By Alison Weir
Commenting on the recent incarceration and deportation of prominent author Ali Abunimah, Sarah Leah Whitson, former Human Rights Watch official, stated: “Switzerland has shamelessly kowtowed to the pro-Israel lobby by deporting an American citizen because he advocates for Palestinian rights.”
While many Americans are becoming aware of the massive influence of the Israel lobby in the U.S., many are unaware that lobbies on behalf of Israel are also present in other countries. Switzerland is a case in point.
In fact, there is a long history of pro-Israel activism in Switzerland. As the World Jewish Congress points out, Switzerland was the location of the conference that launched the movement that established a Jewish state in Palestine.
“The inaugural congress of the Zionist Organization (which would become the World Zionist Organization (WZO) in 1960) took place in Basel, Switzerland, from August 29 to 31, 1897. Switzerland was also the birthplace of the World Jewish Congress, which held its founding plenary in Geneva from August 8 to 15, 1936.”
As a Swiss author Gabriel Heim states: “Basel was the key location on the road to a Jewish state,” the World Zionist Congress meeting there ten times. When Theodor Herzl was looking for a friendly city that was easily accessible by rail, his friend and collaborator, Zurich lawyer David Farbstein, had suggested Basel.’
“Basel offered a prestigious meeting venue, and the proposed accommodation, the Grand Hotel Trois Rois, was an address that would meet with the approval of cossetted Congress attendees,” Heim writes. “At the end of each session, everyone rose together to sing the Hatikva (The Hope) and wave their hats in the air.”
The movement was successful in 1948, when its war of ethnic cleansing established Israel through the expulsion of approximately 750,000 Palestinian Muslims and Christians to create the Jewish state.
In 2022 the World Zionist Organization, still going strong today, celebrated the 125th anniversary of the first conference with an another event in Basel.
Since that time, a number of organizations have been formed in Switzerland that advocate for Israel. Some have promoted government policies that critics warn interfere with Switzerland’s vaunted tradition of neutrality.
A 2024 article in a Swiss publication, “Is Swiss neutrality being led astray?” reports on efforts to pass legislation naming Hamas a terrorist organization and cutting funding to UNRWA, the UN agency aiding Palestinian refugees. This at a time when many Gaza families were only eating one meal a day with parents often skipping meals to let their children eat instead. Others reported eating animal food and tree leaves out of desperation.
“While many western states, including the United States and the European Union, classify Hamas as a terrorist organisation,” the article points out, “Switzerland has long resisted this approach, allowing it to act as a mediator.”
The article reported that Riccardo Bocco, an emeritus professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute, “attributes the policy shift to a ‘successful’ pro-Israeli lobby within Switzerland, with groups like the Swiss-Israel parliamentary group of friends, the Geneva-based Pro-Israeli UN Watch and NGO Monitor campaigning against UNRWA for years.”
Below are some of the groups that advocate on behalf of Israel. Recently, they’ve worked to cover up Israel’s latest, 15-month slaughter against Gazans, which has killed over 13,000 children, most of them five to nine years old.
A partial list of Israel lobby groups in Switzerland:
Switzerland-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group – According to the Israeli Knesset website, ”Parliamentary friendship groups are important tools for parliaments the world over. Parliaments of various countries use these groups to cooperate, to network, and to organize different activities. Parallel parliamentary friendship groups are established in two parliaments interested in maintaining bilateral relations. A head and members are appointed to each friendship group, and they are charged with leading joint projects, exchanges of knowledge and expertise, and reciprocal visits as well as with promoting the common interests of both states.”
The group organizes a trip to Israel every year that includes meetings with military personnel, politicians from the far-right Likud party, and visits to Israeli settlements. In 2022 Knesset members in Switzerland for the WZO celebration met with Swiss parliament member Erich von Siebenthal, chair of the Switzerland-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group. They discussed the potential for strengthening the relations between the countries, the negotiations on a new nuclear agreement with Iran, and other issues. The founder of the Israeli organization NGO Monitor, Gerald Steinberg, sometimes influences their actions. (More on this below.)
UN Watch – Professor and author David Miller calls UN Watch “a Zionist asset masquerading as an ‘independent’ Swiss NGO.” Miller states that UN Watch, based in Geneva, is a front for the American Jewish Committee, an active part of the Israel lobby with a budget of $88 million. While AJC originally stated that UN Watch’s main focus was ‘on monitoring the continuing discriminatory treatment of Israel in the UN system, it has since obscured this mission. UN Watch has waged several campaigns against UN officials critical of Israel. For example, in 2003 it lobbied against UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen for his statement that Jenin refugee camp “residents lived through a human catastrophe that has few parallels in recent history”. Human Rights Watch and others documented that Israel had committed war crimes in Jenin.
NGO Monitor – NGO Monitor is an Israeli organization founded in 2007 to police civil society in Israel. It also focuses on rebutting criticism of Israel by international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper reports that it “is a partisan operation that suppresses its perceived ideological adversaries through the sophisticated use of McCarthyite techniques – blacklisting, guilt by association and selective filtering of facts.”
As mentioned above, it works to influence Swiss actions. For example, it was accused of being behind Switzerland’s 2023 defunding of Palestinian and Israeli peace groups. A Swiss news broadcast reported: “NGO Monitor has been lobbying federal parliamentarians of the Swiss-Israel Friendship Group for many years. Its reports have served as the basis for several interventions in the Federal Chambers in an attempt to end all or part of Swiss cooperation with NGOs active in the Middle East.
“The FDFA’s decision to suspend eleven NGOs [Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups] was hailed as a ‘major breakthrough’ by NGO Monitor, which also boasted of having recently been able to meet with Swiss officials.”
Gesellschaft Schweiz-Israel (GIS) [Switzerland-Israel Society] is a non-political and non-religious organization that aims to strengthen relations between Israel and Switzerland. The GIS was founded in 1957. The GSI has called on the Federal Council to outlaw Hamas. Its president, ambitious Swiss politician Corina Eichenberger-Walther, is also president of the European Alliance for Israel, formed in 2015. A Christian, like many of its members, Eichenberger-Walther is also connected to a lobby organization for the arms industry.
In May GSI’s partner organization in Israel, the Swiss-Israel Society, sent an email to its roughly 2,000 members calling on them to spy on “opponents of Israel.” In the email Walter L. Blum, the central secretary of the society, called for “opposing actors to be systematically monitored.”
The Audiatur Foundation – Its website announces that it “stands for an open commitment to the State of Israel”. (A related website is here.) At one point its head, Alfred Heer, initiated a pro-Israel campaign to take down a distinguished Swiss diplomat and public servant disliked by the lobby.
NAIN (Never Again Is Now) Switzerland – NAIN announces that it “defends Israel against anti-Zionist agendas.” It seems to have been started sometime in the summer of 2024. It recently highlighted Abunimah’s arrest, reposting a statement calling Abunimah “an Islamist Jew-hater”. In reality, Abunimah is the author of a book that proposes a one-state solution in which Palestinians and Jews would live in peace with equal rights.
The Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities (SIG) – SIG is one of the largest members of the lobby. It is the umbrella organisation of Swiss Jews and is the Swiss affiliate of the World Jewish Congress. It states that it “maintains a close sense of connection to Israel and to Jews worldwide. This sense of connection is important and is specifically stated in the SIG’s Articles of Association. As basic maxims, the SIG also recognises the inviolability of Israel’s right of existence and the state of Israel’s Jewish nature.” The organization states that it “maintains an ongoing dialogue with Swiss political bodies and the Swiss federal authorities.” Its first president, 1904 – 1914, was Hermann Guggenheim, of the famed famed Guggenheim family. SIG has affiliated groups throughout the country.
The European Leadership Network (ELNET) – ELNET “is a non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening relations between Europe and Israel” that operates across Europe and the UK.; ELNET DACH covers Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
The man behind ELNET, Raanan Eliaz, previously served on the National Security Council of Israel, AIPAC in Washington, D.C., and the European Friends of Israel in Brussels. In the first 7 months after Tel Aviv launched its genocidal war against Gaza, ELNET arranged over 20 trips sending nearly 300 parliamentarians from the EU and the UK to Israel. ELNET says these trips turned the participants around on Israel, to then support measures on its behalf.
Ali Abunimah’s organization published an article exposing ELNET, which may not have gone unnoticed.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) – In some respects, this once venerable Swiss publication can be seen as another pro-Israel asset. It published a report maligning Ali Abunimah and often exhibits a pro-Israel tilt in its articles. NZZ’s editor in chief, Eric Martin Gujer, is an Israel partisan whose writing was included in a book by Gary J. Schmitt, the former director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). (Schmidt was also secretary of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, connected to the Emergency Committee for Israel.)
Gujer, who had lived in Israel for three years as the publication’s correspondent there, is reported to have an “instinctive partisanship for a so-called Israeli standpoint, against any connection between the Palestinian conflict and the decolonization of the world.” When Gujer took over, he initiated a purge of the venerable institution.
The Swiss newspaper WOZ reports that the staff “is currently being replaced. In just two and a half years, around half of the domestic editorial team has left the newspaper, and the same applies to the arts section. Some of the personnel changes are retirements, but the majority are layoffs or resignations by employees. The last high-profile dismissal in the arts section was that of Uwe Justus Wenzel, who was responsible for the humanities for more than twenty years; from the domestic editorial team, Simon Gemperli, who was responsible for foreign and European policy, among other things, resigned. He was one of the first to warn about the SVP’s enforcement initiative.”
Some people push back against the Lobby
It’s essential to remember that while some of the above groups may imply they represent all Jewish citizens of Switzerland, the fact is that many oppose the lobby, some joining demonstrations to demand a “just peace in Israel/Palestine”.
Former President Ruth Dreifuss is a notable example.
Dreifuss, who is Jewish, condemned the action discussed above by the Swiss government to freeze funding for Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups. She noted: “Where else in the world other than in the Middle East have so many people been campaigning for peace and human rights in such a tense situation for so long and with concrete activities?” Drefuss said the commitment of the organizations gives her hope for a solution.
Dreifuss emphasized that there must be a solution: “Be it with two states or with one state in which all people can live together in mutual respect for their diversity,”
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel. See her presentation on the issue here.
Some quotes in the article came through Google Translate.
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