With Jewish life under fire across the world, two consecutive state election victories by Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) have justifiably drawn attention.
However, the most serious harm to Jewish life in Germany could well come from last weekend’s victory by the far-left Die Linke (The Left) in the capital Berlin. Leaders from across the political spectrum, Jewish community leaders and the Israeli ambassador are sounding the alarm about what they describe as extreme anti-Israeli and antisemitic positions within the party.
Die Linke, the successor of the SED party that led East Germany’s dictatorship until reunification in 1990, won the Berlin city-state elections on Sunday with 25.7% of the vote, defeating the traditional largest parties, CDU and SPD, by significant margins.
If Die Linke can convince the center-left SPD and the Green Party to join a coalition, it could rule a unified Berlin for the first time. The city has the largest Jewish community in Germany, with around 50,000 people, which includes thousands of Israeli expats.
The German capital has been at the center of anti-Israel protests since Oct. 7, 2023. The protests have often included clashes with the police and have been dominated by the city’s growing Arabic- and Muslim-background population, as well as its large population of left-wing radicals.
The party’s campaign explicitly targeted these groups. In a recent example, the candidate Basem Said urged his voters to wage an “election intifada,” while accusing the centrist parties of “enforcing the same racist consensus." He continued, "They have suppressed our civil rights, normalized anti-Arab demonization, actively supported the [Israeli] genocide, and voted for arms smuggling to the Israeli regime.”
“Vote for the Left. Stand fearlessly for the rights of migrants and the liberation of Palestine,” Said urged voters. His campaign slogan is: “For Neukölln. For migration. For Palestine.”
The already latently antisemitic Die Linke has seen rapid changes over the past years. “The party has been infiltrated in recent years,” explained Israeli-Arab extremism expert Ahmad Mansour in an interview with Focus.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose CDU has now been trounced in multiple successive state elections, lamented, “The fact that Jewish life is no longer safe in Germany is the heaviest burden of recent years.”
“The CDU, and I personally, are committed to doing everything possible to ensure that Jewish life in Germany, and here in the capital, Berlin, is safe,” Merz said, vowing to Jewish communities in Berlin and worldwide that what has become possible in Berlin’s streets “is a disgrace for Germany, and I will do everything in my power to bring it under control and push it back.”
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