When the Berlin Left meets this Tuesday afternoon for the constitutive meeting of their new parliamentary group in the House of Representatives, everything revolves around the question: What happens to Israel opponent Vanessa Emde? Will she be accepted into the new faction? Or will the successful candidate from Berlin-Neukölln be left out to meet the demands of the SPD and the Greens?
Emde said in May 2026 that there was “no right to exist for states”. The demand for a “democratic one-state solution” with “equal rights for all people” – which would entail the abolition of the state of Israel – should not be criminalized and is politically legitimate. Emde thus opposed the program of the Left Party, which advocates a two-state solution, i.e. an Israeli and a Palestinian state. She received 46.2 percent of the vote in the election to the Berlin House of Representatives.
After the election, the Left Party, as the strongest political force, agreed with the Greens and the SPD after several rounds of talks on a paper on how to deal with anti-Semitism within their own ranks. This paper sparked harsh criticism from parts of the Left Party.
On Tuesday, the Greens formulated very specific expectations of the Left Party. The co-leader of the Green Party in the Bundestag, Katharina Dröge, said that she “expects” that Emde will not be part of the Berlin Left parliamentary group “because of the statements she has made”.
To date, no Green party has called for personnel consequences for the Left Party with this level of clarity. Dröge also belongs to the left wing of the party, which is naturally more open to a coalition with the Left Party than the Green Realos.
The Left party executive now tells “Politico” that we need to get out of this defensive mode and “get back on the offensive.”
The Berlin state leadership “gave in” on the red-green-red anti-Semitism paper and received “strong criticism” for it. Now we have to turn the situation around and put the SPD and the Greens under pressure. Specifically, what is needed is “a concrete schedule for associations, which is a condition for further discussions and from which one cannot deviate”. Specifically, this means: “Making the question of coalition talks more dependent on concessions from the SPD and the Greens.”
Berlin member of the Bundestag Katalin Gennburg tells “Politico” that she is “not happy with the style of the paper” – and is referring to the Berlin anti-Semitism paper. Gennburg, who became known as an opponent of party leader Ines Schwerdtner, also criticized the protest within the party, specifically the intervention of 17 members of the Bundestag, who had sharply criticized the paper and their own negotiators. What is “funny about the open letter” is that 17 members of the Bundestag, some of whom are responsible for the Middle East issue in the Bundestag itself, “act as if this question were in the Berlin Senate.”
Within the party there is also talk of a “lose-lose situation”: on the one hand, appeasing large protests by the left wing of the party, on the other hand, using compromises to keep the SPD and Greens at the table.
The Berlin paper also triggered a dispute over the direction of the entire party. On the one hand, the realos around the “silver curls” Dietmar Bartsch and Bodo Ramelow, who defend the Berlin paper, and on the other hand, among others, 17 members of the Bundestag who protested against the paper. The big question behind it: How powerful are the extremes on the left who rail against the anti-Semitism resolution?
Once again the “silver curls” stepped into the breach against the extremes because others apparently don’t dare. Many members of the Bundestag also have a problem with incidents of anti-Semitism and extreme statements within their own ranks, but they prefer to be cautious. While Ramelow in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Bartsch in Thuringia have government-experienced, less extreme state associations, the extremes in the West German state associations are gaining more and more power.
The radical faces are already loudly dominating in Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg, leaving some members of the Bundestag even worried that opposing Gaza solidarity could cost them dearly in their own regional association.
For example, in the Lower Saxony state association of Bundestag parliamentary group leader Heidi Reichinnek, which made headlines in March as the first “anti-Zionist state association,” it was the state chairmen themselves who protested against Berlin’s anti-anti-Semitism resolution.
Party leader Luigi Pantisano defended this protest in an interview with Politico: The criticism is not directed against the fundamental issues addressed in the paper. Instead, it is about “certain mechanisms” about how one should “deal with individual MPs who do not behave the way the Greens or the SPD might expect”.
In their party executive decision at the weekend, Pantisano and co-leader Ines Schwerdtner tried to smooth things over. The resolution states: “The Left is not an anti-Semitic party, and we will not allow ourselves or our branches to be assumed to be structurally close to organized crime.”
Someone from the circle of supporters of the protests against the Berlin paper basically welcomed this decision to “Politico”. They are “satisfied that the application clearly positions itself against the instrumentalization of the term anti-Semitism.” It has also become clear that “the party is responsible for dealing with incidents and not non-party committees”. Overall, people are pleased that “the open letter has not been condemned”.
