Debate: The Left | It doesn't work without truth

The possible Berlin coalition partners have presented an initial agreement. Photo: dpa/Fabian Sommer The exploratory results of the Berlin regional associations of the Left, the SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens on October 17th are encouraging. Each of the seven points promises Berliners a real new beginning. The fact that this is the case and that a paradigm shift in urban politics is becoming visible on so many issues is certainly not the achievement of the Greens and the SPD, but of the Left, which impressively won the elections to the House of Representatives - a victory that, together with the referendum "Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co" that was already approved in 2021, gives them a strong mandate to finally make housing policy for the population and not for speculating real estate funds and investors.

The Left, the Greens and the SPD have reached an initial agreement for coalition negotiations in Berlin. The aim is to socialize 140,000 apartments, a rent cap for state-owned apartments and the establishment of social canteens. While these goals meet with broad approval in the city, the agreement "to combat anti-Semitism and organized crime" is causing some discontent among parts of the left-wing electorate. The paper calls, among other things, for the police and secret services to be strengthened. »nd« will accompany the coalition negotiations with debate contributions in the next few weeks. We start with a contribution from Marion Detjens. The historian works at Bard College Berlin and is currently on leave there for freelance journalistic work.

But why are the agreements in the appendix on the “Fight against Anti-Semitism and Organized Crime,” which the other parties wrested from the left on October 8th and which are supposed to become part of the coalition agreement, so fatal and such a slap in the face for many voters? These agreements, whether they are implemented or disappear into the drawer, whether they were written for the elders in your own party or are just a tactical maneuver to form coalitions: They will not satisfy anyone, but on the contrary will only continue to chronicle and inflame the conflicts.

The left must finally, like Mamdani in New York, like La France Insoumise in France, be honest when dealing with anti-Semitism and what is happening in Israel/Palestine. There is no pacification of those forces, especially on the right, but unfortunately also on the left, who, partly out of authoritarian impulses, but partly out of fear and insecurity, turn people into anti-Semites in never-ending disinformation campaigns who are in all probability not anti-Semitic.

The Berlin agreement is floating around. She leaves open how she defines anti-Semitism. Since almost all of Germany - the only exception is the Federal Party of the Left - has adopted the IHRA definition and the exploratory agreement also speaks entirely in the language of the IHRA definition, one must assume that the Berlin Left has now allowed itself to be pushed into the IHRA camp and is now in opposition to the Federal Left. What the agreement has in common with the IHRA definition is that it is intentionally vague. This openly invites instrumentalization because the vagueness allows cases of doubt to always be decided against the suspects. The presumption of innocence is no longer valid. With the agreement as with the IHRA definition, it is ultimately a matter of political expediency (its supporters call this “context-sensitive”) whether positions critical of Israel are considered anti-Semitic or not. In this way, the use of the word “genocide” can be denounced as anti-Semitic when preventing it is inconvenient; and in this way all positions within the left that advocate a secular and non-ethnicized one-state solution can now be scandalized when it comes to dividing the left and making it vulnerable to blackmail.

The left must finally, like Mamdani in New York, be honest about how to deal with anti-Semitism.

The Berlin Agreement does not take the truth seriously. The BDS campaign is quite differentiated in its calls for boycotts and sanctions. It is not true that “Israeli institutions or individuals should be boycotted solely because of their nationality, origin or affiliation.” The movement expressly rejects boycotts based on identity such as nationality or opinions, and simply belonging to an Israeli institution is not sufficient for a boycott. It is more about cooperation with Israeli state institutions, especially the universities, which are implicated in the crimes because of the close connection between research and the military, and about opposing the "normalization" of the crimes - after decades in which Germany has remained silent about illegal settlement construction and the prevention of a two-state solution and is still silent.

The Berlin Agreement is self-contradictory, even lying to the point of indecency and inhumanity. Violations of international law and human rights should be clearly stated, but in the very next sentence it is acted as if “the suffering, hardship and destruction” of the Palestinian civilian population had fallen from heaven. "We stand for a two-state solution that enables both Israel's security and the self-determination of the Palestinian population," it says - but city partnerships and cooperation only exist with Israel. Not a single word is mentioned about the war crimes and crimes against humanity that Palestinians have experienced and continue to experience day after day, the genocidal threat. The whole horror is reduced to “legitimate criticism of the actions of the Israeli government,” as if only some political measures were going wrong.

The Berlin agreement is, above all, authoritarian. The police and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution are to be strengthened - however, police violence, which has gotten completely out of hand, is not mentioned and the work of secret services is not problematized. “Our security authorities will continue to fight illegal financing of extremist and anti-Semitic structures with all severity,” says the paper, although it is left to the security authorities to decide what is suspected of “extremism” and what of “anti-Semitism”. The Berlin Agreement wants to prohibit us from what the Federal Council plans to punish with up to five years in prison at the initiative of Hesse: the "denial of Israel's right to exist", which makes no sense at all, because discussing the right to exist of states and imagining alternative states has been the practice of political philosophy since Plato, and no ban in this world will prevent anyone from thinking and talking about one-state, two-state, three-state and zero-state solutions, just like a ban on the Denying God has never stopped anyone from denying God.

If the agreement had clearly committed itself to the definition of anti-Semitism in the Jerusalem Declaration of Anti-Semitism or the Nexus definition, or at least distanced itself from the IHRA definition and the now all too familiar practice of instrumentalizing the fight against anti-Semitism, then a real conversation could take place about how Jewish life in Berlin can really be protected and what real anti-Semitism prevention should look like so that it is more than just one authoritarian threat, lip service and concession to lobby groups.

As long as the Left plays along with these games of blurring the boundaries of the concept of anti-Semitism in order to cover up crimes, it will not only disappoint everyone who wants a German Mamdani, but of course it will also not satisfy those who are afraid of a German Mamdani, because this fear is not reduced by the authoritarian gestures and measures of securitization, but only continues to be fanned. Pushing Vanessa Emde out of the parliamentary group will by no means allow the Berlin Jews who want this to sleep more peacefully, but rather the unexplained allegations of anti-Semitism hanging over the entire party, indeed across the entire left-liberal spectrum, will compromise governance as a whole and further unsettle worried and unsettled people. Instead of using clear criteria to identify anti-Semitism where it really is, in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and in the "othering" of a Jewish state that is supposedly so special that it is allowed to commit crimes with impunity, purge fantasies are set in motion based on unlimited suspicion. Power groups in the SPD and Green establishments have unlimited opportunities to divide and blackmail the Left. And the Palestinians are being deprived of the last resort to offer peaceful resistance through calls for boycotts and appeals to international solidarity. Once again the left would have betrayed itself.

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