwhile reports of shocking IDF war crimes continue.
Germany is expanding its military, cyber and intelligence cooperation with Israel. Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt announced a “cyber and security pact” with its close ally over the weekend. The agreement is to include cooperation on “cyberdefence” and anti-drone systems as well as intensified intelligence cooperation. Israel’s capabilities in the field of cyber warfare are considered outstanding. They were already on displayed over fifteen years ago with a sensational cyber sabotage strike on Iran’s nuclear programme. Today, those sophisticated capabilities include the controlling of military operations using artificial intelligence (AI), first tested on a large scale in Israel’s war with Iran. Berlin can build on its long-standing intensive military cooperation with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and exploit its close linkages in the field of armaments. This even deeper alliance for repressive expertise and military development is being pursued by the German government at a time when new allegations of war crimes levelled against the IDF are coming to light. It also helps to explain the background to Germany’s harsh domestic repression of supporters of the Palestinians.
With its plans for close cooperation on cyberwarfare Berlin can build on a long tradition of intensive collaboration between the German Armed Forces and the IDF. It began back in the 1950s with secret meetings to arrange German arms supplies. Military cooperation expanded significantly in the 1980s, and even more so in the 1990s.[1] On the German side, one objective was to benefit from the operational experience of the IDF for the planned reshaping of the Bundeswehr into an intervention force with global reach. German soldiers were trained in Israel in, among other things, house-to-house and tunnel combat. The Bundeswehr itself describes its cooperation with the IDF as “incredibly close”.[2] Alongside this alliance, the arms industries of the two countries have pursued increasingly close partnerships. One outcome was the first Heron 1 drones, leased by the Bundeswehr for deployment in Afghanistan from 2010 and produced by a consortium consisting of IAI (Israel Aerospace Industries) and Germany’s Rheinmetall Group.[3] And, in 2022, the decision was taken to procure Israeli Arrow 3 missile system for the planned European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI).[4] Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ missile defence system, now shown to be vulnerable, was widely cited as a model for the ESSI. (more...)
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