Halpern: No longer neutral

I'm thinking

by Micah D. Halpern

For years we were told that Switzerland was an impartial country. And we believed it. But as the Swiss façade of impartiality fades away we see the Swiss for whom and what they really are.

The Swiss are neither impartial nor fair-minded.

Switzerland’s obsession to remain neutral during the Holocaust, their refusal to take a stand against the Nazi murder machine, was simply an excuse. Their benign neglect allowed murderers and anti-Semites to carry on with their plans. Refusing to take a stand meant refusing to do the right thing. Refusing to take a stand against evil is tantamount to accepting evil. And that type of behavior is, was and always will be abhorrent.

Despite the multiple languages spoken in Switzerland and the casual border hopping with neighboring countries, the Swiss still do not put out the welcome mat for strangers. Strangers are anyone who is different and that includes Muslims.

The seven million Swiss people who live in Switzerland are host to 300,000 Muslims. Those seven million people just passed a referendum outlawing the building of minarets on mosques. It was the people themselves who passed the referendum, not the lawmakers. When it was proposed in parliament, the Swiss Government said that the law was unconstitutional and voted it down. Undeterred, the largest party in Switzerland, the Swiss People’s Party, joined with the Federal Democratic Union and took the law to the people. The referendum passed overwhelmingly.

Across Western Europe people countries fear the Islamification of their nations. They fear that the countries they know and loved will be overrun by Muslims and completely transformed. In that, Switzerland is no different than France or Spain or Italy. Impartiality does not make Switzerland any less xenophobic or fearful.

There are only four mosques with minarets in all of Switzerland and the vast majority of the Muslims are from European countries, from Bosnia and Kosovo and Croatia. So why the referendum?

Switzerland has begun to re-think the need to be impartial. The Swiss are finally realizing that some issues are too important and that standing on the sidelines can be crippling. And the Swiss are re-affirming just how traditional and closed a society they are and how they want to remain that way.

Right now, the Swiss are concerned with Muslim appearances, but rest assured the Jewish issues have not gone away; Jews are also in the crosshairs of European nationalist parties. Orthodox Jews wear caps and hats in public in Switzerland so as not to be so obvious. That’s one way to appease the sensitive Swiss. But never forget that during the Holocaust it was official Swiss policy to hand over those Jews who illegally crossed the border into Switzerland to the Nazi regime. And to this day the official policy of Swiss bank accounts is to require death certificates in order for family members to claim accounts.

Death certificates were not handed out in Birkenau.

Micah D. Halpern is a columnist and a social and political commentator. Read his latest book THUGS. He maintains The Micah Report at www.micahhalpern.com