Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Israel Pressures Germany To End Funding To Government Critics

BERLIN (JTA) — Israel is pressuring Germany to end funding for dozens of political, cultural and religious organizations that it accuses of anti-Israel agitation both abroad and at home — including the Jewish Museum Berlin — according to an unofficial letter obtained by a German left-wing daily newspaper.

The Tageszeitung, or Taz, obtained a copy of the unsigned seven-page letter sent to the office of Chancellor Angela Merkel and to the Federal Development Ministry, urging Germany to “review its funding guidelines.”

The letter’s origin is not named, but sources told the Taz that it bore the hallmarks of the Jerusalem-based watchdog group NGO Monitor, a non-governmental organization.

A German government spokesperson told the Taz that there is an ongoing conversation between the two countries about Germany’s support for NGOs and that the Israeli government has provided information as well. The spokesperson would neither confirm nor deny that the letter in question came from official Israeli contacts.

The letter reportedly accuses Germany of going out of its way to support groups that are engaged in anti-Israel activity and that try to intervene in Israel’s internal affairs. As one of many examples, the letter names the +972 magazine of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a think-tank associated with the Green Party, saying its authors “regularly accuse Israel of apartheid.”

The letter reportedly also accuses the Jewish Museum Berlin of stressing the “Muslim-Palestinian view” in a current exhibit about the city of Jerusalem, and comments on the museum’s “regularly occurring events and discussions with prominent supporters of the BDS [anti-Israel boycott] movement.” Germany’s international film festival, Berlinale, is confronted with the same charge.

The letter names foundations, church-based groups and partner organizations in both Israel and the Palestinian Authority as being involved in anti-Israel activities, and criticizes German funding for films by groups that support BDS.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.