Kreutner blasts leading Green politicians as anti-Israel

Head of Swiss Jewish community slams Gaza - Holocaust comparisons and reference to Israel as "an illegal atomic state."

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
BERLIN – The head of Switzerland’s 18,000-member Jewish community, Jonathan Kreutner, told The Jerusalem Post this week that the “highly anti-Israeli” comments made by two leading Green Party parliamentary members in the Swiss National Council were “unacceptable.”
The remarks, which were also criticized in Swiss media reports over the weekend, were made by Daniel Vischer and Geri Müller during interviews conducted by the Swiss branch of the conspiracy Web site “We Are Change” at a “Free Gaza” demonstration in Zurich in January. Footage of the interviews was posted on the site in late April.
Vischer, who is also head of the Swiss-Palestinian society, termed Israel “an illegal atomic state” and a “rogue nation.” His party colleague Geri Müller compared Israel’s Gaza policies to the Holocaust.
Jonathan Kreutner, general-secretary of the Swiss Jewish community,told the Post on Monday that “the statements by the two Green nationalcouncillors are unacceptable in our eyes and highly anti-Israeli.”
“Ofcourse one might ask why two parliamentarians would give an interviewto an organization that was called a conspiracy movement by a Swissnewspaper. The interviewer claimed, for example, that the media arecentralized through the two agencies, AP and Reuters, and that bothcompanies are in the hands of the Rothschild family.
“NationalCouncillor Müller listened to this statement with a smile, but did notreact to it. Further, several times during the interview Müllercompared the Holocaust of the Jews with what was happening inPalestine. We consider it completely grotesque to compare Israel’smilitary actions with the Holocaust,” Kreutner said.