Why German media ignore Ashkenazi

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
German media's ignoring of IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi's visit to Germany is a sign of the internal contradictions of the so-called German-Israeli "special relationship." Dr. Alexander Brenner, a former head of the 12,000-member Berlin Jewish community and an ex-diplomat in Israel and the former Soviet Union, expressed disbelief on Tuesday about the feeble German coverage of Ashkenazi.
"Extremely strange" is how Brenner termed the paltry coverage.
That there was scant coverage in the German press on Tuesday after Ashkenazi's robust speech the previous day defending the IDF at the Holocaust memorial located on platform 17 of the Grunewald train station suggests a lack of reception for his core message: "The IDF, the protector of the Jewish nation, is not a warmongering military, but a defensive military," he said.
While Chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly stressed that Iran's calls to obliterate Israel are a dire threat to the existence of the Jewish state, many German media outlets write that Iran's statements are empty political rhetoric or the result of faulty translation.
A Forsa Institute poll earlier this year showed that during the IDF's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, roughly 50 percent of Germans considered Israel to be an "aggressive state."
A radical pacifist culture that developed after the defeat of Nazi Germany coupled with anti-Israeli sentiments because of contemporary anti-Semitism plays a role in the failure to understand Israel's security interests. The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung daily devoted a two-page interview in mid-October with a young Israeli who refused to serve in the IDF.
More...
jpost.com