Activity

• Affiliated with the German Die Grünen (Green Party)
• Foundation headquarters located in Berlin, with Israel offices located in Tel Aviv and Ramallah.

Funding

• In 2018, total budget was €68.6 million, of which the German federal government provided approximately €46 million.
• According to Parliamentarian Question 19/6047 regarding “Germany’s support for the establishment of a Palestinian state,” HBS received €2.3 million (2017-2018) for projects in the West Bank and Gaza.
• HBS’ Israeli and Palestinian websites provide limited information on the foundation’s ongoing funding partners. Funding information below is provided by recipients.

Funding to Politicized NGOs

• Heinrich Boell Stiftung (HBS) has provided funding to a number of highly biased and politicized NGOs active in the Arab-Israeli conflict including Addameer, Al-Haq, Al Mezan, Ma’an Development Center, Nine-Seven-Two (+972) Magazine, and Al-Shabaka. (See table below for further funding information.)
  • Addameer is an “affiliate” of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – a terrorist organization designated as such by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel – and a number of Addameer staff members have alleged connections to the terror group. Addameer’s chairperson and co-founder, Abdul-latif Ghaith, was banned by Israel from travelling internationally due to his alleged membership in the PFLP. He was also banned from entering the West Bank between 2011 and 2015.
    • Addameer is a leader of campaigns in support of Palestinians prisoners convicted of security offenses, referring to them as “political prisoners” and altogether omitting the context of violence and terror.
  • Al-Haq is a leader in anti-Israel “lawfare” campaigns and BDS activities.
    • Al-Haq General Director Shawan Jabarin has ties to the PFLP terrorist organization and, as a result, has been denied exit visas by Israel and Jordan. According to the Israeli Supreme court, Jabarin “is apparently acting as a manner of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, acting some of the time as the CEO of a human rights organization, and at other times as an activist in a terror organization.”
      • According to a 1995 Israeli submission to the UN, Jabarin was convicted in 1985 for recruiting members for the PFLP. Jabarin was also found guilty of arranging PFLP training outside Israel and was sentenced by Israeli courts to 24-months imprisonment, of which he served nine. In 1994, Jabarin was again arrested for alleged links and placed in administrative detention for six months. An Israeli statement to the UN notes that he “had not discontinued his terrorist involvement and maintains his position in the leadership of the PFLP.”
  • Al Mezan is highly active in anti-Israel lawfare campaigns, exploiting courts and international legal bodies to seek arrest warrants against Israeli government officials, file lawsuits against companies and governments doing business with Israel, and lobby for cases against Israelis at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
  • In May 2018, Ma’an Development Center employee Ahmad Abdallah Aladini was killed in the violence on the Gaza border. Aladini was a “comrade” of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization designated as such by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel. According to the PFLP, Aladini was active against the “Zionist aggression on the Gaza Strip.”
    • On his Facebook page, Aladini posted images that glorify violence and terrorists, including PFLP propaganda. On May 7, 2018, Aladini posted a PFLP memorial notice for the death of six members of Hamas who were killed during the “crimes of the Zionist enemy.”
  • Claiming to be a “think tank without borders,” Al-Shabaka solely promotes an intense anti-Israel agenda, advocating BDS campaigns, a Palestinian “right of return” and featuring writers on its website who accuse Israel of “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing,” without featuring alternative views.

Political Advocacy

• On April 1, 2020, Heinrich Boll’s Ramallah office published an article, in partnership with Ma’an Development Center and the Afaq Environmental Magazine, addressing “Arab Jerusalemites fear the spread of coronavirus in a city crowded with houses no larger than one or two rooms, especially in the old city and its surroundings. This is a clear reality, resulting from a programmed policy of occupation meant to strangle the Jerusalemites in terms of housing and other affairs, which makes quarantine impossible.”
• In February 2020, Ma’an Development Center published a video – “produced with the financial assistance” of Heinrich Boll –titled “Israel’s weapon against farmers … the wild boar,” accusing Israel of bringing wild board “in trucks” in order to “destroy the farmers’ crops… [and] terraces” and “increase desertification.”
• In October 2019, Heinrich Boll and Al-Haq published a report titled “Adaptation Under Occupation: Climate Change Vulnerability in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” placing sole blame on Israel for climate change stating that “Israel’s prolonged occupation of the Palestinian territory therefore constitutes the major cause for the exacerbation of climate change impacts on the OPT, as well as the deterioration of the standard of living for Palestinian communities relying on land and natural resources for their subsistence.” The report was written by Suha Jarrar, Environmental and Gender Policy Researcher at Al-Haq and daughter of PFLP leader Khalida Jarrar.
  • The report was “produced with the financial assistance of Heinrich Boll Stiftung.”
• In September 2019, Heinrich Boll hosted an event on “Annexation and Land Theft” featuring Al-Haq, Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC), and Al-Shabaka.
• In May 2019, Chairwoman of Heinrich Boell Stiftung Barbara Unmuessig (Unmüßig) rejected the German Bundestag’s resolution defining BDS campaigns as antisemitic, complaining that “The Bundestag resolution strengthens right-wing Israeli lobby groups who will do anything to make life difficult for us.” She defended HBS’ support for pro-BDS NGOs, “Most civil society groups in Palestine signed the BDS call in 2005… Instead of forcibly opposing the Israeli occupation, they have opted for peaceful and non-violent resistance.”
• In May 2018, HBS staff participated in the “Alternative Memorial Ceremony” organized by Combatants for Peace (CfP). The “alternative” Remembrance Day ceremonies feature the families of fallen Israeli soldiers and victims of terror, as well as the families of Palestinian terrorists. The ceremony immorally equates acts of terrorism with legal measures of defense.
  • HBS has referred to Combatants for Peace as a “grantee.”
• While claiming to “allow each side to understand the other’s narrative,” Combatants for Peace activities reflect a strong affiliation with the Palestinian agenda and narrative, placing most of the blame for the conflict on “the occupation.”
• In April 2018, Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA), of which HBS is a member, released a statement during the violence on the Gaza border “condemning Israel’s unlawful killing of civilians” during the Gaza-border violence and called for an “independent and transparent investigation into the killing and injuring of civilians in the context of peaceful demonstrations, and for those responsible to be held to account.” The statement ignored the violent nature of the protests, which have consisted of an on-going organized armed attack on the Israeli border and IDF positions, attempts to destroy and breach the border fence, and sustained arson, rocket, and mortar attacks on Israeli civilian communities.
• In February 2018, AIDA published a report titled “50 Years of Occupation: Dispossession, Deprivation and De-development” that accused Israel of “systemic, decades-long squeeze of Palestinian economic prospects and human rights.”
• In November 2017, HBS’s Ramallah office agreed to co-sponsor a conference “Commemorating the thirtieth Anniversary of the First Palestinian Uprising against the Israeli Occupation,” featuring speakers that are former or current members of the Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organizations.
  • Following German media coverage and significant public pressure citing NGO Monitor research, HBS withdrew its support for the event.
• In August 2017, HBS published a magazine titled “50 Years of Occupation, 50 Years of Resilience,” which adopted a one-sided Palestinian narrative of the conflict and placed sole blame on Israel for the continuation of the conflict stating that “instead of giving Palestinians more freedom and withdrawing gradually from the occupied territory, Israel entrenched the occupation, multiplied the number of settlers, erected checkpoints and barriers and divided the West Bank and Gaza into separate parts. Palestinians responded with attacks on Israeli civilians and military personnel. Israeli reprisals were vicious, merciless and often disproportionate. The peace process collapsed and the occupation grew ever more oppressive.”
  • Articles were written by Issam Younis (Al Mezan), Susan Power (Al-Haq), and Rula Abu Duhou  faculty member at Birzeit University’s Institute of Women Studies
    • Abu Duhou, a member of the PFLP terror organization, was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years in jail for her participation in the murder of an Israeli civilian. After her release from prison, Duhou declared, “I’m not sorry for it… On the contrary, I’m proud. And I wish I could do more for my country” [emphasis added].
• In April 2017, HBS publicized demonstrations for “Palestinians Prisoner’s Day,” featuring pictures containing PFLP symbols and flags.
• In 2013, Kerstin Müller, then head of the Tel Aviv office of HBS, co-initiated a German Green party campaign to label and boycott Israeli goods produced over the Green Line.
  • In Israel, Müller became visibly involved in Israeli domestic politics by supporting the V15 group that sought to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu during the 2015 elections.
• Provided support for a book, The Holocaust and the Nakba: Memory, National Identity, and Jewish- Arab Partnership” likening the Palestinian “Nakba” (Arabic for “catastrophe,” referring to the establishment of the State of Israel) to the Holocaust.