You think everything changed after 9/11?...Okay, we all know the bad joke: you can't buy an Arab, but you can rent one...Oh sure, we had any number of gallant German journalists and businessmen and aid workers on our payroll...but they're not live sources. They're not venal, disenchanted, radical imams, or Islamist kids halfway to the bomb belt...We thought we could charm them across the line to us...
...Before I worked the Arab target, I played games with my Soviet opposite numbers...But nobody sawed my head off. Nobody blew up my wife and children while they were sunbathing in Bali or riding to school on a train to Madrid or London. The rules had changed. Our problem was we hadn't...
Even after 9/11, our beloved Fatherland - forgive me, Heimat - was immune...We Germans could go naked anywhere! Still! Nobody would touch us because we were so wonderfully German and immune. Okay, we'd harbored a few Islamist terrorists, and a trio of them had gone off and blown up the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. So what? It was what they'd come here to do, and they'd done it...Why should we worry?...
...The second tiny problem was our unflinching, unqualified, guilt-ridden support for the State of Israel. We supported them against the Egyptians, the Syrians and the Palestinians. Against Hamas and Hezbollah. And when Israel bombed the living shit out of Lebanon, we Germans duly consulted our unquiet consciences and talked only about how gallant little Israel could be defended...".
Monologue of Gunther Bachmann, of German Intelligence, page 57-58 of John Le Carre's "A Most Wanted Man"
Fiction, of course.
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Interview with Federal Foreign Minister Steinmeier on the Middle East, during the ZDF's "heute-journal" news programme, on 13 July 2006:
Q: ...What can you, do you intend to do, Germany and the US?
A: As I have been doing over the past few days, only an hour or so ago I called my Israeli and Egyptian colleagues ... The Egyptian government has for many days now been trying to help achieve a way back, a de‑escalation. Unfortunately the Egyptians, too, have not been successful up to now. We must continue our efforts and we have ... agreed on which of the parties in the region we must apply further pressure. Here Syria plays a certain ... role which I ... believe allows it, if this is at all possible, to put pressure on Hamas in order to ... achieve the return of the soldier kidnapped on the Israeli border. I think this would be the first and decisive step which has to be made. The second step (would be) the immediate return of the soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah. Without these steps I fear we will not be able to get the situation under control over the next few days.
Q: What are you telling our Israeli friends?
A: I'm telling them that we understand that every country has to maintain its defences, and that if such border events as we have recently seen occur twice, it must defend its borders. We understand that Israel is searching for those responsible for this kidnapping. But we also say that the means used in this search and in the reaction must not be out of proportion, of course with a particular view to developments in Lebanon ... We all remember the events there in recent years ... and the efforts required to keep this fragile state together. We have to see to it that no renewed instability arises, and for that reason we say to Israel that it too must ensure that Lebanon is not destabilized by the Israeli reaction.
Q: You are calling for the use of appropriate means. Are attacks on Beirut itself still appropriate?
A: As I learned today, the attacks took place because the Israelis had information that there was a danger of the airport being used to fly the kidnapped soldiers out. I cannot judge from here whether that information is correct. But the destruction of infrastructure is in my view not ... an appropriate form of reaction.
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