Germany’s far-left Die Linke party scored a historic election win in Berlin last month, but its path to power in the city-state has been complicated by its stance on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Since its ballot box triumph, it has been accused of tolerating “Israel hate” and antisemitism in its ranks — but also taken heat from members who say it is selling out its pro-Palestinian stance in pursuit of a governing coalition.
Party members will vote Saturday on whether the anticapitalist party should enter into formal coalition talks with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens that could make its lead candidate Elif Eralp mayor of the German capital.
Conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz has voiced alarm about Die Linke’s critical positions on Israel and its pledge to expropriate real estate holdings — and implored the SPD, his coalition partner at the national level, to “stop heading down this path”.
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Some Die Linke members meanwhile accused their party of betrayal after the three potential coalition allies signed a pledge that rejected antisemitism.
The text affirmed Israel’s right to exist and pledged to strengthen police powers to protect Jewish life and ensure “violence and terror are neither glorified nor relativised”.
Linke supporters “voted for the party out of solidarity with Palestine”, said 21-year-old party youth wing activist Anjo outside a pro-Palestinian meeting in the Neukölln district, one of the party’s strongholds and a centre of Berlin’s Arab and Muslim communities.
“Die Linke should remain steadfast in the positions for which it was elected,” he argued, stressing the party’s positions on social justice and anti-militarism.
Big diaspora
In the middle of it all has been the mayoral hopeful Eralp — a 45-year-old lawyer born to Turkish immigrants who has been compared to New York’s Democratic Socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani.
While Eralp campaigned mainly on a pledge to end Berlin’s dire housing crisis with a controversial plan to expropriate flats of corporate landlords, her party also drew strong support from voters with Middle Eastern roots in Berlin, home to Europe’s biggest Palestinian community.
At one local Die Linke campaign event in Neukölln, a rapper sparked controversy when he shouted: “Yalla yalla intifada” and “Kill IDF”, short for Israeli Defense Forces.
Then, at Die Linke’s September 20 post-election party, a Linke MP was spotted with a man described by media as a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — which is classified as a terrorist group in Germany.
READ ALSO: Why is the Left Party in Berlin being accused of antisemitism?
Another visitor beaming into the cameras was Issa Remmo, patriarch of an extended family with roots in Lebanon, several of whose members have been jailed for crimes including some spectacular heists.
Since the election, the German police union GdP has said that more than 70 officers had requested transfers to other states rather than serve under a Die Linke mayor.
Dark history
Debate around the Middle East conflict is especially sensitive in Germany, a country still at pains to atone for its dark history where the political mainstream has long agreed on steadfast solidarity with Israel.
Pro-Palestinian activists often charge that post-war Germany’s deep shame about the Holocaust has fostered an unquestioning loyalty to Israel that has blinded it to the depth of Palestinian suffering.
Jara, a 29-year-old activist of Lebanese descent speaking at a recent pro-Gaza rally, accused Germany of “a complete externalisation of German guilt onto the Palestinians”.
Khaled, a German with Palestinian roots at another protest, charged that Die Linke was caving in to the pro-Israel consensus and said that, after the party had won “with the help of many people who stand in solidarity with Palestine”, it was now disappointing them.
Die Linke’s spokeswoman in Neukölln, Jorinde Schulz, said that “anti-Zionist positions” had long been a current within Die Linke but rejected charges of antisemitism.
She said about pro-Palestinian activism that, when “virtually every expression of grief, every protest and every act of defiance is labelled as antisemitism, that is simply profoundly inhumane”.
Anjo of Die Linke’s youth wing said that, rather than seeing the party soften its positions, he would prefer it to stay in opposition.
“The power of left-wing politics does not stem from parliaments but rather from the movement and the people who stand behind it,” he argued.
“We consider it a mistake for Die Linke to join the government in the current situation.”
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