Jositsch is right: the SP has abandoned humanism

For secularists and Jews like Daniel Jositsch, the SP is increasingly becoming a no-go area. It is only logical that they turn their backs on the party.

by Kacem El Ghazzali

When Daniel Jositsch, himself Jewish, voted in parliament in 2024 against the continued funding of the Palestinian relief organization UNRWA, he did not do so on the basis of vague suspicions, but in the face of overwhelming facts. It was not just about those UNRWA employees who actively participated in the pogrom of October 7. It was about an organization that is structurally permeated by Hamas: about the terrorists’ command centers and server farms, which were placed directly under the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza, and about an UNRWA education system that not only erases Israel from its maps, but systematically glorifies the cult of martyrdom and sows blind hatred of Jews in its textbooks. Anyone who refuses to provide unconditional funding to such an agency, which has merged with terrorism, is essentially acting in a humanist manner.

However, the Juso Zurich responded by calling for his resignation. In their media release, they did not mention the massacre of October 7 at all. Their co-president, however, accused Jositsch of “justifying a genocide”.

One might argue that the Young Socialists are only the radical youth organization by which the entire party should not be measured. But that is a convenient self-deception. The Juso have long since taken over the parent party structurally and ideologically. The party leadership, embodied by the co-presidium, comes precisely from this milieu. The red line between the Juso’s maximum demands and the official SP party program practically no longer exists.

A party that knows who it (doesn’t) want

The pattern is older than the Jositsch case. By taking this path, the SP is following the global trend of an “anti-imperialist alliance” between parts of the left and Islamists – along the lines of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK or La France Insoumise in France. Over the last two decades, the European left has developed a hierarchy of identities worthy of protection. Muslims are at the top – but only on one condition: that they act as a collective, do not criticize their religion and are managed by left-wing activists as victims of Western hegemony. Secularists of Muslim origin, critics of Islam, enlighteners from the Arab or Iranian context fall through the cracks.

For Jews, on the other hand, the mirror version applies: welcome, as long as you are critical of Israel. No one disputes that harsh, objective criticism of Israeli government policy is absolutely necessary, just as the Israelis themselves mercilessly criticize their own leadership. But legitimate criticism is not expressed by inviting those who legitimize the murder of Israelis into their own parliaments. When Carlo Sommaruga, a member of the SP Council of States from Geneva, offers the radical EU MP and Hamas sympathizer Rima Hassan a stage in the Federal Parliament, this no longer has anything to do with political discourse. Every Jew must inevitably realize that a party that courts such figures has become a political no-go area.

The ideological bias is most evident where the much-vaunted firewall against the right suddenly collapses: namely when this “right” has an Islamic-conservative flavor. The same party that puts friends of Israel under pressure to justify themselves turns a blind eye when Erdogan’s propaganda machine openly and loudly supports a headscarf-wearing SP candidate from Zurich. The bitter reality is that the red carpet is rolled out for Islamists, secularists are pushed to the sidelines and Jews have to watch as the apologists of terror are courted.

Mario Fehr, Chantal Galladé, Daniel Frei, Bernhard Hauser and Daniel Jositsch have long recognized this problem. These names mark only the beginning of a development that will not end any time soon. The ideological cleansing of the SP has long since begun.

Kacem El Ghazzali defends liberal humanism against Islamists in the Orient as well as authoritarian tendencies from the left and right in the West. The Swiss-Moroccan essayist and human rights activist breaks through entrenched thought patterns and embeds debates in a global context.

This article first appeared on Schweizermonat: To the article