Yair Netanyahu to Germany: Stop Funding Left-Wing NGOs That Seek Israel’s Destruction

TEL AVIV – Yair Netanyahu, the son of Israel’s prime minister, slammed Germany for what he said was its hypocrisy in saying it stands “shoulder to shoulder with Israel” while shelling out millions of euros in aid to “radical left wing NGOs that seek its destruction.”

Germany’s foreign ministry, which recently celebrated Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, issued a statement on Saturday marking the 70th anniversary of Israel’s admittance to the UN. The statement said Germany’s “Federal Government would like to take this 70th anniversary as an opportunity to reiterate the fact that Germany stands at Israel’s side in the UN, too.”

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas was quoted as saying that Israel’s “security and right to exist must never be called into question by anyone anywhere.”

The top diplomat went on to say that Germany will always “act as a friend of Israel” and oppose “any unfair treatment of Israel in the UN.”

Yair Netanyahu took Maas to task over the statement, blasting Berlin’s funding of anti-Israel organizations.

“It will be nice if you stop interfering in our internal business and stop funding hundreds of radical left-wing NGOs in Israel that seek its destruction. Use the hundreds of millions of € you use for this to fund hospitals, schools and churches in Germany!” he tweeted.

An article in Germany’s most widely circulated newspaper Bild stated that “Yair said aloud what many in the Israeli government think” about Germany’s funding of NGOs that seek to “defame” the Jewish state.

“The fact is that funds from the EU and Germany are being used by organizations that not only criticize Israel, but also defame the Jewish state, are affiliated with the anti-Semitic boycott campaign (BDS) or even partially support terrorist propaganda,” the report said.

The Bild article went on to quote a recent report by Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry that said that Germany and other European nations are funding BDS groups with clear links to terrorist organizations including Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The paper also noted that EU monies funneled to the Palestinian Authority were finding their way to pension funds for terrorists.

One example in the Strategic Affairs report, titled “Terrorists in Suits,” cites the Ramallah-based Palestinian human rights NGO Al-Haq as being led by Shawan Jabarin, a PFLP terrorist who spent three years in prison. Al-Haq, which promotes boycotts against Israel and which also provided the background material for the since-discredited Goldstone Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict at the UN, is funded by the World Peace Service, a German governmental agency.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also been the target of hypocrisy charges for declaring on the one hand that ensuring Israel’s security is “non-negotiable” while at the same time her administration voted in favor of 16 anti-Israel resolutions at the UN.

Following rocket fire into central Israel in March that prompted an IDF retaliation, Germany’s UN ambassador Christoff Heusgen compared Israel to Gaza-ruling terror group Hamas at the United Nations Security Council, finding a moral equivalency between “Hamas rocket terrorism with the demolition of houses without a building permit,” an article in Bild said, in reference to Israel’s policy against illegal construction by both Palestinians and Israelis.

A month prior, Germany’s foreign minister sent delegates to Iran’s Embassy in Berlin to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

According to the Jerusalem Post, German Jews accused Maas of “failing to internalize the lesson of the Holocaust with his robust support of Iran’s regime.”