May

7

Israel’s 60th

Filed Under In the News, Israel/Jews, Politics, Special Events | 6 Comments

Israel celebrates the 60th year of its founding as a nation this month.

While Israeli President Shimon Peres has invited heads of state, ministers, scientists, philosophers, and artists — among them, US President George Bush, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, former Czech President Vaclav Havel, and former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid — for a three-day conference to mark the Jewish state’s 60th birthday on May 14, Switzerland’s Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has not received an invitation, and has voiced out her disappointment. Apparently, no one from the Swiss government has been invited to Israel’s 60th anniversary celebrations.

According to the news portal Swissinfo.ch, Switzerland will be represented in Israeli’s Diamond Jubilee festivities through its ambassador in Tel Aviv. The slighted Calmy-Rey was quoted by the Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung as saying, “Personally, I am disappointed that our country was not invited at government level.”

The non-invitation may have been caused by Calmy-Rey’s recent visit to Iran to witness the signing of a multi-billion-dollar natural gas supply contract between Swiss company EGL and Iran’s state-owned National Iranian Gas Export Company.

Reports have it that the deal “prompted angry reactions from Jewish groups because Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has often called for the destruction of Israel.” Alfred Donath, president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, said that “by signing the gas deal Switzerland sent the wrong message at the wrong time.”

Calmy-Rey reportedly defended the deal by saying that every state had the right to pursue its economic interests, and that Switzerland was not the only country buying Iranian oil and gas.

The Foreign Minister said that Switzerland, being a neutral state, “talks to everyone.” She added that Switzerland will “continue to condemn breaches of international humanitarian law.”

A minority of Swiss citizens, who are staunch pro-Israel advocates, have often said how Calmy-Rey has compromised the supposedly neutral position of Switzerland by taking sides and not supporting Israel’s right to defend its constituents. “She doesn’t seem to know what she is doing,” said one Swiss businessman, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In March, Switzerland was the only European member of the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council to vote in favor of a resolution condemning Israeli military action in Gaza that resulted in the death of more than 120 Palestinians, many of them civilians. The military raids were prompted by Palestinian militant groups escalating their rocket fire into Israel. (Video courtesy of Aish.com)

Sep

14

Discriminatory System?

Filed Under In the News, Politics | Comments Off

My brother sent me this BBC News link today.

The news article is about the current Swiss citizenship system touted as “discriminatory, and in many respects racist” by an official report made by Switzerland’s Federal Commission on Racial Discrimination. The report, according to BBC News, criticizes the common practice on allowing members of a Swiss community to vote on an individual’s Swiss citizenship application.

It appears that citizenship applications of Muslims and people from the Balkans and Africa are most likely to be rejected. The report cites the case of a disabled man originally from Kosovo. Although fulfilling all the legal criteria, his application for citizenship was rejected by his community on the grounds that his disability made him a burden on taxpayers, and that he was Muslim.

The country is said to have Europe’s toughest naturalization laws. Foreigners are required to live in a Swiss community for at least 12 years before they can apply for citizenship, and being born in Switzerland brings no right to citizenship at all.

The current system requires foreigners to apply through their local town or village. After lodging their application, they appear before a citizenship committee and answer questions about their desire to be Swiss. After that, they must often be approved by the entire voting community, in a secret ballot or a show of hands. The report cites that this is particularly likely to be “distorted by racial discrimination.”

The report of the Federal Commission on Racial Discrimination recommends that decisions on citizenship should be decided by an elected executive and not by the community as a whole.

But such a move is expected to face stiff opposition, especially from the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, which is currently leading in the opinion polls. The Party asserts that Swiss communities have a democratic right to decide who can or cannot be Swiss. (Photo taken from http://www.gottashzrh.com)

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