Adolf Hitler reviewing German troops in Vienna, 1938. (AP)
Combatants for Peace and Yesh Gvul are among the organizations that signed the letter comparing Israeli actions to those of Nazi Germany.
By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News
Several left-wing Israeli NGOs signed a letter comparing the upcoming Israeli annexation of the Jordan Valley and parts of Judea and Samaria to the Anschluss, the 1938 annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany.
The letter was sent to German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who visited Jerusalem last week, asking him to intervene and stop the annexation process, reported Israel Hayom.
Combatants for Peace, Yesh Gvul, Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc), and Mesavarot (“Refusers”) were among the organizations that signed the letter.
“Even today, we are facing annexation dependent on the robbery of another people’s power, which can lead the Middle East and world into another terrible war,” the letter says.
Some of these organizations, while based in Israel, receive funding from foreign bodies. Combatants for Peace, according to watchdog group NGO Monitor, reportedly received 71,798 shekels in donations from the AGEH charity arm of the German Catholic Church in 2018.
Combatants for Peace also received a donation of 42,343 shekels in 2018 from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which is affiliated with left-wing German political party Die Linke.
An investigation by Israeli hasbara (public diplomacy) nonprofit Ad Kan revealed the full text of the letter and its comparisons between Nazi Germany and modern-day Israel.
“The use of the Holocaust by extreme leftist organizations to please their German patrons is a lowly act of organizations that have already crossed all possible limits of decency,” said Ad Kan in a statement.
Jonathan Ger, head of Combatants for Peace, responded by saying, “No German political party or organization asked for this letter.”
“The content speaks for itself,” he told Israel Hayom.
Yesh Gvul said in a statement to Israel Hayom, “Annexation is a war crime.”
Gush Shalom responded, “Annexing territory without granting citizenship to its Palestinian residents will make Israel officially an apartheid state.”
In February, the European Union donated $550,000 to a Russian-Israeli NGO with the mission of “building trust in the two-state solution among a population that has traditionally rejected it.”
The organization, Morashtenu, aims to convince Russian-speakers, who are traditionally right-wing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to adopt a “peace-oriented” view on Israeli policy.
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