The Left Berlin News & Comment

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Month: October 2025

Palestine solidarity discussions in Johannesburg stress ongoing protest

Sumud Flotilla participant Mandla Mandela’s mandate should hit the ruling class in its wallet


11/10/2025

Will the Trump-Netanyahu deal at least pause the mass killing of Gazans? Maybe, and Gazans have every right to celebrate. But we have repeatedly learned how brief the reprieve can be. And once Hamas releases 20 living Israeli hostages and has no further internal leverage, can anyone trust Tel Aviv, Washington and the rest of the G7’s Axis of Genocide to allow sovereignty, reconstruction and an eventual liberatory process? Since the answer is obviously not, activists must not rest now.

Last week, the South African liberation leader Nelson Mandela’s grandson Mandla and five compatriots were kidnapped from the Sumud Flotilla’s ships of life by the Israeli military and taken to Ashdod. They were attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza –Ashdod is 20km north of Ashkelon, where ships of death berth to unload coal, which goes straight into the Rutenberg power plant’s furnaces, to empower the settler-colonial, apartheid economy.

Mandela and hundreds of others from the Sumud Flotilla were then tortured in a desert jail not far from Gaza. At a press conference at his October 9 homecoming at the OR Tambo Airport, Mandela made a call that should be repeated and repeated until it is heeded:

“We will not rest until the genocide has been brought to an end. But let us enforce the resolutions undertaken by the Hague Group. We want you to read what the Hague Group has put out. They have said that all companies that are complicit must be arrested, must be prosecuted and must be dealt with. Now we call on our government. As you have been able to take the apartheid Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court (ICC), we call on you to arrest all those that are complicit in fueling the genocide and selling coal to apartheid Israel. We call on the government with immediate effect to stop any coal that is being exported to apartheid Israel. We call on the government to ensure that all those that have participated in the genocide in apartheid Israel that have enabled the IOF to carry on its genocide and systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to be arrested and prosecuted.”

Mandela’s mandate must be taken seriously by local and international solidarity activists. For realistically, without much more intense pressure from all of us, we don’t expect South Africa’s (SA) President Cyril Ramaphosa to arrest the main Johannesburg residents complicit in coal sales to Israel., That is, his brother-in-law Patrice Motsepe of African Rainbow Minerals (whose co-owned Glencore coal mine has been shamelessly fuelling Israel since 2007); or Glencore senior independent director Gill Marcus( once Nelson Mandela’s spokesperson); or Swiss resident Gary Nagle, Glencore chief executive.

Ramaphosa himself was Glencore’s main partner in coal digging, before he became Deputy President in 2014. He helped the firm triple the price Eskom paid in the Eskom ‘War Room’ he ran in 2014-15, in very dubious ways. 

Relentless ships of death sail from SA

Ramaphosa won’t even halt the coal ships now on their way to empower Israel, including the Seafighter docking on October 10 at the main coal terminal, Richards Bay, en route undoubtedly to Ashkelon. Last week, another ship arrived in Ashkelon with South African fuel for Rutenberg on 1 October: Ernandin. And another, Navios Felix, is three weeks away from unloading more South African coal.

All carry 170,000 tonnes or more, and this supply allows the Israel Electric Corporation to generate nearly a fifth of the grid power used to oppress Palestine. Currently coal costs $83/tonne , so Glencore gains net profits of just $13 for each sold, due to $70/tonne production costs. But each tonne burned creates 2.6 tonnes of CO2 emissions. So these ships fuel both Israel’s genocide and climate crisis.

Indeed, at a ‘Social Cost of Carbon‘ of $1500/tonne, burning a typical large load causes $663 million in climate damage . Since the genocide began, the 22 ships carrying an average of 100,000 tonnes of South African coal each, resulted in CO2 emissions responsible for nearly $6 billion in future damage. The ICJ recently ruled these costs should be compensated for, as climate debt liabilities,.

Meanwhile, at current prices, Glencore’s profits are only $2 million for each 170,000 tonne load. Of that its Black Economic Empowerment partner Motsepe gets 23% of that, just i$470,000 per large shipload.

The SA government still fails to impose a meaningful carbon tax against coal mining and combustion; it’s only $0.40/tonne. If local activists can increase the costs to these firms, such trivial benefits will not be lucrative enough to continue thistravesty.

The SA Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) Coalition holds regular pickets, including last Monday, at Glencore’s Johannesburg office, the largest source of the firm’s capital. Its stock market listing here is s one third larger than its London primary listing.

Protesters also traveled from Durban to Richards Bay Coal Terminal on September 24. And other Palestine activists have demonstrated en masse outside the South African trade ministry’s offices in Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town on August 21; at the Glencore office on May 28 and on August 22, 2024; as well as at Motsepe’s office on April 5.

International embarrassment is an important factor. As the Palestine Youth Movement argued in June:

“In addition to supporting settlement and military infrastructure, this energy supply also powers Israel’s complex artificial intelligence systems used to surveil and track the activities of all Palestinians in Gaza… Cutting South African coal supplies would have a tangible impact on Israel’s ability to sustain its war on Gaza – a measure that aligns with South Africa’s duty to employ all available means to prevent genocide.”

‘Hague Shmague’

The Hague Group promoted by Mandela is an encouraging initiative, though needs an accountability system. The group, founded on January 31, has a Progressive International secretariat.Itspledge that day was to “prevent the docking of vessels at any port… where there is a clear risk of the vessel being used to carry military fuel and weaponry to Israel.”

And on July 16, an emergency Hague Group meeting in Bogota passed a resolution committing that the eight signatory states – co-chaired by SA and Colombia – must:

“Prevent the provision or transfer of arms, munitions, military fuel, related military equipment, and dual-use items to Israel… Prevent the transit, docking, and servicing of vessels at any port…. in all cases where there is a clear risk of the vessel being used to carry arms, munitions, military fuel, related military equipment, and dual-use items to Israel.” 

Hague Group co-leader Gustavo Petro first tried to stop Glencore and Alabama-based Drummond exporting coal from Colombia in mid-2024. But at the Bogota meeting in July, he explained how his own country’s ‘white’ state officials had so far sabotaged his efforts, so he decisively prohibited exports the following month. That makes South Africa by far the lead coal supplier to Israel today.

Considerable anti-genocide rhetoric emanates from Pretoria’s, Ramaphosa and Ministers Parks Tau (trade), Barbara Creecy (transport), Dion George (environment), Ronald Lamola (international relations), Kgosientsho Ramokgopa (energy), Gwede Mantashe (minerals), and Enoch Godongwana (finance). Notwithstanding,all ignore their duties to stop the coal exports. They probably mutter two ghastly words we first heard from Tel Aviv after the ICJ ruled on the plausibility of genocide on 24 January 2024: “Hague Shmague.” 

In SA’s Parliament on September 26 2024, Tau replied to a small party (Al Jama-ah) regarding “mounting calls from social justice activists to stop trading coal with Israel.” Defending coal supplies to the genocidaires, Tau insisted: “Sanctions applied by one member against another in the absence of multilateral sanctions by the United Nations, would violate the World Trade Organisation principle of non-discrimination and would open the country to legal challenge.” 

Tau’s specious argument ignores widespread violations of WTO anti-tariff provisions by many governments, especially the U.S. He refuses to regulate a dangerous export, a tool commonly used by other trade ministers. Dangerous it is: combustion of coal is the main cause of the climate crisis, as well as of local mines’ deadly local pollution and degradation of land, air and water.

As the world’s largest commodity trader, Switzerland-based Glencore offers no apologies or rationale for fueling Israeli genocide and apartheid. In May 2024, at Glencore’s Annual General Meeting in Switzerland, a shareholder asked whether the firm is “conducting human rights assessments on the use of the coal you’re exporting to Israel to ensure that you’re not held liable”?

Board Chairman Kalidas Madhavpeddi replied, “The company supplies to many countries around the world and it’s almost impossible to tell you the answer to your question.” The shareholder followed up, “So you don’t check how the coal is being used?” Madhavpeddi replied: “Coal is used in power generation, that’s simple.”

The two Johannesburg-born Glencore directors at the AGM – Nagle and Marcus – were notably silent during the questioning. Nagle was formerly in charge of Glencore’s coal operations. Marcus was also Deputy Finance Minister, chair of ABSA Bank and Governor of the SA Reserve Bank and having served Glencore since 2018, she is the firm’s highest-ranking non-executive director.

The ceasefire deal’s many downsides

It’s likely this pause in the genocide will be understood, like the one earlier this year, as a short-term ruse so that Trump could pretend he had a shot at the Nobel Peace Prize, which was announced on October 10 (even though he had missed the 31 January nomination deadline). There are many flaws in the dirty deal, according to David Hearst of Middle East Eye:

  • There is no guarantee they have stopped ethnic cleansing and genocide; under this agreement, Israeli forces are not leaving the strip, and Netanyahu is the one who decides how quickly and how much of Gaza his forces hand over to the proposed International Stabilisation Force (ISF). Netanyahu is also free to decide how much aid and reconstruction materials to send in. There is no timetable for such a withdrawal.
  • There is every guarantee that this postwar plan will stifle at birth Gaza reemerging under a Palestinian leadership of any kind. Under this plan, there is no role for any Palestinian leadership in the rebuilding of Gaza. Gaza is definitively split from the Occupied West Bank by this agreement and all thoughts of joining the two have been jettisoned.
  • The Palestinian Authority (PA) fares no better than Hamas or other factions. Already disarmed, the PA has to go further. According to Netanyahu’s remarks at the joint press conference, the PA has to drop its cases against Israel at the International Criminal Court (and the International Court of Justice); it has to stop paying the families of slain fighters; change the school curriculum and tame the media. And only then Israel will see.
  • None of the eight leaders, prime ministers or foreign ministers of Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan consulted the Palestinians before agreeing to this plan. Just as the Palestinians have no agency in the authority that is about to be imposed on them in Gaza, they have had no say in devising a postwar plan.

So any solidarity activist who relaxes now is not taking these factors seriously. And even if the genocide is paused, apartheid continues in the West Bank. Hence the ICJ ruling (in July 2024) that states must halt “aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” (OPT) continues to be violated. In September 2024, the United Nations General Assembly voted (124 for, 14 against) for states to “prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation” in the OPT.

Could BDS help end the genocide and other Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) attacks? A similar vulnerability occurred within SA’s own apartheid system forty years ago, in September 1985: financial sanctions caused such a squeeze that President PW Botha declared a debt default, imposed exchange controls and shut the stock market. Business leaders’ furious response included an urgent visit to Zambia to meet exiled African National Congress leaders.

South African whites fearful of further meltdown accepted ‘one person, one vote’ democracy in 1994. Because anti-apartheid sanctions had split white business away from the racist government, it had the most powerful, external, non-violent impact on ending this crime against humanity. (And U.S.-based General Motors even paid reparations for earnings in apartheid SA, as should Glencore-Motsepe for profits from Israeli-bound coal.)

The merits of SA’s own BDS success against racial apartheid forty years ago, and Pretoria’s January 2024 ICJ case against genocide, can never be forgotten. But the importance of the period ahead, is never to forget nor forgive genocide and apartheid profiteering, here in our wretched coal fields, or anywhere else.

Spain and Palestine – two years of genocide: A brief chronology of half-truths and lies

Spain’s government profits from arms sales to Israel while posing as a defender of Palestine


10/10/2025

The Spanish government presents itself as one that fights for peace, and Pedro Sánchez (PSOE) as one of the international leaders working hardest for a ceasefire in Gaza and for recognition of the Palestinian state. Compared with figures such as German chancellors Scholz and Merz, American presidents Biden and Trump, or British leaders Sunak and Starmer, Sánchez may sound supportive of the Palestinian cause—but looking good by comparison with rabid genocidal maniacs is cheating.

In truth, despite all the kind words and promises of solidarity with the Palestinian people, Sánchez and his government have been opportunistic hypocrites. They cannot hold a candle to true leaders who have shown genuine commitment to the Palestinian cause and to human rights—such as Gustavo Petro, president of Colombia, or the South African legal team that brought the genocidal, terrorist state of Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Despite the fact that the peoples making up the Spanish state overwhelmingly declare themselves anti-war, the state itself profits from war and genocide as one of its most lucrative industries. Spain ranks ninth among the world’s top arms exporters, responsible for 3% of global military exports.

Over the past 20 years, Spain has sold more than €84 million worth of military equipment to the Zionist state. Pedro Sánchez’s government has traded the most with Israel. As Nicolás Ardila and Alejandro de Santiago noted in their article of 9 September 2025:

“In total, from 2005 to the first half of 2024, Spain has sold €84,872,875 worth of weapons and dual-use technology to Israel, according to the Subdirectorate General for International Trade in Defence and Dual-Use Material. Of this figure, €49 million corresponds to the sale of dual-use technology, i.e., technology that has both civilian and military applications. This includes items such as machinery, toxins, propulsion systems, information security, avionics and sensors, among other capabilities. With regard to armaments, Spain has sold just over €35 million worth to Israel in the last two decades, notably including bombs, torpedoes, missiles, infrared imaging equipment, sights and targeting equipment, and ammunition.”

For years, Spanish presidents have engaged in pure hypocrisy—such as José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s 2009 claim that “the weapons we sell to Israel have not been used to kill Palestinians.”

Such absurd and demonstrably false statements may reflect the government’s awareness that these trade relations violate the eight criteria of Council Common Position 2008/944/CFSP, including “respect for the international commitments and obligations of Member States”; “respect for human rights in the country of final destination”; the “internal situation in the country of final destination, as a function of the existence of tensions or armed conflicts”; “preservation of regional peace, security and stability”; and the “behaviour of the buyer country with regard to the international community, as regards in particular its attitude to terrorism, the nature of its alliances and respect for international law”.

In 2022, the Sánchez government authorised arms exports to Israel worth €9.3 million, though deliveries totalled only €2.3 million. Yet as analyst Alejandro Pozo points out, even more significant are Israel’s weapons sales to other countries—since “the occupation is very expensive.” Although the figures remain opaque, Spain is known to have purchased more than it sold from Israel, which markets its weapons as “combat-proven”—tested on the bodies of Palestinians and Lebanese. According to the Centre Delàs d’Estudis per la Pau’s report Businesses Proven in Combat, many of these weapons were tested in the Gaza Strip, which Israel has long treated as a laboratory.

Since 2023, the Spanish government has continued doing business with Israel, allowing companies that profit from genocide to operate in Spain and permitting the transit of military shipments through Spanish ports, airports, and NATO bases. This pattern of half-truths and deception reveals the political and media trickery of the Sánchez government.

Between October 2023 and January 2024, the government expressed its “strongest condemnation” of attacks on Gaza’s civilian population and concern for the humanitarian situation—but stopped short of announcing an embargo or suspending arms sales. The response remained purely diplomatic. Meanwhile, on 7 October, both Sumar and Podemos refused to condemn Hamas’s actions and instead called for an end to the occupation.

On 23 January 2024, weeks after the International Court of Justice case brought by South Africa, Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares claimed on Cadena Ser radio that “since 7 October 2023, there have been no arms sales to Israel.” Sánchez repeated the same claim in Congress in April 2024: “Since 7 October, Spain has not carried out any arms sales to Israel, none whatsoever.”

In reality, Spain not only purchased €1.027 billion worth of weapons from Israel but also sent ammunition there. As journalist Olga Rodríguez reported on 8 July 2024, “Since the beginning of the massacre in Gaza, Spain has not suspended imports of military equipment from Israel. Furthermore, it has continued to award contracts to Israeli military companies, including Elbit Systems and Rafael, the first and third largest in Israel’s defence sector.” Rafael is a public Israeli company; Elbit is private but maintains deep strategic ties with the Israeli Armed Forces.

In April 2024, public pressure and Sumar’s efforts forced the cancellation of a contract to purchase ammunition from IMI Systems worth €6.6 million. Yet Rodríguez reported that the government had already signed 31 contracts for Israeli weapons since October 2023, totalling over €1.041 billion. On 19 August 2024, the Ministry of Defence formalised another contract with PAP Tecnos, a Rafael subsidiary, worth €289,256 for maintaining remote-controlled weapon systems.

Unsurprisingly, further investigations continue to uncover additional contracts and deals.

In September 2025, the government triumphantly announced it was “consolidating” a total arms embargo on Israel—supposedly banning imports of defence equipment, dual-use technology, and products from illegal settlements. It also pledged to deny requests for transit of fuel that could be used militarily. But this “embargo” contains a glaring loophole: the Council of Ministers can grant exceptions “when the application of the prohibition would undermine the national interest.” The policy also says nothing about banning contracts with Israeli subsidiaries abroad or halting financial support from banks like Santander and BBVA, which together fund Israel’s war machine to the tune of nearly $4 billion, according to the Centre Delàs report Armed Banking and Its Complicity in the Genocide in Gaza (October 2024). Conveniently, arms purchases spiked just before the embargo took effect.

Ships and aircraft involved in the genocide

On 16 May 2024, the Spanish government announced that it would prohibit ships carrying weapons bound for Israel from docking in Spanish ports. In practice, these routes have continued. Only public pressure has prevented some ships from being serviced. Researchers from Progressive International and the Palestinian Youth Movement documented 1,185 military shipments—over 13,000 metric tonnes—between May and September 2024. This complicity of Spanish ports does not seem to have changed since then, with monthly reports of such shipments.

Spanish airports have also facilitated the genocide, with more than 60,000 pieces of weaponry departing from Zaragoza since 2023. In September 2025, the government again reiterated that it would prohibit ships and aircraft carrying weapons to Israel, but violations were quickly reported. Days later, Podemos denounced the refuelling of a military ship in Valencia, and in October 2025, Barcelona’s port workers’ union condemned the arrival of the Zim Virginia, carrying weapons from the US to the genocidal Israeli army.

The Spanish government and the flotilla

Public outrage has intensified, culminating in the suspension of the Vuelta a España cycling race in September 2025 due to Israel’s participation.

Under pressure, the government dispatched a warship to escort the Gaza aid flotilla in October 2025. Yet hours before the flotilla was intercepted by Israeli forces, the Spanish vessel withdrew, citing “security risks” and claiming that “the mission of the flotilla is commendable and legitimate, but the lives of its members must come first.” The government even urged the activists to abandon their attempt to break the blockade.

This gesture—combined with the government’s failure to respond to Israeli attacks on Spanish-flagged vessels—has fuelled widespread discontent. Sánchez’s administration has limited itself to vague threats of “legal action” against Israel.

All these half-truths and contradictions have popularised the term PSOED—a shorthand for the PSOE’s repeated deceptions, false solidarity, and empty gestures.

German repression of Palestine solidarity protests did not start on October 7th

The current bans and police violence have their roots in a sinister pattern of repression that has been happening for much longer


08/10/2025

We are all aware of the level of repression against the Palestine movement in Germany since 2023. While the police crackdown has clearly increased in the last 2 years, it is not new. Systematic repression of Palestinians and their supporters was part of German Staatsräson long before October 7th.

In May 2019, the German government passed a non-binding resolution criminalising BDS. The resolution, which was supported by all mainstream parties, has no legal status, but had two direct effects. Firstly, it increased the uncertainty of venue owners, local councils, and academic institutions, which made them less likely to allow “controversial” (ie pro-Palestine) events. Secondly, it emboldened the forces of repression and censorship, who felt more confident to go onto the offensive.

In an article in die Zeit, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum argued that the Bundestag resolution created “a climate of legal insecurity, which leads to institutions racking their brains, not about the quality of a project, but about the political stance of those involved vis-a-vis the Middle East conflict”, resulting in a “form of advanced self-censorship.”

In 2021, 15,000 people demonstrated on Nakba Day in a united action which was not just confined to Palestinians. It was also the largest demonstration for Palestine in Germany for a generation. This made the German State see the growing Palestine movement as not just a distraction, but a formidable threat, resulting in harsher crack downs. 

In the period between the BDS Bundestag Resolution and October 7th, theleftberlin.com was relaunched as a website, concentrating more on news and campaigning, particularly around Palestine solidarity. We’ve put together some of our coverage from that time in this article to provide a far from exhaustive overview of anti-Palestine repression in Germany before October 7. These examples show that the repression did not start in 2019 any more than it did in 2021 or 2023, but that with each year past it has only intensified. 

“Cancel Culture” comes to Germany

The month after the BDS resolution was passed, Peter Schäfer, then director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, was forced to quit over a pro-BDS re-tweet. 

A few months later, Palestinian-German academic Dr Anna-Esther Younes had been invited to present her report on Islamophobia in Europe at a conference “Strategies against the Right” organised by Die LINKE Berlin. The day before the event, she was uninvited because she was “probably close to BDS” and was compared to the right wing murderer who had recently attacked a synagogue in Halle. It was later discovered that the Antisemitism Research and Information Centre and Mobile Advice Against Right Wing Extremism had compiled a secret dossier on Younes and sent it to Die LINKE.

In Spring 2020, Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe was disinvited from speaking at the Ruhrtriennale festival, for comparing South African apartheid to the oppression of Palestinians. The disinvitation was ordered by Germany’s unelected antisemitism commissioner Felix Klein. Academics conducting research on the memory culture in Germany, Irit Dekel and Esra Özyürek reacted to Mbembe’s exclusion saying it was “not an isolated event but part of a long series of other high-profile cases in which Arab, Turkish, African, and Jewish background Germans and non-Germans, a significant number of them women, have been accused of antisemitism or of promoting antisemitic sentiments.”

In October 2022, the German teaching union GEW, invited Israeli anti-Zionist academic Dr. Shir Hever to talk to them about Child Labour in Palestine. Before the lecture took place, it was cancelled by the GEW, who claimed that Hever was an antisemite. They based this judgement on a secret letter from Dr. Michael Blume, the antisemitism commissioner of the state of Baden-Württemberg. 

Restricted Spaces

One of the most obvious effects of the resolution was the generation of a feeling of uncertainty among venues. With a few honourable exceptions, it is now almost impossible to book a room in Berlin for a meeting on Palestine. This is not because most venues are pro-Israel – rather that they fear being tarred with accusations of antisemitism and possibly losing financial support. 

The war on venues is particularly strong in places which depend on state funding for their existence. This is particularly strong in the academic world. For example, in October 2020, the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee withdrew funding for The School for Unlearning Zionism, a series of online events and an exhibition, both organised by Jewish students.

The repression reached its height post October 7th, when in December 2023 the multicultural centre Oyoun was closed down for hosting an event organised by the Jüdische Stimme (Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East) – sister organisation of the Jewish Voice for Peace. The Berliner Senat justified closing down Oyoun, by accusing the centre of “hidden antisemitism.”

But Oyoun, which has played a stalwart role in defending Palestinian rights, had been subject to state repression for many years. In June 2021, The Left Berlin and others tried to organise a workshop “Is it possible to talk about Israel/Palestine in Germany?” at the anti-racist Offenes Neukölln festival. Speakers included Wieland Hoban, board member of the Jüdische Stimme. 

We were uninvited from the festival because “it might be possible that antisemitic statements would be made”. We were able to carry out the meeting online, but Oyoun, which had originally agreed to host the event, were told in no uncertain terms that hosting the event would lead to them losing their funding.

Job losses

In September 2021, German broadcaster WDR announced that prize-winning German-Palestinian journalist Nemi El-Hassan would not be presenting a science show as planned, because she had liked tweets by the Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish, pro-Palestinian organisation. As an Open Letter in support of El-Hassan reported, Bild Zeitung regularly, and without foundation, branded her an “Islamist”.

In July 2022, Deutsche Welle fired 7 Palestinian journalists using dubious claims of antisemitism which were later disproved in court. One of the 7, Farah Maraqa, told Novosti Hoboctn: “my experience at Deutsche Welle wasn’t an isolated case. It’s part of a much larger pattern of repression that Palestinian journalists in Germany and across Europe face.”

I have already mentioned Palestinian academic Dr. Anne-Esther Younes being uninvited by die Linke. Anna was also deprived of many job opportunities. As Hebh Jamal reported for The Left Berlin in 2022, “Since completing her Ph.D, Younes had issues with applications, so she stopped applying for jobs in Germany or engaging with academia. One academic employer told Younes that if they hired her they would ‘lose funding, be torn apart in the media for hiring me, and their institutions would be destroyed.’”

Censorship of the Arts

Between June and September 2022, the documenta15 Art exhibition in Kassel, the first to be curated by an Asian artist or collective, ended in chaos, as the curators Ruangrupa were accused of antisemitism, following an intervention from the German Chancellor. Exhibitors Taring Padi were forced to remove a 100m2 mural. 

Another participant at documenta15, Hamja Ahsan reported being ”stalked, abused, and called a terrorist by members of the SPD” and described as an extremist by Beatrix Storch from the AfD because of her support of BDS.

In 2022 and 2023, Jewish South African artist Adam Broomberg was repeatedly attacked in the mainstream press by Stefan Hensel, Hamburg’s commissioner for combating antisemitism. Hensel claimed that Broomberg was a “hateful antisemitic person who supports terrorism against Jews”. The false claims were not challenged by other journalists, and led to Broomberg losing grants and his teaching job.

Artists were particularly punished by their support for BDS. In October 2019, Lebanese-American artist Walid Raad was denied a cash prize from the German city of Aachen after refusing to condemn BDS. In September 2019, the city of Dortmund withdrew its decision to award the British-Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie a literature prize, citing her support for BDS. 

Following October 7th, the cancellations and repression intensified. In November 2023, Christine Streichert-Clivot, Saarland’s Minister of Culture and Education, cancelled an exhibition by Jewish South African artist Candice Breitz. As Candice acidly remarked at the time: Streichert-Clivot “is likely to go down in history as the first Minister of Culture to preside over the cancellation of a major exhibition by a Jewish artist at a German museum since the Nazi era”.

Police violence

One of the aspects of state repression with which we are most familiar is heavy-handed policing of demos. This, too, did not start in 2023. In May 2021, police violently attacked a rally commemorating the victims of Israel’s attack on Sheikh Jarrah. The following April, Berlin police banned all demonstrations for Palestine until the 1st May.

From 13th-15th May 2022, all demonstrations commemorating the Nakba received a similar ban. According to the European Legal Support Centre: “the police disrupted a Palestinian cultural event on 13 May in Neukölln, banning any political public speech, attempting to stop the distribution of books on Palestine on a discretionary basis, and preventing attendees from dancing the traditional Dabke, claiming that it was a form of ‘political expression’.” 

Two days later, police violently attacked people mourning the murdered US-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Some people arrested that day were later found non-guilty in court. Others received fines for taking part in an illegal assembly.

In April 2023, all demonstrations related to the 75th anniversary of the Nakba were once more banned by the Berlin government.  In May 2023, after the Jüdische Stimme was finally allowed to organise a rally, the rally was shut down by police after some attendees shouted: “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” 

Conclusion

The censorship and repression reported here are just the tip of the iceberg, and is mainly limited to incidents which we directly covered on our small website. Many events are not included, not least the self-censorship of venues, academics, and artists who decided not to speak out on Palestine either because it made their lives easier, or because the dominant German narrative that Palestine is “too complicated” made them feel too uncertain to put their heads above the parapets.

I would hope that one of the side-effects of the mass demonstration for Gaza on 27th September 2025 will help initiate a shift in this narrative, that it will become easier for isolated individuals to speak out for Palestine, and more difficult for the German State to repress them.

Censorship on Palestine – in Germany and elsewhere – depends to a large extent on how much our side is willing to accept, and how much their side is able to impose. As said, the BDS resolution, which helped initiate the new wave of repression, had no legal status, but served to embolden the forces of repression. I hope, and believe, that the new round of resistance will strengthen our ability to resist.

It didn’t start on October 7th, but it didn’t end there either. We can learn from repression, and resistance in the past, in order to strengthen resistance in the future–and the present.

AL.Festival.2025

One week. One city. One radical gathering.


AL.FESTIVAL.2025 is back this October for its 6th edition! Since 2019, AL.Berlin has built a platform for music, art, and critical exchange, amplifying the voices and cultures of South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) and their diasporas. Over the years, AL.FESTIVAL has grown into Berlin’s leading festival for SWANA music, a place where community, resistance, and celebration come together.

Unapologetically loud and boldly present, AL.FESTIVAL is a space of resistance and joy in a time when our existence is too often treated as a threat. We come together to disrupt, to be heard, and to carry both the rage and calm woven into our sound.

We’re honored to present an artist lineup like no other, with powerful collaborations alongside some of your favorite Berlin-based SWANA collectives! Expect workshops, exhibitions, film screenings, talks, radio shows, and a food Bazaar offering a rich variety of flavors that taste like home

Rooted in SWANA and Global Majority voices, we move together in continued solidarity against the noise of rising far-right extremism, the weight of colonial legacies, and ongoing systems of oppression.

The festival ends on Friday, October 11th with a multi-stage playground of live music, DJs, queer karaoke, and open-air vibes in the Festsaal Kreuzberg. Doors open 4pm.

Leyton and Wanstead Labour Party Resignations

21 members of Leyton and Wanstead CLP are announcing their defection from the Labour Party


An image of Leyton underground station

On 30 September, 21 ex-officers and active members of Leyton and Wanstead Constituency Labour Party (CLP), in East London, issued a press statement announcing their defection from the Labour Party in order to:

“Help to build an alternative socialist party that we can be proud to be members of – one that can act in the interests of working class people and provide a real alternative to the “populist” authoritarian far right.”

Leyton and Wanstead had always been a traditionally left CLP. It was one of the first in the country to nominate Jeremy Corbyn in 2015.

It had a proud record of work with trade unions, supporting picket lines of teachers, rail and post workers, NHS staff and others and inviting strikers to its meetings. In October 2022, it played the main role in setting up a local Cost of Living campaign springing from a public meeting of over 200. Over the following year, it collected over £4,000 for striking workers and local food banks at tube stations and outside Leyton Orient football ground.

From right back in October 2023, it took a principled stand against the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Its members attended the regular demonstrations in support of Palestine, including local protests against their own MPs!

The CLP was a little socialist fortress in a hostile party and inspired a lot of loyalty from members who would otherwise have walked away. It was locked in a constant battle with the national, regional and borough right-wingers and their allies in the party bureaucracy.

But as the situation went from bad to worse, many increasingly felt that they could no longer actively work for the party in any capacity. This was felt particularly keenly in this part of London, as the constituency borders Ilford North, where the pro-Gaza independent candidate, Leanne Mohammed, came within just 500 votes of removing the senior, right-wing Labour figure, Wes Streeting.

Streeting is now Health Secretary in Starmer’s government and very close to private health care companies to whom he offers lucrative NHS contracts. He has also made permanent a temporary ban on “puberty blocking” medication for trans adolescents and wants to keep trans women out of women’s wards on hospitals. And this from a gay man!

Leyton and Wanstead also borders Chingford and Woodford Green constituency, where the popular left candidate, Faiza Shaheen, who had been working to establish a strong local support base for years, was scandalously dumped by Labour just days before the general election, and mounted her own vibrant, independent but sadly unsuccessful campaign against the official stooge Labour candidate imposed by the party bureaucracy.

And of course just a few train stops away in Islington North, Corbyn himself managed to stand independently and thrash the official Labour candidate, drawing in hundreds of enthusiastic volunteers from far and wide.

At the same time, the sitting MP in Leyton and Wanstead suddenly resigned days before the last nomination date for election candidates, so that a completely unknown, right-wing candidate, could be imposed by the Starmer clique, to the fury of local members.

In the face of all this, some Labour members helped one or other of these independent candidates in the 2024 election, constantly expecting “automatic expulsion” letters from Labour. Many good socialists left the party in ones and twos. The CLP membership has halved since Starmer first took over, and is becoming hollowed out and inactive except for existing councillors and wannabe councillors.

The Labour vote in Leyton and Wanstead fell from a record 70% in the general election of 2017, to just 47% in 2024. Current opinion polls predict that it will fall to less than 40%. The national party is already down to just 20% in opinion polls and has experienced truly disastrous local government election results. The huge trade union, UNITE, is openly talking seriously about disaffiliation.

Finally, once the Corbyn/Sultana, provisionally named “Your Party” project looked to provide the possibility of a serious mass alternative left party, many of the remaining socialists in the party decided, rather than drift away from the party as individuals, to leave as an organised block and to send a statement to the local press and to national left media outlets.

Most of those who signed the statement and resigned are now campaigning with many others to establish a “Your Party” branch in the constituency, where a public meeting was held on 16 September, attended by over 150 people, which was imbued with enormous enthusiasm. It provided a real basis for future progress and united action until the new national party is formally founded.

However, some of that optimism has had to be tempered by the legendary ability of the left to inflict damage on itself. The press statement was originally scheduled to be released on 18 September but was delayed by extraordinary developments on that very day at the top of the proposed new party based on what appears to be an acrimonious split.

On one side is Jeremy Corbyn himself, and a group around him, many of them from his team when he was Labour leader. He has also allied himself with four so-called “Gaza independent” MPs, all from the Muslim community who had shocked Labour by taking previously safe seats from them. They are not all socialists; they have never even claimed to be. Yet Corbyn seems to be favouring them in the process of developing the new party, placing some of them in key roles.

On the other side is Zarah Sultana, a much younger firebrand socialist who resigned as a Labour MP to “lead the process” jointly with Corbyn, of establishing a new party. She has much more socially liberal and secular views than the independent MPs on issues such as abortion, sexuality and trans people’s rights. She has become a figurehead for those who want a more democratic socialist party, free from the domination of the coterie around Corbyn.

She feels shut out by Corbyn’s allies and has responded by taking two reckless unilateral actions. Firstly, she publicly announced the formation of the party back in July, seemingly without even consulting or warning the “co-leader” Corbyn! Then on 18 September she announced that an internet membership portal for the new party was open and live, only for Corbyn to post on social media that this was completely unauthorised and that anyone who joined (over 20,000 in a matter of hours) should cancel their direct debit instructions! He also reported Sultana for an alleged illegal data breach. She in turn has spoken of a “sexist boys club” and threatened him or his allies with a defamation lawsuit, though this has been withdrawn.

All of this was a body blow to the new party and to the hundreds of thousands up and down the country who had invested their hopes and dreams in it. Frankly, it was a self-indulgent, incompetent disgrace—on all sides.

The membership portal is now open again but it is clear that the enthusiasm and trust has dissipated and many people are reticent about joining unless these disputes are properly resolved. They have not announced how many have joined, leading to the suspicion that the numbers are underwhelming. And over the last few months, 20,000 people have joined the Green Party under its new, charismatic, and more explicitly socialist leader, Zack Polanski, many of them since the Your Party debacle. The Green Party’s membership now stands at 83,000.

In Leyton and Wanstead, work enthusiastically continues to build a left alternative, drawing in those who have left the Labour Party, Palestine activists, sections of the revolutionary left, new people from no party and wide layers of people campaigning on private landlord rent levels, the climate crisis, and many other single issues.

The “Your Party” national conference has been arranged for the end of November, with delegates chosen at random by “sortition”, rather than being elected at a local level via active branches—another source of disagreement and suspicion. The decisions regarding the final name of the party, the leaders and the main policy platform will then be put to an online ballot of all members.

But whether or not the national party is formed or how large it is, it is likely that strongly supported left candidates will stand in Leyton and Wanstead as in many other areas, or that deals are made with the Green Party.

It is still just about possible that the Labour Party, under a new leader, could swing leftwards, to gain more votes and members. But is also very likely that Labour will continue to offer nothing to working people, and make more concessions on asylum and immigration to the far-right, leading to an electoral catastrophe. This will simply open the door to the nightmare of a future Reform UK government.

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Full Text of statement

We the undersigned are active members of Leyton and Wanstead Constituency Labour Party (CLP). We have all been in the party for many years and some of us for decades. Many of us have been CLP and local branch officers, including CLP chairs and secretaries, and a general election agent.

We have watched with anger, frustration and astonishment as the current dishonest leadership has abandoned the principles the Labour Party should stand on. It has tried to solve the economic crisis at the expense of ordinary people who did nothing to cause it, while doing next to nothing to address unprecedented levels of inequality and poverty, including child poverty. This has had disastrous electoral results.

The Government’s shameful inaction and active complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza is intolerable. In the face of hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries, the total destruction of infrastructure, the deliberate starvation in Gaza and the state-sponsored settler violence in the West Bank, the Labour Government has limited itself to minimal, mainly symbolic, actions, taken far too late, while continuing with weapon sales and military co-operation with the Israeli regime. This will be a permanent stain on its reputation.

The proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist group is a terrifying extension of authoritarian state power and has led to the shocking and absurd arrests of hundreds of entirely peaceful demonstrators, many of whom are our friends and family members.

The Government is pandering to the fake patriotism and poisonous anti-migrant rhetoric of Reform UK in a doomed attempt to win their voters on that basis. It has savagely cut international aid and completely betrayed the interests of trans people. All this has led to intensified community conflict and is opening the door to a future Reform UK government.

This is not a complete list! And even many of the reforms that we would welcome have been weakened and watered down.

The leadership of the party at regional and national level, with their local supporters and their allies in the party apparatus have used shameless anti-democratic manoeuvres – tearing up the rule book – to prevent properly democratic selections of candidates for Parliament and local councils and have increasingly closed down any method by which party members can try to determine or influence local or national policy. They have created a climate of fear in the party to shut down opposition.

We have remained members of the Labour Party, despite being told to leave by Keir Starmer, and in spite of many good socialists being expelled or leaving in disgust. We have done this out of party loyalty; to ensure the removal of the Tory government; for the sake of unity with the main organisations of the Labour movement; and because no viable alternative presented itself.

But enough is enough. We now feel that we have no choice but to resign from the Labour Party and to help to build an alternative socialist party that we can be proud to be members of – one that can act in the interests of working class people and provide a real alternative to the “populist” authoritarian far right.