by Leon Wystrychowski

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 

The news reads like a dark joke—but it isn’t. “Rescued little Donkeys from Gaza Find a Home in Oppenheim,” reports Allgemeine Zeitung, a regional newspaper in western Germany. On Instagram, the comment section on the post was quickly disabled due to “numerous inappropriate and hateful comments”– likely criticism of Germany’s decision to take in four donkeys. But what’s the broader context?

Animals welcome – Gazawis not

For many, the story of four donkeys “rescued” from Gaza is further proof of the inhumane cynicism of Germany’s leaders. Since October 2023, hardly any humans from Gaza have been admitted to Germany. Berlin did not prioritize rescuing Palestinian citizens with German passports from the genocide in Gaza, despite the Foreign Ministry’s stated duty to evacuate its own nationals from war and crisis zones. Meanwhile, Germany has even granted citizenship to Israelis who were taken prisoner during Gaza operations after October 2023, loudly advocating for their release as “German hostages.”

While various Western countries in recent months – Spain, for example, as early as summer 2024 – took in contingents of injured or sick children from Gaza for medical treatment, Germany has done almost nothing. Only two children from Gaza are believed to have received treatment in Germany in more than two years. Several German cities had offered to take in larger numbers of minors from Gaza and claimed to be ready to do so – but the federal government blocked these plans, citing the “very unpredictable” situation in Gaza even after the official ceasefire. The Foreign Office and Interior Ministry also referred to “complex procedures” and the need to vet accompanying family members. NGOs helping patients from abroad are required to guarantee the return of patients and their guardians; if asylum is later sought, the NGOs must cover costs for the often multi-year legal process.

Even the Allgemeine Zeitung piece exemplifies the grotesque double standard in German discourse on Gaza. The article opens: “They have endured hunger and misery, beatings and toil.” Setting aside how this framing suggests that Gazans are not only potential “Hamas terrorists” and “Jew-haters” but also animal abusers, it ignores the systematic torture of Palestinians by the Israeli army, as documented in recent reports by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) – virtually absent from German media coverage. The empathy shown for donkeys in this piece far exceeds that extended to humans in Gaza over the past two years. Unsurprisingly, the article fails to mention who is responsible for the donkeys’ hunger – or the deprivation of nearly two million Palestinians.

The article celebrates that the donkeys, “despite all they have endured, are remarkably trusting” and “have even started to blossom a little.” Comparable attention to the psychological state of Gaza’s human population in German media is virtually nonexistent.

READ: Germany lifts restrictions on arms exports to Israel: Spokesman

Germany’s greenwashing of genocide

There is, however, another dimension beyond the obvious cynicism: the story of how these donkeys reached Germany. “These donkeys were abandoned, injured, mistreated, or destined to die,” says the zoo in Oppenheim. (No word on why they were abandoned, or what happened to their original owners.) The animals were “rescued” by Israeli animal welfare organizations – specifically, a group that reportedly has “rescued 50 donkeys from Gaza.” How an Israeli NGO operates in an active war zone is unclear, but it likely required coordination with the IDF.

Already last summer, media outlets reported that the Israeli army was transporting hundreds of Gaza’s donkeys to a farm called the “Starting Over Sanctuary”. Israeli media labeled this “animal rescue.” According to the Belgian News Agency, there had been 10 such transports by early August. The Israeli “aid organization” boasts of having “rescued” around 600 donkeys.

In another report about four more donkeys brought to a ranch in northern Germany’s Lower Saxony, it is revealed that the organization ‘Starting Over Sanctuary’ is actually behind the transports to Germany. The article also claims: “The donkeys had to work hard, were very poorly treated, and had no rights. Their illnesses were not treated.“

Since the genocide in Gaza, donkeys have become a vital transport resource. With fuel shortages and damaged roads, they reliably carry the injured and sick to clinics, transport people and belongings during flight or return home, and deliver essential water, food, and supplies. Far from being senselessly abused or left to die, sick and injured animals in Gaza are treated and rescued. A Guardian report from April 2025 noted that one medical team alone rescued over 7,000 donkeys since October 2023. Meanwhile, journalist Tarek Baé pointed out on X that, according to the UN, as early as August 2024, 43 per cent of all livestock in Gaza had been killed as a result of Israel’s war of destruction.

Seen in this light, the “rescue” of donkeys by Israeli actors appears more as theft or abduction. It forms part of the IDF’s ongoing strategy: denying Palestinians the means of production – especially land, olive trees – and of transport is central to settler-colonial control and the systematic displacement of Palestinians. Ecological justifications have long been used to mask this agenda, critics also speak of “Environmental Warfare“: from tree planting by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) to creating nature reserves that displace Palestinians and endanger lives, to the ostensible “rescue” of Gaza’s donkeys. Germany is now supporting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the genocide in Gaza not only politically, economically, through arms supplies to Israel, and by withholding aid from Gazans, but also by destroying the last means of survival in the Gaza Strip under the guise of ‘greenwashing.’

OPINION: On trial at The Hague: Germany accused of misleading the World Court

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This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.