A composite view of the Middle East

Take a look at the state of play from the vantage points as far apart as Scandinavia, the USA, and inside the Middle East itself.
A Finnish blogger, KGS of Tundra Tabloids, brings this story of how Church organizations in Finland and Sweden routinely engage in spine-chillingly anti-Semitic trips that are funded partly by the Church and partly by the State. It is a synthesis of religion and state apparatus pursuing an overtly anti-Israel agenda that gives considerable pause for thought.
 
In the USA, New York Post columnist Ralph Peters writes about how the US under Barack Hussein Obama is openly undermining the Jewish state in favour of radical Islamist regimes spanning the entire Middle East. Obama’s chronic inability to recognise Israeli anxieties is matched only by his overwhelming desire to anticipate whatever the Arab states want – and to pressure the Jewish state into feeding Arab rejectionist intransigence. Obama’s approach marks a social disparity with a worrying religious echo and unpleasant racist undertones.
 
On the subject of racism, in Egypt, an Israeli reporter was arrested by the military as he tried to cross the border into Israel together with Muslim African refugees who often make the hazardous journey across several Muslim countries to seek asylum in the world’s only Jewish nation. The reporter, Yotam Feldman, wanted to record the plight of the African asylum-seekers from their on-the-spot perspective. He recounts that he was treated reasonably well by the Egyptian authorities but testified to the far worse fate of the black Africans who he says are routinely mistreated in the Muslim state of Egypt, noting that the Egyptians make a distinction in their treatment of white people and their treatment of Africans.
 
It is remarkable that in a world characterised by economic tailspin, major environmental concerns, massive social inequalities, substantial political corruption and other crises of enormous weight, there is such corrosive preoccupation with the Jewish state in countries as far apart as the US and Finland, at the same time as these very same countries turn a blind eye to the vicious injustices perpetrated by Muslims on other Muslims, as testified by a journalist in Egypt.
 
How does one explain this imbalance without using the words “anti” and “Semitism”?

But it’s not all gloom, doom and anti-Semitism. For light comic relief, there’s always that stalwart of manic humour, the United Nations. As Barry Rubin reports with regard to the UN-Habitat organisation, “granting an award to the close friend of those who murdered the man it's named after, a backer of those who he fought against, and who is aiding those seeking to take over his country definitely qualifies for being granted our own award for ironic and disgraceful behavior”.

Read it and weep.
 

A legal precedent

The Jerusalem Post reports that The European Initiative, a new European pro-Israeli lobby, has filed a lawsuit in Belgium against Hamas leaders from Gaza and Damascus, demanding that they be brought to justice for war crimes.

About time too. The Belgian initiative is a welcome proactive move against terrorism and against support for intransigence, indoctrination, Islamism, fanaticism, extremism and terrorism the world over.

A similar initiative would do wonders in Sweden. Sweden has a history of antagonistic behaviour toward the Jewish state, including breach of contract and the welcoming terrorist Palestinian Arab leaders to its shores, and spends immense sums of taxpayer revenue reinforcing Palestinian Arab intransigence, which in turn promotes continued violence and bloodshed. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Swedish citizens have been the victims of Palestinian Arab terrorism in Israel, and Jewish citizens of Sweden have long been made to pay the price for successive Swedish governments that have signally failed to adopt a firm stance against Islamist-inspired anti-Semitism and extremist Left-wing anti-Zionism. This writer has been on the receiving end of rockets from Islamist terror organisation Hizbullah while in Haifa and Islamist terror organisation Hamas while in Sderot.

A call by the imam of the Grand Mosque in Stockholm to kill Jews as a result of the conflict in the Middle East was ignored by the judiciary and the government.

Repeated gross anti-Semitic allegations by extreme Left-wing tabloid Aftonbladet over unfounded claims of systematic Israeli Army organ trafficking were ignored by the judiciary and the government. Even Britain's Guardian newspaper, scarcely the Jewish state's most avid supporter, has the decency to back off from Aftonbladet-esque headlines. Not so Aftonbladet.

Foreign Minister Carl Bildt’s psychotic obsession with the Jewish state has been ignored by the judiciary and the government. He adopted a remarkably aggressive stance on the organ trafficking debacle and then invested the entire resources of his office and his (admittedly fast-dwindling) personal prestige in trying to push the EU to recommend the partitioning of Jerusalem – while at the same time celebrating the reunification of Berlin…

Every year, Sweden diverts vast sums of money from its state coffers, routing these funds away from Swedish schools, Swedish hospitals, Swedish jobs, Swedish infrastructure, even the well-being of Swedish children, and instead using these hard-earned resources for non-transparent, under-the-table foreign-policy strategies via a host of shady NGOs such as SIDA, Diakonia, Forum Syd, ISM, the Swedish Church and so on – all with the aim of subverting the Jewish state. It is a parallel foreign policy about which few Swedes know anything – for the simple reason that it is filed as charity and is therefore virtually invisible. The point is that this pursuit of an invisible and parallel foreign policy is ignored by the judiciary and the government because it is waged privately from the Swedish foreign ministry, albeit with VERY public funding.

Time therefore for a proactive Swedish initiative along the same lines. If you have the funding and/or the expertise to help in this matter, get in touch.

It’s time to put things right in Sweden. The vast majority of Swedes are fed up to the gills with having their already shaky finances abused, their enviable and highly deserved reputation trashed and their energy exploited by shady individuals with murky agendas whose sole merit is that they are in powerful places, whether in the media or in public office.

Rescue Sweden. Before an entire nation is hijacked. It’s been done many times before.

A noble cause?

So the Nobel Awards for 2009 have come and gone.

US Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Hussein Obama – who was nominated for the prize within mere days of taking up office – arrived in Oslo, accepted the award and promptly left.

Obama said that “the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace”. That’s when the US itself is involved. However, it appears not to be a consideration he extends to America’s staunchest ally, Israel.

President Obama, whose very entitlement to the US presidency has been called into question owing to uncertainty over his country of birth, has come in for fierce criticism for accepting the Peace Prize when he has not actually contributed to peace.

Swedish journalist and commentator Per Gudmundson said on Swedish TV that President Obama makes as fitting a Peace Prize laureate as Yasser Arafat did – both have done equally little to advance the cause of peace, albeit in entirely different spheres. Arafat through decades of terrorist attacks on civilian Jews in Israel and around the world, Obama though ongoing and heightened military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively.

Here’s the speech Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Barack Hussein Obama should have made in Oslo:


Dear friends of peace,

I am humbled by your gesture and vow to act in the spirit in which this signal honour was bestowed on me. If there is one lesson recent history has taught us, it is that of Northern Ireland. Decades of violence ended when funding for weapons and training dried up. As a result of international determination to strangle the supply of armaments to hate-mongers and violent terror groups, guns have been replaced by conference tables and very real progress has been made towards genuine, lasting peace. Friendship requires trust, and trust is based on mutual recognition of the other’s concerns and rights.

It is this same approach that I will apply now that I am in receipt of this, the greatest honour I have ever received. I have admittedly done nothing whatsoever to deserve it, yet, but I promise to live up to your expectations and to deliver on those expectations.

Here’s how I will do it: in Afghanistan and Iraq I will use military means to fight the hate-mongers and violent terror groups to a standstill. I will use the money from my Award to set up foundations for education so that future generations in these two war-torn countries see a different reality, a better future. I will above all else do absolutely everything it takes to proactively battle the supply of arms to these two fractured societies.

It is this very same approach I will adopt in that other Middle East hot-spot, the one that for so many decades has pitched the 50-odd Arab and Muslim states against the world’s sole Jewish nation, Israel. To paraphrase a former US President, read my lips: there will be an absolute stop to the supply of weapons to hate-mongers and violent terror groups. When the ability to perpetrate violence has been removed from the equation, the relevant sides will sit down and negotiate a solution. A solution that is a compromise. Because only a mutually agreed compromise will once and for all put an end to this conflict. A conflict that the community of nations has deliberately maintained as a running sore over a number of decades for reasons of political expediency.

Political expediency is at an end. From today the focus is on the human being. Whether Christian in Bethlehem, Muslim in Ramallah, Baha’i in Haifa or Jew in Jerusalem – the Nobel Peace Prize is going to sow the seeds for an approach that brings equal dignity to human beings across this conflict-ridden region.

Human dignity. For everyone. That means an end to Palestinian Arabs living in squalid refugee camps. It means full citizenship, and compensation, for all displaced peoples, both Arab Muslims and Arab Christians, as well as Jews from Arab lands. It means an absolute – and resolutely enforced – ban on arms shipments to all groups engaged in violence, as well as the financing of such groups by any means whatsoever. It means an unequivocal refusal to countenance a nuclear-armed Iran. That will not happen, for the simple reason that the Iranian regime has clearly announced it intends to erase a fellow member of the UN family, Israel, off the map. The UN is not Mafia family which countenances the rubbing out of other family members. It is supposed to be a family of tolerant nations that enshrine mutual respect. If this kind of family is not to your taste, you’re welcome to leave.

And it means, finally, the immediate and absolute ban on all further state-sponsored interference in the affairs of other sovereign nations. This means – and I spell it out very clearly – the total and absolute cessation of government funding of subversion within Israel. The Israelis and their Arab neighbours, including the Palestinians, need to have sufficient peace of mind to work out their differences without outside interference. I am absolutely convinced that without the interference and active subversion of nations such as Sweden via a plethora of “NGOs” – activities that only serve to preserve and extend the atmosphere of mutual distrust and conflict – the Israelis and their Arab neighbours will come to an agreement that meets the widest possible consensus. Not everybody will be satisfied, but the majority will – on all sides.

However, that requires an end to subversion through the use of state-funded organisations that really serve as the extended arm of various nations’ covert foreign policy aims.

That has got to stop. No more covert interference from outside.

While I am here in Oslo, allow me therefore to spell it out clearly for your Swedish neighbours: no more use of Swedish tax revenues to fund disparate organisations such as SIDA, Diakonia, Palestinagruppen, Palmecentret, the Swedish Church and their obsessive meddling in the Middle East. Swedish foreign policy should be conducted openly and transparently through its Foreign Minister. Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has used his time and energy and his nation’s considerable resources to try and persuade the entire EU to push through the division of Jerusalem. Some observers may find it remarkable that the EU would actively support partition in one city while celebrating the 20th anniversary of reunification in another city, Berlin.

However, while the drive to partition Jerusalem may be cheered in certain quarters and abhorred in others, it is nonetheless the openly declared policy of Sweden, through its Foreign Ministry, and as such perfectly legitimate. It is a policy that can be contested in many forums, and doubtless will. What is not legitimate, however, is for the Swedish Foreign Ministry to extend its reach under the table by employing a web of subversive organisations, providing massive government funding for the execution of an invisible policy. To give one single example, Sweden’s extremist Palestinagruppen, with membership totalling just 800 or so members, gets government grants totalling in the region of 5.5 million US dollars, which it uses to fund anti-Israel operations both in Sweden and in Israel. Sweden is of course far from the only country engaged in this subversion. Many European and other countries pursue an active strategy of parallel yet invisible foreign policy via various NGOs.

This will stop.

Today I received the Nobel Peace Prize, for which I offer my heartfelt thanks. It is an award that brings with it serious obligations. I intend to live up to the obligations that came with this award – I will promote peace. Robustly.

Because sometimes, promoting peace requires going to war.

If you are engaged in subverting peace, I put you on notice.

I am Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Barack Hussein Obama, and I am prepared to go to war to ensure peace. Because the instruments of war have a very real role to play in preserving the peace.

I will go to war to preserve peace because I hold human dignity dear.

Thank you for you attention.

Barack Hussein Obama


NGO Monitor: Promoting Israel's isolation
NGO Monitor: Lawfare
Gerald Steinberg: European Funding
Barbara Sofer: Letter to the Swedish Foreign Minister
Manfred Gerstenfeld: Behind the Humanitarian Mask
Jerusalem Post: Raising funds for Hamas on US campuses
JCPA/Dore Gold: Europe Seeks to Divide Jerusalem
IPT: Radical Movement's Leader Forecasts America's Demise
Honest Reporting: UNRWA Perpetuating the Misery
Spectator/Melanie Phillips: An Inconvenient Truth
Spectator/Melanie Phillips: Spot the Difference
Daniel Pipes: Sheikh Obama and his Two Wars
GLORIA/Barry Rubin: Radical Islamism
Isi Leibler: Candidly Speaking: Europe Has Forsaken Israel
Israel National News: Sweden's Radical Anti-Israel Programme
Ilya Meyer: The Swedish Foreign Minister's Crusade Against Israel
Ilya Meyer: EU Buys Swedish Votes

Hamas and Aftonbladet: a marriage made in hell

Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet writes an inflammatory anti-Semitic article that even its own editors admit is so lacking in factual basis it cannot be printed in the news pages. It is relegated to the “Culture” section.

Which says a whole lot about the Swedish perception of culture in a climate of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism nurtured by large swathes of the media. The Church of Sweden and its various satellite organisations play at least as significant a role in this incitement as the media do.

Meantime, Hamas in Gaza refuse to educate children on the subject of the Holocaust as part of the curriculum.

Schoolbooks – indeed the entire educational establishment just like virtually all aspects of life in the Gaza Strip and West Bank – are financed by the West. Sweden is the world’s biggest per capita donor to Palestinian Arab welfare. Swedish taxpayers’ money is being used in order to shield Palestinian Arabs from an aspect of world history that is taught in every other part of the world. Hamas refers to the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were slaughtered as part of a widespread racist ideology, as “a lie invented by the Zionists”. It is this same Hamas that Sweden and the rest of the West continue to subsidise. UNRWA, which is charged with ensuring that UN funds are properly used in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, said simply that “the Holocaust was not currently on its curriculum” in the Hamas-controlled territory.

It is this same Hamas that more than three years ago kidnapped a young Jew from Israel, Gilad Schalit, and has since held him without access to the Red Cross, the UN, legal representation, medical attention, or visits from or indeed correspondence with his family. Schalit is being used as a pawn in the medieval pastime of human trafficking. It is a practice that is illegal in the civilized world but is deemed a legitimate Palestinian government tactic. It must be legitimate because the world at large continues to turn a blind eye – it has never once been on the EU, UN or US agenda over the past three years.

Sweden and the rest of the western world accordingly continue to pump billions into the Palestinian economy, while the Palestinians continue to enshrine barbaric practices into governmental policy.

Not everyone in the West is blind, however. Italy is not afraid of condemning Aftonbladet’s anti-Semitism, calling its article “lying and hurtful” and an act “of blatant anti-Semitism”. Israeli officials have repeatedly maintained that they do not either want or expect the Swedish government to interfere with freedom of expression or freedom of the press, but insist that the Swedish government needs to make its response to the anti-Semitic claims clear. Responding is not the same as curbing freedom of speech. The absence of a response, on the other hand, could be and often is seen as tacit support. Hamas certainly seem to see it that way.

The Italian Foreign Minister had no difficulty in formulating a response. FM Franco Frattini went so far as to say: “There are limits to freedom of the press that stem from respect for the truth and the duty of every journalist to prove his claims.” Italy seems, unfortunately, to be the sole voice in the wilderness.

Because that wilderness echoes to the sound of official Sweden’s silence.

The bewildering thing about Sweden’s silence is that it is not consistent. According to website WWRN (WorldWide Religious News), Sweden’s Prime Minister did actually express regret over the nature of the offence caused.

‘Prime Minister Fredirk (sic) Reinfeldt said after Tuesday's talks … “I regret if people have taken offense or feel offended”.’

There’s one problem, however. I’ve been a bit economical with the truth, because the above quote, while totally accurate in what I’ve included, is interesting for what I’ve omitted; a few key phrases. The full quote as taken from the WWRN website actually reads:

‘Prime Minister Fredirk Reinfeldt said after Tuesday's talks with Swedish Muslim organizations, “I regret if people have taken offense or feel offended” by the cartoon in a local newspaper, Nerikes Allehanda.’

The reference is to the offence felt by Muslims a couple of years ago over insults perceived by Muslims and Islam worldwide in the wake of cartoons published depicting the prophet Mohammed in an unfavourable light.

The Swedish Prime Minister and his government just couldn’t square it with Sweden’s much-vaunted freedom of the press and freedom of expression to voice equal regret over insults perceived by Jews and Israelis worldwide in the wake of unsubstantiated and blatantly anti-Semitic allegations published in Aftonbladet.

Neither PM Reinfeldt nor anyone in his government is anti-Semitic. They are pillars of democratic decency.

But the juxtaposition between words on the one hand and silence on the other nurtures anti-Semitism.

And it is this that is so problematic with official Sweden’s silence today.

INN, Haaretz, WWRN, JPost, Al Ahram, Emanuele Ottolenghi, DN (Swedish), Sydsvenskan (Swedish), Swedish Parliament (Swedish), IlyaMeyer, IlyaMeyer2, IlyaMeyer3,

Sweden’s Aftonbladet: an ideology in search of a newspaper

And, not surprisingly, a good translator.

Aftonbladet’s journalistic ethics are matched by the shoddiness of its translations.

For the background in a nutshell, see this 2-minute long film.

After first leveling what can only be described as a Mediaeval blood-libel against the Jewish state and Jews everywhere, the extreme Left-wing tabloid achieved pariah status among professional journalists and newspapers the world over for the extreme shoddiness of its research work and ethics.

Now the paper, instead of backing down from its indefensible anti-Semitic stance, has decided to up the ante by translating its infamous article into English.

Well, a sort of English. This is, after all, Aftonbladet, where professionalism is not a word that is terribly familiar in the editorial office. Even extreme-Left writer Gideon Levy of Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, no friend of the Israeli government, was scathing in his blistering condemnation of the shoddy work done by both Aftonbladet and Boström, and called into question the motive behind such obvious fabrications and idiotically tenuous links where none exist.

What Aftonbladet has done is to compound its calumny by filtering out the most offensive parts of its article in the transition from Swedish to English. Anyone reading the English text gets a substantially different impression than someone reading the Swedish.

Jonathan Leman has comments and examples of Aftonbladet’s deliberate dishonesty (search halfway down the Swedish comments for a rough English translation). So too do many other sources.

And the results were not long in coming: Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority and many others in the Muslim sphere – all are happily publishing the carefully re-orchestrated text, one that is almost mild and reasoned compared with the Swedish original.

That’s what happens when you leave political ideology in the hands of the unscrupulous. Ethics, professionalism, hard work, burden of evidence, corroboration – all foreign concepts to Aftonbladet.

In whatever language they choose to insult our intelligence.

What is notable is that Aftonbladet’s infamous allegations – which even the article’s author Donald Boström himself admits are entirely unfounded – met with stony silence from Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and indeed the government. Carl Bildt maintains that freedom of expression is an unassailable right in Sweden and that the government do not comment on articles in the press.

And of course he is absolutely right. Well, up to a point. Because Bildt and the rest of the government have chosen not to avail themselves of the same right. Not when it is Jews who are under vicious attack.

The very same Carl Bildt, however, had no compunctions whatsoever about weighing in against the press when he himself was the target of what he felt were unfair media accusations. Swedish Christian newspaper “Världen idag” today ran an editorial that provided several examples of Bildt’s highly public comments in the press and his utilisation of freedom of expression in which he commented on the articles about him. Among his less diplomatic comments: "Dishonest TV journalism" and "You (reporters) have to admit your errors and show a sense of judgement". All very well - when it benefits Carl Bildt. Outspoken when it suits him, tightlipped when it doesn't.

Ultimately, of course, this scandal is not really about Aftonbladet. There will always be substandard newspapers that will sell their souls for a few extra copies. That’s par for the course. And it’s not about the article’s author, Donald Boström, who is a self-admitted pro-Palestinian who campaigns against the Jewish state. Unethical people will always abuse their positions of trust to deceive others.

What this actually is about, is the position of the Swedish state. It is, after all, the Swedish Foreign Ministry along with various Church of Sweden organisations that financed the book in which Boström first made his allegations back in 2001. This finance came from Sweden's public coffers. And it is these same instances that are now refusing to make a simple comment on the affair, to clarify their feelings on the unsubstantiated claims in the article.

Use of public funds to finance a calumny, then tight-lipped silence on the anti-Semitic result, has analysts the world over wondering just where Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt really stands.

It doesn’t bode well for Carl Bildt, a consummate politician who regards his post as Foreign Minister as a mere stepping-stone to bigger and better things on the grander world stage.

This Conservative Party minister is right now the absolute darling of the Swedish extreme Left and of radical Islamists the world over.

Political expediency makes strange bedfellows indeed.

Haaretz, Världen idag, Jonathan Leman, The New Republic, NWT (in Swedish)

Swedish Greens emerge in fashionable brown shirts

Swedish Green Party politician Per Gahrton, who is also Chairman of the rabidly anti-Israel "Palestinagruppen", strongly condemned Sweden’s ambassador to Israel.

This after Ambassador Ms Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier expressed her distaste over Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet’s grotesque anti-Semitic article. The populist daily painted a picture of Israel and Jews worldwide engaged in a murky conspiracy to illegally harvest human organs from Palestinian Arabs, suggesting there is an Israeli army unit set up to kill Arabs for the purpose.

Gahrton insisted that Ms Bonnier be recalled to Sweden by Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and taught “the basics of Swedish freedom of speech” for her denunciation of the article. This was in August 2009.

In April 2009, at the height of the Danish Muhammed cartoon controversy, the same Per Gahrton lambasted Denmark’s former PM Fogh Rasmussen: “By refusing to criticize Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten’s Muhammed cartoons … he has contributed to the ‘clash of civilisations’ that certain conservative circles seem to want”, thundered Per Gahrton.

The quixotic Gahrton thus demands official interference in the press for articles that risk offending Muslims, yet equally stridently decries official interference in the press for articles that offend Jews. Either his logic needs adjusting, or his medication does.

What the barely democratic Per Gahrton and his collaborators fail to understand is that "freedom of speech" is just that: everyone is entitled to express an opinion.

It is not illegal in Sweden for a newspaper to publish unadulterated nonsense. It is not a crime to be an idiot or to display an embarrassing lack of intelligence in a public place - otherwise Aftonbladet's journalists and editors would have been behind bars years ago.

Nor, by the same token, is it a crime to comment on the idiocy of journalists. The Swedish ambassador was exercising her freedom of speech by commenting on the absurdity and nastiness of Aftonbladet's article. Remarkable though it may seem, it is actually permissible for Aftonbladet to produce such unsubstantiated rubbish, even though it is borderline gross anti-Semitism. It is also equally permissible for a Swedish ambassador to comment on it. What Per Gahrton and his ilk don't seem to understand is that "freedom of speech" actually applies to all citizens - not just the select few that he selects.

Like the rest of his brown-shirted compatriots, Gahrton feels it is wrong for politicians to interfere with freedom of the press. There are however two exceptions: it is OK if it is Israel that is being criticised, and it is not OK if it is Muslim intransigence, violence, criminality and megalomania that are being criticised.

One law for the Jews, another for everyone else. Per Gahrton should leave the Greens and shift to his ideological home among the Brownshirts – their numbers are growing here in the Swedish media.

JPost, JPost2, Haaretz, Haaretz2, Haaretz3, HonestReporting

Sweden's Diakonia aid agency wages war against Israel

It is unreasonable to provide information about the Holocaust, in which Hitler murdered six million civilian Jews in a meticulously planned industrialised process, without at the same time providing information about “al Naqba”.

These words mean “The Catastrophe” and refer to the 400,000 to 750,000 Palestinian Arabs who became refugees in 1948 when, backed by five Arab armies, they attacked the Palestinian Jews in the fledgling state of Israel but lost their war.

This is the official view of Swedish Christian aid organisation Diakonia, whose Policy Officer for Conflict and Justice Joakim Wohlfeil said at a meeting in Gothenburg in October this year that Diakonia is more a lobby group with a clear political agenda for the Middle East than a Christian aid organisation. The shocked silence that ensued was quickly filled by his boss, Secretary General Bo Forsberg, who said that Diakonia was still first and foremost a Christian aid organisation.

Anti-Israel policies
Diakonia operates freely in Israel and the Palestinian territories in pursuit of anti-Israel policies that are often remarkably anti-Semitic in effect. Its record speaks for itself.

Modern developments show that political extremism, religious fanaticism, dictatorships and crimes against humanity are all on the rise. As democrats rooted firmly in the Judeo-Christian affirmation of inalienable human rights, it is always our moral duty to stop human suffering at the hands of anti-democratic despots and their collaborators. Iran, Darfur, Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Tibet – all require our focus if we are to contribute to a better world.

These, however, are areas in which Sweden’s Diakonia is not involved.

Unhealthy obsession against the Jewish state
The ostensibly Christian aid organisation Diakonia appears instead to be totally obsessed with the world’s only Jewish state and is uninterested even in coming to the aid of Christian communities in acute distress. Copts are suffering systematic racism in Egypt, Pakistan’s Christian minority are being hunted to extinction, Christians in the Philippines are being exterminated, Bethlehem’s Christian population has been decimated since the Palestinian Authority took control over the area. Diakonia continues to pump Swedish money into the PA apparatus but maintains total silence on the systematic expulsions of Christians from Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus and the cradle of Christianity.

Diakonia's collaborators
In the democratic state of Israel, Diakonia collaborates intimately with a whole raft of extreme left-wing organisations. In the dictatorship of the Palestinian Authority, Diakonia collaborates intimately with radical political groups and fanatical religious organisations that refuse to mark Israel on the map and where young schoolchildren are systematically indoctrinated in anti-Semitic hatred from grade one.

Diakonia’s 60-page annual report makes no mention of the Taliban. The word “terror” appears just once – in conjunction with Paraguay. And then only with the qualifier “alleged terrorists”. According to Swedish aid organisation Diakonia’s world view, acts of violence against civilians perpetrated by fanatics with an extreme religious and/or political agenda are not characterised as terrorism.

Overt one-sidedness
Diakonia’s annual report makes no mention of Sderot, whose civilians have been terrorised by more than 8000 Palestinian Arab rockets and where playgrounds for toddlers have to be built indoors for protection against these rockets. Yet the Palestinian Arabs get 13% of Diakonia’s total aid. Donated by Christians in Sweden who believe in democracy and the equal value of all human life.

In one single month, October 2008, Diakonia participated in 10 articles in the Swedish media. Nine of them dealt with the world’s only Jewish country, Israel. Diakonia writes in its annual report that its second focus area outside Israel/the Palestinian Authority is Congo. Yet Congo, which has seen thousands of civilians slaughtered, raped and expelled, has merited just one single article. That was written in February…

Diakonia runs what it calls an “ecumenical accompaniment programme in Palestine and Israel” whose stated aims are to “reduce the brutality of the Occupation” and to “End the Illegal Occupation of Palestine”. But it does not aim to bring an end to terrorism – the root cause of the occupation and the violence. Despite the flowery language in its policy document, there has not been one single recorded instance of Diakonia ever accompanying children in Sderot, who have been bombarded by 150 missiles from Gaza in the past week alone. But then these are Jewish children.

It is to this organisation that Christians in Sweden donate their millions. And it is this organisation that Israel gives free right to operate within its sovereign territory.

Religion and politics dangerous bedfellows
If there is one thing that history has taught us it is that religion and politics are dangerous bedfellows. When the Church pursues its own foreign-policy agenda with substantial financial backing, the result is seldom pleasant and always predictable. One natural question regarding Diakonia’s obsession with the world’s sole Jewish state while ignoring human rights issues in the world’s 23 Arab states is whether its Christian benefactors in Sweden actually know what is being done with the hard-earned money they donate. Because if there is one thing Diakonia does not do, it does not contribute to calm and mutual respect in the Middle East by pursuing such a flagrantly prejudiced stance.

The other question that begs an answer is whether the Israeli authorities really understand the nature of the fifth column that is being allowed to work within its borders. The Israeli foreign ministry and security establishment may find it helpful to contact Swedes with an objective insight to obtain first-hand information about the nature of Diakonia and other like-minded Swedish organisations that operate freely within Israel to bring down the country.

Unconscionable hatred and partisanship
It is incompatible with a Christian, humanitarian and democratic world-view that a radical left-wing organisation be allowed to operate under the mantle of Christian aid. It is inconceivable that it should receive Swedish governmental financial aid and official Israeli sanction to engage in lobbying and domestic politics in Jerusalem while remaining silent on the plight of Christians being decimated in Christianity’s birthplace a few kilometres away in Bethlehem. And it is unconscionable that its obsession with the Jewish state causes it to turn a blind eye to the plight of millions of people the world over who are suffering indescribable injustices.

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.

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.

Ambassador Zvi Mazel sums up Sweden in a nutshell

It was highly interesting to read former Ambassador Zvi Mazel’s concise assessment of Israel’s status in the “Israel Advocacy” area. Living in Sweden and working with hasbara for 25 years, it saddens me to say Ambassador Mazel is entirely correct. The people at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs do a remarkable job under impossible conditions, and they deserve nothing but the highest praise for their accomplishments.

The problem is not with the highly motivated but vastly overworked staff there, but with the failures of their political masters who in the run up to and the wake of the Oslo debacle decided that the world understood Israel’s position, and that therefore no further information effort was needed.

Those of us who live outside Israel but work with Israel advocacy are in the front line of the information war. It is we who have our fingers on the pulse, long before Israeli politicians absorbed in the heat of domestic and foreign politics are ever aware of changes in the making. It is we who first see the signs of the shift in tone in our various countries as the relentless Arab propaganda onslaught gathers momentum while Israel’s own information efforts are cut back; not least, it is our children who are often the first to feel the brunt of the shift in pro-Arab, anti-Israel sentiment, because it is usually first expressed in the form of anti-Semitism – with our kids being the easiest target.

Israeli politicians who for perhaps very understandable short-term financial reasons authorise cutbacks in the country’s information effort need to pay closer attention to experts like Mr Mazel – and to those abroad who work in tandem with the likes of the ambassador and the excellent team at the MFA: a pro-active information drive is not a negotiable expense that can be cut in the face of other pressing needs; rather, it is a strategic investment designed to put Israel on equal footing with her enemies on a very real battleground, where the war is fought with words and under the media spotlight.

The staff at the MFA need far more backing than they have had this past decade. Israel’s failings in the information war are not the fault of MFA staff working against impossible odds to carry out their orders, it is the fault of their political masters who for a decade have simply had no orders to give them.

Ambassador Mazel is right: we need to re-dedicate ourselves to the information effort. That decision can only come from the very highest level within the government – whatever its political colour.

Our future depends on it.

BBC lies - yet again

Listening to Jeremy Bowen reporting from Jerusalem on the Gaza pullout (18th August, 6 o’clock news), it was hard to tell if he has a short memory or is simply yet another of these journalists whose personal political agenda gets in the way of his profession.

Mr Bowen stated categorically that there were two laws governing the way intransigents are dealt with in Israel: the softly-softly approach being used on the settlers and their supporters in evicting them from the synagogue in Kfar Darom, and the harder, all-guns-blazing method that would have been used had the opponents instead been Palestinians. He specifically pointed out that had they been Palestinians, the Israeli army would have deployed guns, tear gas and grenades at and inside the building.

Perhaps Mr Bowen cannot remember the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem? Not a Jewish synagogue with unarmed Jews inside, but a Christian church taken over by a gang of heavily armed Palestinian thugs who had just carried out a series of murders. Does Mr Bowen remember just how many months the terrorists remained inside the church? And does he remember that the only shooting in that hallowed building was carried out by these Palestinians? That they desecrated both the inside and the outside of the building? That they deliberately used the building for shelter knowing full well that the one thing they could count on was that Israeli soldiers would never use firearms in a church, mosque or synagogue?

It would do the BBC great credit if an unconditional apology were made for this gross slander and insulting lie.

15-year-old Swedish girl dying in Gaza

15-year-old Swede Miriam Nowajha will soon slip into a coma. Miriam, who together with her four siblings aged 6-16 was kidnapped and has been incarcerated in Gaza since June, suffers from Type 1 diabetes and is about to die.

Miriam has no more facilities for testing her blood-sugar level. Without knowing her blood-sugar level, she does not dare take insulin in case the dosage is wrong. Without her constant medication, Miriam is incapable of making rational decisions, even those affecting her health and life.

Without insulin, the 15-year-old will slip into a coma within 48 hours. She will then die in a slow but irreversible process. She has not been eating since the 6th of December.

Her mother Elisabeth Krantz has appealed to Swedish Prime Minister Mr Göran Persson, to Foreign Minister Ms Laila Freivalds, and to the Swedish Foreign Office. She has appealed to the Swedish Consulate General in Israel, which is the local Swedish authority best able to obtain the children’s release. Thus far without result.

The Swedish media have interviewed Elisabeth Krantz on a number of occasions. She has explained on the air and in the papers that her estranged husband, the children’s father, has announced his intention to marry off the two eldest girls, Sara and Miriam aged 16 and 15, to their first cousins, his own brother’s sons. Elisabeth has explained that the children – who were taken to Gaza back in June at the height of the summer when clothing requirements were minimal – do not even have shoes.

Elisabeth Krantz is appealing to media and politicians the world over to help save her children. Miriam’s situation is critical. In another couple of days’ time, it may be too late.

There is one means of getting the children released immediately: freeze Swedish aid to the PA, which is doing nothing to secure the children’s release. PM Persson stated in Parliament that it “would be a most unfortunate development if we were to confuse aid with any one legal case”.

Miriam is not a legal case, she is a 15-year-old Swede who will die far from home. She will die while Sweden continues to make huge financial contributions to the Palestinian Authority – which has still not released Miriam or her four siblings. Linking aid to the lives of Miriam, Sara, Zakarias, Amina and Adam is not an “unfortunate development” – failure to do so is tantamount to criminal negligence. Financial aid can be restored within a few seconds, without any side-effects. Miriam has one life. It cannot be restored, and it is ebbing away while these words are being read.

Campaign by the Church of Sweden to dismantle the state of Israel

The Swedish Church is behind the HOPP campaign. HOPP is the Swedish acronym for “Stop the Occupation of Palestine”. It is also the Swedish word for “hope”.

When the Swedish Church talks about Palestine, they mean – just as Yasser Arafat does – a geographical area that belongs only to Arabs. Arabs who today call themselves Palestinians but who prior to Israel’s independence in 1948 neither belonged to nor voiced aspirations towards recognition as a separate people, nation or political entity.

When the Swedish Church calls for economic sanctions against only Israel – which they maintain is single-handedly responsible for the violence in the area – it chooses to ignore the roles played by Arafat, Al Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups. Criticism is directed solely at the Jewish state. Terror carried out by Palestinians seems somehow to escape the same critical review.

Not even when Yasser Arafat on Saturday the 15th of May explicitly calls for terror, does the Swedish Church alter its bias in favour of the Palestinians, against the Israelis. Not even when Arafat issues a decree to his people to “act in accordance with your calling as warriors of Jihad … (to) terrorise your enemy and God’s enemy”.

The question is what – if anything at all – can persuade the Swedish Church and its HOPP campaign to realise the truth about the brutal people it voluntarily chooses to back. They are, after all, the very same brutal people who last week were playing football in the streets of Rafiah with crowds of jubilant spectators lining the streets. The football consisted of part of the body of a dead Israeli soldier.

Just imagine how much positive input the Swedish Church could have stimulated if its HOPP campaign instead aimed at injecting real hope among all the peoples of this troubled area. Just imagine if the Swedish Church had lived up to true Christian ethics and stretched out its hand to everyone who is suffering, giving them hope for a brighter future. Just imagine if the Swedish Church had actually learned something of Jesus’ teachings and acted in accordance with what Jesus had preached, instead of turning its back on one part of the region’s people – the Jewish people.

The Swedish Church and its HOPP campaign are a scandal for true Christian teachings. Because there is no longer any room in Christianity for the two thousand year old hatred of the Jews – except among the Swedish Church and its HOPP campaign.

Prejudice breeds hatred. Christianity is about love. The Swedish Church seems to need fundamental education on the precepts of Christianity, love, respect, history and modern social science.

And on the drawbacks of hate propaganda.

Church of Sweden suppresses truth about Palestinian barbarity

Suppression of the truth about Palestinian barbarity undermines the Church of Sweden's credibility.

Israel’s opponents are not the Palestinians, but the core of brutal Palestinian terrorists who rule with the active aid of the Arab world and blinkered supporters in countries like Sweden.

When it was revealed a fortnight ago that a handful of American soldiers had behaved in a disgraceful way towards some of their Iraqi prisoners in Baghdad, the Hamas and Islamic Jihad rulers of Gaza reacted by vandalising a local cemetery containing the graves of Allied soldiers who died during the First World War. 87 years after their death, not even the dead are protected from Palestinian bestiality.

The same callous disregard for human feeling was evinced earlier last week when six Israeli soldiers were blown apart in their armoured vehicle in the Gaza Strip. One might argue that this is war, the soldiers died fighting. But the Hamas and Islamic Jihad rulers of Gaza swooped on the scattered remains of the dead Israeli soldiers, collected the limbs and other assorted body parts and organised an auction – knowing full well that the Jewish faith requires the burial of the entire body. It is hard to imagine such macabre contempt for the most elementary tenets of human dignity, but it’s an attitude that frames the daily actions and attitudes of Gaza’s Palestinian rulers.

The Church of Sweden has lent its full weight and immense financial resources to the newly-started HOPP campaign. HOPP is the Swedish acronym for “End the Occupation of Palestine”, it is also rather cleverly the Swedish word for “hope”. The HOPP campaign aims at bringing financial and trade sanctions to bear on Israel – collective punishment against all Israel to induce the Jewish state to sanction the ultimate goal – the formation of a Palestinian state. The link between punishment and goal is rather diffuse to everyone except perhaps the anti-Semites with which the Church of Sweden claims it has nothing in common.

But this very same Church of Sweden is remarkably silent on the subject of Palestinian bartering over dead Jewish soldiers’ body parts. The Church of Sweden’s Information Bureau writes that there are “many friends of Israel – both Christians and Jews – who criticise the State of Israel for its unjust behaviour towards the Palestinians, without in any way being opponents of Israel”. However, criticism of the Palestinians for their unjust behaviour towards bereaved Jewish civilians who want to bury their dead does not seem to be equally high on the list of priorities of these very same “friends of Israel”.

The Church of Sweden’s Information Bureau claims that “Israel is a democratic state for Jews but not for other citizens of Israel”. This may come as something of a surprise to the country’s 1.2 million-strong Israeli Arab population, whose adults are entitled to vote however they want – including for political parties whose agenda favours the disappearance of the State of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian Arab entity. While on the subject of democracy and human values, the Church of Sweden’s Information Bureau may also want to explain why Saudi Arabia’s visa laws banned the entry of Jews into the kingdom. An exhaustive search of the Church of Sweden’s website reveals no strongly-worded protests by the Church – in its much-vaunted capacity as self-declared “friend of Israel” – against these anti-democratic – racist – regulations.

The same search of the website reveals no strongly-worded protests against Libya for its refusal to allow Israeli chess players to participate in the World Chess Tournament in that country, even though Israel is ranked second in the world. Apparently the Church of Sweden – which so enthusiastically embraces the boycott of Israel in its HOPP campaign – does not apply the same yardstick when it comes to judging democracy in Arab dictatorships. But the Church of Sweden is of course in good company, because the IOC – the International Olympic Committee – is equally tight-lipped in its response to the racist policies of Libya, suggesting instead that Israel’s matches be played in Malta. That, unless the world is mistaken, is how apartheid came into being – the segregation of an entire nation of people from the rest of humanity. Not even the world of sport is permitted to unite the peoples of the world as long as the automatic anti-Israel majority has its say.

But back to Gaza, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the price per kilogram of butchered Jewish body parts. If this is not the sort of Palestinian leadership that the Church of Sweden and the HOPP committee want envisage, then it is time for an unequivocal condemnation of Palestinian barbarity. Expressed in the same uncompromising vocabulary that is used to condemn Israel for claimed – and occasionally even actual – wrongdoing. And signed by the very same people. A massive public campaign to condemn Palestinian brutality and bestiality, the result of years of officially sponsored Palestinian indoctrination. Criticism of Palestinians that is given the same sort of media prominence as criticism of Israel would go a long way to erasing suspicions that the HOPP campaign and its main powerhouse, the Church of Sweden , is only interested in the destruction of the Jewish state, no matter what measures are used against its living – and dead – citizens.