Even the left-wing “taz” reacted with shock: “There is a party in the Bundestag with a state association that rejects Israel’s right to exist,” wrote editor Nicholas Potter last Monday. “No, it is not a right-wing extremist party, but a left-wing party: The Left.”

Historical roots: From the SED to the PDS

The rejection of the Jewish state is historically deeply anchored in the Left Party. The SED already agitated in a similar way against Israel and the Jews. Their central organ “Neues Deutschland” wrote about the Six-Day War in June 1967: “This is genocide. The Israeli Wehrmacht launched a blitzkrieg and carried out a mass pogrom against the Arab world.”

After the end of the GDR, the party, which now called itself the PDS, tried to shed this legacy. Party leader Gregor Gysi, whose mother came from a Jewish family, demonstratively traveled to Israel in 1991 to meet with politicians there. He acknowledged Germany’s special responsibility towards the Jewish state.

Generational change and left-wing anti-Semitism

Not much of this attitude remains. Gysi faced increasing headwind, especially when numerous West German leftists joined the party in 2007. Solidarity with the Palestinians and criticism of Israel were de rigueur for many of the old left in the Federal Republic. Now it is mainly young people and migrants who are massively mobilizing against Israel in the party.

As early as 2003, Jewish columnist Henryk M. Broder pointed out that left-wing criticism of Israel often had anti-Semitic traits. The labeling of Israel as an “apartheid state” and a “colonial project,” he wrote in his book “Left Anti-Semitism,” is aimed at denying the Jewish state its right to exist. Equating Israeli policy towards the Palestinians with that of the National Socialists means a reversal of victim and perpetrator.

Gregor Gysi and the internal power struggle

Parliamentary group leader Gysi resolutely opposed such tendencies in his party in 2008. In a speech on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, he declared: “Anti-Zionism can no longer be a justifiable position for the left as a whole, for the party ‘The Left’ in particular.” He also rejected the concept of imperialism. Instead, he praised Israeli democracy “as a truly great achievement that deserves admiration.”

Even then, however, a significant number of officials had a different opinion. The long-time member of the Bundestag from North Rhine-Westphalia, Inge Höger, repeatedly caused a stir with her anti-Israel statements. In the same year that Gysi gave his speech, she, along with other MPs in her group, demonstratively stayed away from a vote to step up the fight against anti-Semitism. According to their justification, the Bundestag resolution would equate criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism.

The Gaza flotilla and the “toilet trip” of 2014

In 2010, together with MP Annette Groth, she took part in a convoy of ships to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. When Israeli marines tried to board the ship, they were captured by violent activists. The Israelis then used live ammunition and shot nine Turkish crew members. Left chairwoman Gesine Lötzsch said at the time that she was proud of Höger’s efforts.

In 2011, the Bremen regional association of the Left decided to support the boycott of Israeli goods. Leading members of the party then described the campaign as “anti-Semitism,” “reminiscent of the Nazi slogan ‘Don’t buy from Jews’.” However, a unanimous decision by the left-wing faction rejecting such calls for a boycott and another Gaza flotilla only came about because Höger and 14 other MPs stayed away from the vote.

In 2014, Höger and Groth made headlines again because they and MP Heike Hänsel followed Gysi into the toilet in the Bundestag. The faction leader had previously banned the use of the Left Party’s rooms for an event with two anti-Israel activists because he feared anti-Semitic attacks. In order to confront him, they followed him to the toilet and filmed him locking himself in a toilet room. The affair later landed on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of the most serious anti-Semitic incidents in 2014.

BDS movement and reactions to Hamas terror

In 2019 it became apparent that the majority in the left-wing faction had shifted further to Gysi’s disadvantage. When the cross-party motion “Resolutely oppose the BDS movement – ​​fight anti-Semitism” was put to the vote in May, this time almost all members of the Left faction voted against it or abstained.

It became clear in May 2021 how much the image of Israel as an enemy had now become entrenched. Because Hamas fired rockets at the Jewish state, it responded with air strikes. There were then anti-Israel demonstrations in Berlin and other cities, in which members of the Left also took part. Instead of condemning the outbursts of hatred, the party executive tried to cover up the conflict. In a statement, he condemned both sides, Hamas and Israel, equally.

That too Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023 did not lead to a rethink in the party. On the contrary: after a short time, the left once again targeted Israel, whose government was determined to destroy Hamas this time. Six weeks after the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, the left passed a resolution at its party conference that consisted of 95 percent criticism of Israel. Only the first paragraph briefly condemned the “atrocities of Hamas.”

Resignations of prominent left-wing politicians in Berlin

A year later there was a scandal in Berlin, where the anti-Israel left is particularly strong. At the state party conference in October, delegates amended a motion about growing anti-Semitism in the city. The reference to the fact that leftists had relativized and sometimes even celebrated the Hamas massacre was omitted, as was the sentence: “Leftists must never ignore the role of eliminationist anti-Semitism, which drives the terror and strategies of actors such as Hamas and Hezbollah as well as their support from the Iranian mullahs’ regime.”

Prominent left-wing politicians such as former senators Klaus Lederer and Elke Breitenbach therefore resigned from the party and explained: The Left had failed to “clearly and unambiguously distance itself from anti-Semitic positions”.

The Jerusalem Declaration and new severity

The federal party conference in May 2025 also marked a turning point, at which the Left decided to say goodbye to the definition of anti-Semitism that had been common until then. Since then, the party has favored the so-called Jerusalem Declaration, which no longer sees blanket criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. Terms such as “colonialism” or “apartheid” as well as calls for a boycott against Israel are therefore entirely legitimate. The President of the Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, then declared: “The left shows where it stands – and that is not on the side of the Jews in Germany.”

The fact that the gate to migrant and left-wing opponents of Israel is now wide open can be seen, among other things, in the Berlin district of Neukölln. There, supporters of the Palestinians regularly give free rein to their hatred of Israel at demonstrations. The Left has now nominated the pro-Palestinian activist Ahmed Abed as its candidate for the office of district mayor, which will be elected in September. The Left parliamentary group leader caused a scandal in October 2025 when he shouted in parliament to the mayor of Neukölln’s Israeli sister city: “You are not welcome here!” He later blamed him for a “genocide”.

The left-wing youth and the end of the Jewish state

Many young members – who have joined the Left in large numbers in recent months – hold similar opinions. In November 2025, the Federal Congress of the Left Youth overwhelmingly accepted a proposal from Berlin that clearly had anti-Zionist characteristics. Instead of criticizing the policies of the Israeli government, it asserts a “colonial and racist character of the Israeli state project” as a whole, “which, from its beginnings to the present day, is expressed in the conquest of new territories and the expulsion of their inhabitants.”

It then calls for people to support “the revolutionary movements in the region” for the “liberation of Palestine.” In plain language: The young leftists want to eliminate the Jewish state again.

However, the fact that an entire regional association, as is now the case in Lower Saxony, rejects “the Zionism that actually exists today” is a new quality. As a party member wearing a Palestinian scarf explained with a grin in an Instagram video, the association is the first to be officially “anti-Zionist.” For the Brandenburg anti-Semitism commissioner Andreas Büttner, this was the last straw. He left the Left Party. The former parliamentary group leader Jan Korte also explained: “There is a massive anti-Semitism problem on the left.”

Course of the party leadership under Jan von Aken

An open letter to Gysi, which became known this week, shows how much the climate in the party has changed. Because he pointed out that new members with a “specific migration background” had brought problematic “views of Israel” into the party, the authors accused him of racism. “Such terms reinforce anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments and must have no place in an anti-racist party.”

The party leadership is currently making no effort to counteract this development. Instead of setting clear limits on criticism of Israel, party leader Jan von Aken explained that Lower Saxony’s choice of words “moves within the corridor of the federal party’s resolutions” – including the terms “genocide” and “apartheid”, which are used five times in the resolution. In the history of the persecution of the Jews, Christianity in particular was a danger to Jews. “And the Holocaust was committed by blonde, blue-eyed Germans.”

The number of people in the Left Party who defend Israel from excessive criticism has dwindled significantly. Gysi, now 78, can obviously no longer counteract this. It seems that Germany must therefore prepare for the fact that in the future there will be a party in the Bundestag that openly rejects the Jewish state.