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Merkel Allowed to Address the Knesset auf Deutsch

A legal controversy over German Chancellor Angela Merkel's request to speak to Israel's parliament during an upcoming state visit has been settled. But some Knesset members may still walk out.

A committee of Israeli lawmakers voted Tuesday to allow German Chancellor Angela Merkel to address the Knesset in German during her visit next week to mark Israel's 60th anniversary. The decision bends a rule which says only "presidents, heads of state, and kings" -- but not explicitly chancellors -- may speak to Israel's parliament.

The Knesset House Committee's 7-2 decision to let Merkel give a speech ends a legal squabble. But protests lodged by the two nay-voting members make the ruling more than just a technicality.

"I can't hear German in the Knesset plenum," said Arieh Eldad, a member of the the right-wing NRP-National Union party, according to the Ynet News Service. "It's the language my grandfather and grandmother were killed in. I will get up and leave. If it's not necessary, don't bend the rules -- if only because the last words they heard were in German."

Eldad, 57, lost a number of relatives in the Holocaust, and to this day he boycotts German products and has never set foot in Germany.

Uri Ariel lodged the other no vote in the House Committee. "It's all well and good that Germany changed its ways, and there are important things in the political and security sphere that they should be praised for," he said, also according to Ynet. "But to go back to the reptiles and to be wusses … What's the matter? What happened to us?"

The NRP-National Union is a joint conservative party whose members support settlers' movements in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Merkel's government has called Israeli settlements in those territories "not acceptable" and a hindrance to peace.

Normally, someone with Merkel's stature would not need special permission to address the Knesset in his or her native language. But Germany has both a chancellor and a president, so an invitation was not automatically extended. The nine-member House Committee had to make a ruling first.

Except for her title, though, the speech will not be historic. Two German presidents have addressed the Knesset in the past. Johannes Rau broke the taboo in 2000, and Horst Köhler paid a visit of his own in 2005. Both spoke German; Höhler introduced his speech in Hebrew. Several Knesset members walked out in both cases.

msm/dpa