Matthias Monroy

For three years, Germany and Israel have been deepening their security cooperation. Military personnel train on weapon systems, and police authorities exchange information on investigations. Criticism of war crimes remains without consequence.

Military and police collaboration between Germany and Israel has intensified in recent years. This emerges from answers given by the German Government to two parliamentary questions posed by the Left Party. According to these, the two countries cooperate not only on arms exports but also in training and counter-terrorism. Information is available concerning the Bundeswehr and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), though not regarding the Federal Police.

According to the government, German and Israeli soldiers take part in each other’s ‘high-value training’ at command and military academies as well as universities. The practical training of German forces includes further instruction for helicopter crews in the so-called dust-landing procedure and mountain-flight training. Conversely, Israeli soldiers complete free-fall and tandem-jump training at the German Airborne and Air Transport School. Mutual medical courses are also part of the cooperation.

Training on drones and air defence

For several years, the German Air Force has received weapons-system training on the Heron TP drone at a base near Tel Aviv; it replaces the Heron 1 unmanned reconnaissance system used since 2010. For deployment in the Gaza war, the Bundeswehr returned two Heron TP drones to Israel after 7 October 2023; the training, which had been suspended since then, was resumed only this April. A total of five armed-capable drones are to be supplied from Israel, one of which is already stationed in Jagel, Schleswig-Holstein. The Bundestag has recently approved the procurement of three more Heron TPs.

Further training of German soldiers has been taking place since the corresponding procurement decision on Israel’s Arrow missile-defence system and an associated system of high-performance radar devices for monitoring, detecting and tracking incoming missiles. This AWS-G is to be stationed at several locations throughout Germany – it could then also be used by the police.

The closing of such capability gaps in drone defence was recently announced by Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (Christian Social Union), who also announced a related project with Israel. Whether this involves police use of the military AWS-G system was left open by the minister. Its initial operational capability is to be achieved later this year.

‘Emphatic’ call for compliance with international law

At working level, military ‘specialist and expert discussions’ take place between Israel and Germany in various fields; according to the Ministry of Defence, the current focus lies ‘on logistics, procurement, operations, surveying and investigation, as well as prison affairs’. The government does not explain what precisely this exchange concerning prisons entails.

The German Government considers the cooperation to provide ‘valuable experience and insights from a military and training-technical perspective’. When asked how it assesses this against the background of war crimes committed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, it states: ‘The Federal Government is also in exchange with the Israeli government on questions of international law and emphatically calls upon the Israeli government to comply with international humanitarian law.’

Focus on ‘terrorist organisation Hamas’

Police cooperation has also been intensified – so far, however, only at a strategic level. Most recently, in early September, Israel’s police chief Daniel Levy visited, with a delegation, the Joint Counter-Terrorism Centre (GTAZ) at the BKA in Berlin-Treptow. According to the German Ministry of the Interior, the focus was ‘on the terrorist organisation Hamas’.

Again, the government gives no details – for instance, whether the exchange of information on the organisation’s alleged activities in Germany is to be intensified. In early October – three weeks after the visit to the GTAZ – the Public Prosecutor General in Germany arrested four men who were allegedly preparing ‘murder attacks on Israeli or Jewish facilities in Germany’ on behalf of Hamas.

The Israeli police chief also discussed with the BKA possibilities for financial investigations – such methods are often used in the field of terrorism. In an unspecified concrete case, the BKA demonstrated to the Israeli delegation the use of virtual reality in a crime-scene reconstruction. On the second day, the BKA presented its developments in artificial intelligence – a topic to which the authority in Wiesbaden had devoted its entire autumn conference a year earlier. The focus there was on facial recognition.

Senior German officials at conferences in Israel

This coming December, the BKA intends to take part in a ‘Conference of Emergency-Management Commissioners’ in Israel – though its contribution remains unspecified. It is not the only visit of this kind: a week after Israel’s police chief was in Berlin, Olaf Lindner, President of Federal Police Directorate 11 (special forces), spoke at an ‘anti-terrorism congress’ in Tel Aviv, claiming that as Germany had ‘significantly curbed illegal migration’, the threat of terrorism had also been reduced.

Speakers from Israel and other countries at the conference paid tribute to the far-right US influencer Charlie Kirk, who had recently been killed, vilified the International Criminal Court, and declared that Israel was currently ‘under attack from all sides’. Campaigns and cases before international courts were described as a military ‘eighth front’ and as ‘antisemitic’.

Christian Klos, Director-General at the Federal Ministry of the Interior, stated at the ‘anti-terrorism congress’ that German protests against the Gaza war were ‘often anti-Jewish’ and frequently targeted religious sites. He justified this by saying that activists used the words ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’. On this year’s Nakba Day, 15 May, in Berlin, a police officer had been ‘seriously injured’ by demonstrators, Klos claimed in Tel Aviv – a widely circulated false report, as several media later established with the help of Forensic Architecture.

Left Party demands an end to cooperation

A deepened German security cooperation with Israel had already been announced in May 2022 by the then Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (Social Democratic Party). This cooperation was described by the ministry as ‘close and based on trust’, taking place ‘within already proven formats for combating crime and terrorism’. When asked about concrete measures, the spokesperson would only say that in September 2023 a cooperation agreement had been concluded with the Yad Vashem memorial for the ‘raising of antisemitism awareness’ among staff of the Federal Police and the BKA.

During a visit to Israel in June 2025, Interior Minister Dobrindt also announced a ‘cyber and security pact’ to cover the protection of critical infrastructure, civil protection and response to drone attacks. The ministry remains tight-lipped on the matter: ‘As the cyber and security pact has not yet been agreed, no details can be provided,’ the spokesperson told ‘nd’.

The oral question on military cooperation with Israel came from Left Party MP Gökay Akbulut. She criticises the fact that the ‘deep and multifaceted cooperation’ continues despite systematic war crimes. ‘This contradiction is fundamental and undermines all credibility of German foreign policy,’ Akbulut said. The Federal Government must therefore suspend the measures immediately. This demand is echoed by Lea Reisner, who inquired about police cooperation: ‘That Germany continues to work closely with Israeli armed forces and police, although they commit the most serious human-rights violations, is not a ‘gain in experience’ but a moral bankruptcy declaration.’

Published in German in ‘nd’.

Image: Audience with wanted war criminal: Alexander Dobrindt met Benjamin Netanyahu at the end of June (Jens Oellermann/BMI).