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Merz warns that Jews are not safe in Germany, as voters choose parties linked to antisemitism
(JTA) — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s warning this week that Jewish life in his country “is no longer safe” reflects concerns voiced by some Jews in Berlin.
They are alarmed by the success of the left-wing socialist Left Party in Sunday’s municipal election, which coincides with the rising power of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in several state elections this month.
Leaving the Left in charge of the country’s capital would be “like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse,” Berlin Jewish Community President Gideon Joffe said in an email press statement this week.
The Party “bears a special responsibility for the consequences” of tolerating Islamic extremism, left-wing antisemitism and what German authorities call “clan crime,” organized criminal activity involving extended-family networks in the capital, said Joffe, who represents some 9,000 registered Jewish community members, out of an estimated 30,000 Jews in the nation’s capital.
He spoke out after the Left received 25.7% of the votes in Berlin’s municipal elections, more than Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which garnered 18.8%, followed by the AfD with 16.3%, the Greens with 14.3% and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) with 12.1%.
Berlin is a city of contrasts and deep political divisions, a city that has always been oppositional. It saw street fights between Nazis and communists in the 1930s, and similar face-offs in the 1990s after unification. It is also the German city where the most Jews were hidden and saved by non-Jews in defiance of authority during the Holocaust.
Thus it was not surprising that in Berlin, as the right-wing AfD is growing in popularity nationwide, the Left might be the strongest opposition to that development.
Mainstream parties, such as Merz’s CDU, which had tried to block the far-right, are flailing. The anti-immigration AfD, in contrast, took the lead in two former east German states: Saxony-Anhalt, on Sept. 6 with 43.8% of the vote, and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania on Sept. 20 with 38.2%.
The Left’s platform, which was adopted in 2024, takes an egalitarian approach: It supports Israel’s right to exist alongside a future Palestinian state and disavows antisemitism alongside other societal plagues. “For The Left Party, lived antifascism is linked to the fight against warmongering, antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism and national arrogance,” the platform reads in part.
The Party grounds its stance in the post-war slogan, “Never again war, never again fascism.” Some affiliates on the extreme left hold anti-Zionist stances; the Party has been criticized by Jewish leaders and mainstream parties for not forcefully distancing itself from those elements.
In 2010, prominent Party members took part in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which the Israeli military intercepted in an operation that killed 10 activists. German Left politicians were among those arrested and deported home.
At its convention in 2025, the Party adopted the “Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism,” which rejects the notion that some anti-Israel expressions are antisemitic, as put forward in the working definition of antisemitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The Party said that the IHRA definition “paves the way for authoritarian state action” by Israel.
More recently, during the Party’s Berlin campaign, “calls were made for the Intifada and the death of Israeli soldiers, and the audience sang and danced along,” said Josef Schuster, chair of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, in a statement released Sept. 22. The council represents some 90,000 members of Jewish communities nationwide. In all, there are about as many people who identify as Jewish but don’t belong to communities.
“That a party whose campaign stage openly called for the death of people emerged victorious from the election deeply disturbs me,” he said, adding that the party had “lost all credibility” by failing to combat “Jew hatred” within.
Berlin resident Anetta Kahane sees parallels between the extreme parties on the left and the right.
“It is a big shame that the AfD is winning, and it’s a big shame that the Linke Partei is winning,” Kahane, 72, who grew up in the former East Germany, said in a telephone interview. “Because both are very deeply antisemitic. And I don’t want to be governed by antisemites.”
Kahane, whose parents had fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and ultimately settled in East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, or GDR) as dedicated socialists, told JTA she realized as a young adult that the Communist party her parents supported was run by “the same antisemites, the same Germans as in the west.”
“Today, we hear the same slogans we heard about Israel and the Jews during the GDR: They are like the Nazis. Israel is a fascist state. They are imperialists. They are colonialists. They are the worst of the worst,” said Kahane, who founded the Berlin-based Amadeo Antonio Foundation, which fights xenophobia and antisemitism, in 1998.
“I hear people saying that, well, the world is so complicated, we don’t need [democracy], we need a good dictator,” said Kahane, because “democracy is discussing and discussing and never achieving anything.”
While the cost of living and taxes are rising, politicians fail to “talk in a way people can understand,” she added. The more “brutal and populist” their language, the more people will vote populist.
Despite their rising popularity, neither the Left nor the AfD is likely to be part of the newly elected state governments. That’s because the mainstream parties are forming coalitions to block out these upstarts – a firewall, when it comes to the far right.
In Berlin, most Jewish voters find themselves eschewing both extremes. But not all Jews are upset at the results.
“I’m hopeful that there will be a coalition with the SPD and the Greens, and that we’ll have a more promising future for Berlin,” Donna Swarthout, 67, told JTA in a telephone interview from Berlin.
She said she voted for the Greens “so that they would be in the governing coalition,” but she isn’t put off by the Left Party and has been drawn to its mayoral candidate Elif Eralp.
“She just really resonated with me because of her emphasis on social justice issues,” she said.
Swarthout, who grew up in the US and obtained German citizenship 14 years ago as the daughter of German Jewish refugees, says it’s important for Jews in Germany “to work in coalition with other minority groups… We need a broader, more positive, future-oriented dialogue. And I’m hoping that she [Eralp] can help shift the dialogue.”
Elvira Groezinger worries about younger voters in general. “As 16-year-olds were allowed to vote [in Berlin] for the first time, and Muslim migrants dominated the discourse, the outcome is a cause for concern,” Groezinger, a literary scholar who was born in Poland in 1947 to Holocaust survivors, said in an email to JTA. The Left’s campaign “was accompanied by antisemitic incidents and pro-Hamas declarations of Muslim candidates and voters.”
“The fact that 36 years after the unification, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the establishment of a democratic system, communist ideology is so attractive to over a quarter of voters, depicts the political failure in implementing democratic values,” she added.
The Left and the AfD have a lot in common, she noted: Both support Putin and oppose help for Ukraine; both espouse anti-Americanism and support totalitarian ideas.
The Left’s 2024 platform demands “the dissolution of NATO and its replacement by a collective security system with the participation of Russia.” While the AfD supports continued membership in NATO, it posits that “European security cannot be attained without Russia’s involvement.”
But while “the AfD is anti-Islamic and not openly antisemitic like the Left, and even claims to be pro-Israel, its ideology of ‘Germany for Germans’ is just as dangerous for Jews, who are regarded as non-German,” Groezinger remarked.
Left leaders this week rushed to defend themselves against accusations that they tolerate antisemitism and criminality in their ranks, after an alleged pro-Palestinian militant and a person with ties to a Middle Eastern crime family were seen celebrating with a Left legislator at a victory party on Sept. 20 in Berlin.
Eralp said it was “absolutely unacceptable” to “celebrate violence and terrorism,” adding that she would “do everything to ensure that Jewish people – just like Muslims, queer people and everyone in our city – can feel safe.”
A Party spokesperson did not get back to JTA by press time.
Elio Adler, founder of the Berlin-based, pro-democracy Jewish Values Initiative, has pushed back against both the Left Party and the AfD, urging mainstream parties to come up with clear options for voters.
“As long as politics still doesn’t address very relevant and burning topics, the extremist parties on both sides will have their voters and the firewall will get cracks, election after election and, one day, it will break down,” he said.
The Initiative published an open letter to Berlin’s democratic political parties on Sept. 15, urging them to shut both the AfD and Left out of any coalition talks to form a government for the city-state.
Up to now, the term “firewall” has generally referred to a boycott of far-right parties by the mainstream parties.
But “we say if you establish a firewall, it needs to be a round wall protecting democracy against attacks – or fire – from all sides. It can’t be a firewall just protecting against one side,” said Adler, who was born in Essen in 1971; his father was a Holocaust survivor.
”I’m not too happy that antisemitism somehow appears to be the main topic” of discussion. “It’s sort of a strawman argument, in place of many other topics,” he added. “As a group that is at risk and dependent on protection, we are deeply alarmed by the Left Party’s plans to weaken the police and, in particular, to abolish the domestic intelligence service.”
The Left Party “accepts a lot of antisemitism within their ranks. Of course, if you ask them, they are against antisemitism,” Adler said. “They’re against right-wing antisemitism, which is good, which is correct.”
But “they absolutely forget their own antisemitism and all the migrant antisemitism and the extreme-left antisemitism. So they are really blind in more than one eye.”
The post Merz warns that Jews are not safe in Germany, as voters choose parties linked to antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
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‘Jews are welcome, Zionists are not’: Is a Zionist ban at a restaurant legal?
Sap Sua, a Vietnamese restaurant in Boulder, Colorado, was one of Emily Lanigan’s favorite restaurants. She even celebrated her 44th birthday there in June. So Lanigan was stunned when the restaurant posted this since-deleted message on Instagram in September: “Jews are welcome, Zionists are not.”
Lanigan, a former synagogue president, identifies as a Zionist, which she defines as the Jewish right of self-determination. Was she really no longer welcome at the place where she had received a complimentary dessert just months before?
She wondered if the restaurant had a different definition of Zionism, she said, and thought maybe reaching out and offering to have an in-person discussion could clear things up.
“Being a Zionist does not mean I do not also believe in the freedom and autonomy of Palestinians,” Lanigan said she commented on Instagram. “You and I are not so far apart.”
But Sap Sua’s owner, Anthony “Ni” Nguyen, doubled down: “As you clearly saw, the full statement was ‘Jews are welcome. Zionists are not.’ Jews are a protected class, and all Jews are welcome,” Nguyen wrote in messages to Lanigan reviewed by the Forward. “Zionism is a political ideology, like Nazism.”
Nguyen’s response to Lanigan implied the law was on his side. He could ban “Zionists,” it seemed, so long as he let in Jews who shared his views about Israel.
Legally speaking, Nguyen was partially correct. Neither federal civil rights law nor Colorado law prohibits businesses from refusing service based on customers’ political beliefs — meaning turning someone away based solely on their political support for Israel could be allowed.
But the line gets murkier when “Zionist” is used as a stand-in for Jewish or Israeli identity, which can violate laws prohibiting discrimination based on religion or national origin.
The distinction matters not only for Sap Sua, as spaces from coffee shops to book festivals to concert venues make disavowing Israel a condition of entry or participation. The troubling practice raises a thorny question: How should the law distinguish between excluding someone because of their political beliefs and excluding them because of who they are?
The right to exclude?
Sap Sua was not the first business to declare itself off-limits to Zionists with no legal consequences. In Utah, after a bar called Weathered Waves declared “no Zionists allowed” in 2024, the attorney general found no evidence of legal wrongdoing. (Weathered Waves later closed over a dispute with its landlord.)
But that doesn’t mean “Zionist” bans are always legal. According to Richard Katskee, a professor of law at Duke University with expertise in public accommodation law, the legality depends on how the ban is enforced.
Does the business ask only Jewish or Israeli customers to disclose their views? Does it make assumptions about the politics of customers wearing kippahs? If Jewish customers are being singled out, Katskee said, that would make a finding of illegal discrimination more likely.
Omer Wiczyk, senior counsel at the Brandeis Center, told the Forward that two cases he’s currently litigating cross that line. At a coffee shop in Oakland, California, a customer wearing a Star of David baseball cap was asked on video if he was a Zionist and told to leave. At an eyebrow salon in Northern Virginia, a customer was kicked out after disclosing she was Israeli-American.
Businesses “cannot turn a customer’s identity into objectionable politics, and then invoke that to justify their exclusion,” Wiczyk told the Forward. “Being Israeli is not a political issue. Being a Jew is not a political issue. It’s who you are.”
But if a business required every customer, regardless of their identity, to affirm a particular political position on Israel before receiving service, that could be legal, Katskee said — though enforcing such a policy fairly would inevitably prove difficult in practice.
“It might be legal, like putting up a sign saying ‘Republicans only’ or ‘Democrats only,’” Katskee said.
Jenin Younes, legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, argues that businesses have some latitude to refuse service based on customers’ politics. The ADC is currently making that case on behalf of Poetica Coffee, which is fighting a Department of Justice investigation into its decision to publicly bar Rep. Dan Goldman over his support for Israel.
In Goldman’s case, Younes said, his public profile and easily searchable voting record help support the idea that the coffee shop targeted him for his political views.
“It’s harder to make the argument that ‘No, this was really about just not letting Jewish people in’ — because he’s a public figure,” Younes said. “He’s said what he thinks on these issues.”
Even Goldman himself said that the coffee shop incident did not warrant a civil rights investigation because of his status as a public figure.
Younes argues that the same principle applies to situations unrelated to Israel and Zionism.
In 2018, for example, the owner of a Virginia restaurant kicked out White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders citing the Trump administration’s “inhumane and unethical” policies. The restaurant faced social backlash, but no legal consequences.
And last year, a Martha’s Vineyard farmers’ market stand refused to sell lawyer Alan Dershowitz pierogi, citing his legal defense of Jeffrey Epstein and other men accused of sexual assault. Dershowitz threatened legal action, but it appears he never actually filed suit.
“In my opinion, businesses should have the right to exclude people whose views it doesn’t like,” Younes said. “And by the way, I would apply this in the other context: If there’s a pro-Israel coffee shop owner and they wanted to say, ‘We don’t want anyone wearing a pro-Palestine pin in here,’ I think they have that right.”
The law’s limits
Whether businesses have the legal right to exclude certain customers is a different question than whether they should.
Such bans can end up holding ordinary Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government — with the misguided idea that denying them a meal or a cup of coffee will somehow advance the Palestinian cause.
And since “Zionist” means different things to different people, using the label as a litmus test will almost inevitably lead to erroneous assumptions about peoples’ views.
In cases where the law is not a remedy, the free market may be. Businesses that turn away “Zionists” must be so committed to their beliefs that they are willing to refuse a paying customer, risking boycotts and reputational damage.
At the same time, some businesses may believe the publicity will draw in new clientele. Karimi Brows, which turned away the Israeli-American customer, boasted that it gained 40,000 TikTok followers in the month after the incident.
For its part, Sap Sua appeared to backtrack amid intense public pressure, posting to Instagram that it would welcome “every guest who walks through our doors.” (Sap Sua did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.)
But for Lanigan, the damage was done.
“It was one of my favorite restaurants,” Lanigan told the Forward. “But I will never set foot in that place again.”
The post ‘Jews are welcome, Zionists are not’: Is a Zionist ban at a restaurant legal? appeared first on The Forward.
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Explainer: Gadi Eisenkot’s four conditions for forming Israel’s next government
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Israeli President Isaac Herzog tasked Gadi Eisenkot on Sunday with forming Israel’s next government, giving him up to six weeks to assemble a coalition with a total of 61 seats out of 120 in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.
If he fails to do so, then the president can give another Knesset member the opportunity; most likely this will be incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. For his part, Netanyahu, has urged Eisenkot to join him in an emergency national unity government that will keep Israel strong against ongoing threats.
Eisenkot has responded that the “national emergency government” he will form will comprise the “four Zionist parties” of the change bloc – his own Yashar Party, B’Yachad headed by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beitenu Party and the Democrats under Yair Golan.
He also said he would welcome “parties and Knesset members who support Yashar’s four principles” to join the coalition.
At the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on Sunday, Eisenkot said he would be sending out formal invitations as soon as possible “to every Knesset faction, calling on all their members, both as parties and as individuals, to take part in forming the government and bringing it to its swearing-in.
“The rule is simple,” he added. “If you are prepared to sign on to the four principles I have set out, you are potential partners in a national emergency government under my leadership.”
Throughout his campaign, and particularly since the Oct. 27 election, Eisenkot has emphasized these four principles as the basis for forming the next government. But what are they exactly? And who, out of the other 11 parties, will be able to accept them and join his coalition?
1) Recognition of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
Eisenkot wants to define his coalition as a government that is committed to Israel’s Jewish national identity and to democracy, not simply an alliance united by opposition to Netanyahu.
Any party wanting to join must accept Israel’s identity as the national home of the Jewish people first. The requirement has historically been contentious for Israel’s two Arab parties, who represent 19 Knesset members.
Parties must also accept the country’s democratic institutions, which uphold equality and rights for all citizens and prioritize the rule of law.
This means parties, such as the far-right and the ultra-Orthodox, that, as members of the outgoing government, have been pushing to overhaul the country’s judiciary – a key institution in Israel’s system of democratic checks and balances – might think twice about joining.
2) Acceptance of the values of the Declaration of Independence.
Israel’s Declaration of Independence, proclaimed and signed on May 14, 1948, is a foundational document that has helped shape the country’s constitutional principles, although Israel does not have a single, formal written constitution.
In it, the signatories laid out their vision for Israel, including the historical ties the Jewish people have to the land of Israel and its place as a safe haven for Jews around the world who are in trouble.
For Eisenkot, the emphasis appears to be on one particular section that declares: “The State of Israel will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens, irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; and it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
By embracing the Declaration of Independence, Eisenkot is recognizing the place of Israel’s minority groups, highlighting their “full and equal citizenship.” A point mentioned twice in the declaration.
The declaration also reaffirms that Israel is a country seeking peace, rather than endless conflict, at a time when Netanyahu has recently been criticized over his handling of the country’s wars on multiple fronts.
3) Mandatory service for all — military, national, and civilian, to strengthen the IDF and expand its ranks.
Including this condition for joining the government is a direct message to the ultra-Orthodox parties, at least one of which is considering supporting Eisenkot’s coalition.
United Torah Judaism, which has been aligned closely with Netanyahu’s bloc for at least the past two decades, on Thursday refused to recommend the prime minister as Israel’s next leader. Instead, the party, which holds seven seats, abstained from recommending any candidate.
Both UTJ and the second ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, have resisted efforts that would include ultra-Orthodox young men studying in yeshiva under a universal draft law requiring all eligible Israelis to perform military service.
Previous exemption laws have expired, and Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s blanket exemption of yeshiva students from military service has no legal basis and violates principles of equality before the law.
By including this condition, Eisenkot is telling the ultra-Orthodox – and even the Arab community, most of whose members are also exempt from mandatory military service – that everyone in Israel must do their part, whether through military service or some type of national or community service.
This stipulation could either keep the ultra-Orthodox out of the government, even though Eisenkot’s partners have expressed willingness to allow their participation. Or it could force them to be more flexible on an issue that until now they have appeared unrelenting.
4) Recognition of Hamas as a terrorist organization and commitment to dismantling its military and governing power.
Leaders of the two Arab parties, the Islamist Ra’am Party and the more nationalist Joint List, have refused to make this statement out loud.
Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas, who has repeatedly condemned the Oct. 7 attack, has said he does have a clear position on this but refuses to state it publicly for several reasons ranging from concerns about his personal safety to his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Hamas is also affiliated. He has also questioned why Arab politicians are required to pass loyalty tests that are not applied equally to Jewish politicians.
When President Herzog pressed him on the matter last week, Abbas said: “I have an unequivocal answer, but leave me space to be a bridge. To also influence the other side.” He argued that maintaining channels of communication with Palestinians requires him not to adopt language that would immediately alienate them.
For the Joint List, the continued refusal to call Hamas a terror group appears to reflect the view that Hamas is part of the broader Palestinian political movement. Some of its members argue that labeling it a terrorist organization risks delegitimizing Palestinian political aspirations as a whole.
Members of the 11-member faction have condemned the Oct. 7 massacre, but are unlikely to accept this particular condition because it could be used to justify Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and the West Bank. Its leaders also want to preserve their credibility among Palestinian voters, many of whom see the conflict through the lens of occupation and Palestinian national rights.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Explainer: Gadi Eisenkot’s four conditions for forming Israel’s next government appeared first on The Forward.
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Photos: Pro-Israel counter-protesters overwhelm anti-Zionist bike rally in Philadelphia, where police arrest 3
Hundreds of pro-Israel counter-protesters gathered around Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square Sunday morning ahead of a bike rally targeting six Jewish-owned restaurants. There were about 300 anti-Zionist protesters and about 200 pro-Israel counterprotesters, police estimated. Rally organizers said the timing — just before the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Nazis attacked Jewish shops and homes — was coincidental.
Three people were arrested Sunday, according to police. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, said a few hours after the crowd had dispersed, “In the midst of blatant antisemitic targeting of Jewish-owned restaurants on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the City of Brotherly Love showed up to support our neighborhood businesses and prove once again that hate has no place in our Commonwealth.”
The post Photos: Pro-Israel counter-protesters overwhelm anti-Zionist bike rally in Philadelphia, where police arrest 3 appeared first on The Forward.
