Overview
- Andreas Büttner left the party after the Lower Saxony branch backed a resolution rejecting the "today real-existing Zionism" and describing Israel as committing genocide and practicing apartheid.
- Lower Saxony party officials published an amended text stating it targets current political expressions of Zionism and includes a Hamas condemnation, though the original title remained.
- Co-chair Jan van Aken said he regretted Büttner’s exit, called the wording one-sided yet within the party’s opinion corridor, and signaled a new federal motion to refine the line before June.
- Büttner also cited an arson attack on his property in January marked with a Hamas symbol and the party’s slow public response, alongside an ongoing exclusion bid that the Bundesschiedskommission deemed "not unfounded" to review.
- Criticism widened as the Central Council of Jews’ president Josef Schuster and Lower Saxony’s antisemitism commissioner Gerhard Wegner condemned the decision, with senior Linke figures Bodo Ramelow and Jan Korte warning of serious misdirection.