Opposing the capitalist Israeli state is not antisemitism

Defend the right to debate the way forward in the Middle East

Socialist Students steering committee

Socialist Students sends our solidarity to members of Linksjugend [‘solid] – the youth section of the German left party Die Linke – who have been subjected to vicious public attacks for their criticism of the Israeli state.

Shamefully, these attacks have come not just from the capitalist media in Germany, but also from the leadership of Die Linke itself.

At the federal conference of Linksjugend in early November, delegates voted in support of a motion on the Middle East that referenced the “colonial and racist character of the Israeli state project… from its beginnings to the present day”.

If anything, this characterisation is vague on the policies of mass expulsion, occupation, and state terror carried out by Israeli capitalist governments ever since the foundation of the Israeli state.

But the motion was still seized upon by the billionaire-owned press in Germany to spread accusations of antisemitism, in an attempt to defame Die Linke and its youth wing, and the global movement in solidarity with the Palestinians that has resurged in the past two years.

Unfortunately, the Die Linke co-leaders have responded by assisting in a witch hunt of its own young members in Linksjugend. They have asserted that “one cannot question the protection of Jewish life” – in other words, claiming that by opposing the Israeli capitalist state, Linksjugend members are undermining the safety of Jewish people.

But the opposite is true. It is the Israeli ruling class, and their staunch defence of an unequal capitalist system based on exploitation and oppression for private profit, which poses the biggest threat to the lives of Jewish people in Israel.

By ramping up war throughout the Middle East, the Netanyahu government has only increased fears and unease of most people living in Israel. Currently one-in-five Jewish Israeli children grow up below the poverty line. That’s before mentioning the genocidal policy of the Israeli government in Palestine, which in two years has claimed over 60,000 Palestinian lives and laid waste to Gaza – intensifying the national conflict and Palestinian suffering, and not bringing greater security to Israelis.

Socialist Students believes that the building of a movement for socialist change in Israel – which would include replacing the current capitalist Israeli state with a democratic workers’ government – will be a key part of the struggle for a socialist Middle East. That is the only way to finally end poverty, war, and oppression in the region. In opposing the current Israeli state in this way, socialists are the foremost defenders of the right of Jewish and all people to a genuinely safe and decent life.

As a socialist youth organisation, Socialist Students defends the right of all young people to discuss and debate a way out of the horror that capitalism means for billions around the globe. That includes the right to debate how the current nightmare in Palestine and the Middle East could be ended. We send solidarity to members of Linksjugend who, by adding to this debate, have faced vicious smears by agents of the capitalist class in Germany, both inside and outside Die Linke.