ThoseControversy in Geneva
The cicad, in the heart of accusations of all -round censorship
No cicad subsidy, pleads a director, because she would seek to silence the criticism of Israel. Beware of Boomerang’s return, warns an elected official. Controversy.
Each year, inter -community coordination against anti -Semitism and defamation (CICAD) publishes a report on anti -Semitism in French -speaking Switzerland.
TDG
- Dominique Ziegler criticizes the Cicad a confusion between anti -Semitism and criticism of Israel.
- The organization should therefore no longer receive public money, he said in a letter of readers.
- The elected Plr Michèle Roullet said she was shocked, believing that this intolerance could turn against the aid to the director.
- Cultural actors denounce an unprecedented intimidation, which the elected official refutes.
Against the background of destruction of Gaza, yet another controversy swelled in Geneva, following two readers of readers published on 16, then July 25 in the “Tribune de Genève”.
In the first, Dominique Ziegler pleads so that the city of Geneva cuts the annual subsidy of 100,000 francs paid to the CICAD. The author and director criticizes the French -speaking organization against anti -Semitism “to assimilate those who demonstrate against the policy of Israel to anti -Semites”. In question, “the questionable amalgamation between Judaism and Zionism”. And therefore between anti -Zionism and anti -Semitism.
Shocked, the municipal councilor PLR in town of Geneva, Michèle Roulletthen wrote to the “gallery” to underline the “essential and fundamental work” of the cicad. “With Dominique Ziegler, we understand that the one who emits disturbing or questionable remarks is assigned to be silent.” And to warn the founder of the company Les Associés de l’Ombre, “who received significant punctual subsidies”, that he was likely to “undergo the boomerang effects of his intolerance”. Some citizens could request that the director no longer receive aid, specifies the elected official.
“Public intimidation”
“This is the first time in my whole life that I have seen in Geneva such a determined attack on a cultural actor with public intimidation at the end,” reacted on social networks Genevois José Lillo. Words that have not been taken lightly: the “threat” is brandished by an elected official sitting on the Arts and Culture Commission, insists the theater man, quickly joined by other cultural actors.
“If they want the money from the good bourgeoisie, the artists must close their mouths or sing for Tsahal,” added the writer Quentin Mouron, accusing the elected party of being historically hostile to the Palestinian cause.
These two men of culture also criticize Michèle Roullet for defamed Dominique Ziegler, when she writes that he locked himself “in an extreme left rhetoric at the anti -Semitic hint”; Or when she asks if he wants “the Jews being discreet, small”.
Always on the networks, the former president of the Geneva PLR, the lawyer Bertrand Reich, recalls that, like himself, other members of his party support the recognition of a Palestinian state. He also believes that Michèle Roullet’s words do not engage in her own own.
Lesson
But basically, he gives him reason to “highlight the fact that freedom of speech and thought cannot be asymmetrical: if we can cut the subsidy of an association because his speech disturbs, then we must accept that an artist undergoes the same treatment”. But he concludes that he will always fight against censorship.
In “Le Temps”, Michèle Roullet denies any desire to cut food to Dominique Ziegler. She claims to have only wanted to give him a lesson by reversing her speech.
A “rhetorical threat […] Unhappy, “comments, still in” Le Temps “, the head of culture in the city, the socialist Joëlle Bertossa. Before reassuring: subsidies to artists do not depend on municipal councilors, but on a window of external experts, which rules on the artistic qualities of projects and not on their political scope.
As for the secretary general of the cicad, Johanne Gurfinkiel, he refutes that his organization confuses criticism of Israel and anti -Semitism. According to him, Dominique Ziegler, and others, seeks to delegitimize the cicad, because she refuses to “silence the reality of anti-Semitism when he is adorned with a political or humanist varnish”.
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