According to an ARD-DeutschlandTREND survey released on Thursday, a day before Merz's announcement, 66% of Germans want their government to put more pressure on Israel to change its behaviour. Most strikingly perhaps, only 31% of Germans feel they have a bigger responsibility for Israel due to their history - a core tenet of German foreign policy - while 62% do not.
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51