The presidents of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, visited this Friday the Kfar Aza kibbutz, where militants from the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas raided last Saturday and massacred the population. “We were in Kfar Aza. One of the epicenters of the atrocities committed by Hamas last weekend,” Von der Leyen said in a message on the social network
Von der Leyen assured that “the horror of what happened here is indescribable,” and stated that “we are mourning with the families of the victims,” Efe reported.
The German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, has joined the solidarity visits that political leaders are making to Israel after the massacre caused by Hamas, leaving behind a wave of criticism for the way in which it has managed the evacuation of nationals. “Hamas has committed terrible atrocities in recent days and we must call this terror by its name,” Baerbock declared in a press conference with his Israeli colleague, So Cohen. The minister expressed the solidarity of the German government, but also on the part of the German people with Israel and her people with the phrase “in these terrible days we are at your side and we feel with you. These days we are all Israelis.”
Baerbock’s presence in Israel was obligatory, although purely testimonial, because unlike the American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, on tour in the region, the minister’s political agenda only included, as far as is known, a meeting with Cohen in Netivot, near the border with the Gaza Strip. Cohen thanked Germany for the visit of support and solidarity with the State of Israel and assured that “peaceful coexistence with Hamas was impossible. “You can’t even call them animals,” she said.
Germany, which for historical reasons has made Israel’s security a state issue, has condemned without palliatives or shades of political color the Hamas massacre, among whose victims there are several Germans and among them the young Shani Louk. The case of this 22-year-old girl lying in the back of a Hamas vehicle, unconscious, bloody and trampled has gone around the world. She was presumed dead, but her mother, a native of Ravensburg, Germany, later found out that she was in critical condition in a hospital in Gaza. Baerbock will meet with that mother in a place that is kept secret.