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 Swedish recipe: all children are equal, unless they are Israelis

Swedish Foreign Minister Ms Laila Freivalds will shortly be visiting Ramallah to enlist Yasser Arafat’s help in ending the anguish of a Swedish mother whose five children were kidnapped by her estranged Palestinian husband and are being held hostage in Gaza under armed guard.

Ms Freivalds is to be commended for playing such a personal role in the wellbeing of young children. She deserves every best wish in her endeavour. She will hopefully be able to bring about a happy resolution to the agony of a mother who has had her children taken away – albeit temporarily – and that she will be thus able to alleviate the fear and anxiety of the children themselves, the youngest a mere 6 years old.

What seems strange in this context, however, is that the Swedish Foreign Minister has apparently never been equally moved to make a similarly personal appeal to Yasser Arafat to end the indiscriminate killing of Israeli children on streets, in buses, at parties, at religious celebrations. This despite the murder of a Swedish citizen and the attempted murder of several others at a Pesach celebration in Netanya, and the murder of a 20 year-old Swedish citizen at an Egged bus stop in Israel. All carried out by Palestinian terrorists closely or loosely affiliated with Yasser Arafat. These victims – many of them children under school age – are not being temporarily held against their will by estranged family members – they have been murdered, their families will never see them again.

It would be absurd to suggest that Ms Freivalds is anti-Semitic or that she reflects an anti-Semitic Swedish government. However, it cannot take much imagination to realise that this is precisely the kind of subtle signal that is – quite correctly – interpreted by Islamist fanatics in Sweden and elsewhere that they are immune regardless of their actions and that Europe applies one yardstick to Jews and Israelis and quite another to Muslims and Palestinians.

Swedish Foreign Minister Freivalds deserves all the support she can muster in the delicate task facing her. It would be so much more of a credit to her government if she were to apply the same dedication to Israelis suffering in the same way – children and parents alike.

Quiet diplomatic support and off-the-record words of encouragement to Swedish and Israeli Jews not only do not go far enough – it is the very absence of outright public support that by definition encourages a growing anti-Semitic undercurrent among extreme Islamists in Sweden and abroad.

One law for Israelis and Jews, another for Palestinians and Muslims

Swedish Foreign Minister Ms Laila Freivalds will soon be making a personal visit to Ramallah. There she will enlist Yasser Arafat’s help in bringing to an end the anguish of a Swedish mother, Elisabeth Krantz, whose five children have been kidnapped by their Palestinian father and held hostage in Gaza.

Ms Freivalds is to be commended for playing such a personal role in the well-being of young children. She deserves every best wish in her endeavour and it is to be hoped that she manages to put a swift end to the unimaginable agony of a mother who has lost her children, and to the constant fear and anxiety of five children, the youngest a mere 6 years old.

What is remarkable, however, is that the Swedish Foreign Minister has never felt it necessary to make an equally personal appeal to Yasser Arafat to bring an end to indiscriminate killing of Israeli children on public streets, in buses, at parties, at religious celebrations – including the murder of a Swedish citizen and the attempted murder of several others at a Pesach celebration in Netanya.

While not for one moment suggesting that Ms Freivalds is either personally anti-Semitic or that she in any way reflects an anti-Semitic Swedish government, it cannot take much imagination to realise that this is precisely the kind of subtle signal that is – quite correctly – interpreted by Islamist fanatics in Sweden and elsewhere that they are indeed off-limits and that Europe does indeed apply one yardstick to Jews and Israelis and quite another to Muslims and Palestinians.

The Swedish Foreign Minister deserves all the support she can muster in the immensely delicate task facing her. It would be so much more of a credit to the Swedish administration if she were to apply the very same standards to the rest of an equally suffering regional population.

Behind-the-scenes support for and quiet words of encouragement to Sweden’s Jewish population not only don’t go far enough – the very absence of outright public support is per definition encouragement of a growing anti-Semitic undercurrent among the more extreme fringes of Sweden’s Muslim population.

Whither the White Buses?

By fomenting anti-Semitism, a Swedish leader shames her brave forebears.

Sixty years ago, Sweden made headlines sending its White Buses to bring scores of Jewish Holocaust survivors out of the terrifying hell of European anti-Semitism to a safe haven in Sweden. Today if Swedes were to make news, it would be over gaps in logic and empathy large enough to drive a bus through - while Swedish anti-Semitism reaches new heights.

A few weeks ago, Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds achieved considerable notoriety when, during a visit to a class of 16-year-olds in Gothenburg, she accused Israelis of behaving like Nazis towards the Palestinians. She beamed with appreciation when one of the pupils, a Muslim girl, voiced the theory that according to the Torah, the Land of Israel was promised to the Jews upon the return of the Messiah, and since the Messiah had not returned the Jews had no right to be there and should accordingly be expelled.

This happened at a school with a high proportion of immigrants, many of them Muslims, and one solitary Jewish student. When that pupil, devastated to the core of his being, wrote in the newspapers of his sense of betrayal that the foreign minister in the country of his birth could treat the truth in such cavalier fashion, Freivalds denied it all.

Fast forward to the visit by the same Laila Freivalds to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on June 9. In her speech there, she said, "Let me state very clearly that it is legitimate to criticize Israeli government policies as it is to criticize the policy of any government. Such criticism can never in itself be equated with anti-Semitism, and we firmly reject attempts to do so."

At no time during that speech or in any context prior to that speech, however, did Freivalds show interest in expressing criticism of the Arab regimes surrounding Israel. Criticism of Israel, the world's only Jewish state, while failing to even mention the reprehensible actions of the regimes surrounding it, has one effect: it nurtures anti-Semitism.

Freivalds had more to say in her speech at Yad Vashem: "In Sweden, anti-Semitism falls under the legal ban on racial, ethnic, or religious incitement. Swedish law enforcement acts firmly against any such punishable actions. They are prosecuted to the full."

Either Freivalds is severely out of touch with reality, or she is being somewhat flexible with the truth.

Here are the facts: For an anti-Semitic crime to work its way into the statistics by which Freivalds sets such store, Swedish law requires that there be 10 witnesses. The reason is that racial hatred has to have been spread for it to constitute a crime of incitement. If it is not spread (to the requisite number of witnesses), there is no crime to prosecute. Case closed.
I SPEAK from personal experience. Several cases involving anti-Semitic attacks by Muslim youths on my 13-year-old son have been closed for precisely this reason. If the required number of witnesses cannot be furnished, the case does not get as far as court. Nor does it get to court if the perpetrators are too young to be prosecuted - which, unfortunately, describes a significant proportion of the perpetrators.

Freivalds went on to claim that "statistics are kept, and published annually. According to the latest figures, the number of anti-Semitic crimes in Sweden is declining." Ms. Freivalds is apparently oblivious of the following: Most anti-Semitic crime in Sweden is perpetrated by youngsters of Arab and Muslim background. If they are under age, the case does not go to court - so it does not figure in Ms. Freivalds' statistics. If the gangs attack a solitary Jew (usually a youngster), then here too there is no means of bringing a case against the perpetrators without the requisite number of witnesses. Again, such incidents do not make it into Freivalds' statistics.
Just two days after Freivalds spoke at Yad Vashem, there was a football match in Stockholm between two teams of 15-year-olds. One team is IK Maccabi, Jewish boys from Stockholm; their opponents were kids from families originally from Somalia. Throughout the match, the Jewish kids were being taunted with "Death to the Jews," "We'll deal with the lot of you after the match," "Smash Zionism," and "We'll take it easy now and sort them out after the match," this last by the team captain.

At the end of the match, according to customary sportsmanlike tradition the teams were to line up on the pitch and shake hands with each other. However, led by the team captain, who instead of shaking hands held his opponent with one hand and hit him in the face with the other, the Somalian team launched a full attack on the Jewish team. They were immediately joined by their supporters, who also laid in with punches and kicks to the 15-year-old Jewish football players. The Jewish team was led away bleeding, shocked, and traumatized. Not, however, before administering a lesson their opponents would not easily forget.

No one is suggesting that Freivalds was as active in supporting this disgrace as she was in encouraging hate and division at the school in Gothenburg, but her spirit seems to have pervaded every pore of Swedish society. The 15-year-old Somalian kids have taken their cue from a leadership that will go to any lengths to deny it has created and is nurturing a problem.
But Sweden does not have a problem, it has a festering sickness. The first step in curing any sickness is to identify it and administer the appropriate medicine. Denying one has an ailment because it is a highly embarrassing one may be a perfectly understandable human reaction, but it is hardly conducive to pursuing a cure.

Sometimes surgery is the only option. Freivalds may find she is part of the sickness, not the cure, and her removal from office may be the only option if there is to be a cure for an increasingly ailing Sweden.

She may also find that no number of White Buses furnished by yesterday's Swedish leaders will do anything to undo the disgrace of some of their successors. Prime Minister Göran Persson, that man of immense vision and the force behind Sweden's renowned Living History program, should act before there is nothing left to save.

Is the Swedish Foreign Minister out of touch with reality?

60 years ago, Sweden made the headlines by sending its White Buses to bring scores of Jewish Holocaust survivors out of the terrifying hell of European anti-Semitism to a safe haven in Sweden. Today Swedes are hitting the headlines with gaps in logic and empathy large enough to drive a bus through – while Swedish anti-Semitism reaches new heights.


A few weeks ago (May 2004), Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds achieved considerable notoriety when, during a visit to a class of 16-year-olds in Gothenburg, she accused Israelis of behaving like Nazis towards the Palestinians. She beamed with appreciation when one of the pupils, a Muslim girl, voiced the theory that according to the Torah, the Land of Israel was promised to the Jews upon the return of the Messiah, and since the Messiah had not returned, the Jews had no right to be there and should accordingly be expelled. This was a school with a high proportion of immigrants, many of them Muslims, and one solitary Jewish pupil. When that pupil, devastated to the core of his being, wrote in the newspapers of his sense of betrayal that the Foreign Minister in the country of his birth could treat the truth in such cavalier fashion, Ms Freivalds denied it all.

Wind forward to the visit by Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds to Yad VaShem in Jerusalem on 9 June 2004. In her speech there, she said: “Let me … state very clearly that it is legitimate to criticise Israeli government policies, as it is to criticise the policy of any government. Such criticism can never in itself be equated with anti-Semitism, and we firmly reject attempts to do so.” At no time during that speech or in any context prior to that speech, however, did Ms Freivalds evince any interest in expressing criticism of the Arab regimes surrounding Israel. Criticism of Israel – the world’s only Jewish state – while failing to even mention the reprehensible actions of the regimes surrounding the Jewish state, has one effect and one effect only: it nurtures anti-Semitism. End of discussion.

Ms Freivalds had more to say in her speech at Yad VaShem: “In Sweden, anti-Semitism falls under the legal ban on racial, ethnic or religious incitement. Swedish law enforcement acts firmly against any such punishable actions. They are prosecuted to the full.” Either Ms Freivalds is severely out of touch with reality, or she is being somewhat flexible with the truth.

Because here are the actual facts: For an anti-Semitic crime to work its way into the statistics by which Ms Freivalds sets such store, Swedish legislation requires that there be ten witnesses. The reason is that racial hatred has to have been spread for it to constitute a crime of incitement. If it is not spread (to the requisite number of witnesses) there is no crime to prosecute. Case closed. I speak from personal experience – several cases involving anti-Semitic attacks by Muslim youths on my own 13-year-old son have been closed for precisely this reason. If the required number of witnesses cannot be furnished the case does not get as far as court. Nor does it get to court if the perpetrators are too young to be prosecuted – which unfortunately describes a significant proportion of the perpetrators.

Ms Freivalds went on to claim that “statistics are kept, and published annually. According to the latest figures, the number of anti-Semitic crimes in Sweden is declining.” Ms Freivalds is apparently oblivious of the following: most anti-Semitic crime in Sweden is perpetrated by youngsters of Arab and Muslim background. If they are underage the case does not go to court – so it does not figure in Ms Freivalds’ statistics. If the gangs attack a solitary Jew (usually a youngster), then here too there is no means of bringing a case against the perpetrators without the requisite number of witnesses. Again, such incidents do not make it into Ms Freivalds’ statistics.

Flash forward a couple of days to a football match in Stockholm on the 11th of June between two teams of 15-year-olds. One team is IK Maccabi, Jewish boys from Stockholm, their opponents are kids whose families originally hailed from Somalia. Throughout the match, the Jewish kids are being taunted with “Death to the Jews”, “We’ll deal with you lot after the match”, “Smash Zionism”, “We’ll take it easy now and sort them out after the match” – this latter by none other than the team captain.

At the end of the match, according to customary sportsmanlike tradition the teams were to line up on the pitch and shake hands with each other. However, led by the team captain – who instead of shaking hands held his opponent with one hand and hit him in the face with the other – the Somalian team launched a full attack on the Jewish team. They were immediately joined by their supporters, who also laid in with punches and kicks to the 15-year-old Jewish football players. The Jewish team was led away bleeding, shocked and traumatised. Not, however, before administering a lesson their opponents would not easily forget.

No-one is suggesting that Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds was as active in supporting this disgrace as she was in encouraging hate and division at the school in Gothenburg, but her spirit seems to have pervaded every pore of Swedish society. The 15-year-old Somalian kids have taken their cue from a leadership that will go to any lengths to deny it has created and is nurturing a problem.

But Sweden does not have a problem, it has a festering sickness. The first step in curing any sickness is to identify it and administer the appropriate medicine. Denying one has an ailment because it is a highly embarrassing one to have to admit to it in public may be a perfectly understandable human reaction, but it is hardly conducive to effecting a cure.

Sometimes surgery is the only option. Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds may find she is part of the sickness, not the cure, and that political surgery to remove her from office may be the only option if there is to be a cure for an increasingly ailing Sweden.

She may also find that no number of White Buses furnished by yesterday’s Swedish leaders will do anything to undo the disgrace of some of today’s Swedish leaders. Prime Minister Göran Persson, that man of immense vision and the force behind Sweden’s renowned “Living History” programme, should act before there is nothing left to save.