Sweden at the crossroads: choice between dignity and anti-Semitism

Yesterday the entire civilised world remembered the 6 million Jewish victims who 60-odd years ago were selected for the worst anti-Semitic barbarity in modern time – the Holocaust.

With breathtaking callousness, yesterday was also the day Ilmar Reepalu, the Social Democratic mayor of Malmö who last year tried to stop Jews playing tennis in his city because they were Israelis, chose to make the following statements:

• Zionism – The Jewish national movement that is the very cornerstone of the State of Israel – is “unacceptable”. Reepalu declares this in the same interview in which he nevertheless goes on to say that “At City Hall we do not deal with foreign policy – that is against the law.”
• Reepalu regards Zionism, the Jewish national movement as an expression of “extremism … which places its adherents above all other groups and regards other people as inferior.” That is an odd claim bearing in mind that 20 percent of the Zionist State of Israel consists of Arabs – both Muslims and Christians – and the fact that the Jewish state is the only country to which Muslims fleeing Muslim-on-Muslim pogroms in Muslim states and regions such as Darfur and Nigeria deliberately cross several Muslim countries to claim refugee status in the world’s sole Jewish state. In fact, these “extremist” Zionists travel the world to bring aid to “inferior” groups of people suffering as a result of natural disasters – Hindus in India, Muslims in Turkey, Christians in Haiti, black Africans in Kenya, Asians in China. These are also the very same Zionists who, while under rocket bombardment from the Muslim regime in Gaza, transport hundreds of thousands of tonnes of supplies to the Hamas enclave – an area ethnically cleansed of all Jews, including the dead – even though the Hamas charter specifies as its aim the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel. Interestingly, Swedish Social Democratic mayor of Malmö Ilmar Reepalu has no comment on any other national movements. Only the Jewish national movement is selected for criticism.
• Israel is described by Ilmar Reepalu as a “festering sore”. Reepalu has no comment on any other people’s native countries. Only the Jewish state is selected for criticism.
• Jews who refuse to strongly and publicly criticise Israel “send the wrong signals” to the society around them. Reepalu has no comments on any other religious or ethnic groups who refuse to criticise their own native countries. For instance, he has not demanded that Malmö’s Muslims criticise Iran, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority or Egypt for the countless documented human rights abuses in those countries. He does not feel that they “send the wrong signals” to the society around them if they do not express criticism of their native countries. Only Jews are selected for criticism.
• Jews who demonstrate their support for Israel have themselves to blame if they are attacked. Reepalu has no comments on any other groups that demonstrate their support for countries such as Iran or terror groups such as Hamas or Hizbollah.
• The only antisemitism that exists, according to Reepalu, comes from “the Right”; he does not accept that there is any Left-wing anti-Semitism or any Islamist anti-Semitism in Sweden. Despite thoroughly conducted investigations by the police which state the exact opposite.
• The Jewish State of Israel has no right to self-defence according to Swedish Social Democrat Ilmar Reepalu. 10,000 Hamas missiles from Gaza fired over a period of 8 years at Israeli towns and villages merits no comment from the Social Democrat strongman of Malmö. It is only when Jews respond to the bombardment that he is spurred to comment – stating that Israel’s response is “disproportionate”. Israel’s response to the 2922 days of Islamist missile bombardment lasted 22 days. Disproportionate indeed.

The above hammer-blows against democratic belief systems and common humanity were delivered by Swedish Social Democratic mayor of Malmö Ilmar Reepalu, on the day when the civilised world commemorated the 6 million Jews selected for slaughter during the Holocaust.

Something is truly rotten in the state of Sweden, in Sweden’s Social Democratic party, when Ilmar Reepalu is allowed to make such statements, with such macabre timing – and is allowed to remain in office.

Social Democratic party leader Mona Sahlin needs to wake up to the dangers facing not only her party but her country. For the sake of Sweden’s well-being at home and reputation abroad.

Bearing in mind Mona Sahlin’s track record of photographic proximity to Islamist terror organisations and her remarkable denial as Minister of Integration that there was any anti-Semitism in Sweden, in particular not Muslim anti-Semitism (this was during a TV programme in which a 13 year old Jewish boy recounted his suffering at the hands of Muslim anti-Semites, the police have a detailed account of every attack), there may not perhaps be much point in expecting any response from Ms Sahlin.

Christians here routinely monitor the Jewish population. This is not a case of sinister profiling – rather, they bemoan the fact that after more than 200 years in what used to be a Scandinavian paradise, so many Jews are leaving the country for the safety of foreign shores, usually Israel. Christians watch and wonder. They wonder when it will be their turn to leave, and who will welcome them as they leave the country they have inhabited since the dawn of Christianity and indeed well before that.

Sweden is at a moral crossroads. And an ethnic, religious and existential one.


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Swedish paradise lost

A pro-Israel rally in the southern Swedish city of Malmö descended into violent chaos as an illegal counter-demonstration went on the offensive.

What was remarkable was that the illegal counter-demonstration was allowed by the police to come so close to the pro-Israel rally that the attackers were able to slice through the power supply cable to the PA system. They also got close enough to throw rockets, stones, eggs and glass bottles, eventually forcing the rally to abandon its programme at the insistence of the police.

In Malmö, Sweden, in 2009, Jews are running for their lives via back-streets while an insufficiently prepared and/or insufficiently interested police force allow violent attackers to swarm over the Jews’ meeting-place.

Among the rally participants were survivors of the Holocaust. One cannot even begin to imagine the images flying through their minds as they fled under a hail of missiles with the screams of the mob ringing in their ears. “Death to the Jews! Death to the Israelis” intermingled with the increasingly frenzied barks of police dogs, reawakening terrifying recollections from a not too distant past.

This is Sweden, the year is 2009. A Sweden where the mob rules and where people in police uniform bark orders.

The people responsible for this crushing defeat of democracy are not primarily the police, although there may be some reason for questioning their preparedness; the people who are responsible the media, who for years have pursued a virulently anti-Israel and borderline anti-Semitic campaign via the newspapers, radio and TV.

The power base of the mob has shown its power. Now it is up to Parliament to show its power, to demonstrate whether it will return Sweden to the course of democracy.

Or whether it will sit idly by as the country slides towards a situation that was last seen in Europe 70 years ago.

Tuesday January 27 is Sweden’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the murder of six million Jews by other racist anti-democrats not so very long ago. It is to be hoped that Tuesday will not also be hijacked by an anti-democratic, racist mob, while uniformed police protect the “basic human rights” of the violent protesters – the explanation actually given by a police officer as the Jews were removed from their venue and the area was handed over to the jubilant pro-Palestinian and pro-Hizbollah protesters.

Today in Sweden a terrible echo from seventy years ago was heard loud and clear.

Sweden fishing in murky Hamas waters

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt wades through some very murky waters indeed.

Before the weekend he breaks EU policy, meets with Hamas government ministers and declares “we believe the Palestinian government should be treated as a single entity”.

Immediately after the weekend he somehow manages to forget everything Hamas stands for on his visit to Yad Vashem, the monument to the monstrosity that is anti-Semitism – a disease that is alive and very much thriving to this day.

Not least among Hamas’ main backers, Iran. The very same Iran that recently hosted a conference questioning whether the Holocaust took place and organised a cartoon competition belittling the Holocaust.

Since Swedish Foreign Minister Bildt is apparently unable to read or understand English, allow me to quote a passage from the official Hamas Charter that he might find relevant,:
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

If this statement reflects the cohesive policy of that “single entity” – the Palestinian government – and Bildt does not subscribe to the view that Israel should be obliterated, then he should immediately sever relations with all Palestinian ministers since they are all to be treated as one single entity – his own words.

Of course, Swedish Foreign Minister Bildt may not exactly have anything against the Hamas Charter per se. His blog displays an animosity to the Jewish state that is unparalleled in any western democracy. Perhaps the time has come for Israel to make up its mind as to just how often it is willing to be grossly insulted by its guests – however fancy their titles.

Revolutionary movements that can't seem to pass a motion

Our partners for peace the Fatah Palestinians under the secular Holocaust denier President Mahmud Abbas are having trouble with their partners in government, the Palestinians under the religious Sunni Hamas, who propose the right of return of Palestinian Arabs to lands they never lived in, from Arab lands that have consistently denied them citizenship and elementary human rights. The Sunni Hamas also propose the enforced right of return of all Israeli Jews to countries to which their forefathers trace their roots after their forced removal over the centuries from the land of their origin – Israel. It’s a move otherwise known as ethnic cleansing.

The Sunni Hamas are in turn aided by the Shiite Iranians, some of whose military personnel were arrested in Gaza by Fatah last Thursday on charges of military subversion. The Iranians of course are the people whose president Mahmud Ahmadinejad infamously joined the deafening chorus of other Islamic states in denying the right of Israel to exist, at the same time going one step further by calling for the Jewish state’s destruction and replacement by yet another Islamic state. This at the same time as Teheran hosted a Holocaust-denial conference and ratcheted up its program of nuclear armament.

Meanwhile, Fatah and Hamas are having difficulty agreeing on just about anything apart from the need to kill Jews. So much so, that Hamas on Thursday attacked a Fatah supply convoy containing toilets for the brave Fatah bottoms. Fatah, fighting valiantly, managed to maintain a firm military hold of the convoy’s supplies of toilet paper. Bringing the Palestinian national “movement” to a complete standstill.

So it’s a case of the Palestinians continuing to be unable to work together to pass even a single “motion”…

This is Palestinian society in the year 2007. Europe pays for the toilet paper, Fatah transports it, Hamas hijacks it and, as with its nuclear program, Iran is only in the game to “diversify its energy resources” by capitalizing on this new source of pent-up Palestinian very natural gas.

Some of the world’s best comedy is unfolding before our eyes. We in the West are already paying the ensemble through our noses for the show, billions of dollars over the years. Of course, the other cost of this unending black comedy is not in dollars but in lives – Palestinian, Israeli and Lebanese. While Iran continues its search for thespian perfection on the Middle Eastern stage.

Swedish credibility at an all-time low

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anti-Jewish sentiment spreads in Swedish schools

The following case-history highlights creeping anti-Jewish sentiment in Swedish society.

On the 11th of September 2001, four civilian aircraft were deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon headquarters in the USA.

The shock of this event prompted many head teachers in Sweden to advise their staff to take time from scheduled school classes to discuss this event with students. School students of all ages were arriving at school not knowing, not understanding, looking for guidance and reassurance from the adults in their lives.

My thirteen year old daughter’s teacher came into the class and announced that the lesson would be spent discussing the previous day’s events.

The teacher started by explaining that these were terrorist actions, that they were terrible events, and that many civilians had undoubtedly died – the figures in those first hours were very uncertain. She then went on to explain, by way of background, that although actions of this sort are terrible, it is nonetheless important to understand the justifiable anger of the Arab and Muslim world against everything American (it was already at this early stage clear that the aircraft had been hijacked by people with an Arab connection). This justifiable anger stemmed from general Arab and Muslim hatred of the Americans because, a few decades previously, the Americans had given the Jews the land that had previously belonged to the Palestinians, so that the Jews could build their own country of Israel. The Arab and Muslim world (continued the teacher) did not accept this outside interference by the Americans, which explained their hatred of everything American and probably prompted the previous day’s terror action.

My daughter returned home in a state of shock. When I later phoned the teacher to discuss the issue, she denied saying anything of the sort and accused my daughter of lying. I replied that I was prepared to attend a meeting with the entire class at which all students would be given free opportunity to confirm or deny my daughter’s version. The teacher declined to participate. I pointed out that any further attempt to indoctrinate the children would prompt me to make a formal complaint to the Swedish Ministry of Education, and I left it at that.

It is now about 7 months later, mid-April 2002, the political and security situation in Israel and the West Bank/Gaza Strip is very precarious. In Sweden, the media attitude towards Israel is extremely offensive, openly biased towards the Palestinian cause. The media’s and the public’s distinction between Israeli and Jew is becoming increasingly clouded. Jewish institutions like the synagogue and school, and individuals going about their lives, have been targeted in a variety of ways, including bomb threats, beatings and vandalisation. There is an increasingly aggressive public stance towards everything Israeli, and to a growing extent everything Jewish.

On Sunday the 7th of April, a large pro-Palestinian demonstration is held in the city centre. My by now 14 year old daughter is walking home with her best friend – a classmate from the class in which the above explanation of the Twin Towers action was given by the teacher. The friend says that she thinks the demonstrators are absolutely right, that “the country should be given back to the Palestinians since it was the Americans who gave you Jews the country in the first place”. My daughter is stunned. She wants to explain to her friend how she sees Israel’s rights and entitlements on this issue, she wants to explain that there are two sides to every dispute, that there is scope for both sides to come to an agreement if only the violence would stop. Perhaps most importantly, she wants to explain the distinction between Israelis and Jews. Her friend fends off her explanations with virtually the same words that the teacher had delivered all those months ago – they seem to have made a strong impression. The friend then leaves, having heard nothing and denying my daughter the opportunity to explain anything.

My daughter is extremely upset. The day before, she had attended Shabbat services in the synagogue – guarded by armed police patrols on foot and in squad cars – and the day after is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Her grandmother was her family’s only survivor from Ravensbruck and Auschwitz, weighing 40 kilos when the camp was liberated and she was granted a new lease of life in Sweden. My daughter wants to explain all this and much more to her best friend. Instead, she can do nothing but watch her friend walk away.

My wife now writes to our daughter’s class teacher (not the same teacher as the one above) and sketches the background to these distressing events, taking care not to mention names. My wife asks permission to come to the class or to ask someone from the Jewish Community’s staff unit to come to the class and help put both the political and – in particular – the religious/social aspects into a more accurate perspective. She states that she does not in any way wish to influence the students’ opinions in any direction, only to give them balanced facts so that they can draw their own conclusions – whatever those conclusions may be. She also wants to talk about the importance of respect, of listening to one another’s opinions before deciding whether to accept or reject them. The class teacher declines to deal with the request, although this is her home class, and she instead passes the note on to the school management – the headmaster.

One day later, my wife gets a single-sentence reply: “Your request has been denied.” No explanation, no justification.

This is Sweden, the year is 2002.

My wife and I – and our daughter – feel this is a frightening sign of the creeping anti-Jewish sentiments that are becoming increasingly widespread throughout Swedish society. When these sentiments spread throughout the school system – when teachers express themselves as above and their students repeat their words virtually verbatim 7 months later – and there is no forum for discussion or balanced presentation of facts, we feel that the situation needs to be illuminated.

I’m not sure we can blame the school, however. The press in Sweden are blatantly anti-Israel, letters to the editor with a pro-Israel stance are virtually always refused, there is no forum in the public media where Jews with a moderate profile or Jews who support Israel can be heard, although there is always editorial space for Jews who are critical of Israel. Anti-Jewish activity is concealed behind ostensibly anti-Israeli opinions. The media do not support the position of the country’s Jews, nor of Israel, they refuse to point out the difference between Jew and Israeli, and they will not accept Jewish input that explains any of the above.

The school takes its cue and follows suit.