In 2023 and 2024 alone the German Government paid close to €1 billion in support to various Palestinian causes, a request for information by Liberal MP Claudia Raffelhüschen has revealed.
The answer given by Susanne Baumann, state secretary at the Federal Foreign Office under minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens), listed a total of €913 million in transfer payments.
One of the biggest recipients of German taxpayers’ apparent largesse was the United Nations Palestinian Relief Agency UNRWA.
The organisation received almost €350 million in payments – €178 million for “humanitarian help”, €104 million for “financial and technical co-operation” and €45 million for “crisis management and reconstruction”.
Most of the payments were made after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel in which terror group Hamas killed more than 1,200 people (the large majority civilians) and took 250 hostages.
UNRWA employees have been shown to have had links to the attacks and UNRWA facilities have reportedly been used to hold some of the Israeli hostages.
UNRWA schools have also been accused of indoctrinating Palestinian children with anti-Semitism for decades.
In January 2025, NGO UN Watch published a report that showed how the UN agency had been infiltrated by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives. Hillel Neuer, executive director, called UNRWA “a primary enabler of the Arab-Israeli conflict”.
Israel has stopped all co-operation with UNRWA. In 2024, the Israeli parliament passed a bill designating the agency a terrorist organisation. The US also stopped all payments to UNRWA in 2024.
The extent of German payments to Palestinians has caused consternation among observers.
Publicist Andreas Hallaschka shared the news about the cash transfers on X, together with a picture of Shiri Bibas and her children Kfir, aged two and Ariel Bibas, aged five, who were taken hostage by Hamas and later murdered, writing: “German taxpayers’ money is helping to kill.”
Yet the revelations about UNRWA do not seem to have dampened the German Government’s willingness to fund the agency.
In a press statement on January 21, the foreign ministry said there still was “a vital political and humanitarian interest” in funding UNRWA.
