For more than 40 years, Israel and Germany have maintained what has come to be called a “special relationship.”

What’s so special about it?  

To be sure the two countries have had significant economic ties since the early 1950s. They started with the meeting of David Ben-Gurion and the then-chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer, in 1950, which led to West Germany’s agreeing to make massive reparations payments to Israel in 1952. Ever since, Israel and Germany have maintained a strong economic relationship – Germany is now Israel’s second-most important trading partner, behind only the United States.

When people refer to the “special relationship” of the two countries, though, I doubt they’re speaking about economic affiliation. More likely, they mean the largely symbolic, diplomatic engagements between the two counties that seem to occur on a regular basis. Here’s a sampling of some of the more recent political niceties: in 1999, then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak was the first foreign dignitary received by the German government at its new home in Berlin (after having moved from Bonn); to mark 40 years of official diplomatic relations, then-Israeli president Moshe Katsav and German president Horst Kohler exchanged state visits in 2005; and most recently, the two countries held a joint cabinet session in Israel last month.

During that trip, German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the Knesset in German. “The mass murder of six million Jews, carried out in the name of Germany, has brought indescribable suffering to the Jewish people,” she said, and “the Shoah fills us Germans with shame. I bow to the victims. I bow to all those who helped the survivors.” She also addressed the Iranian threat – “Iran must convince the world it does not want the nuclear bomb” – and made zero mention of Israel’s contentious continued building of settlements.

Wow. What a good friend to Israel Germany is. In one 20-minute speech, Angela Merkel planted herself and her country on Israel’s side vis-à-vis the trifecta of major concerns for Israelis and Jews worldwide — the Iranian/radical Islmanist threat, Israel’s right to retain its land holdings and the continued elevated status of the Holocaust in the lexicon of historical genocide.

No one likes Israel enough to be that nice. I mean, even the obviously pro-Israel U.S. president, George W. Bush, makes a point of putting pressure on Israel to stop settlement building or engage in “difficult” diplomacy with Palestinian leaders every once in while.

Germany is, like, Israel’s bestest friend.

Is it just me, or do you feel uncomfortable about the love-in between Tel Aviv and Berlin? That Germany, of all places, would be Israel’s best friend just 60 years after orchestrating the death of six million Jews (not to mention also trying to get rid of the rest of us) seems at the very least unlikely. It’s the most improbable of diplomatic relationships in human history.

Of course, what it’s really about is the Holocaust. From the German point of view, befriending Israel makes perfect sense. Germans – rightly – still feel guilty about Hitler and the Nazis, either because they actually feel bad about what their countrymen did 65 years ago, or because that still-recent part of history is a serious blight on their record, politically speaking.

But from Israel’s point of view – and indeed, from a Jewish point of view – the question is why should we be such good friends with a bitter and very recent enemy?

If the answer to that question isn’t “because we’re nice, forgiving people” – and it’s not – then what it boils down to is a case of Germany using Israel to bolster its place in the world. If all it takes for Germany to rejuvenate it’s political standing is an annual apology for the Holocaust and regular shipments of Volkswagens to Israel, that’s a pretty good deal. For Israel and the Jewish world to accept it so easily is astonishing. As things stand, in the current German-Israel relationship, it’s the Germans who appear to be working to move beyond the Holocaust and the Jews who are continuing to allow themselves to be defined by it.