The Berlin Left Party’s Capitulation After the Elections: A Betrayal of Solidarity with Palestine

The original article was published in German by the author Fabian Lehr on his personal page on October 9, 2026.

In September, the reformist Left Party (Die Linke) became the strongest party in the Berlin elections. Since then, a bourgeois smear campaign against the party has intensified attacking the party due to supposed “Antisemtism”. In reality the smear campaign target the base of the Left party who unequivocally reject Zionism, are against the genocide in Gaza as and demand socialization of the housing sector. The opportunistic and Zionist response of the leadership of the Left reformist party was to throw Palestine solidarity under the bus. This case showcases the very limitations of reformist politics in attempting to co-manage the capitalist state.

Guest article by Fabian Lehr

Shortly before the Berlin elections, I argued that it seemed sensible to me to vote for the Left Party in these elections because it was reasonable to assume that the subsequent coalition negotiations would, with a high degree of probability, lead to a sharp confrontation between the opportunistic, pro-government wing centered around Elif Eralp on the one hand, and the socialist-oriented wing—which is particularly strong in Berlin—on the other, and thus either result in the enforcement of strong “red lines” through pressure from the grassroots or, alternatively, pave the way for a major left-wing split from Die Linke. The latter seems to be unfolding more quickly and drastically than expected.
After weeks of a crazy, shameless smear campaign in which the Springer press, public media, the CDU/CSU, the AfD, the Greens, and others—all in cozy harmony—sought to defame Die Linke as a sinister anti-Semitic party because of its positions in solidarity with Palestine—the Greens and the SPD have apparently demanded of the Berlin branch of Die Linke, as a precondition for coalition negotiations, that it must pledge to reform in a public ritual of submission and accept measures dictated by them to address its “anti-Semitism problem.”

This has now taken shape in the form of a three-page document outlining ideas for the fight against anti-Semitism, signed by all three parties—though, of course, it is intended solely for Die Linke. It is a document of baseness, indignity, and hypocrisy. The Left Party in Berlin—by far the city’s strongest party, which, mind you, is negotiating here with its potential junior partners—indirectly accepts in this document that the smear campaign directed against its left wing is justified. There is no thought given to how a party with even a shred of self-respect and dignity might explain that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are two different things—and that, especially from the Green Party agitators, one must demand either evidence of genuinely anti-Semitic positions or an apology for their unbelievable insults and slander before sitting down at the table with these people. Let’s take a look at a few low points of this wretched document.

The entire document is implicitly underpinned by an acceptance of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which invites equating criticism of the State of Israel with antisemitism—in contrast to the JDA definition officially adopted by The Left, which draws a much sharper distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Israel. “Protecting Jewish life in Berlin” and “solidarity with Israel” are accordingly thrown into a wild jumble in the document, suggesting that any denunciation of the State of Israel is essentially also an attack on Jews per se.
For example, when the BDS campaign (the political merit of which is certainly open to debate) is cited as an example of anti-Semitism because it discriminates against people “based on their origin and affiliation.” This is simply a blatant lie—as if BDS were calling for a boycott of products manufactured in Europe by Jews or Israeli citizens, or as if non-Jewish investors in the West Bank were exempt from the boycott. According to this logic, was the boycott campaign against the apartheid regime in South Africa then “anti-Boer racism” that leftists should not have tolerated?
Or when the phrase “No Zionists welcome”—which, in Berlin’s left-wing circles, is primarily directed against “pro-Israel” anti-Germans, Greens, and the like of good Prussian-Protestant descent—is cited as an anti-Semitic statement requiring severe sanctions. “A person with pro-Zionist views”—regardless of how one might assess the history and ideology of Zionism—is simply not a synonym for “Jew”; one need only ask the large and very visible community of left-wing, anti-Zionist Jews in Berlin.

Or when questioning “Israel’s right to exist” (a political battle cry, incidentally, that is unknown in international law) is framed as inherently anti-Semitic in motivation, without distinguishing in any way between, on the one hand, genuinely anti-Semitic right-wing fantasies of expulsion and revenge and, on the other hand, left-wing concepts of Israel’s dissolution into an egalitarian binational Jewish-Arab republic.

According to the definition of antisemitism that de facto underlies this document—which essentially equates criticism of the Israeli state and its state ideology with antisemitism—practically all socialists in the world are, in fact, antisemites, whereas the AfD, with its staunch solidarity with Israel, would be a force in the fight against antisemitism. And this nonsense is not meant to remain an empty declaration, but to be put into practice—the document provides for sanctions against all individuals and organizations deemed antisemitic according to this absurd definition.

On the one hand, any form of cooperation with organizations deemed antisemitic under this definition is to be ruled out. This would encompass, for example, virtually all socialist organizations, among which, after all, only a few do not harbor fundamental criticism of the reality and ideology of the State of Israel. Strictly speaking, this now constitutes a formal ban on contact between members of The Left Party and members of Marxist organizations.

Second, they propose—yes, no joke—“strengthening the police and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution” to curb antisemitism. The police and intelligence services of the Federal Republic of Germany—the strongest bulwarks against inhuman ideologies—who isn’t familiar with that?
And third, each of the three parties is to have the ability to denounce any member of the other parties as an anti-Semite, after which a “commission of experts” formed by all parties must review the case, ideally resulting in expulsion following a conviction. One can roughly imagine what kind of “independent experts” the Greens and the SPD will appoint to investigate “left-wing anti-Semitism.”
Of course, it’s clear to everyone that this mechanism is intended exclusively to target the Left Party, and there will never be, for example, proceedings against Greens or SPD members who reproduce anti-Semitic ideas by equating Judaism with the State of Israel. This is clearly a public ritual of submission demanded by Eralp, Wolter, and Co. as a precondition for coalition negotiations, in which Die Linke—despite its overwhelming election victory—is expected to accept a position completely subordinate to the Greens and the SPD.

The fact that Eralp and Co. immediately accept such a blatant humiliation at the hands of their potential junior partners gives a foretaste of how spineless and contemptible the party leaderships are likely to behave on the truly central issues of the negotiations, particularly the housing and socialization issues. The Berlin leadership of Die Linke has thus made it clear that it is willing to do absolutely anything just to secure government posts—and that, to that end, it is happy to recognize the Greens and the SPD as the de facto leaders of the coalition. The entire sham debate over Palestine and “anti-Semitism” is, of course—in Berlin as everywhere else in Germany—a coded dispute over entirely different matters: The aim is to denigrate socialist-oriented leftists as “anti-Semites” and to destroy them personally in order to undermine their moral authority on the economic policy issues that are really at stake. This is abundantly clear from the fact that the full brunt of these attacks is directed so heavily against Die Linke Neukölln, which, of all Die Linke district groups, has the strongest socialist self-identity.

It is in this context that one must also view the as-yet-unconfirmed rumors that Die Linke has assured the Greens and the SPD that it will not admit Vedi Emde—who is particularly outspoken in her solidarity with Palestine and her socialist orientation (and who thereby achieved nearly an absolute majority in her Neukölln district)—into the parliamentary caucus. The message is clear: If it’s necessary to win the favor of the Green agitators and slanderers, we’ll gladly throw Neukölln—and indeed all socialists in the party—under the bus.

But this very thing could prove to be the downfall of the opportunistic, state-supporting forces within the Berlin leadership of Die Linke. It is precisely the highly motivated, activist forces within the party that show solidarity with Palestine on which their electoral success is fundamentally based. If these forces are driven out of the party, the Left Party’s activist base in numerous districts will collapse, destroying the very foundations of its rise.

For socialists, this would not necessarily be the worst-case scenario. The left-wing district associations of the Left Party—such as Neukölln, Wedding, and others—are large and motivated enough that, were they to break away from the Left Party, they could easily become the core of a major new socialist force, just as the Left Party itself emerged in large part from the breakaway of the SPD’s left wing. Such a potential breakaway from the Left Party—which, in the current situation in Berlin, could have a genuine mass base—would not be a process of days or weeks, but would require organizational preparation and likely further escalations with the party leadership.

However, preparing for such a scenario should be a central topic of discussion for socialists both within and outside the Left Party, but not only in Berlin, and I hope that exchanges and discussions will now take place between the socialist and Palestine-solidarity wing of the Left Party on the one hand, and Marxist organizations on the other, regarding what forms of political cooperation—or even joint organizing—might look like if the position of socialists within the Berlin Left Party does indeed become untenable.