Merkel’s visit came against a backdrop of resurgent nationalism and far-right violence in Germany which has been fueled by anger at her decision to welcome more than a million mostly Muslim asylum seekers in 2015. Merkel also said she agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran, Israel’s arch-enemy, should never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons but that they differed on how to achieve that objective. Merkel began a day of meetings between Israeli and German government officials with a visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, where she laid a wreath on a stone slab that contains ashes of death camp victims.
