Soundings | Middle East dispute: Left postpones

After its election victory, the Left Party was preoccupied with allegations of anti-Semitism. Photo: dpa/Sebastian Gollnow The Left became the strongest force in the House of Representatives election two weeks ago. But the formation of a government has been extremely bumpy since then. The talks that the potential coalition partners, the Greens and SPD, are calling “preliminary explorations” are reportedly going slowly. While only one meeting was originally scheduled, the party leaders will meet a third time on Wednesday. The only point of discussion: the allegations of anti-Semitism against individual members of the left.

An attempt to get rid of the reputation of anti-Semitism is now shelved for the time being. A vote in the left-wing faction in the House of Representatives on a change to the statutes scheduled for Tuesday was postponed. The parliamentary group executive committee was also not re-elected. The left faction is still not formally constituted. When asked, a spokesman said they wanted to wait for the official final results of the House of Representatives election to be announced because the composition of the parliamentary group could still change. They want to start a new attempt next week.

The formality has a very important background. The amendment to the statutes was intended to stipulate that MPs must adhere to the party's decisions. “Our rules bind us all and violations of the rules affect us all and have consequences,” wrote the parliamentary group leaders Elif Eralp and Tobias Schulze as well as the state chairmen Maximilian Schirmer and Kerstin Wolter in a statement last week. In this context, parliamentary group leader Tobias Schulze also brought parliamentary group exclusions into play.

The new statute is apparently aimed at the Middle East debate on the left. The two-state solution is part of the party's basic program. Numerous resolutions have also been passed in the Berlin regional association, most recently at the state party conference in November 2025, at which a motion on the topic was passed with few dissenting votes: "Israel's right to exist is just as much an obligation for us as the recognition of an independent Palestinian state," it says there.

The change in the statutes in the parliamentary group was intended to formalize the elected representatives agreement, which had been decided at the same state party conference. “All applicants recognize the political primacy of the party and promise to align their political actions with the party’s democratically made decisions,” it says. All left-wing candidates for the House of Representatives signed this agreement.

However, whether everyone sees themselves bound by it is another matter. A majority of the group members represent more or less openly pro-Palestinian positions, but this is fundamentally in line with the decisions made. A group of four to five MPs, on the other hand, is assigned to problematic tendencies. This involves individual representatives from the Neukölln district association as well as those who are close to the Palestine Solidarity State Working Group.

The focus is primarily on Neukölln MP Vedi Emde. It is also said to have been a topic in the preliminary discussions with the Greens and SPD, as the “B.Z.” reports with reference to participants’ information. “There is no right to exist for states,” she said at a panel discussion in May 2026. On the evening of the election, she was photographed at the election party in Neukölln with the now nationally known activist Ibrahim Ibrahim, a self-proclaimed supporter of the controversial Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The latter is responsible for numerous attacks, most of which were directed against civilian targets. In 2014, the group claimed responsibility for an attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem that left five people dead. Ibrahim called Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed in 2024, a “martyr hero.”

Emde has already known Ibrahim for a long time: in August 2025, he appeared as a representative of his group “United Palestinian National Committee” at a summer festival for the Neukölln Left. At the time, Emde called Ibrahim's group an "established actor in the movement" and warned against a division into "supposedly evil" and "good" Palestine solidarity. However, after the summer festival, the Left state executive committee decided to prohibit cooperation with actors “who glorify or legitimize October 7th.”

This personnel is likely to play a role in the preliminary investigations, which are due to be completed on Wednesday. The Greens had signaled in advance of the talks that they would support cooperation with the Left Party if it was ensured that the votes of the controversial MPs were not decisive for important decisions. Because a red-green-red coalition would have a comfortable majority, this condition could easily be met. The SPD, on the other hand, keeps a low profile in public about which criteria they want to apply.

The Left's state leadership is not only facing headwinds from other parties. Pro-Palestinian forces are also trying to influence the probes. “We hereby express our solidarity with the Neukölln District Association of the Left and with all other comrades of the Left Party who are currently exposed to this right-wing smear campaign,” says an open letter signed by 138 cultural workers, scientists and lawyers. They include the comedians Sebastian “El Hotzo” Hotz and Jean-Philippe Kindler, the musician Mine and the influencer Nurder Koch. Among the signatories are Jewish personalities such as the violinist Michael Barenboim and the Israeli author Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus.

"We expressly call on the party not to sacrifice Palestine solidarity to a government coalition with the Greens and the SPD."

“We say very clearly: Criticism of the State of Israel is not anti-Semitic,” the letter says. One refers to the Jerusalem definition of anti-Semitism, which a federal party conference of the Left in 2025 decided to be binding for them. “None of the currently controversial statements are anti-Semitic according to this definition,” write the signatories.

Strong protests are also expressed against the measures taken within the left. “We expressly call on the party to protect the attacked members – Ferat Koçak, Basem Said, Martha Kleedörfer, Hannah Bruns and everyone else,” the letter says. A party expulsion process is underway against Hannah Bruns, who is not a member of the House of Representatives, because she refused to distance herself from the Hamas massacre on October 7th in a television interview. At a rally last year, she also demanded that Tel Aviv must be "back in the hands of Palestine." The signatories want the exclusion process to be stopped.

“We hereby expressly call on the party not to sacrifice Palestine solidarity to a government coalition with the Greens and the SPD,” it says in the open letter. The left should not be afraid to “name the racism of the current counter-campaign.”

This article cost you nothing. We do: for research, printing and technology. We saved on office rent as well as on printing and distribution. And we gave up salary. Nevertheless, the calculation doesn't work without you. We need 300,000 euros by the end of the year. You pay what you can, in return we keep writing.

No paywall, no fine print, just one goal: that nd stays.