Helping to kill Jews.
The nation that is responsible for the murder of Six Million Jews in Europe during World War II, also known as the Holocaust, is now knowingly funding the murderers of Israeli Jews, through the “good offices” of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA). Germany’s funds are being used by the PA to make payments to families of terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands, and terrorists currently in Israeli prisons. The Palestinian practice is better known as “pay to slay.”
Israel’s ambassador to Germany Ron Proshaur sharply criticized the German government for the transfer of funds to the PA. In an interview with the German left-wing daily Tatz, a mouthpiece for the Green party whose leader is Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, Proshaur charged that the current German government representatives are ignoring the PA use of the funds Berlin is providing to promote terrorism.
It is not the first time such willful ignorance is being used by the German government. In 2016, the German government led by Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic party) admitted that the PA is making payments to terrorists’ families with aid funds from Germany. It was not, however, an admission that came out willingly, but was forced out by repeated questions from Bundestag Member Volker Beck. The German foreign ministry in Berlin (run by the Social Democrat party) acknowledged that German funds went to “martyrs,” and Palestinian terrorists’ prisoners in Israeli jails. The funds were distributed by the PA from its annual budget. According to the Times of Israel, Germany annually provides the PA with about $179 million.
Back in 2016, Volker Beck pointed out that the government in Berlin knows how the system that supports terrorists’ and their families works. Beck added, “But that they closed their eyes in front of this problem is not understandable.”
The Berlin Spectator, September 21, 2020, headline read “Germany continues to support Palestinian NGO’s linked to terrorism.” The article continued saying that, “While the US brokered a peace between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Germany chose the opposite path, in at least one way: Berlin is still funding NGO’s that are affiliated with the terror organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).”
According to NGO Monitor, in 2018 and 2019, the German group Medico International implemented the project, “Defense of Palestinian land rights in the Jordan valley,” with the Palestinian PFLP-linked Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC). According to the UAWC, this project was funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) as funders of its projects in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
UAWC has been identified by Fatah as an official Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) affiliate and by the USAID as the agricultural arm of the PFLP. In 2019, two senior UAWC operatives responsible for the NGO’s finances, were arrested, and are currently on trial for membership in the PFLP terror cell responsible for the bombing that murdered Rina Shnerb, a 17-year old Jewish Israeli girl.
Since the beginning of the 1980’s, Germany has pledged over billion euros to bilateral projects in Palestine as part of its development cooperation efforts. This is in addition to Germany’s contributions to EU, UN, and World Bank development programs as well as its pledges for projects with UNRWA.
Ambassador Proshaur, while connecting German funds with Palestinian terror suggested that, “Every representative from Germany who travels to Israel, has no choice but to visit ‘Uncle Abbas’ in Ramallah. Instead of listening for hours to his fairy tales about the ‘poisoning of the wells’ and the ‘theft of organs’ by the Jews, the visitors should confront him with his gifts of money to terrorist families, since these funds come from the German and European aid budgets.” Proshaur added, “It’s hard to believe but these funds flow to the ‘pay to kill’ camp, meaning the more Jews you kill, the more money you get.”
Proshaur had also something to say about his counterpart in Israel, Germany’s ambassador Steffen Seibert, who during Israeli Operation Breaking Dawn in Gaza, against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) last year, twitted, “Another lethal, disproportionate attack against a besieged population.” For a representative of the German government to infer that Israel’s defensive operation against a murderous terrorist group was “lethal and disproportionate” is downright shameful. Apparently, he would rather shed “crocodile tears” over the Israeli-Jewish victims than support preventing such attacks on Israelis.
Seibert’s first official meeting in Israel was with Physicians for Human Rights in Israel, an essentially anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian NGO masquerading as a human rights organization allegedly concerned with medical aid for all people. This NGO receives significant funding from the German government.
More recently, during the IDF anti-terror operation in which nine Palestinian terrorists were killed, Seibert tweeted that he was concerned by the high number of Palestinian casualties, and demanded that Israel protect its security in a “proportional manner and in accordance with the law.” What seemed to escape Seibert’s mind is the fact that if Israel did not act in the manner it did, innocent Israelis in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv would be murdered by these terrorists.
The world saw how the Germans acted against the Munich Olympic terrorists in 1972. It was a terrible fiasco that cost the lives of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes. Germany’s soft treatment and bribery of terrorists has spawned the likes of the 9/11 Arab terrorists who found safe and a hospitable ground in Germany.
While Germany professes to be Israel’s close friend, its voting pattern at the UN does not reflect such friendship. In December 2019, Germany voted against Israel on the critical issues that deemed that Jerusalem’s Western Wall, the holiest Jewish site as “Palestinian territory.” Germany voted for a UN resolution titled “The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination,” which was sponsored by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Egypt, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, and “the state of Palestine.” The former German ambassador to the UN, Christoph Heusgen, had frequently used his bully pulpit at the UN to join the ongoing orgy of diplomatic targeting of the Jewish state for opprobrium.
More recently, Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz faced criticism for not responding to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ antisemitic outburst. Abbas, speaking at a joint press conference with Scholz, accused Israel of “committing 50 Holocausts” against the Palestinian people. Only after being criticized did Scholz expressed “outrage” at Abbas for “inciting hatred.”
For a nation that committed the greatest crime in history against the Jewish people and humanity itself, Germany seeking to assuage its guilt by pandering to the Palestinians with its generous charity toward the PA that extends to funding Palestinian murder of Jews, is immoral and unacceptable.
Joseph Puder, a freelance journalist, is the Founder and Executive Director of the Interfaith Taskforce for America and Israel (ITAI). He is a regular contributor to Frontpage.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.