A "special relationship" between Germany and Israel was forged after World War II, encouraging the memory and memorialization of the Holocaust, but lingering guilt and reparations for Jews who survived German cruelty have taken a toll on the collective psyche.
Nearly half of the Germans polled by the Bertelsmann Foundation last year said Jews exploit the legacy of the Third Reich. You don't have to be a disciple of Sigmund Freud to see that many Germans take a psychological glee, or at least satisfaction, in accusing Israelis of using Nazi tactics against Palestinian terrorists.
The Judeo-Christian tradition that is so much a part of American culture, fusing Biblical history with Western democratic traditions, inevitably leads to strong support of Israel. We see a separate church and state, but the Founding Fathers didn't separate the law of Moses from the inspiration that guided the writing of our Constitution. The Judeo-Christian heritage is one pillar of government, just as Greek and Roman philosophy is another. Such thinking is largely absent in post-Christian Europe, diminishing appreciation of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East.
Jews, who contributed mightily to German society in the decades leading to World War II, were nevertheless perceived as "visitors" here, stereotyped as "different." An exhibition at Berlin's Jewish Museum drives this attitude home. It's called "Typical Cliches About Jews and Others." A bitter joke introduces the exhibition: "I've nothing against foreigners. Some of my best friends are foreigners. But these foreigners aren't from here."
Merkel tried to get a reference to the Judeo-Christian origins of government into the constitution of the European Union, but couldn't. Saying almost anything positive about religious faith is verboten in most of Western Europe -- something more to make meaningful conversation about America difficult.