A Swiss “expert” tries to trivialize the extremist Muslim Brotherhood and is met with little protest from politicians. It’s a Mr. Willi that we’re talking about here. He appears in a discussion program on SRF as an expert from the private „Middle East Institute Switzerland“ in Geneva, which he directs. The topic was “Terror and war in the Middle East: What does Switzerland have to do?” A central question in the episode is whether Hamas is a terrorist organization that needs to be banned. “Hamas,” Willi explains to the Swiss audience, “according to its own charter from 2017, is a Palestinian national and Islamic liberation and resistance movement.” “Parts” of this Islamist movement have “terrorist elements, but it is difficult to classify them as a terrorist organization as a whole to classify. It was democratically elected in 2006, has many, including secular and liberal, supporters, and takes care of garbage collection, hospitals and schools.” The TV talk also includes well-known politicians from the major parties in Switzerland, neither they nor the moderator questions the statements by the expert.
There were also no protests when Willi blamed only the military wing of Hamas for the terrorist attack on October 7, or when he declared that Hamas had moderated itself between 1988 and 2017 and was actually prepared to accept Israel’s 1967 borders , even if at the same time it calls for the destruction of the “Zionist” state.
However, one viewer of the program found Willi’s comments so out of place that he filed a complaint with the ombudsman’s office of SRG German-speaking Switzerland. The SRG ombudsman is not known for handing out reprimands carelessly. But in this case, they recently proved the viewer right in key points. Willi trivialized Hamas several times and was rightly perceived as an “advocate” for the Islamists. There is no evidence that Hamas has moderated itself – and it is also not true that it accepts Israel’s 1967 borders.
In reality, Hamas published policy documents in 1988 and 2017 that differ at least in tone. A text from 1988 is riddled with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and calls for murder. It says: “The hour will come when the Muslims will fight against the Jews and kill them until the Jews hide behind stones and trees. But the trees and stones will say: ‘O Muslim, O servant of Allah, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him!’” The Hamas charter of 2017, on the other hand, dispenses with such calls. Instead, the Islamists cite fashionable words such as colonialism, discrimination and oppression. Hamas even officially condemns aggression. In principle, however, it maintains that Israel must be destroyed because the land belongs to the Palestinians and, above all, to the Muslims. The 1967 borders are mentioned. But they are only accepted insofar as a Palestinian state is to be established on the then and current Israeli territory, “from the Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean.”
How does an expert come to relativize the radicalism of Hamas in one of Switzerland’s most important political programs? Willi studied in Zurich and Oxford and wrote his doctor thesis on the Muslim Brotherhood there. The Middle East Institute Switzerland, which he founded in Geneva in 2021, is dedicated to advising governments, companies and international organizations interested in the Middle East and North Africa. The private think tank’s website lists 18 employees. Two of them worked for al-Jazeera, which sympathizes with Hamas. Another employee published an article in which he appealed for understanding for the Hamas financier Qatar (title: “Condemning Qatar is counterproductive”). Posts on social media suggest a more “Israel-critical” attitude among employees.
Opinions like those of the self-proclaimed expert are increasingly being heard in statements from people who want to put the extremist and Islamist tendencies within the Muslim Brotherhood into perspective. They sow doubts about the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot Hamas. In Willis’ doctoral thesis, he does not sufficiently emphasize the central role of hatred of Jews in the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. Rather, he makes a genuine effort to bring Western critics of the Muslim Brotherhood closer to populists and conspiracy theorists. In 2021, he wrote in an article for a German magazine that “supporters of the right-wing conservative, identitarian spectrum” in particular considered the Muslim Brotherhood to be dangerous. The brothers, on the other hand, see parts of the “western liberal” world as actual democrats who are comparable to the conservative German party CDU. Ultimately, the German party “emerged from right-wing social conservatism” before “moderating” itself through integration into the institutions. Willi points out that Hamas has “absolutely terrorist elements,” especially in the Al-Qassam Brigades. But he refrains from clarifying what Hamas means by “liberation.” Its actions and statements are of the most brutal clarity – even when it takes care of waste disposal. And the trivialization of the Muslim Brotherhood as the main ideology of an Islam that not only wants to destroy Jews, but also wishes death to homosexuals and places Sharia law above state laws in a secular community – that this has a place in a TV show in Europe is more than questionable.
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