Anti-Semitism dispute in the left: The Left Party splits over Koçak

It didn't take a day for the Left's brilliant election victory in Berlin to be tarnished. The fact that conservatives, right-wingers and the Springer press would do everything they could to denigrate the party and thus prevent a left-wing government in the capital should come as no surprise to anyone.

But in addition to the campaign against the left, there is now a renewed dispute within the party. The focal point so far was a post from long-serving comrade Petra Pau on Monday. She wrote to her colleague Ferat Kocak on

In doing so, she criticizes the Bundestag member from Berlin-Neukölln for the commotion that his district association's election party caused. An activist was present there on Sunday evening who is criticized for anti-Israel positions and is said to be close to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is classified as a terrorist organization by the EU.

Issa Remmo, whose family is accused of numerous crimes, also showed up at the party. These include: involvement in the theft of a 100 kilo gold coin from Berlin's Bode Museum and the break-in into the Green Vault in Dresden as well as the attempt to crack an ATM during the Berlin power outage.

The Left Berlin reacted immediately at the election party, throwing Remmo - who had also been invited to the CDU in the past - out and declaring that it had nothing to do with organized crime. But a few hours later there was new excitement on Monday: Issa's son, Firas Remmo, published a chat with Neukölln's left-wing Bundestag member Ferat Koçak. He didn't want to know who he was writing to. He later admitted his contacts with the Remmos. The left-wing parliamentary group announced on Tuesday that Koçak will leave his office on hold for the time being and withdraw from the public eye. He did not respond to a taz query on Wednesday.

Others are expressing this opinion, now also at the federal level. After Katharina Dröge, parliamentary group leader of the Greens in the Bundestag, demanded that the Left should expel Ferat Koçak from the party, its parliamentary director, Irene Mihalic, also told the taz: “The least would be for Heidi Reichinnek and Sören Pellmann to throw him out of the parliamentary group.”

But Pellmann first wanted to wait for Koçak to create the “complete transparency” he had announced, as the taz parliamentary group leader wrote on Wednesday. “We will then decide whether and what consequences are necessary,” said Pellmann. However, from Mihalic's point of view, the fact that Koçak is letting his mandate rest for the time being is a "staircase joke", because that way he would get his MP diet without having to do anything for it.

“Anti-Semitic slogans have no place in our society or in our politics,” wrote SPD party leaders Lars Klingbeil and Bärbel Bas as well as Secretary General Tim Klüssendorf in an Instagram post. "The left will be measured by this and clearly must not leave an inch of space for anti-Semitism and clan criminals in their ranks. That is where the responsibility now lies." This can be understood as a request to get the problem under control before forming a joint government. The SPD and the Greens in Berlin have also explicitly tied coalition talks to how the left deals with anti-Semitism.

In times of shift to the right, democratic parties should not allow themselves to be divided, emphasizes the Berlin Left managing director Bjoern Tielebein. Despite all the criticism of the “anti-Semitism problem” that his party unfortunately has, he pointed out in an interview with the taz: “We are an anti-fascist party, and that is why we lost people in the concentration camps.” His party repeatedly makes decisions against anti-Semitism, which they try to “fill with life”. As the only Berlin top candidate for the House of Representatives election, Elif Eralp presented a five-point plan to protect Jewish life, emphasizes Tielebein. There is currently talk at Berlin level about further exclusions of members.

Koçak received support from the nationwide Linkskanax working group, to which both Eralp and federal chairman Luigi Pantisano belong. The group wrote on Instagram on Tuesday: "Ferat made a mistake and is responsible for it. But we will not allow a migrant comrade to be held to different standards than everyone else. Ferat is one of us and we stand behind him."

BAG Shalom, a group within the left that is committed to protecting Jewish life, sees things completely differently. “The Bundestag faction should withdraw Ferat Kocak’s position,” writes BAG spokeswoman Selin Gören to the taz. At the same time, the problem cannot be solved through personnel decisions alone, because it runs deeper.

“Anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist positions are still trivialized in parts of the party, alliance partners are not examined carefully enough and political proximity to actors is accepted whose relationship with Israel or terrorist organizations should actually set off any alarm bells.” As an example, she cites the inner-left group marx21, whose website propagates the destruction of Israel.

Left federal managing director Janis Ehling writes to the taz that intensive discussions are currently being held - within the party, not in public. At the same time, he emphasizes: “Studies show that anti-Semitic attitudes are statistically more widespread among conservative and right-wing people than among left-wing people.” BAG-Shalom spokeswoman Gören believes: “For us, the reference to anti-Semitism in the CDU must never serve to ignore anti-Semitism in the left.”

The MPs interviewed by the taz, who otherwise speak out loudly against anti-Semitism, remain surprisingly quiet, as do those who are considered Kocak's allies. Have they been muzzled? Given the complicated situation, are they at their wits' end? Or do they hope that the conflict will disappear by sitting it out?

If you ask Left-wing voters in Neukölln what they think about the dispute, their reactions vary: Some didn't even notice what was going on. Others don't see the problem. A Neukölln resident emphasizes his understanding of the anger towards Israel's government, especially among those Berliners who lost relatives in the Gaza war. But he doesn't think it's particularly wise to give people who are known to have close contacts to questionable Palestinian organizations prominent positions in the left-wing election campaign. “That was completely foreseeable,” he says, almost bored.

Another says he has already gone to the synagogue to express his solidarity with unsettled Jewish Berliners. “I’m pissed off that a few weirdos are currently providing everything the others need to reject a coalition with the left.” Another simply shrugs her shoulders in resignation and says: “Perhaps this left-wing conflict is simply insoluble.”