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Labour’s “5 Missions for a Better Britain: Build an NHS Fit for the Future”

The new Labour Party manifesto is not enough to provide the Health Service which we need


04/02/2024

‘Labour’s third mission in government will be to: Build an NHS fit for the future: that is there when people need it; with fewer lives lost to the biggest killers; in a fairer Britain, where everyone lives well for longer. Each mission is built on the strong foundations of economic stability, national security, and secure borders.’

The recently released Labour Party Manifesto on the NHS

Time to consider the hard facts

For health campaigners who argue that now is the right time to advance a bold vision of health and social care, this document is disappointing. It shows no ambition from the party that created the NHS, and which now publicly recognises that it is ‘facing both an unprecedented immediate crisis and an existential long-term challenge’. Fundamental to this lack of ambition is the unspoken argument of ‘unaffordability’. This insists that there is no “magic money tree”, the prior £375bn quantitative easing for the banks is now the victim of short term memory loss. Labour seems, however, more than happy to endorse the magic efficiency tree – home to the arboreal and elusive ‘reform fairy’, charged with transforming a cash-starved NHS so long as it does not involve handing over any money! Unfortunately, a preoccupation with ‘costs’ rather than ‘benefits’ automatically means that spending on public services is seen as a burden rather than something that improves people’s lives and makes the economy more productive.

However, as John Adams pointed out ‘Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence’. Those who like to imagine that technological innovation, rearranging of beds and promises of future strategies for preventing illness will solve the current major problems of the NHS will be taught a harsh lesson. As Anita Charlesworth, Director of Research for the Health Foundation observed, it is quite simple: “Either we are going to have lower quality healthcare relative to other countries or we spend more”. The bottom line is that we spend less on healthcare than other developed countries and our spending has not kept pace with the combination of inflation, population growth, population aging and increase in chronic illness.

Funding is an essential part of the solution

A curious statement near the start of the document suggests that ‘the Left’ believes problems within the NHS can be solved with ‘more spending alone’. This is a straw man argument given that few people on the Left (or elsewhere for that matter) believe that money by itself will cure all the service’s ills. This is not least because it depends on how the money is spent, and there are clearly additional requirements. However, money is undoubtedly of fundamental importance in making the NHS and its under-staffed and crumbling hospitals and surgeries sustainable for the future. As Shakespeare put it: “if money go before, all ways do lie open”.

Some of those additional requirements are set out in the joint briefing published by Independent SAGE and Keep Our NHS Public. They include the need to build a consensus based on core values of decency, security, justice and compassion; understanding of evidence about the level and nature of health needs and how to achieve effectiveness, equity and resilience; exposing the myths that hold health, care and support services back e.g. that they represent only a cost rather than an asset, that they are unaffordable, that privatisation brings efficiency, and that public health is solely about personal choice.

This joint report drew some crucial conclusions that should inform any debate about reform. Namely that health care is fundamental to human well-being and a productive economy; much higher levels of funding than currently proposed are needed; more needs to be spent on public health; staff pay and conditions have to be improved; greatly increased capacity is required; planning is essential for meeting long term demand; much greater priority should be attached to using evidence-based approaches to reducing inequalities; service provision should be under direct control of Government rather than being outsourced, be designed together with service users, with inbuilt democratic accountability mechanisms. We may regard the need for evidence based policy as perhaps one of the key points here.

Re-stating the obvious

Many of these important concepts are largely missing from ‘Build an NHS fit for the Future’. If you wonder where inspiration for this document came from, it is instructive to look at what three things are set out as essential for repairing the NHS. According to Labour, these are:

  1. More care at home in the community
  2. Harnessing the latest technological advancements
  3. Focusing on prevention through tackling the social determinants of health – a ‘prevention first’ revolution (- but curiously no mention of climate change, now the biggest threat to public health!)

Compare this with the 2014 Five Year Forward View which stated that:

  1. The future will see far more care delivered locally
  2. We will improve health technology; we will improve the NHS’s ability to do research and use innovation
  3. There needs to be a big improvement in helping people live healthier lives so that they don’t get ill so much – this is called ‘Prevention’

“Five Year Forward View”, however, also went further than Labour by stating that even with action on prevention, putting money into new care models, investing in social care services, and becoming more efficient over time – nonetheless ‘if we are to reflect the growing number of people needing to use health services, we need to spend more on healthcare in this country’. There is also a demand side. With growing numbers of people we can add inflation, an ageing population, increasing numbers of people with chronic disease and multiple conditions, and an explosion in mental health problems. Labour recognises these demands but feels they can be met by changing the service and without investment: ‘Demographic change, an ageing population and more people living with long-term conditions means the service must change to meet the needs of the population today and be sustainable in the long- term’.

The belief that new technology and scientific innovation will inevitably reduce overall costs for the NHS is questionable given such levels of increased demand. In fact, medical technology is a primary driver of healthcare costs, and novel and expensive treatments include those for conditions previously untreatable. To take one recently much hyped key technological NHS expense-reducing policy of virtual wards or ‘hospital at home’, a recent study suggested that costs were in fact twice as much as in patient care. This also emphasises the importance of garnering evidence from pilot projects before uncritically rolling out innovations.

Building a two-tier system is not a solution

‘Build an NHS fit for the future’ makes repeated references to an NHS that is ‘free at the point of use’, but does not qualify this by ‘publicly delivered’, leaving it worryingly open for publicly funded services to be privately provided. All is revealed by the next statement: ‘the last Labour Government reduced waiting times by using the private sector, increasing staff numbers and spreading good practice. We did this before. We will do it again’. What is not pointed out here is that the last Labour government substantially increased investment in the NHS in order to successfully improve performance. In addition, its reliance on the private sector led to increased costs; the undermining of NHS services; and firmly established some key private sector players in the NHS – where they remain to this day.

Labour is clear that ‘to end the threat of a two-tier health system, we will use spare capacity in the independent sector to ensure patients are treated quicker’. However, investing in the independent sector (which does not have spare capacity and shares a single labour pool with the NHS) only effectively promotes a two-tier system. This, as David Rowland has outlined: ”may benefit a small proportion of users, but ultimately undermines one of the key solidaristic principles of the post-war welfare settlement……nor has the for-profit sector magicked into existence the infrastructure to provide an alternative to NHS care. Nor is a two-tier system inevitable due to market forces. It is in fact the product of government policy over the past two decades and any government can, if they choose, reverse this trend by sustained investment in the NHS and the removal of subsidies which promote the growth of for-profit provision in the UK.”

Suggesting the private sector has its own staff who are simply sitting around waiting to help out the NHS is wrong for reasons clearly set out by Rowland and others, and obscures its essentially parasitic relationship with the NHS. For example, outsourcing of mental health services resulted in spending on private ‘out of area’ beds reaching record levels to the detriment of financially stretched trusts and patients. Outsourcing of ophthalmology services poaches NHS staff and undermines patient safety. Even those who do feel the private sector has something to offer, to address the elective care backlog they acknowledge that it simply cannot be a substitute for addressing the major problems facing the NHS.

Misleading statements

Some statements (“the reality is that the NHS is still designed for the world of 1948, where people needed short term treatment for infectious disease or injury”) embarrassingly suggest that the authors have never been near a modern hospital providing intensive care, kidney dialysis, organ transplantation and day case surgery (to name but a few). They seem to be borrowed directly from Conservative former health minister Sajid Javid’s play book. Similarly with dentistry where it is said “people are desperate and they are starting to look outside the NHS for the care they need”. People certainly are desperate but the reality is that the majority of dental care is already delivered outside the NHS. Supervised tooth cleaning (already being done in some schools) and a meagre 700k more appointments each year will just not cut it. Labour should be able to do much better than this – time for a new vision, and to find the same courage to invest in our future as was summoned in 1948, despite a war ravaged economy and much higher levels of government debt than now..

 

“It’s So Berlin!” 3: Hashtag 161

Third instalment in our series of photographs and cartoons about Berlin and Palestine.


03/02/2024

Following last week’s contribution “Cancelled Remains“, here is the latest in the series of works by Berlin-based Palestinian artists Rasha Al Jundi and Michael Jabareen.

Titled “Hashtag 161” we wanted to draw your attention to… Nazi glorification. The number in the title refers to a specific military regiment in the Wehrmacht that fought the “Battle of France”

Photo: Rasha Al-Jundi

Cartoon: Michael Jabareen

In this image, the abandoned items are two bedside tables. Incidentally, there was a shredded empty Amazon box which Michael also employed in the illustration.

Titled “Hashtag 161” we wanted to draw your attention to the core source of the alarming racism in Germany: Nazi glorification. The number in the title refers to a specific military regiment in the Wehrmacht that fought the “Battle of France” and later in what was known as the Eastern Front. Its last commanding officer, General Paul Drekmann received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross of Nazi Germany.

While working on this series, our hearts were heavy with extreme anger and anguish at the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing carried out by the Zionist entity against our Palestinian people in the homeland. Our anger extends to the fascist brutality practiced by the German state that blindly collaborates in this ongoing crime and the hateful inciting slurs that are widespread in its mainstream media. The latter did not come from vacuum. They came from everything you see in this image.

We believe that this deeply entrenched racism within German society does not apply to the rising right wing, but also to the left and across the whole political spectrum. No one is innocent.

And after spewing racist slurs against our people, they still seek to consume part of our food culture. Oh the audacity!

Image taken in Wedding, Berlin (2023).

Dear German activists, I have some questions on integrity

Open letter regarding the exclusion of victims of racism from demonstrations against the AfD


This letter is directed to many organizations: some that participated in organizing the anti-AfD demonstrations last week, and those who publicized it. In this letter I urge you to take action against a specific type of racism that some of your spaces are infested with.

I am writing this in between episodes of anger, rage, anxiety, and trials to empathise with those on the receiving end, so that I can articulate words that will make you read. BIPOC people might understand the emotional burden of having to explain how racism feels to people who have never experienced it.

I experienced a racist incident at the anti-AfD demo in Bonn on Sunday, 21st January 2024. I wanted to report on it when I’d calmed down the day after, when I woke up to an influx of similar cases of discrimination in my community across Germany. After the nationwide anti-fascism demos, while white people were congratulating each other, Arabs were checking on each other. Business as usual.

More than half of all people in Germany hold racist sentiments towards Arabs, racialised Muslims, and people perceived as such (source)

Those are not only right wing AfD voters or Ampel voters. In Germany, this phenomenon is especially prevalent amongst liberals (especially the anti-Deutsch current). It has been shown in the way anti-AfD demos were marked by exclusion of Arabs and Muslims, even though they are the AfD’s frontline targets.

In recent months, it has been shown with the rise of antisemitism, racism against Arabs and Muslims, and people racialised as such. Liberal spaces decided to selectively take a stance against antisemitism while leaving millions of Arabs and Muslims, and people racialised as such with their back to the wall (or as Arabs say: back to a falling wall), facing racist German politicians and media. I appreciate your sensitivity to antisemitism; still, I won’t excuse you further marginalizing a group that is screaming at the margin.

Anti-Muslim racism consists of individual attitudes and/or structural manifestations that express themselves in public discourse, social structures, and practices which lead to the exclusion and/or disadvantage of  Muslims and people perceived as such. Muslims are turned into The Other as a result of negative characteristics being attributed to them. They are often considered backward, dangerous,  oppressed by their religion, or difficult to integrate. These racist attributions designate them as either cultural, religious, or national non-members. This is where processes of racialization and dichotomization take effect: they construct seemingly opposing groups and position them hierarchically in relation to each other. This logic is based on a we/they distinction.

This definition4 is taken from a report by the Federal Ministry of Interior that was issued in August 2023 (i.e. before the racist shit hit the fan). The report offers a detailed explanation of why anti-Muslim hate is considered a form of racism. It explains the difference between Islamophobia and criticizing Islam or Islamism (a political ideology). In educating yourselves, you can detect these racist tropes and fight them, so I don’t need to take the emotional burden of explaining them to you. Although the biggest populations of Muslims worldwide live in Southeast Asia, not in the SWANA region, Arabs of all religions are racialised as Muslims and bear the brunt of Islamophobia.

I moved to Germany twice, once as a hijabi woman and recently without the hijab. My features can be perceived as a black Brazilian, Ethiopian, or anything in between. I spent the worst days of my life being a hijabi in Germany who white folks either hated or wanted to save. Although I wasn’t committed religiously to the hijab, I continued wearing it as a form of anti-racist resistance and to express my identity, until I decided to move back to Egypt and took it off. I hope that one  day, I will be seen and heard in Germany for who I am, not through a distorted German lens.

The anti-AfD demo (Bonn)

On the day of the protest, I walked with a placard on my back that represents how political parties in Germany are treating me and my friends in Germany and Palestine, based on our nationality and (in)security of residency. At the bottom, I wrote a sarcastic note on racism in the liberal scene. During the demo, someone gave me a sticker that said Free Palestine with a heart in the colours of the Palestinian  flag. I took it and stuck it on the cardboard. One of my flatmates joined later, with flyers from a Palestinian solidarity group in Bonn. We were walking together towards the front where we had been told the BIPOC block was.

Heba’s placard at the anti-AfD demo in Bonn; the placard reads “Arab in Deutschland, the AfD wants to deport all of us, SPD & CDU want to deport 50% of my friends, The Green Party & SPD are financing bombs that kill my friends in Gaza, The Anti-Germans are very German & anti-me :(“

A guy (let’s call him white guy in blue jacket) followed us and told me to take the sticker off, because national flags were not allowed. I thought that this was ridiculous, because I was not even waving a flag and chances were that most people wouldn’t see the sticker anyway.

To some extent, I get where your ban on national flags comes from, although you have been discriminatory in this, too. The Kurdistan flag, rightly, took centre stage because that is part of the Kurdish migrant experience. Someone from the organizing coalition argued that Kurdistan is not a state. Palestine is also a nation with a land and without a state. I would like you to be honest in addressing this ban and the role of censorship in the past months that led to it. Like, imagine if we were free people in a free country (sigh).

White guy in blue jacket said that I carried an unwelcome message and called me an antisemite. Up to this point, there had been no real conversation between us, except for his order and a clear “No” from me. Since there was no basis to his accusation, I called him out on his racism that echoed what we have been hearing from German politicians, including the President, the Chancellor, the Minister of Interior, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and guess who, the AfD. They all made statements that accuse any Arab/ Muslim/Palestinian or advocate for Palestinian rights of being an antisemitic terrorist sympathiser before we even speak.

Another protester witnessed this and came to my help, my flatmates were there as well. Another woman in a black jacket joined and stood by white guy in blue jacket. I was furious and shouting; white guy in blue jacket and white woman in black jacket were yelling at me about an offensive social media post from October 7th. I didn’t know what the hell they were speaking about, but I understood the concept of guilt by association. Someone my colour did something somewhere, a white woman saw it and now I am guilty. Enraging enough that nothing in the world that I can say in my defense will convince them, because their prejudgement will always be stronger than their judgement. Two more women from the organizing team joined, listened to my rage, and tried to understand. Much love to them.

Just to throw me deeper into my rage, white guy in blue jacket, asked me “Free  Palestine from what?”. I can recall his face saying that and what scares me the most is not the difference in our moral positions, but his denial. Such an unaware person shouldn’t be in the awareness team. I told him “If the AfD comes to power, I will be dragged in front of you and you will say nothing.” He said, “They better shoot me first.” Very noble, but in that hypothetical dystopia, the fascists will first dehumanise us by spreading lies and fear, and then act on collective punishment (read history books, or the news).

Finally, he apologised for yelling at me. I told him that I don’t care about the tone of voice, but I care that he apologises for calling me an antisemite. He turned his back and left. I don’t know his name. The other organisers didn’t inform me of it either.

What is in my Free Palestine?  

I know that most of you would do everything to avoid opening the topic of Palestine (I excuse migrants). It is not only the state’s silencing of leftist Jews and all Muslims, but also the active canceling campaign, ironically, by the Antifas. One more struggle that my community is going through is being unseen, unheard, ignored, humiliated, and threatened. Some of us have lost jobs, tenancy, or scholarships for expressing solidarity with Gaza or criticizing German policies (enters blue jacket). Some are not able to practice their right to protest because of the fragility of their residence or asylum situation. We are not allowed to be political or grieve together. This brings back a lot of trauma in those who were ready to die for democracy, and those who fled fascist regimes.

Even before the report on AfD’s secret meeting,planning to deport millions of people, we were discussing our way out of Germany. Those of us who are in leftist activist circles feel betrayed and isolated, because the spaces we thought were safe are not inclusive of us. The groups we identified with are now supporting carnage raged by an ultra-right-wing government on our people or acting as if it is not worthy of their attention.

White guy in blue jacket told me “Go read a book”. Ok, I live across the street from THE leftist bookstore in Bonn. I passed by one day and asked the guy to remove a racist book cover from the shop window. It portrays a Palestinian scarf wrapped in a jihadist slogan. While talking to him, I got engulfed by emotions and cried. He was nice and generous, offered me tea and listened to me. I asked him if he could put educational books about Palestine instead, but he told me that “Books about the Middle East, Jordania and these places, don’t sell”. There were books about Israel, Rojava, Kurdistan, and most recently, Sudan. I didn’t argue with him, but it sounded too familiar to me. I lived under fascism most of my adult life; they don’t burn books in 2023, they just don’t sell them.

The next day, I passed by with a friend who just moved from Cairo to Cologne. Originally, I had told her about the bookstore, because she wanted to screen her film on growing up Black and German, but this situation made her feel uneasy. My friend was raised in a Jewish, German, Arab, Muslim, and Black family. Her perspective on Palestine is worth reading.

All the people I know in Gaza are activists like you (but better). Ali Mohanna is an environmental activist and an artist. He started a cooperative called The Sea is Ours to grant Gazan kids an affordable public space. I met him in an EU fellowship program where he founded an open-air cinema in Gaza. Ali was never in a real cinema. He and his children now, including his newborn baby Rose, don’t have access to enough food or any clean water or healthcare.

Being a cycling activist, I connected with the cycling team in Gaza, all of whom cycle with one leg, because they were shot while peacefully protesting in the Great March of Return in 2018. The IDF said that 214 Gazans were killed by mistake, even though the soldiers were ‘just’ aiming at knees. Hazem from the team spent a year in Egypt trying to save any part of his leg. He had five different amputations and couldn’t get a prosthetic. Alaa, the team leader, could have saved his leg, but Israel didn’t grant him a medical permit to leave Gaza on time. They now deploy their bikes for aid delivery to the displaced.

Bisan is a feminist activist. Before streaming her video diary of the genocide, she worked with a feminist organization, founded by a Palestinian friend of mine, on the topic of reproductive health awareness. I used to see Bisan modeling silver accessories shaped after female reproductive organs before I started seeing her covered in rubble dust. She is now evacuating for the 6th time in three months.

My Lebanese friends are mourning journalist Issam Abdallah who was targeted by an Israeli tank in South Lebanon. My feelings for them all are a drop in the ocean next to the suffering of any  Palestinian.

I came to the anti-AfD demo, as I come to leftist activists spaces, as a whole being. This includes my history, my emotions, my experience of life in Germany and life elsewhere, my understanding of justice and my connection to people. I am not willing to walk the anti-AfD walk, faking a sterilised version of myself that doesn’t include my struggles. If you march in our defence, you need to accept us for who we are, and show some integrity.

This article first appeared on Kandaka website. Reproduced with permission

Berlin’s rulers want homelessness

Roughly 10.000 people in Berlin lack any shelter. This isn’t a policy failure – the government chooses to keep people on the streets


02/02/2024

Last week, Neukölln presented six “safe places” for homeless people. Apartments? Not quite. On a fenced-off empty lot, these white plywood “housing boxes” offer three square meters of privacy – with no heat or running water.

In the last year, 607,000 people in Germany lacked their own place to live (“wohnungslos”) at some point. About 50,000 went without any shelter at all (“obdachlos”). On Berlin’s biggest English-language podcast, experts discussed the complex causes.

Homelessness seems like an inevitable feature of any city. And yet, in the early days of the Covid pandemic, New York and Los Angeles moved thousands of unhoused people into hotels. All it took was the stroke of a pen to end all the suffering.

In other words, our rulers are choosing to keep people on the streets. Drug addiction and mental health issues exist everywhere, yet they only lead to tents in city parks if there’s a housing crisis.

Neukölln’s former social councilor, Falko Liecke of the CDU, famously called for increased police repression against the “voluntarily homeless”. Who does Liecke, a lobbyist for realty speculators, think chooses to live like this? What he means is that some people do not want to go to emergency shelters where they can only stay a few hours per night, without pets, without partners, without friends, where they might have to share a room with strangers suffering from severe mental health problems.

The housing market is like a game of musical chairs. With too few apartments, some people are going to land on the ground. In Germany, “social apartments” generally have their rents capped for 30 years. With most of them built in the 20th century, affordable housing is disappearing fast. Last year, just 25,000 new ones were built.

Is there a lack of space? Not even close. Berlin has almost a million square meters of empty offices. Just look at that awful Amazon Tower in Friedrichshain. Jeff Bezos’s employees would desperately prefer to work from home – you could do them a huge favor and practically solve the city’s homelessness crisis by taking that one building. It would just require taking a tiny fraction of Bezos’s wealth.

The German government is spending 100 billion additional euros on weapons. This money could build a million new apartments right now. Yet politicians from across the spectrum lament this is impossible.

The SPD and Die Linke caused Berlin’s housing crisis with massive privatizations in the early 2000s. Over two years ago, 59.1% of Berliners voted to socialize housing – and two subsequent governments have simply ignored this mandate.

When we see people suffering on the pavement, we assume that multiple systems must have failed. Because who would want this? Yet, as all studies about “housing first” have shown, it’s actually far more expensive to leave someone on the street than to put them in their own apartment. Homeless people have frequent contact with extremely costly emergency medicine, and jail isn’t cheap either. Unhoused people in Germany live an average of just 46.5 years.

Homelessness has the same function in a capitalist society that the pillory (the stocks) had in medieval times: humiliation as a form of social control. The government does remind us: “Work hard and obey your boss, or else we might do this to you!”

East Germany, despite being a very poor country, never had an eviction or an unhoused person. The GDR might have been a repressive dictatorship, but it was also a non-capitalist economy, and they didn’t let people suffer on the streets.

Capitalist Berlin, in contrast, will let you die on the street – or if you’re very lucky, they might give you an unheated wooden box.

This is a mirror of Nathaniel’s Red Flag column in Neues Deutschland. Reproduced with permission.

Letter from the Editors, 1st February 2024

“Anti-discrimination” cause repealed. Where now in defending Berlin Artists who support Palestine?


31/01/2024

Hello everyone,

We are still struggling with problems with our Server. Most people are getting this Newsletter, but some are not. While this problem remains, we will also post this Letter from the Editors on theleftberlin.com. We hope we can upgrade to a new server soon, which should remove the problem.

Our latest Palestine Reading Group is tomorrow (Friday) at 7pm. Until now, we have been studying texts which we would largely recommend. This week we will look at some texts which support Israel. You can find the recommended reading here. For this particular meeting, we will be using a slightly different format, which requires slightly more space. For this reason, we will be meeting this week in oyoun, Lucy-Lameck-Straße 32 (NOTE: not usual venue). The Reading Group takes place every week. on alternate Fridays and Sundays. You can find the exact dates, and the subject matter for the next few meetings on our Events page. Suggested readings are usually posted roughly 1 week prior to a meeting.

On Saturday, there will be a human chain around the Bundestag protesting against the AfD. Now, it is our joint responsibility as civil society to defend a togetherness in solidarity. On 3rd February, we will show a large action around the Bundestag buildings: We are the firewall! We call on everyone to no longer watch on as the right wing is normalised in Germany and Europe. The action is organised by Hand in Hand, who are our Campaign of the Week. If you would like to demonstrate alongside other international activists in Berlin, we will be meeting outside the U-Bahn Bundestag at midday.

Also on Saturday, there will be a launch of the new book Reading Kofman in Constellation (RKIC)! RKIC is a book of poetry, fiction, comics, film, and essays resulting from a reading group of the same name that took place at Hopscotch Reading Room in 2023. Sarah Kofman (1934–1994) was a multidisciplinary philosopher and thinker whose work touched on themes including but not limited to: metaphor, psychoanalysis, feminism, artistic experience, haunting, death, and food. The event will feature readings, refreshments, and a few surprises. It starts at 3pm at Stations, Adalbertstraße 96 next door to Cafe Kotti.

On Sunday, the campaign ‘Fund Healthcare Not Warfare‘ will be launched in Germany with screenings of “United in Anger” and “Love and Suppression”. From New York to London to Berlin – queer, healthcare and anti-war activists are uniting. ‘Fund Healthcare Not Warfare’ is a new coalition of anti-war, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine solidarity activists and healthcare movements to demand a permanent ceasefire now and an end to the Israeli occupation, apartheid and settler colonialism.  The films will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A. The Event starts at 6pm at Tipsy Bear Berlin, Eberswalder Str. 21

The Berlin LINKE Internationals have their monthly meeting on Monday, 5th February at 7pm at Ferat Kocak’s office, Schierker Straße 26. This month’s meeting will be concentrate on the attacks on Berlin artists for supporting Palestine.  The discussion will be kicked off by a representative of the Arts and Cultural Alliance Berlin (ACAB) who have been organising demonstrations against Berlin’s misnamed “anti-discrimination” clause. This discussion will be preceded by a short discussion of Events organised by the group, including report backs from the Palestine Reading Group and the meetings on Apartheid Israel and Gaza, as well as coming events like the Gaza film and Küfa on February 10th, a possible meeting on Imperialism in Africa (postponed from last year), and Summer Camp at the end of June.

There is much more going on in Berlin. To find out what’s happening, go to our Events page. You can also see a shorter, but more detailed list of events in which we are directly involved in here.

If you are looking for Resources on Palestine, we have set up a page with useful links. We will be continually updating the page, so if you would like to recommend other links, please contact us on team@theleftberlin.com. If you would like to donate to people in Gaza, Fida’a, who spoke at our meeting last week on Gaza, recommends this GoFundMe campaign for medical professionals. She also recommends this call to escalate the pressure on our governments to end the ceasefire.

In News from Berlin, Berlin’s discriminatory “anti-discrimination clause” is withdrawn, warnings against the Nazi party Die Dritte Weg, and AfD sees rise in membership despite revelations of meetings with Nazis.

In News from Germany, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance is launched, Judith Butler and others call for a boycott of Germany, transport workers to strike on Friday, and new survey shows that many East Germans feel left behind.

Read all about it in this week’s News from Berlin and Germany.

New on theleftberlin, we interview ACAB about the “anti-discrimination” clause and suppression of support for Palestine on the Berlin Art scene, the second part of Rasha Al-Jundi and Michael Jabareen’s photography/cartoon series It’s So Berlin!, Shav McKay looks at the German media’s reporting of Palestine, Dutch socialist Tobias den Haan looks at the Resistable Rise of Geert Wilders, Dr. John Puntis says why we all need to support the British junior doctors’ strike, and John Mullen reports from France about why the farmers’ protests are a problem for Macron’s right-wing government.

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If you would like to contribute any articles or have any questions or criticisms about our work, please contact us at team@theleftberlin.com. And please do encourage your friends to subscribe to this Newsletter.

Keep on fighting,

The Left Berlin Editorial Board