After the knife attack on a Jew in Zurich, people in Switzerland also realized that they have a problem with anti-Semitism. Politicians now want to quickly implement an action plan – rather late, many believe.
Anna is standing in line at Ma’adan Bakery, a kosher bakery in the Wiedikon district of Zurich. She only moved here from Jerusalem four years ago. A safe place, she thought – until a few days ago, until the knife attack on an Orthodox Jew on the street in the middle of Zurich.
“I’ve never felt so afraid here,” says Anna. “We always felt protected here, but now I accompany my children to school. I lock myself at home. It’s scary.”
Bakery owner Naftali Beck is also shocked. Like the 50-year-old man who was stabbed just a few hundred meters from the bakery, Beck wears the black clothing typical of Orthodox Jews. “I know him personally, he is a customer of ours.” It is a catastrophe.
Just seemingly peaceful?
It was only with luck that the man survived the knife attack. “I’m here to kill Jews,” the perpetrator, a 15-year-old Swiss with Tunisian roots, is said to have shouted. In a video he confessed to being a supporter of the terrorist organization IS.
A crime of hatred of Jews, a terrorist attack, Beck only knew something like that from other countries, but not in Switzerland. “Yes, there are incidents here and there, people call us out or something like that. But I grew up here and we actually live very, very peacefully here,” he says.
But only apparently peaceful. The anti-Semitic knife attack in Zurich was no surprise to him, says Ronni Guggenheim. Together with others, he founded the Yellow Umbrella organization last October, which has been protesting against anti-Semitism with yellow umbrellas ever since.
The feeling of insecurity began very soon after the terrorist organization Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th. There were very violent demonstrations – “loudly screaming, hate symbols everywhere, graffiti, swastikas in the streets of Zurich.”
Switzerland has a problem
Now police officers are standing in front of Jewish schools and synagogues on Zurich’s streets. A total of 17 Jewish institutions are guarded around the clock. The 15-year-old Islamist attacker is in custody. And Switzerland is slowly becoming aware that it has a problem.
“The hatred against our Jewish fellow citizens, neighbors and friends and racism in general hits at the core of our society, respect, diversity, openness. And it endangers the cohesion of our country,” said Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider from the Social Democratic Party Swiss Parliament.
Police officers stand in front of the synagogue in Zurich to protect them.
A turning point
A few days after the Zurich knife attack, parliament called by a large majority for a “strategy and an action plan against racism and anti-Semitism”. Finally, says Jonathan Kreutner, Secretary General of the Israelite Community Association, the umbrella organization of Jewish organizations in Switzerland. For him, the knife attack in Zurich represents a turning point:
We have actually been calling for such a strategy and plan for two years. At the beginning there was great resistance to this. Now he is broken. After this attack. By October 7th it would perhaps hardly have been possible for us to get a ban on Nazi symbols passed in Switzerland. Today we are close to it. Unfortunately, it took these events for people to wake up in Switzerland. But it’s mostly like that in Switzerland. Wake-up calls like this are needed.
“Anti-Semitism exists everywhere in Switzerland”
How the young attacker became radicalized is now the subject of the investigation. It is clear that he spread Islamist-motivated hatred of Jews online. But anti-Semitism exists everywhere in Switzerland, emphasizes Kreutner. In February, for example, a ski rental shop in Davos made headlines with a public notice stating that they would not rent equipment to Jews.
The crime in Zurich was motivated by Islamism, but it is clear: “Anti-Semitism in Switzerland has manifested itself in all milieus in recent decades: right, left, Islamist.” And that is why anti-Semitism is so unpredictable.
Kathrin Hondl, ARD Geneva, tagesschau, March 9, 2024 2:42 p.m