Last resort party litigation: When is the red line crossed?

How does a party deal with members or subdivisions that violate its principles? This is a question that the Berlin Left must currently ask itself. There are also calls from the ranks of the SPD and the Greens, their potential coalition partners, to separate from problematic parts in order to send a clear signal against anti-Semitism. However, this is not an easy undertaking.

The legal hurdle for expelling a member is high. Violation of party decisions alone is not enough as a reason for exclusion - for good reason, because that would be the end of any intra-party pluralism. Rather, the criterion stated in Section 10 of the Party Act is that a member can only be excluded “if he or she intentionally violates the statutes or significantly violates the principles or rules of the party and thereby causes it serious harm.” The decision must be made by an arbitration tribunal. The person concerned can appeal against this to a higher level arbitration tribunal.

But when does someone significantly violate the principles or rules of a party? This formulation is open to interpretation - and the arbitration tribunals of all democratic parties generally follow the principle of deciding in favor of the person or persons affected in case of doubt. This makes party exclusions complicated, which makes sense so that they cannot be misused for power struggles within the party.

It's still easy when advertising for a competing party. In the spring of 2008, the SPD unceremoniously expelled the former Bundestag member Detlev von Larcher after 39 years of membership because he had called for the left to vote in a letter to the editor of the FAZ at the end of 2007.

The SPD found it much more difficult in the case of Thilo Sarrazin. It took a full ten years and several attempts before Berlin's ex-finance senator was expelled because of his numerous racist statements. “If Sarrazin remained a member of the SPD, the external impression would be that the SPD also offers space to members with views in the right-wing populist spectrum,” said the SPD Federal Arbitration Commission in the final instance in July 2020, justifying its decision.

However, the attempt to exclude former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder because of accusations of trivializing Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his positions in Russian companies failed. Both the SPD arbitration commission for the Hanover region and the Hanover district were unable to identify any behavior by Schröder that was damaging to the party. The Federal Arbitration Commission rejected the appeal in May 2023.

And what about the left? Unlike the SPD, for example, party exclusion procedures can be applied for not only by a party division or the party executive board, but by every member. This ensures that the left's arbitration courts have significantly more to do than those of other parties. But that doesn't necessarily lead to more party exclusions.

Several members tried in vain to have Sarah Wagenknecht excluded in 2021 after the publication of her anti-left combat pamphlet “The Self-Righteous”. The North Rhine-Westphalia State Arbitration Commission argued that the party had actually suffered damage as a result of Wagenknecht's behavior. But this is not only to be blamed on her, since “in the same way” the left bears responsibility for this, “which for many years has not been able to politically resolve the increasingly severe conflict” over Wagenknecht’s views, but rather has delayed it.

The Federal Arbitration Commission unanimously rejected the complaint against the non-exclusion in May 2022. She couldn't or didn't even want to recognize Wagenknecht's damage to the left. At this point, the ex-chairwoman of the left-wing faction in the Bundestag and her loyalists had long since begun planning for their secession. In October 2023 they left to form their own party.

However, the party expulsion proceedings against Ramsis Kilani, a Trotskyist member of the Left in Neukölln, were successful across all instances. The then Berlin Left Chairwoman Katina Schubert and Martin Schirdewan, Chair of the Left Party in the EU Parliament, requested the expulsion of the pro-Palestine activist because of his openly anti-Israel and terror-related statements in October 2024. Kilani had previously transfigured the terrorist massacre of October 7, 2023 into a "Hamas-led offensive against Israel" and announced, among other things: "For revolutionary socialists, the Palestinians have always had and have every right to defend themselves by any means necessary against the imperialist-backed Zionist settler colony that occupies their land and oppresses them."

The decision of the Berlin State Arbitration Commission to withdraw Kilani's membership was confirmed by the Federal Arbitration Commission in November 2025. The highest party court accused him, among other things, of "relativizing the actions and intentions of an anti-Semitic terrorist organization such as Hamas". He denied that Hamas “is guided by anti-Semitism that amounts to a desire for destruction.” In doing so, Kilani “clearly violated the party’s basic consensus on rejecting all anti-Semitism by trivializing a powerful and violent anti-Semitic terrorist organization.”

The highest party court stated that the commitment to the right to exist of the State of Israel is “a principle of the Left Party”. In contrast, Kilani “publicly contradicted the basic party consensus on the commitment to the right to exist of the State of Israel in a clear manner and publicly denigrated a large number of kidnap victims, some of whom even died while being held hostage.”

The Left Neukölln sharply criticized Kilani's exclusion from the party. There was “no legal or political necessity for this party exclusion”. There was no comprehensible justification as to how Kilani's statements were said to have caused "serious damage" to the party. The effort to expel was “a serious political mistake.” Only those who share Kilani's positions, at least in principle, can come to such an opinion.

Around 100 activists from the LAG Palestine Solidarity demonstrated against the arbitration decision in front of and in the Karl Liebknecht House, the party headquarters. Hannah Bruns was also there as one of their spokespeople, against whom an exclusion process is now also underway. She is of the opinion that the liberation of Palestine will end “when Tel Aviv is again in the hands of Palestine.”

According to the Left's statutes, intra-party associations such as the LAG Palestine Solidarity could be “dissolved by a resolution of the party congress or the party council”. The prerequisite for this is that “in their self-image, in their decisions or in their political work they significantly and continually violate the principles of the party's program, statutes or fundamental decisions”.

At first glance, the decision of the Federal Arbitration Commission in the Kilani matter appears to be very clear. However, upon closer inspection, it can be seen that, compared to the previous decision of the Berlin State Arbitration Commission, it has expanded the scope for pro-Palestinian activists.

Unlike the previous court, the highest party court found that Kilani's demonizing descriptions of Israel as a "genocidal colonial state" or "colonial entity" were not legally incriminable. After all, “the founding of the State of Israel was only possible through the intervention of the previous colonial power, so that there is a factual core in the formulation of the 'colonial structure' that does not preclude the use of the corresponding term in the debate,” according to the panel's subtle argument.

Kilani's statements that the attack on October 7, 2023 was a “classic outbreak of colonial counter-violence after decades of structural colonial violence” also “seem borderline”. However, they “still have a descriptive element of evaluative description, which must be accepted within the framework of the debate within the party.”

It is also interesting to note what the Federal Arbitration Commission found in another procedure regarding cooperation with problematic organizations. In April 2026, she overturned the lower court's decision against the financial support that the local left-wing city association had given a protest against arms deliveries to Israel in Leipzig. The pro-Palestinian Leipzig group Handala was one of its organizers.

The Saxon State Arbitration Commission had argued that cooperation with Handala was incompatible for the Left because the group does not recognize Israel's right to exist, trivializes Hamas' crimes of October 7, 2023 and does not distance itself from Hamas. However, this contradicts the decision of the left.

In fact, for example, the federal party conference in Halle in October 2024 decided: “Anyone who fuels anti-Semitic sentiments in the Middle East or here, anyone who questions Israel’s right to exist, anyone who agitates against Jewish people or relativizes the terror of Hamas can no more be an ally for us than those who approve of or carry out racist, anti-Muslim or anti-Palestinian attacks and propaganda.”

The left's decision-making situation in Saxony is even clearer. For the regional association there, “collaboration with associations or people who represent eliminationist anti-Semitism under the guise of anti-Zionism, who glorify, trivialize or deny the violent acts of October 7, 2023 or the criminal actions of Hamas and other Islamist organizations is incompatible with its principles and program.” The Saxon Left therefore “excludes any cooperation with them”.

But that wasn't enough for the Federal Arbitration Commission. Because what is missing in all of the left's corresponding supposed incompatibility decisions: the clear naming of horse and rider. The party court found that “the decision itself constituting the incompatibility” must “make it clear with sufficient certainty which specific organization or person it refers to.” It must “be clear who (everything) is meant without any further interpretation or subsumption of content.” However, there is “no mention whatsoever” of Handala. This also applies to those peculiar “alliance partners” of the Neukölln Left, such as the United Palestinian National Committee.