‘Calling the shots’ with the German chancellor

The setting: Two people are sitting opposite each other in a studio, with a wall with a landscape photo in the background. It is clear from the context that the photo was taken on the fringes of the mid-June G-7 summit in Canada.
  The plot: The person on the right side of the picture, a woman, is asking her counterpart a question: “Isn’t it appealing that the Israelis are now doing the dirty work for a regime that many in the world perceive as a really big disruptive factor?” The woman is Diana Zimmermann, head capital city studio from the German public-sector broadcaster ZDF. The journalist, born in 1971, studied “comparative literature, sinology and history at the FU Berlin and in Paris”, according to her c. v. at ZDF.
  The person on the left in the picture, a man, replies: “Mrs Zimmermann, I am grateful to you for the term ‘dirty work’. This is the ‘dirty work’ that Israel does, for all of us. We are also affected by this regime. This mullah regime has brought death and destruction to the world. With attacks, murder and manslaughter. With Hizbullah, with Hamas, on 7 October 2023 in Israel. That would never have been possible without the regime in Tehran. Supplying Russia with drones from Tehran. Yes, it was ‘dirty work’ that Israel did there. I can only say that I have the greatest respect for the fact that the Israeli army had the courage to do it, that the Israeli government had the courage to do it. Otherwise, we might have seen months and years more of this regime’s terror, and then possibly with a nuclear weapon in our hands”. The man is Friedrich Merz, chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. He was born in 1955 and studied law.
  Sometimes it is necessary to create distance in the face of such monstrous assertions. Journalists do this routinely by way of their work, part of which is simply describing. So we see a journalist asking a politician a question, an everyday situation.
  But something else is happening here. The two people in the photograph are a team and are engaged in “hybrid warfare” – waging a “war without fighting”. Their targets are the heads of those outside the screens, as they like to say in the studios, thus creating a proper distance according to the motto: We in here (who have the knowledge), those out there (to whom we explain the world).
  The targets of the hybrid attack by this journalist and the German chancellor “against the wonderful backdrop of the Rocky Mountains”, according to the ZDF journalist, are those who tuned into heute journal, the ZDF news program, the evening of 17 June – but also all those who will subsequently hear what the chancellor has to say in numerous translations worldwide. The aim is to explain the terms, perspectives, positions, and goals of German foreign policy to the public worldwide – “to call the shots” with Germany’s leader.

Iran and ‘the seven-front war’

The journalist introduces the interview with a template for the chancellor, who “gratefully” takes it up. His remarks about the “dirty work” that Israel is doing “for all of us” are a lesson in how racism and colonial imperialist thinking are firmly anchored in the minds of the political classes and other elites – in this case Germany’s.
  The Israeli war of aggression against Iran, the war of annihilation against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Syria and the occupation of their territory: Labelling these part of the “dirty work” in Israel’s seven-front war in West Asia as is characteristic of a mentality of domination. The implied view of Israel is of an employee doing menial, unpleasant tasks – manual labour, in other words. It follows that the seven-front war’s victims are as rubbish and dirt with which one doesn’t want to get one’s hands dirty.
  What the ZDF journalist and the chancellor are demonstrating here is the purest racism and master-race thinking with which Europeans have wanted to subjugate the world since the Middle Ages. We must think of the long succession: the crusaders in the 11^th to 13^th centuries, the colonial conquests in Asia, Africa, and, Latin America, the extermination of Native Americans – this last the “First Nation” murdered to establish the United States of America on their land. It was always about exploiting resources, and the labour of those who had developed cultures, civilisations, and modes of governance according to their own ideas. It was always about controlling harbours, sea routes, and what is now called the “transport corridor”.
  And the European master race always considered itself the crowning glory of creation, superior to all others and destined to lead the world. The US put it succinctly with its claim to be exceptional, “indispensable” “the city on the hill” that “shines the light of freedom and enlightens the world”, as Ronald Reagan famously put it. Or as Madeleine Albright, while serving as secretary of state, explained in an interview (NBC TV, 19 February 1998): “If we have to use force, it’s because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future”.¹
  And now Friedrich Merz and journalist Diana Zimmermann are explaining the world to ZDF viewers on this day. Israel’s unprovoked war against Iran, which violates international law, is a “dirty job”, the government and country of Iran is a “disruptive factor”, Germany is threatened by Iran, and also by (Lebanese) Hizbullah and (Palestinian) Hamas, who are said to have “brought death and destruction upon the world” with “this mullah regime [...] with attacks, murder and manslaughter”. And then the “greatest respect” is paid to the Israeli army and state leadership for doing this “dirty work”, because otherwise the “terror of this regime […] possibly with a nuclear weapon in their hands” would have continued for years.
  What both actors in this propaganda show certainly know but are not saying, is that when Israel attacked on 13 June Iran was in negotiations with the US about its nuclear programme, which is closely monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. They also know that attacks on nuclear facilities and civilian infrastructure are prohibited under international and humanitarian law. And that the International Court of Justice is investigating the state of Israel, its government, and its army for the genocide of Palestinians. That the UN General Assembly, with the majority of the member states assembled, has called on Israel more than once to release the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 and to return confiscated property.
  The Federal chancellor and the journalists will or should know – by virtue of their office – that Hamas and Hizbullah emerged as political and armed liberation organisations in resistance to Israeli occupation despite conditions of political and military weakness. Parenthetically, all states in the region have signed the UN Charter and are UN members. Every man, every woman, every child in countries Israel has attacked since 1948 has the same rights as those in Europe and the US who believe they can use Israel’s “dirty work” to eliminate these “human animals” (Yoav Gallant, Israel’s former defence minister) and take over their land. According to the UN Charter, every child in Gaza, every labourer in Iran, every farmer in Lebanon has the same rights as Friedrich Merz or Diana Zimmermann.
  This Zimmermann/Merz team propagates a strategy of supremacy that is omnipresent in the US, the EU and NATO. This strategy is based on racism and white supremacy, it is the driving force of US/EU/NATO colonial imperialism, which enforces its dominance worldwide by way of wars. “The supremacy strategy is deeply rooted in the cultural heritage of the NATO and EU countries”, according “Global Supremacy of the West”, an article in the 3 May edition of Current Concerns.²
  As the warring parties, Israel and Iran understand Merz. The Israeli embassy in Berlin thanked him for his “moral clarity”.
  The Foreign Ministry in Tehran summoned the German ambassador.³
  And who will draw a red line⁴ around the Federal Chancellery and the glass media studios in Berlin, as was done in London, The Hague and Brussels?
  Must the countries and societies that are being devastated by Israel with US and German weapons and money assume that the descendants of Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, and Albert Einstein have settled into the colonial way of life and thinking of “white supremacy”? •

¹ Madeleine Albright, NBC TV interview of 19 February 1998; https://1997-2001.state.gov/statements/1998/980219a.html
² https://www.zeit-fragen.ch/en/archives/2025/nr-12-27-mai-2025/weltweite-vorherrschaft-des-westens-die-linke-die-rechte-und-das-reaktionaere-eu-usa-nato-projekt-gefragt-waere-eine-oeko-soziale-kritik-der-kolonialen-lebensweise
³ https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/tehran-summons-swiss--german-envoys-over-hostile-rhetoric
⁴ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/4/pro-palestine-protesters-in-uk-call-for-israel-arms-embargo-sanctions

First published in globalbridge.ch of 19 June 2025