Germany is offering asylum to donkeys from Gaza; but not children

Just when it seems impossible for German policy on Palestine to become more absurd, the country manages to prove otherwise. Last week, reports emerged that at least eight donkeys from Gaza had been “rescued” and flown to Germany. While the operation can be seen as part of an Israeli campaign to deprive people in Gaza of an essential means of transportation, the real outrage lies elsewhere: Germany has already evacuated at least four times as many donkeys as human beings from Gaza.

Germany has already evacuated at least four times as many donkeys as human beings from Gaza.

“They have left behind hunger and misery, beatings and exploitation.” This is how a German newspaper opens its story about the donkeys’ “rescue” – without a single word explaining who is responsible for their suffering. Worse still, German media have not used such empathetic language for Palestinians in more than two years. Only far-left outlets still describe what is happening in Gaza as “genocide.” In the mainstream, the word is treated as a “scandal“ in itself. Reports of systematic torture of Palestinians by the Israeli army – most recently documented by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) – barely reach German audiences, and there is certainly no public outcry.

Further down, the article cheerfully notes that the donkeys, “considering all the terrible things they have experienced, are amazingly trusting” and have already “blossomed a little.” Reading similar descriptions of the psychological state of Gaza’s people in a German newspaper today would be nothing short of “revolutionary.”

For international observers – and for South Africa’s genocide case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – one of the clearest indicators that Israel is committing genocide is the repeated dehumanization of Palestinians by Israeli government and army spokespeople, who routinely liken them to animals. Regarding Germany, one can now say this much: after two years of genocide, Ghazawis have been so thoroughly dehumanized that, in the hierarchy of “valuable” life, they rank below animals.

Refusing entry to Palestinian children
While several Western governments have in recent months brought injured or sick children from Gaza for medical treatment, Germany has almost completely refused to do so. Only two children from Gaza are said to have been brought to Germany for treatment in the past two years. Last summer, multiple German cities publicly announced that they were ready to admit minors from Gaza and had already prepared logistics and facilities.

While several Western governments have in recent months brought injured or sick children from Gaza for medical treatment, Germany has almost completely refused to do so.

But the Foreign Office and Interior Ministry blocked the plans. Despite the ceasefire, they said, conditions in Gaza were “very confusing and unpredictable.” They also cited “complex procedures” and insisted that any accompanying relatives would require security screenings. In other words: the German government fears – or claims to fear – bringing “Hamas terrorists” into the country.

This applies not only to Ghazawis but to Palestinians in general. Between November 2024 and August 2025, German authorities denied entry to a Palestinian infant on the grounds that the baby’s presence supposedly endangered “the security of the Federal Republic of Germany.” The parents, who held valid residency and work permits, were allowed to enter – and ultimately overturned the ban in court.

Aid organizations facilitating medical evacuations must sign declarations guaranteeing that patients and their relatives will leave Germany after treatment. If they apply for asylum – which is hardly unthinkable, given the devastation in Gaza – the NGOs must cover their living costs during the often years-long asylum process.

One current case involves one-year-old Hassan*. “The boy was born in the middle of the genocide and has cancer. The cause is all too obvious given Israel’s conduct of the war,” says Yasin*, a German doctor. “We’ve arranged almost everything: a hospital, specialists, and nearly the 100,000 euros needed for the privately funded therapy.” What stands in the way, he says, is German policy. “Doctors in Gaza and Germany agree: the child’s condition is critical, time is running out. He urgently needs the treatment. In Germany it would be simple and straightforward. But if he stays where he is, it is a death sentence.”

Since October 2023, comparisons have frequently been drawn between Germany’s (and the West’s) handling of the genocide in Gaza and the war in Ukraine. The contrast is glaring in Germany’s admission practices: since February 2022, more than one million Ukrainians have resettled in Germany. Unlike refugees from other countries, they did not need asylum applications, received simplified visa procedures, immediate labor-market access, free train travel, priority housing, and effortless school enrollment for their children. Special educational programs to preserve “Ukrainian identity” were even discussed. The presence of ultranationalists and open fascists among the arrivals has never troubled German politicians or media – after all, they are “useful Nazis,” as one former Left Party parliamentarian once put it, unironically.

Palestinian German are also second class citizens
Germany’s hierarchy does not end with refugees. Even German citizens themselves are not equal. Berlin did not attempt to evacuate Germans of Palestinian descent from Gaza, despite the fact that protecting citizens abroad is one of the core responsibilities of the Foreign Office.

One case among many is that of Abdul Al-Najjar. Originally from Gaza, he studied in West Germany, built a family here, held a German passport, and ran a taxi company in the City of Bochum. Shortly before the genocide, he traveled to Gaza to care for a sick relative. He never made it home. All attempts to leave failed.

On June 2, 2025, hope finally seemed near: the 77-year-old reached the Red Crescent in Ramallah and told his wife he felt confident he would soon return. Less than 48 hours later, he was dead. IDF soldiers stormed his house, ransacked it, and he hid in the basement in terror. Aid workers found his body only after soldiers finally let them pass. He had been riddled with bullets, his limbs broken, his skull crushed.

No German official has expressed condolences to his family. Whether they criticized Israel for killing a German citizen is unknown – though unlikely. Authorities are also denying his widow a pension because they deem a copy of his death certificate insufficient. They demand the original by mail from Gaza. German bureaucracy remains as inhumane as ever.

Yet when political will exists, things move quickly: Germany has granted fast-track citizenship – in absentia, which is normally very unusual– to several Israelis captured during the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation and held in Gaza. This allowed the government to loudly campaign for these “German hostages.” It is another example of the German ruling class’s absurd over-identification with Israel, and a grotesque attempt to position themselves among the “victims.”

German barbarism, unmasked
For more than two years, Germany has actively supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza: in October 2023 it increased arms exports to Israel tenfold, making itself Tel Aviv’s second-largest weapons supplier after the U.S. It has consistently framed the slaughter of tens of thousands in Gaza as “self-defense” and defended it against all criticism. For this, Germany now stands accused at the ICJ, after Nicaragua charged it with aiding genocide in April 2024. Domestically, Germany has crushed dissent with police violence, criminal prosecution, censorship, bans, and deportations. Criticism of this repression now comes not only from human rights organizations but from the EU and the UN as well.

Some may have expected that this policy would eventually soften, because of the ICJ proceedings, mounting international pressure, or the so-called ceasefire. Since the adoption of the so-called “Trump Plan,” Germany has attempted to impose silence over Gaza. Chancellor Friedrich Merz immediately declared there was no longer any reason to protest for Palestine. Fortunately, tens of thousands took to the streets the very next day. Germany has since reversed even the modest restrictions it briefly imposed on arms deliveries to Israel in August.

One might have expected at least a return to the pre-October 7 “normality”: weapons for Israel, ignoring apartheid, verbally condemning settlement expansion, alongside some humanitarian aid to obscure Germany’s complicity in mass death, physical and psychological trauma, and total devastation. That hypocrisy would have been seized upon and – rightly – criticized by the Palestine solidarity movement. But the government did not even bother to create this facade. Much like in Trump’s America, the shamelessness of Germany’s ruling class now surpasses the “imperialism with a human face” of previous decades. There is no hypocrisy left.