In the course of several months last year, there is a return between German officials and Kurve Wustrow. The German aid organization organizes a desperate attempt to save its ongoing projects with Zochrot and a new profile, two Israeli human rights organizations aimed at anti-military and Palestinian rights.

The organization made phone calls and held non-public meetings with officials. They sent emails answering questions. They even sent statements from Israeli organizations explaining their positions.

But nothing has dissuaded the German government from cutting all of the organization’s official public investment. In mid-December the resolution was confirmed. This futile struggle left Kurve Wustrow’s acting director, John Preuss, “tired and frustrated. “

Kurve Wustrow has partners in several countries, adding to Sudan and Myanmar. But, said Preuss, it is the first time that the German government has financed one of its existing projects.

Preuss, which collapsed before the resolution to speak in public, and its Israeli partners had to guess what they were even to protect themselves.

The German government has never given the organization an official explanation for why it would suddenly reduce investment on projects it had approved or renewed a year earlier.

DW’s survey unit tested classified emails and documents and has maintained dozens of resources in the progression sector in Germany, Israel and the occupied West Bank. The effects imply that Zochrot’s definition and the new profile is of a broader scheme to reduce the federal budget for human rights organizations that have criticized Israeli government policy and the ongoing war in Gaza.

Since the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, Germany has also stopped investing in at least six Palestinian organizations. DW’s appeals agreed that this is a political move, an attempt to silence critical voices amid shrinking space for civil society in Israel. He also claimed that Germany’s resolution was adopted under Israeli pressure.

In A TO DW, the German Foreign Ministry rejected the accusation as “inaccurate,” saying it continues to fund “many NGOs in Israel and the Palestinian territories critical of Israeli profession policies. “

The work done by New Profile and Zochrot is debatable in Israel, under a government that is more politically right-wing than any other in the country’s history.

The relief in German investment put an end to ongoing projects that teams had approved at the end of 2023.

Zochrot, which means “to remember” in Hebrew, advocates for accountability for the Nakba, a term many use to designate the expulsion and displacement of Palestinians before the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The organization also militates for the right of return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, which the current Israeli government strongly opposes.

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 is why Zochrot wrote a letter to the German government, in which he asked if he had asked for “the way of life of Israel”, answering categorically no.

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.

New Profile, a volunteer-based movement, offers support to conscientious objectors who risk imprisonment in Israel, where military service is mandatory both for men and women. The organization said it has lost about half of its total funding.

In a long time for the German government, a new profile explained that their paintings with which they refused to serve in the Israeli army were “strictly in accordance with Israeli law. “

Sergeiy Sandler, the organization’s treasurer, said the investment had been timed “to inflict the maximum imaginable damage on our work. ” This left the organization to rush to place the investment of choice at a time when Israeli infantrymen were sent into combat in Gaza and, until recently, 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.

The resources eluding the Israeli government would likely have led to the German government’s resolve to defeat them and other groups.

Germany is reviewing the coverage of the federal budget for cooperation for progress and humanitarian aid, particularly in regions mired in armed clashes and political unrest. But when it comes to Israel and the Palestinian territories, the complexity is even greater.

The German parliament passed a resolution in November which had been drawn up behind firmly closed doors, linking public grants on adherence to a controversial definition of antisemitism. Its critics see the resolution as conflating any criticism of the Israeli government as antisemitic, as it lists broad terms such as “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” or “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” as examples of antisemitism.

This comes to practice in what the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development in a December 2023 statement called a “close scrutiny” of partners in the region, a procedure that ensures Germany’s partner organizations don’t have links to terror groups, nor make antisemitic statements or actions that make it “undesirable” to support them. This means organizations shouldn’t support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, incite to violence against Israel or deny Israel’s right to exist.

Dozens of Civil Society Organization resources told DW that the German government has increasingly restricted investment since October 7, 2023, when Hamas and other Palestinian militants launched a series of brutal attacks, killing some 1,200 Israelis. and taking 254 hostages. The government unleashed attacks first in Gaza and then in Lebanon. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive, according to local authorities.

Relief has compiled a list of at least 15 organisations, including Zochrot and New Profil, which have lost their investment from the German government in recent months. Most are Palestinian and many had long-standing associations with German progress organizations.

While the Foreign Ministry did not confirm that 15 had been defunded, DW was able to verify at least eight groups whose funds were recently cut.

A resolution, in which many NGO resources agreed, is symptomatic of Germany’s restrictive position: Berlin’s resolution to silently cut six Palestinian organizations after Hamas attacks in late 2023.

Israel had deemed them connected with terrorists already back in 2021, even though many countries, including France and originally Germany, said those claims were baseless.

One of those organizations, AL-HAQ, is known in 2014 for having testified to Israel before the International Criminal Court, which issued in November 2024 an arrest warrant opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, presenting accusations of war crimes and opposite crimes To humanity. Many resources in civil society probably said it due to this 2014 testimony that Al-Haq had been registered in the list of terrorists in Israel.

The 2021 moves through the Israeli government to designate the six Palestinian NGOs as political terrorists, “100%,” the European Union’s representative in the West Bank and Gaza, Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, told DW.

“None of the monetary audits and controls have concluded that any of those six NGOs have contravened or violated our investment agreements or contractual obligations,” he said.

Nine European foreign ministries have come to a similar conclusion. They wrote in a joint in July 2022 that “no substantive data has been gained from Israel that warrants a review of our policy toward the six Palestinian NGOs. “One of the signatories was Germany.

The investment continued, but then, in December 2023, the German government quietly did an about-face on its policy and ended all federal investment. It was a few days before Christmas, one source said, when top relief personnel were already on vacation.

DW has a copy of a classified internal report from the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, which states that no new cooperation with the six agencies is allowed. Here, too, it is not explained why it happened. The resolution has never yet been publicly communicated.

When asked why this sudden change occurred, a spokesman for the Office of Foreign Affairs responded to DW in a letter that the Government had tried and continues to review all the data on the six NGOs.

Overall, the investment of 8 Israeli and Palestinian organizations seems to involve Germany’s resolve with the existing Israeli government, the progression resources agreed.

It comes at a time when the space for critical civil society and media in Israel is shrinking, said Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard, who defends and advises Palestinian and Israeli NGOs, including Al-Haq. He believes that restricting funding for human rights organizations is part of a deliberate strategy of the Israeli government to stifle dissent.

“It is a trend that a decade and a part does, but it reached its peak with the existing government, and especially after October 7,” he said. It is, he explained, “incredible how complicated it is in today’s Israel to criticize government 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.

Sergeiy Sandler of the new profile agrees.   He lives in Beer Sheva, a city in southern Israel between two army airports. The soundtrack of the war in Gaza, which takes a 40 -kilometer position from his house, is the incessant roar of the planes that are directed to or return from the strip of Gaza.

It’s a constant reminder that war is very close to home. “And the [new profile] paintings are helping at least other people not to participate in atrocities,” he said, adding that the new profile is becoming increasingly popular. Requests from other people who want to abstain from military service.

“I can perceive why the Israeli government to suppress us,” he said.

But, he asked angrily: “What is the German’s action to impose the ideological demands of Israelis on Israeli citizens?”

What, he added: “Is it a matter of the German government to silence dissent?”

In a letter to DW, the Foreign Ministry rejected all of Germany’s accusations, following Israel’s example, silently criticizing the Netanyahu 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