Swiss Govt Report Warns Of
'Violent Extremism' By Jews
By Ian Traynor
Central Europe Correspondent
The Guardian - UK
1-5-5
Switzerland's small Jewish community is in uproar over a
government report which describes some Jewish youth as armed radicals and
talks of the possibility of "violent extremism" by some Swiss Jews.
The country's main Jewish organisation is calling for the
contentious passages to be cut from the report and for a meeting with the
justice minister, a Swiss nationalist, to demand an explanation for the
allegations which it denounces as "false," "outrageous," and "perhaps made
in bad will".
But of course
The deputy head of the domestic intelligence service
has had to apologise (For
fear of the jews) for its report and order the deletion of references
to some Jewish students in Geneva as armed radicals.
But Swiss Jewish leaders remain angry that the amended
version of the annual report from the Swiss domestic intelligence service,
on the risks of political violence and extremism, retains claims that
"violent anti-semitic acts could lead to vigilantism and violent Jewish
extremism".
The original report released last August said: "Jewish
political extremism manifests itself in the conduct of associations fighting
for the Zionist cause." It singled out an association of Jewish students in
Geneva.
"Some of the young members are armed. They belong to a
security agency and attend every event in the Jewish community. At the
moment there is no evidence of links between these groups and the Kahane-Hai
terror group."
These claims stoked fury among the small Jewish community
of around 18,000 in a country of almost 8 million. The passage was deleted
and an apology made.
Alfred Donath, president of the Federation of Swiss
Jewish Communities, is demanding, however, that all references to alleged
Jewish extremism in Switzerland be dropped.
"Jews in Switzerland are outraged," he told the Zurich
newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung. "There is no Jewish extremism here ... the
accusation of extremism is utterly false." Mr Donath said synagogues and
other Jewish institutions had private armed security guards posted around
them "here and there, because regrettably the state is unable to guarantee
our safety ... it is completely legal".
Mr Donath and other community leaders are expecting to
meet the justice minister, Christoph Blocher, in a fortnight to demand an
explanation and to urge him to have the report revised for the second time.
Mr Blocher is the leader of the nationalist Swiss
People's party, which campaigns on an anti-immigration platform.
While Mr Donath said there had been no let-up in anti-semitism
in Switzerland in recent times, he was sanguine about the dangers of anti-semitism
from Switzerland's Muslim minority. "Of course, it wasn't Islam that caused
the Shoah [Holocaust]," he noted.
Relations between the Swiss majority and its Jewish
community have seldom been easy, but came under greater strain as a result
of the dripfeed of revelations in the 1990s over how the Swiss establishment
profited from handling and processing the plunder of Jews in Nazi Germany
and the Swiss reluctance to own up to the misdeeds.
