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Elif Eralp's fear: You can't get more distance than fear
Once again, the Left Party's alleged closeness to anti-Semites and Islamists must serve as a warning against a left-wing alliance in Berlin. Why actually? more...
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T he excitement knows no bounds. The Berlin Left parliamentary group leader Elif Eralp revealed her “fear” of people like the Palestine activist Ibrahim Ibrahim in a note accidentally sent to Der Spiegel and published by it. In other words, from people who, at least ideologically, support Islamist and terrorist structures like Hamas. So what, you might say.
Eralp's fear for herself and her family - even if only from verbal attacks - is understandable: As a woman with an immigrant background from a Muslim country who clearly supports Israel's right to exist and against anti-Semitism, she is not an ally of these structures - on the contrary. If there was any need for proof that Eralp is not close to terrorist supporters, there it is. You can't get more distance than fear.
This doesn't play a role in the right-wing campaign logic, which wants to prevent a government led by the left. Eralp wasn't supposed to become mayor because Ibrahim Ibrahim was at the Left Party's election party in Neukölln.
Now she shouldn't be because she's afraid of him. The interpretation that Eralp, as Governing Mayor, could be blackmailed in her actions - and thus those of the Senate - by violent milieus, as is now being claimed, is not supported by anything. The Left, the Greens and the SPD have long since agreed in their explorations to strengthen the security authorities in the fight against anti-Semitism. But since the evening of the election, no argument has been too crude for opponents of left-wing politics and every means is acceptable.
There is no new news situation with the Spiegel story. It has long been known that parts of the left are not afraid of Ibrahim Ibrahim and even invite him to events because they are unable to draw a line between the required solidarity with Palestine and the legitimization of terror. For the Left Party, this remains a problem that it must face, more urgently than ever.
In her first reaction to the publication, Eralp announced that she would not be intimidated by anyone. She should now prove this in the party and parliamentary group and work to exclude Neukölln MP Vanessa Emde from the parliamentary group.
Anyone who can show more solidarity with Ibrahim Ibrahim than with Elif Eralp has no place in the party and its parliamentary group.