The Nazi regime in German had many victims. Apart from the 5.5 million Jews who were murdered in the death camps and in various killings like the one in Babi Yar described elsewhere in The Reconstitution of Ireland, about 60 million people in total were estimated by some to have been killed and maimed before and during World War II. While many of these were combatants, from many nations, very many more were civilians; men, women and children.

            But there was one more category of victim. This was the next generation of German and Japanese citizens. They bore a terrible burden of guilt, disgust, and national collective shame when they came to realise the truly terrible things that had been done by their immediate forebears. In Japan, militarism was outlawed by the constitution that was put in place after the war.

            In Germany, the whole political landscape was transformed so that former Nazi operatives at all levels could be captured and put on trial. To offer come level of sympathy and sustenance to the survivors of Naziism, many in the new generation of Germans became supporters of the idea that Jews should have their own homeland. Ursula von der Leyen, who was deeply enmeshed in German politics, where she served as a cabinet minister as a member of Angela Merkel’s CDU party before assuming her role as President of the European Commission, is one such. A staunch European, she is also, and firstly, a post-war German.

           

It was in this context that she, along with the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, of Malta, visited Israel on October 13^th, some six days after the Oct. 7^th attack. The purpose of the visit was, according to the two EU Institution Presidents, “to express solidarity with the Israeli people in the wake of the horrific Hamas terrorist attack.”

            At that stage the Netanyahu regime in Israel had not yet started on its the devastating military campaign in Gaza.

            When the Israeli incursion into Gaza did get underway, and when the Israeli Defence Forces, or IDF, showed itself unable or unwilling to avoid enormous amounts of civilian death and maiming, including that of a great many children, commentators and opponents of Israel, and of Dr. von der Leyen, remembered the Oct 13^th visit. She was strongly criticised for doing something that was of personal interest to her while she was deemed to be acting as the President of the EU Commission.

            On December 14^th 2023 Naomi O’Leary wrote a piece in the Irish Times entitled “Von der Leyen has torched her image in Ireland”, wherein she quoted the words of a professor emeritus from Maynooth University who was critical of the Commission President. I responded with the following: