Hostage-taking in Sweden

Kidnapping as a political weapon makes the transition from the Arab mindset to Sweden.

Kidnapping, the taking of hostages for personal and/or political gain, has now made its triumphant entry into Sweden’s finest salons.

Hostage-taking is no longer the exclusive preserve of fanatical Islamist groups with a fearsome political agenda or of psychotically violent Taliban worshippers in Peshawar, Ramallah, Beirut, Baghdad or Fort Hood.

Now the disease has spread to Sweden.

Its prime advocate is Sweden’s least diplomatic and most aggressive Foreign Minister in history: Carl Bildt. In August, Swedish extremist left-wing tabloid Aftonbladet published an anti-Semitic article based on unfounded allegations of officially sanctioned Israeli organ trafficking using the bodies of dead Palestinian Arabs. The whole world waited for the Swedish government to follow in the footsteps of Sweden’s ambassador to Israel, Ms Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier, who expressed distaste for the article’s racist content while at the same time supporting the newspaper’s right to publish it – embarrassingly amateurish journalism and infantile writing style are not, after all, illegal in Sweden. Sweden’s Chancellor of Justice Göran Lambertz confirmed there were no legal obstacles to either Carl Bildt or any other senior government representative voicing similar sentiments.

The Swedish government, however, did the exact opposite: Carl Bildt withdrew the ambassador’s statement and refused to comment on the article that made derogatory remarks about Jews. A few weeks later, however, there were very strong government comments in the Swedish media – because the same newspaper had published an article containing derogatory remarks about Muslims.

Carl Bildt was criticised by Israel for his unusually abrupt and – even for him – uncouth behaviour over the Aftonbladet case. In response to Israel, Carl Bildt has now taken Sweden’s foreign policy and its reputation hostage by spearheading an act that in terms of its aggressive intent is unparalleled in Sweden’s history: While Sweden still holds the EU Presidency, Carl Bildt has devoted himself to representing the Islamist rejetionist front, forging ahead in the vanguard of a movement to alter the status of Israel’s capital Jerusalem and formally give it to a non-existent state, “Palestine”.

By forcing through an EU decision on this matter, he is adopting a long-term strategy to create the legal foundation for international military action against the Jewish state. It is an act of unparalleled aggression that will have far-reaching consequences for Sweden’s reputation abroad – and will crush any hope of peace in the Middle East.

Carl Bildt is an embarrassing burden for Sweden. Voices in the Foreign Office mutter about his autocratic style and his constant efforts to put himself rather than Sweden’s interests or reputation in focus. No wonder then that several political parties are making huge gains in the run-up to national elections in autumn 2010 – on both the fanatical Left and extremist Right fringes and at the expense of the mainstream political establishment.

Carl Bildt is using the Foreign Office as his own private extortion organisation. He has kidnapped Sweden and is holding Swedish foreign policy hostage while he pursues his own private vendetta against the Jewish state.

The dangers of letting the lunatics run the asylum

A professional in the foreign ministry.

In Spain.

While it’s still amateur hour in Sweden.

"The foreign minister, while maintaining the most absolute respect for freedom of expression, regrets that space was given to a historian who denies one of the biggest tragedies for humanity in modern history … These types of statements deeply hurt the Jewish people."

That’s how a professional – and a humane individual – gets the job done at the foreign ministry. The above statement is from a spokesman for Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, who responded to the publication in Spanish newspaper El Mundo of anti-Semitic ramblings by notorious Holocaust denier David Irving.

Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, meantime, is sticking to his guns and maintaining that he cannot comment on an anti-Semitic article by Swedish far-Left tabloid Aftonbladet which accused Israelis and Jews of indulging in systematic organ trafficking.

Two foreign ministers in two European countries. And two so very different responses to the same disease. The Spaniard correctly diagnoses the disease – always a good start to treating it. The Swede doesn’t even want to talk about it. Not much chance of a cure, then.

And the controversy continues. After insulting Israel by withdrawing the Swedish ambassador’s acknowledgement of Israel’s hurt feelings, and then compounding the insult by claiming Swedish law prevents him from commenting on the article (it doesn’t – according to the Swedish Chancellor of Justice), Carl Bildt’s upcoming visit to Israel has now been cancelled. Sweden currently holds the rotating EU presidency so this is a major blow to Bildt’s and Sweden’s credibility in the international arena.

Perhaps Israel is being unfairly harsh on Sweden. After all, Bildt is consistent: he has not said a word about kidnapped Israeli Gilad Schalit, even though Sweden, the second-largest per capita contributor to Palestinian Arab welfare, has it within its power to condition its continued massive injection of cash into Gaza on the release of Schalit – the only Jew in a Gaza Strip that has otherwise been ethnically cleansed of all other Jews.

Bildt has consistently stayed silent on the issue of the Jewish hostage in the Middle. He’s consistently paid out a hundred million dollars a year from Swedish state coffers to the people who indulge in this human trafficking. Now he’s being consistently silent on the issue of anti-Semitic articles in a newspaper in his own country.

Carl Bildt is nothing if not consistent. The strong silent Swede. Except, that is, in his criticism of Israel, when he exhibits a rather more talkative side to his character. In January this year he levelled bitter criticism of Israel’s military action in the Gaza Strip, but refrained from commenting on the seven years of bombardment by 10,000 missiles from Gaza on Israeli homes that preceded that action.

Selective silence. It seems to be a peculiarly Swedish malady.

Luckily for us, the Spaniards know a thing or two about democratic process, freedom of expression, historical precedent and simple humanity.

Miguel Moratinos should consider taking some time out from his duties as foreign minister to teach his Swedish colleague the basics of the job.

Carl Bildt has a lot to learn.

JPost, Haaretz, Haaretz2, TundraTabloids,

Convoluted Swedish politics impacting the Israeli political scene

Dusted-off Swedish politician and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is mixing it up in Israel. He's where he best likes to be - under the spotlight.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt recently addressed the Herzliya Conference and, speaking to journalists on the subject of Iran, said:

“A military option doesn’t exist. You can only delay” Iran’s nuclear armament through military means (“Ya’alon: Crisis Management, Not Peace”, Jerusalem Post, Jan 22).

While this writer does not necessarily advocate a military option to combat Iran’s increasingly strident and racist stance on Israel, this is not a surprising statement on the part of the Swedish Foreign Minister.

A discredited politician
Carl Bildt is a member of the Conservative party and is in many eyes a largely discredited and discarded politician on account of several rather dubious financial dealings over the years. His appointment as Foreign Minister when the centre-right coalition came to power surprised many – apparently including himself (“On Friday I was appointed Foreign Minister of Sweden in a move that was widely seen as somewhat surprising. And in many ways it was.” Carl Bildt’s blog, October 07, 2006).

Swedish politics at play
Apart from Carl Bildt’s rather abrasive comments on Israel over the years (he calls Israel’s drive to stop Palestinian firing of Kassam rockets “indiscriminate killings”), perhaps stemming from personal antipathy towards the Jewish state, one needs also to look at his comments against the backdrop of a variety of less visible considerations.

Perhaps foremost among these driving forces is that Bildt put a lot of faith in and staked his personal reputation on the success of the Oslo Accords. That process has now been killed and buried. Killed by Arafat who on the verge of receiving what he always purported to want – an independent Palestinian state – baulked at the realization that it would also mean something which for him invoked the utmost revulsion: recognition of a Jewish state as his neighbor. And buried by the Palestinian intifada and its deliberate murder of innocent civilians as a means of achieving political and geostrategic aims. Carl Bildt needs desperately to salvage his name. Oslo failed him, Arafat failed him, now he wants to rehabilitate his name on the Iran-Israel seam line. It is Israel that is the stage for his personal brand-name marketing campaign.

A wider backdrop
Carl Bildt may be Sweden’s Foreign Minister, but his words and actions need also to be seen against the wider backdrop of pressing domestic issues rather closer to home. Bildt’s Conservative-led coalition is not doing very well in the popularity stakes. Sweden’s Jewish minority has been in the country for almost 300 years and numbers about 20,000. The country’s Muslim minority has lived in Sweden for 30-40 years and already exceeds 400,000. Bildt and his party need votes. Principles and ethics aside, a politician is in the game of politics to do just that – stay in the game. Failure to mouth words and express sentiments that will fall in fertile soil would see that possibility evaporate. Exit Bildt. But Carl Bildt, startlingly resurrected from the sidelines, has no intention of sidling off the world stage once again.

"Kill the Jews" is merely lively public discourse in Sweden
Carl Bildt is a Swede. Just two years ago Swedish Chancellor of Justice Göran Lambertz took the unprecedented step of interfering in an ongoing police investigation and directed the courts to drop a preliminary hearing. In a sermon at the Grand Mosque in Stockholm, the imam exhorted his followers to “kill the Jews”. Not even in Sweden is racism allowed. Nor is incitement to murder ratified by law. There were audio tapes to verify the imam’s fiery statements. The Swedish Chancellor of Justice, however, directed the prosecutor to drop the case with the motivation that such statements “should be judged differently – and therefore be regarded as permissible – because they were used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict”.

Swedish Jews are thus expected to live with calls for their death owing to an ongoing conflict on a different continent more than 3000 kilometers away. There are all sorts of theories regarding what motivated Lambertz’s remarkable departure from protocol – fear of a Muslim backlash, a well-intentioned but poorly executed attempt to defuse a potentially violent situation, latent anti-Semitism – but Carl Bildt was not in government at the time. He is, however, a product of the same background.

There may well be many Israelis who are grateful that a faraway country like Sweden should take an interest in its demographic well-being and strategic survival. There may also be many other Israelis who, upon examining Sweden’s record on immigration, absorption and integration, might well ask what Sweden could possibly teach Israel. Sweden has since the end of the Second World War accepted many different groups of immigrants. Some were survivors of Hitler’s death camps, some were political activists fleeing repression and death at the hands of despotic regimes, and many others were asylum-seekers looking to escape political strife in which they were not personally involved but which nevertheless placed their lives in jeopardy.

New demographics
The largest single group of immigrants – and it is not a homogeneous ethnic group by any means – represents a massive influx of Muslims over the past 30 or so years. While all previous waves of immigrants took to their new country and integrated quickly and smoothly into the fabric of their new society, these more recent immigrants have remained apart, isolated, literally a foreign body within the country. Sweden is of course not exceptional in this regard; France, Britain, the Netherlands and Germany, for instance, all echo this same pattern. While it is both impossible and wrong to make generalizations about any ethnic group, it is safe to say that these immigrants – disenchanted, separate, many of them unemployed and, they claim, unemployable owing to unofficial discrimination, semi-lingual in two half languages instead of bi-lingual in two – these immigrants have totally failed to integrate, to identify themselves with their new country. The number of parabolic antennae pointing east is perhaps an indication of their affiliations and interests.

None of this is remarkable in the Europe of today, perhaps, but bearing in mind the failed state of Sweden’s immigration and absorption program, it is scarcely likely that Israel can benefit much from listening to Carl Bildt on how best Israel should come to terms with its own indigenous (and often very intractable) Muslim minority and the highly aggressive Muslim nations surrounding Israel. While it is naturally incumbent upon the host nation to listen politely when a visiting Foreign Minister speaks, Israel may well conclude there is not much need to make extensive notes of his Herzliya Conference speech.

Tiptoe on Iran - or else...
Of course, Carl Bildt does have to tread warily whenever he tackles the Iranian issue. A large proportion of the Iranian asylum-seekers living in Sweden want no truck with the mullahs of Teheran. Among the foremost reasons they have fled their home country are religious-inspired persecution and Iran’s failing economy. This latter is due in no small measure to Iran’s hugely costly drive towards nuclear capability which, according to many observers, also embraces nuclear weapons. Any hairdressing salon or pizzeria in the city of Gothenburg where this writer lives will probably be run by an Iranian – one who has sought and is grateful for Swedish refuge.

Yet the weekly flights to Teheran are packed – these are supposed to be terrified asylum-seekers, remember – and first-hand accounts relate that on almost every flight there are fit, burly young Iranian men sporting crew-cuts and neatly trimmed moustaches who disembark not from the front of the aircraft like the rest of the passengers but from the rear, and that they are not seen again in passport control or in the luggage terminal. Iran’s covert activities in Sweden are a major worry for Carl Bildt and most Swedes. And rightly so, the regime has never failed to bomb its critics into submission even as far afield as London and Buenos Aires. Carl Bildt does well to handle Iran with kid gloves, he is quite rightly looking after Sweden’s interests. But Israel should not lose sight of where his natural interests lie when he speaks on the subject of Israel and the wider Middle East.

Carl Bildt endorses PM Ehud Olmert and praises Mahmoud Abbas – the former apparently has a 2 percent popularity rating and the latter famously does not even control the streets beyond his compound in Ramallah – as “partners for peace”. This is scarcely surprising. Whatever Prime Minister Olmert’s and Mahmoud Abbas’s sterling qualities may be, “uncontroversial” and “strong leadership” are not the words one might instinctively choose to characterize their periods at the helms of state. The Israeli and Palestinian Arab publics may choose to view Bildt’s endorsement as valuable backing, or they may choose to regard it as yet more evidence of a trio of rather inadequate public figures holding hands under the public spotlight.

Right-wing politician is the darling of the Far Left and Communists
Finally, the Swedish perspective on Carl Bildt’s visit to Herzliya needs to make the following clear to anyone unfamiliar with this Scandinavian nation’s politics. Carl Bildt is a Conservative. But to a public attuned to 30 years of unadulterated criticism of Israel no matter what she does or does not do, any sentiment that undermines Israel’s legitimacy or strategic security is music to the ears of a Left that is vicious in its condemnation of the USA and, by some inexplicable link, Israel. Conservative politician Carl Bildt is in the peculiar position of being the darling of the Swedish Left, Far Left and Communists, and generally rather disparaged by Sweden’s Centre and Right.

And you thought Israeli politics was convoluted?

The Church of Sweden and its Crusade against the Jewish State

The Church of Sweden (in Swedish, Svenska kyrkan) is shifting into high gear in its increasingly aggressive stance against the world’s sole Jewish nation.

At the same time, it has spectacularly avoided making a firm comment on the appalling bloodletting going on in many of the world’s 49 Muslim nations. And it has stunningly failed to comment on the increasingly deplorable plight of Christian Arabs at the hands of Muslim Arabs in Bethlehem and other Palestinian towns and communities.

A couple of years ago the Church of Sweden infamously launched its HOPP-campaign to persuade the Swedish public to boycott and divest from Israel. The word HOPP was an acronym for “End the Occupation of Palestine”. At the height of the campaign, several writers, commentators and politicians in Sweden pointed out to the venerable Church of Sweden, led by its outspokenly anti-Israel Archbishop K.G. Hammar, that what the Church was engaged in was uncomfortably close in word, intention and expression to the events that heralded Hitler’s attack on Europe’s Jews. The Church expressed public outrage at the similarity but the campaign quickly subsided after that.

Selective view of what constitutes humanity
Not long after, however, it was followed by a vast Swedish media campaign by another church organisation in Sweden, Diakonia, which appealed to the nation to “Stand up for humanity” (in Swedish “Ställ dig på människornas sida”). Pictured with this heart-rending text was a stereotypically strong, robust and armed-to-the-teeth Israeli soldier standing behind an elderly, weak-looking Arab. There were striking similarities between these depictions and the infamous Der Stürmer caricatures as Hitler’s propaganda machine worked overtime to demonise the Jews and whip up public frenzy against them.

Diakonia professes to be “a Christian development organisation working together with local partners for a sustainable change for the most vulnerable people of the world” according to its own website. Yet Diakonia, like the Church of Sweden, has never seen fit to work together with its “local partners” to plead the case of Jews abducted from sovereign Israeli territory, illegally incarcerated and then denied the privileges accorded to all prisoners the world over, whether combatants or not, such as visits by the Red Cross. Prisoners are apparently only seen as “vulnerable” if they are Arab and held in Israeli jails, where they are visited by the Red Cross, but not if they are Israeli and held incommunicado for 25 years in the Arab world.

The anti-humanitarian "humanitarians"
The Church of Sweden prides itself on its humanitarian stance (“the Church of Sweden works in cooperation for peace, atonement, justice, and sustainable development. It does this through direct efforts and through its strive (sic) to be a critical voice in society”; taken from its website http://www.svenskakyrkan.se/default.aspx?di=37014). But the organisation is not all that critical of anyone apart from the Jewish state, because the Church of Sweden has shown remarkable unwillingness to approach Arab and Muslim entities on behalf of missing Israeli soldiers or justice for their families – some of whom have not heard a word from or about their loved ones for almost a quarter of a century. What the Church of Sweden is very good at, however, is to document the plight of Palestinian prisoners convicted of terror crimes against Israeli civilians – despite the fact that these prisoners are entitled to and do receive visits from the Red Cross. A courtesy not extended to a single Israeli prisoner in any Arab jail, and a case of human injustice with which the Church of Sweden does not feel any need to involve itself.

What price justice?
Two years ago Swedish Chancellor of Justice Göran Lambertz famously told the nation’s Jews that calls by an imam in the Stockholm Grand Mosque to kill the Jews were no reason to prosecute the imam and should instead merely be regarded as part of the general discourse on the situation in the Middle East. The then Labour government of Sweden felt this was a perfectly acceptable response and accordingly no legal proceedings were instituted against the imam. The Church of Sweden, which professes to be in favour of “peace, atonement … and justice”, did not see fit to take the imam to task for his unforgivable attack on other Swedes, nor did it lodge a complaint against the Chancellor for failing to take seriously the threat to fellow Swedes of Jewish birth. To recap: incitement to kill Jews in Sweden owing to a conflict on another continent involving non-Swedes was seen as part of the natural discourse on that conflict, and the Church of Sweden had nothing to say on behalf of “peace and justice” for Swedes whose sole misfortune was being born Jewish.

Silent on the plight of Christian Arabs
But the Church of Sweden is not only vociferous in its attacks on the Jewish state, nor is it only silent when it witnesses attacks on Sweden’s Jews. The Church of Sweden also has absolutely nothing to say about the increasingly desperate plight of Christian Arabs on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. Just 25 years ago 80 percent of the population of Bethlehem, for instance, was Christian. Today that figure has dropped to 20 percent and is still falling. The cause is Islamist aggression against not only the Jewish state but the nascent Palestinian state’s own Christian minority. The Church of Sweden has nothing to say about the increasingly precarious plight of its own brethren, even as it channels millions of kronor into the West Bank and Gaza.

All-expenses-paid propaganda trips
This may be because the Church of Sweden has found a way of blaming Israel not only for this situation but also for all other evils assailing Palestinian society. The Church has embarked on an extensive – and expensive – publicly funded propaganda drive to take Swedish journalists to the Palestinian Territories – all expenses paid – where they are taken to selected households to hear carefully groomed “witnesses” make claims that, were they not so totally horrendous in their anti-Semitic pitch, would otherwise be funny to the point of absurdity. These journalists return to Sweden from their free trips and write articles about how Palestinian in-breeding is the result of the Israeli “apartheid wall” and roadblocks because Palestinian Arab men can no longer move freely enough to propose marriage to women outside their own immediate families! According to these beacons of Swedish analytical journalism, this situation has resulted in a preponderance of genetic disorders among the Palestinian population. Yet the scientific article entitled “Genetic Disorders in the Arab World” (http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/333/7573/831) states that genetic disorders are about 40% among the Palestinian population on the West Bank and in Gaza, but 50% among Palestinians living in Jordan – where there is no Israeli “apartheid wall” and there are no roadblocks.

In one article published in Swedish daily GöteborgsPosten the journalist – whose “fact-finding” trip to the West Bank may or may not have been financed by the Swedish Church, this information is being withheld – was able to devote his entire text to statements such as: “The West Bank is occupied and colonised – in practice it is Israeli territory where Israelis live the life of a well-armed master-race while the Palestinians are corralled into guarded enclaves. The similarity to South African apartheid and Bantustan policy is remarkable.”

However, the journalist saw no reason to offset any of the above observations with mention for instance of Israel’s offer of an independent Palestinian state on 96% of the West Bank with East Jerusalem as its capital and 1:1 compensation for the remaining 4%, or Israel’s unwillingness to compromise on security in light of its experiences from Gaza, which after handover to the Palestinians has resulted in more than 4000 rockets being fired into Israeli civilians. The Church of Sweden sees no reason to confuse the issue with fact, and the journalists whose trips it finances see no reason to jeopardize a free holiday by failing to toe the line.

Aggressive crusade or abject fear?
So what does all the above say about Sweden and the increasingly aggressive role being played by some of its key church institutions? Are we seeing a concerted Christian attack on the symbol of Jewish survival – the sole symbol of Jewish strength in an increasingly subdued Christian world and increasingly ascendant Muslim world? We already see an England where it is no longer possible to buy piggy-banks to save one’s children’s pocket-money for fear of offending the nation’s Muslim minority (http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Piggy-banks-offend-UK-Muslims/2005/10/24/1130006056771.html); where office staff are requested to refrain from eating lunch at their desks for an entire month to avoid offending Muslims observing the Ramadan fast (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2258664.ece); where a blind eye is being turned to medical students of the Muslim faith who walk out of lectures dealing with AIDS or alcoholism because these are conditions that are anathema to their religious beliefs (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article2603966.ece); where it is scarcely possible, in the upcoming Christmas holiday season, to buy a card which says “Merry Christmas” – for fear of offending the nation’s Muslim minority, with most cards having more neutral wording such as “Happy Holidays” (http://www.hindu.com/2005/12/14/stories/2005121404491000.htm).

The Christian church: time to protect its reputation
Truth be told, we are seeing a Western society where Christian faith is imploding owing to its unwillingness to stand up for its own rights and beliefs, where everything Jewish is being sacrificed in order to demonstrate Christianity’s acceptance of Islam’s superiority.

This may be a sign of crass cowardice, or a fear of Islamist-inspired violence, or it may be the result of dedication to a cause that we all thought had died out with the last of the Crusaders, but the fact is that the Jewish nation is under attack by certain institutions of Swedish Christianity for the simple reason that it is a Jewish nation. Thankfully, there are Swedish Christian entities that are appalled by this disgrace and strongly voice their opposition. If the rest of the Christian world also objects to Christian faith and beliefs being hijacked in this way, it is high time for Christians throughout the world to make their voices heard.

Because a terrible moral travesty is being committed by the Church of Sweden. In the name of Christianity.

Rewarding the aggressors

Sweden recently organised an international donors’ conference for the victims of Hizbollah’s war in southern Lebanon. However, the fund-raiser benefited only the Lebanese victims and excluded victims from the Jewish state.

It is interesting to put Sweden’s initiative into a wider perspective. Hizbollah’s war was launched from sovereign Lebanese territory. Eight soldiers were killed on Israeli soil, two soldiers were abducted from Israel, and rockets were fired into towns in northern Israel.

Set against this backdrop is Sweden’s own record on recent issues relating to Israel and to Jewish interests. The Swedish Chancellor of Justice declined to try a case where an imam in the main Stockholm mosque called for “death to the Jews”. The Chancellor said that Jews in Sweden should accept that this was part of the ‘normal discourse’ in a democracy.

Recently, Swedish state-owned wines and spirits monopoly changed the labelling on some Israeli-produced wines to state they came from “occupied Syrian territory”. No similar differentiated labelling was implemented for other conflict-ridden areas, such as the Lebanon (until recently occupied by Syria and with a strong wine-export industry). While the EU and UN labelled Hamas a terror organisation and banned dealings with the group, Sweden was the sole country in Europe to give a leading Hamas representative an entry visa, thereby opening the door to his entry into the rest of the EU under Europe-wide visa regulations.

Swedish minister for International Development Cooperation Ms Carin Jämtin, on the subject of the Israeli anti-terror barrier that has slashed Palestinian suicide bombings by over 90 percent, said the barrier, which she also termed an apartheid wall, was “entirely incomprehensible, it is not possible to express in words how incredibly sick it is”. She was then promoted to Deputy Foreign Minister. Twenty-three percent of the Swedish Jewish communities’ budget is allocated to security – that’s before one single cent is spent on providing any benefits for the communities’ members. We have to pay for the privilege of living here. There is a term for that in Arabic – dhimmi.

In the meantime, Swedish Jews demonstrating for peace are attacked by mobs burning flags and throwing stones. Once again there are posters bearing the hated Nazi swastika – now carried by Islamist extremists. The Swedish judiciary cannot decide whether or not to ban the swastika. Jews have to cancel Shabbat services and move them to secret locations because the lives of worshippers cannot be guaranteed. The Swedish police do an admirable job, they are the most sympathetic, understanding and dedicated of public servants, but they cannot do what they have neither the mandate nor the resources to do.

Sweden goes to elections in mid-September. This a country with about 400,000 Muslims and 16,000 Jews, with the Labour government trailing in the polls despite support from the Swedish Left (formerly Communist) party.

Hosting a donors’ conference that bizarrely rewards the Arab aggressors and ignores the victims in the Jewish state does not come as a surprise. In Sweden, expediency comes before principle.

Putting Swedish justice into perspective

The right to earn an income is more worthy of the Swedish Chancellor of Justice’s direct intervention and legal proceedings, than the right of Swedish Jews to live in safety without having their lives threatened.

That appears to be the emerging truth in the ongoing saga of Swedish Chancellor of Justice Mr Göran Lambertz and the legal cases to which he chooses to lend the weight of his office.

Swedish Chancellor of Justice Göran Lambertz went on record in April 2006 as saying that Muslim Swedish calls to kill Jews – in Sweden – should be seen in the context of a conflict taking place 3000 kilometres away on a different continent in which no Swedes of any description are involved. He opined that such statements “should be judged differently, and therefore be regarded as permissible, because they are used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and invectives are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict.”

Less than a month later the Chancellor of Justice, in a remarkable departure from the protocol of his office, micro-managed the case of an individual by suggesting it might be advisable to institute legal proceedings against a Swedish tabloid that published unfounded allegations of alcohol abuse against a renowned Swedish actor, on the grounds that such allegations could seriously damage the actor’s reputation and ability to earn an income. The Chancellor who declined to use his powers to defend the lives of Jews in Sweden apparently decided there was more merit to defending an actor’s good name so he could earn an income.

Sweden recently axed a long-planned peacekeeping drill with the several European air forces because the Israeli Air Force was also participating, although both Sweden and Israel took part in a similar exercise just last year in Canada. However, last year was not election year in Sweden. 2006 is, and the governing Social Democrats are trailing in the polls, with elections scheduled in mid-September.

A fortnight after pulling out of the long-scheduled air drill, Sweden contravened the EU and Schengen signatory states, violating international agreements to give the terror-branded Hamas Minister of Refugees an entry visa to Sweden. In that capacity, the minister, Mr Atef Adwan, came to Sweden to request support for something that has never previously existed in history, an independent Palestinian Arab state. As Minister of Refugees, however, Mr Adwan came to Sweden to structure his vision of how that Palestinian state should come about: through mass immigration of Palestinian Arabs into Israel – a country his Hamas government does not recognize, that it has sworn to replace with an Islamic state, against which it conducts a relentless war of terror, and whose Jews it has vowed to drive into the sea. It was to this Hamas representative that Sweden gave an entry visa, over the subsequent and strongly worded objections of allies such as Germany and France.

Sweden’s view of what constitutes justice thus seems to be at odds with that of its most vulnerable citizens, with that of its major European allies, and with the nation’s most fundamental concerns, such as whether income is prized more highly than life is.

When requested to comment on the apparent disparity between his handling of the two cases, the Chancellor of Justice replied that they deal with entirely different issues. In the case of the actor, the issue was one of libel, whereas in the case of calls for death to Jews emanating from the Stockholm mosque, the issue was one of racial incitement, and according to the Chancellor the allegations could not be proven. However, the reason the allegations could not be proven was because his office declined to insist on proper translation of the material from Arabic into Swedish. The Chancellor also pointed out that the two cases were examined “within the framework stipulated by the applicable regulations, and their assessment has been strictly objective”. He pointed out that “the criterion of ‘social relevance’ is not applicable when the issue under consideration is that of racial incitement”.

The Chancellor of Justice’s actions – or indeed lack of action – need to be examined against the background of what has emerged as a swing in Swedish policy towards Israel, the Swedish media’s keenness to obliterate the distinction between “Jew” and “Israeli”, and the resultant animosity to Jews and Israelis alike that is increasingly rife in this Scandinavian country. A brief examination of recent events in April and May 2006 makes for interesting reading:

Low-level Palestinian functionary Salah Muhammad al-Bardawil was denied a visa into Sweden, following immense protests not least from EU and Schengen member state France, and from many concerned Swedish citizens. Sweden responded by denying him a visa – but instead granting a visa to high-ranking Hamas minister Atef Adwan.

A Swedish Muslim politician for the Centre party demanded the imposition of Sharia law for the country’s Muslims. Initially including, but not limited to, legislation banning boys and girls from studying in the same classes, restructuring of inheritance law so men get two-thirds and women one-third since “we all know it is the duty of the man to look after the woman”, and altering of divorce law so divorce can no longer be granted by this country’s civil authorities.

Leading Labour daily Aftonbladet wrote (15 May) that in a Gaza Strip that has become an “emergency catastrophe area” owing to Israel’s “blockade”, it has now become necessary for Palestinian women to sell their gold and jewellery to finance the purchase of essentials such as water, food and medicine. It went on to say that the people profiting from this callous trade were the very people who erected the “ghetto wall” around Gaza – Israel’s Jews. It was a frightening throwback to classic Nazi-era vilification of the Jew as responsible for the suffering of non-Jews. No mention was made in the article about the remarkable ease with which weapons, dynamite, rockets and ammunition are smuggled into the Gaza Strip – apparently only food and medicine could not be smuggled in because of Israel’s hermetically sealed border and its “blockade”. A blockade, apparently, that did prevent food and medicine from getting in, but not a poor Palestinian woman’s gold from getting out to the avaricious Jews on the other side of the “ghetto wall” waiting to grab it.

Although Sweden declined to participate in an international air drill together with the Jewish state, Sweden had no compunction about participating in joint military exercises with Russia, which is currently waging a brutal war in Chechnya. Nor did Sweden draw the line at selling highly advanced military equipment to Saudi Arabia. And interestingly, the second-largest market for dual-purpose heavy-duty trucks from a major Swedish truck maker is Iran.

It is therefore perhaps unfair to point the finger of blame solely at Swedish Chancellor of Justice Göran Lambertz. He does not operate in a vacuum of his own making but is instead part of the wider Swedish malaise whereby both Sweden’s Jews and Sweden’s relations with Israel are called upon to pay the price as election time draws near.

Sweden is renowned for its pragmatism. Principle, unfortunately, gets to play second fiddle.

Swedish credibility at an all-time low

2006 is election year in Sweden. In early April, Swedish Chancellor of Justice Göran Lambertz quashed an investigation into calls from the Stockholm Grand Mosque to “kill the Jews”. In his opinion, incitement to kill Jews in Sweden should be seen against the background of the conflict in Israel, rendering such calls entirely permissible.

Later the same month Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström declined to withdraw an entry visa for Hamas leader Salah Muhammad al-Bardawil or to have him arrested upon entry – even though Sweden is a signatory to the pan-European decision to brand Hamas a terrorist organisation. al-Bardawil and his associates will be visiting Sweden in early May under the full protection of the Swedish authorities.

Policy of non-cooperation with Israel
And now Cabinet Secretary Hans Dahlgren announced that Sweden has withdrawn from a European peacekeeping exercise. The explanation: “the participation of the Israeli Air Force has changed the prerequisites of the exercise.” Swedish Defense Minister Leni Björklund goes further: Sweden pulled out because Israel is a state “that does not participate in international peacekeeping missions” – in other words, if you’re not already in the club you have no right to try and lend a helping hand to those in need. Ever. Of course, the Defense Minister is entirely wrong – nothing unusual in Swedish government circles – because Israel sent a peacekeeping force of policemen to Fiji in conjunction with that country’s elections. But then the Defense Minister is not exactly renowned for allowing fact to shape policy.

Electioneering
It is election year and the votes of Sweden’s 400,000 strong Muslim electorate easily outweigh those of the country’s mere 16,000 Jews. The Swedish Social Democratic administration obviously considers it worth the half million or so kronor it has already spent on its 10-month preparations for the joint exercise to drive home its thirst for votes.

Bad timing
Sweden’s latest in a long line of questionable decisions could scarcely have come at a more indelicate point in time – virtually coinciding with Holocaust Remembrance Day in memory of the millions exterminated on an industrial scale in a Europe unwilling to work together to stop tyranny and encourage coexistence and loyalty. Today Sweden is repeating what it did sixty years ago – turning its back on those in need and siding with the force it sees as likely to win. This is perhaps the right time to remind ourselves that it was high-quality Swedish ore that powered Nazi Germany’s war machine.

What price morality?
It is perhaps also the right time for people of conscience to vote with their wallets and give Sweden’s IKEA, Volvo and Saab a wide berth. There is no Swedish product that cannot be replaced with an alternative from a democracy based on moral values.

Most Swedes are indignant, shamed even, by this most recent example of their government’s anti-Israel stance, the more so since it smacks so obviously of pre-election jostling. At a time when the governing left-communist coalition is trailing in the polls by three to five percent, it is apparent that no measure is too marginal to be used in the drive to cement its power.

The shame is that Jews in Israel are being victimised yet again, denied the opportunity to participate in peacekeeping missions in other parts of the world owing to domestic electioneering tactics in faraway Sweden.

It does perhaps help put matters into perspective that the Swedish government’s decision to ostracize Israel came on the same day that the Muslim Council of Sweden publicised its demands for the implementation of Islamic Sharia law for Muslims living in Sweden.

Blundering Swedish naivete

Swedes as a nation are not anti-Semitic.

But they are frighteningly naïve, with a love of ready-packaged solutions so they don’t have to get their hands dirty working out details, and with a penchant for being told what to think.

They love the underdog, which they choose from an all-black and all-white palette. Above all, Swedes have an instinctive distaste for conflict.

All of which explains why given the current climate in the country, the Swedish govt. will continue to sideline Israel while protesting its affection for her.

And here is the current climate in a nutshell – all events of the past 30 days:

1. Swedish Chancellor of Justice says Muslim calls in Stockholm mosque to “kill the Jews” are OK, since there is a conflict a few thousand km away in the Middle East.

2. Swedish Minister of Justice grants visas to Hamas, although Sweden has branded Hamas a terror organisation. The explanation? “An organisation may be terrorist, but not all its members.” Think hard about that one…

3. Swedish PM withdraws from European peacekeeping exercises – feels it is better NOT to train life-saving missions with 7 partners than to train with 1 partner with whom Sweden has never trained before.

4. The Muslim Council of Sweden demands legislation to enshrine sharia law for the country’s Muslims.

5. There are 400,000 Muslims in Sweden. There are 16,000 Jews in Sweden.

6. National elections will be held in September this year, and the current govt. is trailing in the polls. Draw your own conclusions.

Swedish unwillingness or inability?

Swedish Chancellor of Justice Mr Göran Lambertz appears to be a victim of his own unwillingness or, at best, inability to do his job properly.

The Chancellor responded both defensively and offensively to a press release (http://www.upprop.net/pressrelease.php?lang=eng) highlighting his decision to drop preliminary investigations into a Stockholm mosque’s calls to kill Jews. He defended his decision on the grounds that such calls, while repugnant, should be seen against the background of the conflict in the Middle East, commenting further that even calls of an offensive nature are “protected by the Constitution, and (that) freedom goes very deep”. He is not on record as having stated that the Muhammed cartoons, while repugnant, should be seen against the background of Islamist violence against unprotected civilians in the name of Muhammed, nor that the right to publish them in Sweden is protected by the Constitution, whose freedom goes very deep.

It is interesting, moreover, to note the following:

1. The Chancellor is highly irate because he feels the press release suggested “it would be politically correct in Sweden to refuse prosecuting hate speech against Jews”. Unfortunately, the Chancellor interprets the English language the way he interprets Swedish law – rather flexibly: nowhere in the press release was there any suggestion that that it is politically correct in Sweden to do any such thing, but rather that the Chancellor has taken it upon himself to interpret the law in this way, perhaps out of inadequate preparation of the case (see point 3 below), concern in an election year (see point 2), or fear of Muslim sentiment, among other possible considerations. If the latter, then that is highly regrettable because the Chancellor is not in office to cower out of fear, but to uphold the law. He failed in spectacular fashion.

2. The Chancellor is also highly irate over what he sees as the suggestion in the press release that his decision might have had “something to do with the upcoming elections in Sweden”. The record needs to be put straight: this IS an election year in Sweden, he surely cannot be contesting that. And the Chancellor DID soft-pedal on an issue of considerable concern to Muslims in Sweden, and he did so on highly questionable grounds (see point 3 below). There is no reason to avoid pointing out all the facts in the scenario, however peripheral he may regard them from his scarcely objective viewpoint. After all, the Chancellor himself chose to point out facts that are widely regarded as remarkably peripheral in defence of his decision to drop the preliminary investigation into racial hatred at the Stockholm mosque – he after all chose to point to a conflict taking place several thousand kilometres away on a totally different continent, in which conflict Sweden plays no part whatsoever. It is hard to imagine why the Chancellor would grant himself the right to cite peripheral events in defence of his inaction, yet get upset over his citizens’ right to cite peripheral events when highlighting that inaction.

3. Despite his charmingly worded protestations (in English) to the contrary, the Chancellor is being somewhat economical with the full facts of the case. At a debate (in Swedish) at the Stockholm Jewish Centre in early April, some interesting revelations were made:
i. There exists no substantial documentation to which he can refer and on which his “findings” were based.
ii. The flagrantly anti-Semitic texts from the Stockholm mosque were never fully translated in writing for his examination; instead he received a verbal translation through the services of an interpreter, and this verbal translation was more in the nature of a summary of the contents. Yet the Chancellor writes: “There is furthermore no reason for me to review my decision as long as such re-examination would concern the same material.” The question is: what material would this be? The Chancellor, after all, admits he has none.
iii. The Chancellor also freely admits that the political situation in the Middle East is highly inflamed – it is in fact the very excuse he offers for sanctioning the viciously anti-Semitic statements in the first place. Yet despite the inflamed nature of the conflict – which has nothing to do with Swedish Jews – he does not see fit to put in place the elementary safeguard of employing several translators and subsequently comparing their renderings of the contents. This begs the question of just how naive a public upholder of the law is permitted to be in such a situation, when he freely admits that the very subject of the Middle East causes such high feeling among all concerned.
iv. Despite the Chancellor’s protestations to the contrary in his English letter, he was put in the highly awkward position of having to publicly backtrack in Swedish on every single count during the debate in Stockholm. None of which is evident in his English letter. It would appear he has taken a leaf out of Yasser Arafat’s book – Arafat going down in history as the man who made an art of out saying one thing in English and quite another in Arabic.

There is a consideration of moral relevance here. Not that anyone in their right minds in the open, democratic country of Sweden would think of suggesting anything as deplorable as the following – it being merely a rhetorical extension of the Chancellor’s own argument – but would the Chancellor’s decision now open the door for calls in Sweden to kill Arabs and/or Muslims everywhere? After all, the number of Jews blown apart in suicide bombings in Israel over the past five years is well documented. These suicide bombings all carried out, of course, by Arabs and Muslims. We also know how many victims of suicide bombings there have been in London, Madrid, New York, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, Russia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, to mention just some of the venues of this Arab and Muslim pastime. All atrocities committed by Arabs and Muslims in countries remote from Sweden.

Against this background of wanton daily mass-murder in places quite remote from Sweden, would Swedes now be permitted to call on their fellow-citizens to kill Arabs and Muslims in the calm backwaters of Sweden? After all, as the Chancellor wrote: “it is quite safe to say that the (Swedish) Law does not make it a crime to sing battle songs or utter war-cries related to the conflict in the Middle East.” Would one be right in assuming it is quite all right for non-Muslim Swedes to pursue such a reprehensible line because, to quote the Chancellor once again, their right to say such things “is protected by the Constitution, and the freedom goes very deep.” God protect Sweden from a society in which its citizens would be allowed to utter such disgraceful, anti-democratic sentiments. However, that right apparently sits quite easily with the Swedish Chancellor of Justice.

There remains, of course, the ultimate problem with the Chancellor’s handling of this case: because it was actually the Swedish Chancellor of Justice who offered the argument that the repugnant calls for killing Jews should be set against the conflict in the Middle East. The Swedish Muslims guilty of this racial incitement made no such connection whatsoever, pointing solely to the Muslim religious aspects of the case. It is remarkable that the Chancellor is so keen to offer his radical Islamist citizens an escape hatch from what he himself calls their “utterly provoking and quite unacceptable” comments aimed at his own moderate Jewish citizens.

It is morally repugnant that the Chancellor has received hate-mail, as he claims, just because he did a bad job. Incompetence should not be responded to with hatred or threats, but with guidance and reason. If the Chancellor did indeed receive threats just for doing an inadequate job, I for one would stand should to shoulder alongside him and defend his right to live in safety and security – because this is precisely what all right-thinking democrats in Sweden are defending, it is precisely why there has been such widespread criticism of the Chancellor’s decision to close the investigation into calls that undermine the safety and security of Sweden’s Jews.

The Chancellor did what he did out of any one or more of a number of reasons. And it is reason that will bring him to ultimately do what he should have done in the first place – a thorough job.

But for him to suggest that the press release has “cheated” its readers is nothing short of a desperate attempt to defend the indefensible – his abject failure to live up to the high demands of his office.