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“Toiletgate” and the German Left’s Civil War over Anti-Semitism

Nov. 19 2014

Last week, two anti-Israel activists chased the chairman of the German Left party down a corridor of the Reichstag building and into a bathroom, where the harried parliamentarian locked himself in a stall until his pursuers left. The incident brought to a head a growing conflict between those in Germany’s largest opposition party who are willing to condemn anti-Semitism and those who support the destruction of Israel. Benjamin Weinthal explains:

On the one hand, key leaders such as [party chairman Gregor] Gysi, [Petra] Pau, MP Stefan Liebich, Klaus Lederer, head of the Berlin Left party, and Matthias Höhn recognize Israel’s existence and are willing, albeit sporadically, to confront left-wing anti-Semitism within their ranks. That may not seem like progress to an objective, detached spectator. It is, however, worth recalling that the Left party is the successor to the Stalinist East German state’s Socialist Unity party, which from 1949 to its demise in 1990 had flatly rejected Israel’s right to exist.

The second camp of Left-party MPs, on the other hand, is, from Israel’s perspective, a catalogue of horrors. Höger and Annette Groth were on the Turkish Mavi Marmara vessel, which sought to break Israel’s legal blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza. Christine Buchholz supports Palestinian suicide attacks against Israel as a legitimate form of “resistance.” Party vice president Sahra Wagenknecht, Heike Hänsel, Sevim Dagdeln, and Buchholz refused to participate in a standing ovation for former president Shimon Peres on Holocaust Remembrance Day in the Bundestag, because of his role in Israel’s wars of self-defense. . . . According to critics, the war over the soul of the party will be determined only if the Left can decontaminate itself from anti-Semitism.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Anti-Semitism, Communism, Germany, New German Left

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic