Jerusalem Post journalist Benjamin Weinthal, who has thankfully returned to regular blogging, just posted about a potentially significant, albeit somewhat counter-intuitive, development on the German left. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) leadership is much more hostile to Israel and much more sympathetic to Iran than is the party’s youth organization Jusos. That’s the opposite of what you usually get when you juxtapose party elders with young European political activists, and the dynamic is increasingly fueling talk of a generation gap.
Earlier this month, SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel, who hopes one day to be chancellor and might very well succeed, triggered a controversy by slamming Israel for “apartheid.” The statement was hailed as “courageous” by the Palestinians but drew a strong rebuke from Jusos’s Berlin chapter, which called on him to distance himself from the remarks and insisted that there is “in no way a justification” for the accusation.
