Germany’s Left Party faces internal rift after Gysi links antisemitism to migrant members

A growing row over Israel within Germany’s Left Party (Die Linke) has intensified after senior figure Gregor Gysi linked rising anti-Israel sentiment in the party to the presence of members with migrant backgrounds, triggering sharp internal backlash.

Gysi, who led the party’s parliamentary group in the Bundestag from 2005 to 2015, is facing mounting criticism from within his own ranks following remarks made in an interview focused on antisemitism.

The controversy stems from comments Gysi gave earlier this month on Focus magazine’s “Machtmenschen” podcast.

Asked how widespread anti-Israel and antisemitic tendencies are within the party, Gysi said:

“Well, the situation has become more dangerous because many more people with migrant backgrounds have joined us, including from certain specific backgrounds, which I actually welcome. But they bring incorrect views about Israel, and I will always oppose that; certain limits must not be crossed.”

In the same interview, Gysi added that he felt considerable relief after a party member who had described Hamas as a “liberation organisation” was recently expelled.

According to reporting by WELT, the remarks have drawn strong criticism.

The Federal Working Group of Migrant Left (BAG Migrantische Linke), formally recognised as an official party body in November 2025, is preparing to send a two-page letter addressed to the 78-year-old politician and to the party leadership under co-chairs Ines Schwerdtner and Jan van Aken.

The letter, signed by the group’s federal spokesperson council, including Baden-Württemberg’s lead candidate Mersedeh Ghazaei and around 180 other members, states:

“Some passages in your interview are highly problematic because they reproduce racist narratives and contradict the fundamental principles of our party. Associating members with migrant backgrounds with an alleged increase in antisemitism is unacceptable.”

The group argues that Gysi’s assertion that the situation has become “more dangerous” due to a rise in members with migrant backgrounds reflects a “racist threat scenario”.

“These kinds of statements reinforce anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments and have no place in an anti-racist party,” the letter says.

The signatories also level more serious accusations against the veteran politician, arguing that his rhetoric contributes to “a further shift to the right in political and social discourse” and describing as “fundamentally antisemitic” what they characterise as his alleged conflation of Israel with Jewish people.

The Federal Working Group further accuses Gysi of fuelling internal divisions within the party.

“It creates the impression that the boundaries of what can be said are being set in an authoritarian manner by well-known and long-serving party officials,” the letter states, adding: “Your statements do not dismantle structural racism; rather, they intensify and entrench it both within the party and in the public sphere.”

The signatories are pressing Gysi to act. In an effort to “counter division”, they call on the senior Bundestag member to “immediately” delete the interview video from his Instagram account and to publicly clarify that members with migrant backgrounds should not be indiscriminately linked to antisemitism.

They also demand a public apology to migrant and younger party members “for the impact of your statements and the harm caused”, as well as immediate participation by Gysi and his team in anti-racism training.

The letter has been signed not only by BAG Migrantische Linke but also by several regional leaders, members of state executive committees and heads of local council groups. Gysi’s spokesperson told WELT that the letter had not yet been delivered and that he could not comment.

In his interview with Focus, Gysi had emphasised his strong support for “a sovereign and secure Israel” alongside “an equally sovereign and secure Palestine”.

Gysi’s father, Klaus Gysi, who was active in communist resistance against National Socialism and later became a politician in East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party (SED), was Jewish.

In November 2025, Gysi, together with former parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch, Bundestag Vice President Bodo Ramelow and 14 other Left Party MPs, sent a separate letter to co-chairs Schwerdtner and van Aken.

That letter, referring to an anti-Israel resolution adopted by the party’s youth wing, stated: “It appears that something has gone wrong in our party.”

It called on party leadership bodies to “draw clear and unmistakable boundaries”.

Debate over what critics describe as “left-wing antisemitism” has long been contentious within the party. In February, the Thuringia state disciplinary committee removed Martha Chiara Wüthrich, a national spokesperson for the party’s youth wing, from all party positions and suspended her membership for two years after she described Israel’s war in Gaza as a “damn Holocaust”.

On Sunday, Brandenburg’s antisemitism commissioner Andreas Büttner resigned from the party after the Lower Saxony state branch adopted a resolution rejecting “Zionism in its current form”.