Linke (The Left) party expelled with immediate effect Palestinian-German member and activist Ramsis Kilani for his vocal opposition to “Israel’s” ongoing genocide in Gaza. In doing so, it followed in the footsteps of the only other mainstream leftist party in the country, the Greens, in exhibiting the infamous Palestine exception to progressive politics.
Kilani, a self-described Marxist, called his expulsion “a sad commentary on a leftist, internationalist party”, left-wing daily junge Welt (jw) reported. The decision made by the Landesschiedskommission, the party’s state-level arbitration body was damaging “to all of us who fight for universal human rights”, the activist wrote on Instagram.
Katina Schubert, one of two members from the party’s right-wing who had brought forward the motion to expel Kilani denied that his Palestine solidarity activism had anything to do with the decision, saying that it was based on his “relativisation of Hamas terror, selective criticism of violence against women as a weapon of war and denial of “Israel’s” right to exist”, the jw report went on to say.
How is it not progressive when a Hamas fighter blows up an IDF tank? Is there something qualitatively different about the way Hamas fights the occupiers and some other, more progressive group, would be fighting the IDF? And if the difference is not in how they fight but how they govern, why should it matter at all how they govern when Gaza has been completely disintegrated and there is no operating governmental structure anyway so even if Hamas were cartoonish Islamist terrorists like ISIS they wouldn’t even have the ability to control anyone. If there’s a Palestinian organization that’s worth criticizing because they’re misusing their power, it’s not Hamas, it’s Fatah.