SP offspring: Vera Çelik calls for anti-Israel demonstrations and wants headscarves in the classroom

In May, Vera Ayse Çelik and the group publicly called for participation in an unauthorized pro-Palestine demonstration in Bern – on a Shabbat. “Organized Action” sees violence as a legitimate political tool and sympathizes with the RAF. Çelik is now also calling for teachers in Zurich schools to be allowed to wear headscarves.

The rally on May 25, 2025 escalated: fireworks and paving stones flew, police officers were injured and a fireworks store was looted. The decisive factor, however, was the route. The procession moved towards Bern’s synagogue, masked and noisy. The police had to intervene with water cannons and tear gas to prevent further escalation. “Anyone who marches towards a synagogue with a masked block on a Shabbat is not demonstrating for Palestine – they are sending a signal against Jews,” Audiatur Online put it in a nutshell.

Çelik did not distance herself – neither from the route, nor from the violence, nor from the actors involved. Her call was deleted, nothing more.

The SP’s own values can be put into perspective

Çelik is on the board of the SP Zurich 11, the central secretariat of JUSO Switzerland and the board of “SP Migrant:innen” Switzerland. At the same time, the 19-year-old is running for municipal council for the SP in district 11.

The young woman is politically active: in October, she launched an individual initiative through which Çelik wants to politically anchor the headscarf in public schools. She argues for equal treatment, although numerous secular Muslims(Saïda Keller-Messahli, Kacem El Ghazzali, Ahmad Mansour, Necla Kelek and many more) have conclusively shown for years that the headscarf is an expression of patriarchal control and sexualization of women and has long since become a symbol of political Islam.

The SP and its friends like to dismiss their arguments as anti-Muslim. Gender equality? They only count when it comes to Western women. For everyone else, the values they hold so dear disappear to the back of the queue in the name of cultural relativism. It is precisely this mechanism that reflects the attitude so aptly analyzed by Jan Kapusnak in his latest essay.