Mideast conflict haunts race for Berlin town hall

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”.

Some Die Linke members meanwhile accused their party of betrayal after the three potential coalition allies signed a joint pledge to fight antisemitism, which also affirmed Israel’s right to exist and vowed 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 recent Linke meeting in Berlin’s Neukoelln district, a party stronghold and a centre of the Arab and Muslim communities.

“Die Linke should remain steadfast in the positions for which it was elected,” he argued, explaining that he favoured a “one-state solution” to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

 

– Big Diaspora –

 

In the middle of it all has been 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.

At one Die Linke campaign event in Neukoelln, a rapper sparked controversy when he shouted “Yalla yalla intifada” and “Kill IDF”, short for Israeli Defense Forces.

Then, at the election night party, a Linke MP was photographed with a man described by media as a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), classified as a terrorist group by the EU.

Another visitor beaming into the cameras was the patriarch of an extended family with roots in Lebanon, several of whose members have been jailed for crimes including some spectacular heists.

The German police union has since said that more than 70 officers had requested transfers to other states rather than serve under a Die Linke mayor.

Fresh controversy flared Thursday when news weekly Der Spiegel reported that Eralp herself had voiced fear of radical pro-Palestinian activists after she wrote she was “afraid of these people” in comments accidentally emailed to the magazine during a process to authorise her interview quotes.

Volker Beck, head of the German-Israeli Society, charged that “a party whose leaders do not dare to call terrorist threats by their proper name … is not up to the security policy responsibilities of a state government”.

 

– ‘Toxic debate’ –

 

Eralp then quickly faced the TV cameras, vowing not to be intimidated, slamming a “truly toxic debate”, and promising a tough stance “against organised crime, against organisations that glorify violence, against violence, against terror”.

Debate around the Middle East conflict is especially sensitive in Germany which has long been at pains to atone for its Nazi-era history.

Pro-Palestinian activists often charge that German shame about the Holocaust has fostered an unquestioning loyalty to Israel that has blinded it to the depth of Palestinian suffering.

Jara, 29, an activist of Lebanese descent speaking at a recent pro-Gaza rally, accused Germany of “a complete externalisation of German guilt onto the Palestinians”.

Die Linke’s spokeswoman in Neukoelln, Jorinde Schulz, said that “anti-Zionist positions” had long been a current within Die Linke but rejected charges of antisemitism.

When “virtually every expression of grief, every protest and every act of defiance is labelled as antisemitism, that is simply profoundly inhumane,” she said about pro-Palestinian activism.

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