DISPATCHES FROM ALMĀNIYĀ: Islamists have Berlin’s politicians in their grip.

Elif Eralp, the Left Party’s candidate for mayor, won Berlin’s city state election in September. She is now in negotiations to form Berlin’s government. Yet despite her prospective power, she lives in fear of some of her own pro-Palestine supporters.

We know this thanks to a mistake by her press team. An interview transcript containing her internal annotations was accidentally sent to Der Spiegel, along with the authorised version. In the margins, Eralp reminded her staff that she had been advised against naming names in public, and noted that her husband, too, was afraid. ‘What do we do now? Cancel the whole interview?’, she wrote. ‘I should never have agreed to this interview.’

The question that so agitated her concerned Ibrahim Ibrahim, a well-known Palestinian activist who has organised many of Berlin’s anti-Israel demonstrations. He supports the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), whose members took part in the massacre of October 7, and which the EU has designated a terrorist organisation. He has also called former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar a ‘martyr-hero’. Yet none of this stopped Ibrahim from being filmed arm-in-arm with leading Left Party figures at their September election celebration.

Yes, but at least they’re helping keep those nasty right-wingers out of power.

Exit quote: “What better way to embolden radical elements than to let the world know that you are terrified of them?”