Israel Pressures Germany To End Funding To Government Critics
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
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.
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