Linke (The Left) party expelled with immediate effect Palestinian-German member and activist Ramsis Kilani for his vocal opposition to “Israel’s” ongoing genocide in Gaza. In doing so, it followed in the footsteps of the only other mainstream leftist party in the country, the Greens, in exhibiting the infamous Palestine exception to progressive politics.
Kilani, a self-described Marxist, called his expulsion “a sad commentary on a leftist, internationalist party”, left-wing daily junge Welt (jw) reported. The decision made by the Landesschiedskommission, the party’s state-level arbitration body was damaging “to all of us who fight for universal human rights”, the activist wrote on Instagram.
Katina Schubert, one of two members from the party’s right-wing who had brought forward the motion to expel Kilani denied that his Palestine solidarity activism had anything to do with the decision, saying that it was based on his “relativisation of Hamas terror, selective criticism of violence against women as a weapon of war and denial of “Israel’s” right to exist”, the jw report went on to say.
I get that, i really do, but sometimes you just gotta take the loss for being unpopular if the cause is right. Israel is less popular today than it was yesterday. Sometimes you can’t help that your core principles are not valued by the majority at the moment, for whatever reason. If events change the minds of people, there’s a steady alternative to go to. To debase one’s principles to appeal to the right wing voters will only make their constituency not vote. People who are right wing won’t vote left because they are more anti immigration or more pro Israel. But people who vote left won’t probably vote at all if the alternatives are right wing or right wing light. They just won’t see themselves represented at all. Then you get low voter turnout.
Things ARE complicated! I surely didn’t offer any way out of the issue!
The entire problem here is that there is a huge rhetorical gap between thinking the Netanyahu government is evil and needs to be held accountable for Gaza atrocities, and the idea that Israel needs to be violently dismantled and the people fed to dogs (yes i have literally seen people on here say “fed to dogs”).
Conversations which start with anti-zionism are unhelpful, but this seems to have become a weird purity test on the left which is creating huge cracks in what would otherwise be a unified voice regarding Gaza.
I used to be a both sides have a right to exist and we should strive to achieve that, but the longer i hear Israeli and Israeli apologists speak online and the more i see their actions the harder it is to remain of that opinion.
My opinion now is that if we manage to successfully create the conditions to allow an independent state of Palestine and a state of Israel, it will be only a matter of time until Israel starts illegally occupying the Palestinian state. So unless it’s a nuclear Palestinian state or a nuclear backed Palestinian state, it’s very unlikely we can see a world where Zionism can exist in peace. Even with a nuclear Palestinian state, the Israeli mind would sit ill at ease trying to come up with a solution to disable the nukes and take over Palestine somehow, because Israeli can’t fathom a world where they have to share the land that “god gave them”, especially to a group of people they so overtly consider inferior to them.
So unfortunately the state of Israel itself has made me believe a two state solution is impossible no matter who leads Israel. It’s the Israeli zeitgeist. Their culture is a culture of war, oppression and genocide and if their god is real, i cannot see it being anything else but deeply ashamed of who calls themselves its people, who act so brazenly contrary to the principles set by the torah. Were this not the case, i see no reason that we could not have two states. But it’s like they say, if my grandmother had wheels, she would be an electric car. There’s only one way forward left. One state ruled by both Jews and Muslims. It will be bumpy at first, but eventually they will figure it out, like we all did. The idea of a Jewish only state is a deeply flawed idea that has harmed Judaism deeply and should be abandoned. And even if Israel comes out winning with the help of the US and they manage to stamp out Palestine, i believe over time that is exactly what they will become given enough time, as the old guard dies and their flawed, bellicose and bigoted ideas die with them. And that is the irony thay everything they are doing, all the deaths, all the cruelty, will eventually be pointless because their ideal dream is flawed and unsustainable.