In the course of several months last year, there were exchanges between German officials and Kurve Wustrow. The German humanitarian organization organized a desperate attempt to save its ongoing projects with Zochrot and the new profile, two Israeli human rights organizations aimed at anti-military and Palestine rights.
The organization made phone calls and held personal meetings with officials. They sent emails responding to questions. They even sent statements from the Israeli organizations explaining their positions.
But nothing has succeeded in deterring the German government from cutting all official investments for the organization. In mid-December, the resolution confirmed it. The futile struggle has left Kurve Wustrow’s interim director, John Preuss, feeling “tired and frustrated. “
Kurve Wustrow has partners in several countries, including Sudan and Myanmar. But, Preuss said, it’s the first time the German government has funded one of its ongoing projects.
Preuss, who for days collapsed about the resolution to speak publicly, and its Israeli partners had to guess what they were to protect.
The German government never gave the organization an official explanation as to why they had suddenly canceled investment for projects they had approved or renewed last year.
DW’s investigative unit has reviewed emails and classified documents, and spoken with dozens of sources from the development sector in Germany, Israel and the occupied West Bank. The findings indicate that the defunding of Zochrot and New Profile are part of a larger pattern of cutting federal funds for human rights organizations that have been critical of the Israeli government’s policies and the ongoing war in Gaza.
Since the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, Germany has also stopped investment from at least six Palestinian organizations. DW resources spoke with All Things agreed that the measure is political, an attempt to silence critical voices amid the reduction of space for civil society in Israel. They also claimed that Germany’s resolution was adopted under Israeli pressure.
In a statement to DW, the German Foreign Ministry rejected this accusation as “inaccurate,” stating that it continues to fund “many NGOs in Israel and in the Palestinian territories that criticize the Israeli occupation policy. “
The paintings made through New Profile and Zochrot are debatable in Israel, under a government that is politically more right than any other in the country’s history.
Germany’s investment relief deactivated existing projects that teams had eliminated by the end of 2023.
Zochrot, which means “Remembering” in Hebrew, advocates for accountability of the Nakba, a term many use to refer to the expulsion and displacement of Palestinians before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The organization also campaigns for the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, to which the current Israeli government is strongly opposed.
Its director, Rachel Beitarie, told DW that she met with German officials before the defunding was made final. “The German past, the Nazi regime was brought up again and again in these conversations,” she said. German officials, she added, told her it was important for Germany to support Israel because of Germany’s history.
That’s why Zochrot wrote a statement to the German government, in which he addressed whether he had asked “Israel’s lifestyles,” saying he didn’t do this categorically.
Beitarie said Zochrot lost about €100,000 (roughly $103,000) — about a quarter of its budget. The defunding “definitely hurts us, but it will not stop us from doing this work,” she said.
The new profile, a voluntary movement, offers conscientious objectors facing imprisonment in Israel, where army service is compulsory for men and women. The organization said it lost some of its overall funding.
In a lengthy statement to the German government, a new profiler explained that his portraits of those who refused to serve in Israel’s army were “strictly in accordance with Israeli law. “
Sergeiy Sandler, the organization’s treasurer, said the investment had been timed “to inflict the maximum damage imaginable on our work. “This allowed the organization to scramble to locate select investments at a time when Israeli infantrymen were being sent to fight in Gaza and, until recently, in Lebanon.
Both organizations had been receiving development aid through various German partners for roughly two decades. Until now, sources told DW, their work had seemingly never raised concerns among German authorities.
Sources believe pressure from the Israeli government may have led to the German authorities’ decision to defund them and other groups.
It is a popular procedure for Germany to review the safeguard of the federal budget for the cooperation of progression and humanitarian aid, namely, in regions immersed in armed conflicts and political disturbances. But when it comes to Israel and the Palestinian territories, there is an additional layer of complexity.
The German Parliament adopted in November a solution written behind closed doors, which linked public subsidies with adherence to a debatable definition of anti -Semitism. His detractors affirm that the solution confuses all complaint of the Israeli government with that of Anti -Semit Israel’s state is a racist attitude. ”
This has just been practiced in what the German Ministry of Cooperation and Economic Development in a December 2023 Groups terrorist, or make anti -Semitic statements or movements that make them “undesirable. ” This means that organizations deserve not boycott, divestment and movement of sanctions (BDS), inspire violence opposite Israel or denying Israel’s right to exist.
Dozens of resources from civil society organizations told DW that the German government is increasing Israelis and taking 254 hostages. The Israeli government launched attacks first against Gaza and then against Lebanon. According to local authorities, tens of thousands of Palestinians have died in the Israeli offensive.
Aid workers have compiled a list of at least 15 organizations, including Zochrot and New Profile, that have lost their German government funding in recent months. Most are Palestinian, and many had long-standing partnerships with German development organizations.
Although the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not verify that 15 would have been financed, DW capable of determining at least 8 teams whose budget were recently reduced.
One resolution, according to many NGO sources, is symptomatic of Germany’s restrictive stance: Berlin’s resolution to quietly cut investment to six Palestinian organizations after Hamas attacks in late 2023.
Israel had already linked them to terrorists in 2021, although many countries, including France and, originally, Germany, said those statements were unfounded.
One of the organizations, Al-Haq, gained prominence in 2014 for providing testimony against Israel to the International Criminal Court, which in November 2024 issued an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Many civil society sources said it was likely due to this 2014 testimony that Al-Haq made Israel’s terror list.
The 2021 move through the Israeli government to designate the six Palestinian NGOs as political terrorists, “100%,” the European Union representative in the West Bank and Gaza, Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff told DW.
“None of the audits and monetary controls have concluded that any of those six NGOs have violated or violated our investment agreements or contractual obligations,” he said.
Nine European foreign ministries reached a similar conclusion. They wrote in a set in July 2022 that “no really extensive data from Israel has been won that justify the review of our policy towards the six Palestinian NGOs. ” One of the signatories was Germany.
The investment continued, but then, in December 2023, the German government quietly proceeded with a complete reversal of its policy and ended all federal investment. A few days before Christmas, one source said, when peak support staff were already on vacation.
DW has a copy of an internal and classified report from the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, indicating that no new cooperation with the six agencies deserves to be authorized. Here too, no explanation has been given as to why it has been given. The resolution has never been publicly communicated.
When asked what prompted the sudden shift, a Foreign Office spokesperson told DW in a written statement that the government reviewed and continues to review any information concerning the six NGOs.
In general, the investment of 8 Israeli and Palestinian organizations seems to involve Germany’s resolution with the existing Israeli government, progression resources agreed.
This comes at a time when civil society and critical media in Israel are reducing, said Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard, who defends and advises NGO Palestinas and Israelis, adding that Al-Haq believes that restricting the investment To human rights organizations is part of a planned strategy through the Israeli government to suppress the dissent.
“It’s a trend that’s been going on for a decade and a half, but it peaked with the current government, and especially after October 7,” he said. It is, he explained, “incredible how difficult it is in Israel today to criticize the government’s policies. “
The Israeli embassy in Berlin responded to questions about the broader crackdown on civil society in Israel.
The German “participates in oppression,” said Beitarie, director of Zochrot.
The new profile Sergeiy Sandler agrees. He lives in Beersheba, a city in southern Israel between two army airports. The soundtrack of the war in Gaza, which is taking hold just 40 kilometers from his home, is the incessant roar of planes heading for or returning from the Gaza Strip.
It’s a constant reminder that the war is so close to his home. “And [New Profile’s] work at least helps some people not take direct part in the atrocities,” he said, adding that New Profile is getting more and more requests from people wanting to abstain from military service.
“I can perceive why the Israeli government is repressing us,” he said.
But what, he asked, angrily, “is the German government’s business imposing the ideological demands of the Israeli government on Israeli citizens?”
How, he added, “is the German government’s purpose to silence dissent?”
In a written statement to DW, the Foreign Office rejected all accusations of Germany following Israel’s lead to silence voices critical of Netanyahu’s government as “inaccurate.”
Additional reporting by Tania Krämer in Be’er Sheva and Tel Aviv
Edited by: Mathias Bölinger, Carolyn Thompson, Sarah Hofmann
Fact-checking: Carolyn Thompson
Legal Advice: Florian Wagenknecht