The German left and the Paradox of Israel

Gencay Sözüdoğru - Researcher

The years of the Cold War were years that marked the emergence of a deep ideological crisis for left-wing socialist politics. This period had an impact not only on political parties and movements in the traditional sense, but also on a wide range of movements, from trade unions to environmentalism and anti-war movements. Throughout the 1980s, neoliberalism emerged as the dominant ideology on a global scale. Imperialist military interventions were marketed alongside rhetoric about global democracy and human rights, under the pretexts of market stability, the security of trade routes, and the protection of energy supplies. The 1991 Gulf War became the symbol of this period. This war went down in history as a turning point that determined the new alignment of the disintegrating left. The socialist left's united stance against the war was damaged during this period.

During the disintegradition process, Gorbachev's approval of the US-led Gulf War destroyed the Soviet Union's position as a counterweight to imperialism. The anti-war movement in the West was deprived of the confidence it had felt in the background; anti-war sentiment ceased to be a global bloc and was pushed into a fragmented, local, and scattered terrain.

During this period, discussions on the West's criticism of real socialism were conducted on a basis that systematically ignored its own militarism and colonialism. The discourse on human rights began to be used in line with US and NATO policies. A political discourse that took the Soviet invasions as its central reference point replaced the US-backed coups of the past. The relationship between fascism and capital was ignored. The claim that the Soviet regime and Hitler's regime were identical in terms of their repressive apparatus was used as a tool of political manipulation during the Cold War. While Saddam Hussein was portrayed as Hitler's successor, the juntas in Chile, Indonesia, and Greece were left out of the debate because they were part of the Western camp.

THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA AND THE INTELLECTUAL ATMOSPHERE

During this period, the media and intellectual debates became one of the most important areas deepening the rifts within the left. Although extra-parliamentary politics in Germany generally took an anti-imperialist stance against the Gulf War, different voices began to emerge in traditional left-wing magazines and newspapers. On a spectrum ranging from the magazine Konkret, formerly edited by Ulrike Meinhof, to the newspaper Die Welt, and with the contribution of the liberal Spiegel team, parallels began to be drawn between the Iraqi regime and German fascism. Saddam was the leader of a barbaric army that instrumentalized the Palestinian issue and attacked Israel with missiles. Israel must not become a new Auschwitz. Had not the Nazi regime been defeated only through external military intervention? If so, then the pacifist stance against external intervention must be abandoned, and war must be chosen for peace.

It was precisely this atmosphere that provided the intellectual environment necessary for the emergence of anti-German (Anti-Deutsch) currents that fragmented the anti-fascist movement. They made unconditional solidarity with Israel, military support for Israel, and linking any opposition to Israeli state policy to antisemitism their core principles. Anti-Deutsch writers recruited from the left began to find a place in the liberal mainstream media. Pro-US and pro-Israel NGOs allocated resources through cultural and academic projects.

This trend played an extremely functional role in weakening the traditional leftist discourse opposing Western military interventions. The deep historical trauma caused by Nazism and the Holocaust also facilitated this atmosphere, making it difficult for the leftist movement in Germany to take a critical stance against Israel.

This historical burden has made criticism of Israel taboo in Germany. As a result, solidarity with Palestine from an anti-imperialist perspective has been replaced by unconditional solidarity with Israel. This situation persists as a paradox that undermines the German left's consistency on issues of war and human rights.

THE YUGOSLAV WAR AND TRANSITION OF THE GREENS

Throughout the 1990s, the wars in Yugoslavia caused a radical change in the German Green Party. The Green movement, which had entered parliament as the representative of the '68 generation's street protests, became a victim of the German state's policies of control and domestication throughout the years it was in power. In the 1980s, the Greens were a radical pacifist and anti-NATO movement, but during Joschka Fischer's tenure as foreign minister, they became advocates of NATO's military intervention in Kosovo on the grounds of humanitarian intervention. This marked the party's transition from anti-war to pro-war. Acting in concert with the Social Democrats, the Greens provided political legitimacy to Germany's first offensive military operation since World War II.

The Russia-Ukraine war that began in 2022 demonstrated that this transformation is now permanent. The anti-war tradition of the past has become the representative of NATO policies today.

CONCLUSION: STUCK AND WAYS OUT

Today, many organizations labeled as “left” in Germany have been swept into a line that supports imperialist military interventions, is in line with NATO policies, and has reduced anti-war sentiment from a historical principle to a conditional stance. The only way out of this vicious circle is for the left to rebuild an independent anti-imperialist perspective. The first step is to expose how human rights and democracy rhetoric are being instrumentalized to legitimize imperialist interventions. The second step is to free anti-war sentiment from the “good war – bad war” dichotomy.

Perhaps then the slogan “Never again” will no longer be merely a memorial to a genocide, but a universal call against imperialism.

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Alman solu ve İsrail paradoksu, published in BirGün newspaper on August 18, 2025.