Swedish Prime Minister candidate sacrifices Swedish Jews’ security for Muslim votes

This is a translation and adaptation of an article that University of Malmö student Peter Rubinstein originally published in Swedish on Newsmill.
He writes from his first-hand perspective of the situation in Malmö, the rise of Muslim anti-Semitism in the city and the unwillingness of the political establishment to deal with the issue.

In recent weeks, discussions about Malmö’s left-wing mayor Ilmar Reepalu and his controversial statements about Jews and Israel have caused anti-Semitic sentiment in the nation’s third-largest city to bubble to the surface. His extremist views, widely regarded as racist, are one part of the problem. Another, perhaps more important, aspect is that large sections of Sweden’s media and political establishment appear unwilling to acknowledge the nature of the problem.

Christian Democrat party leader Göran Hägglund (Minister for Health and Social Affairs in the governing centrist coalition) noted in a TV debate on March 7 that the rising tide of anti-Semitic threats in Malmö came from sections of the city’s Muslim population. That Hägglund mentioned Muslims by name may well have been an indiscreet slip of the tongue rather than a deliberate decision – he may have just injudiciously voiced what many Swedes feel but seldom put into words for reasons of political correctness. With one eye firmly fixed on the results of the latest pre-election polls, Social Democrat party leader Mona Sahlin, currently in opposition but according to various polls likely to win the national elections this September, calmly professed outrage and insisted that Hägglund apologise. Hägglund quickly changed the subject and avoided this issue during the rest of the debate, possibly because he too did not want to risk alienating the Muslim electorate.

Yet the recent spate of anti-Semitic hate crimes in Malmö is not attributed to a bunch of disaffected right-wing skinheads or uneducated yobs. Rather, it is a direct result of anti-Jewish feeling among sections of the city’s Muslim population. I know, because I live in Malmö and I am a Jew. I’ve experienced it at first hand and I know several of the victims of both physical attacks and verbal abuse. The perpetrators have one single factor in common: their roots in Muslim countries.



This is something that has to be recognised openly and debated in public if Sweden is to overcome this problem. Mona Sahlin and her party comrade Ilmar Reepalu refuse even to acknowledge the source of the problem. If Sweden does not recognise and label its substantial undercurrent of Muslim anti-Semitism, it stands no chance of overcoming it.

It is a matter of shielding elementary democratic values: if the powers that be feel it is important for Jews continue to live in Malmö instead of fleeing the city, as they are at present, then it is necessary to bring about a change of attitude among Malmö’s Muslim population. Sweden is by no means unique in hosting a large Muslim population with openly expressed antipathy towards Jews. Mein Kampf is a best-seller in many Muslim countries, and the Arabic-language media are rife with raw anti-Jewish propaganda. This has been thoroughly documented worldwide, not least by news site Memri TV which translates news items from Arabic TV channels. Last year the Kristelig Dagblad newspaper in Denmark reported on a survey among Danish Muslims who revealed widespread anti-Jewish sentiment.

In Sweden cases of openly expressed anti-Semitism are on the rise. A couple of years ago there was the documented case of a Stockholm mosque selling audio tapes in which Jews were referred to as pigs and apes. There are clips on YouTube showing a large group of young Muslim men in Malmö last year shouting Arabic slogans inciting the massacre of Jews. There are film clips showing how a peaceful pro-Israeli manifestation on January 25 last year was smashed by a wild Islamist mob shouting “Hitler! Hitler”, “Death to the Jews” and “Death to the Zionists”.

As the pro-Israeli demonstrators, many of them survivors of the Holocaust, were forced to flee for their lives, Muslim youths pursued them to continue their attacks. One of my friends told me how some of these youngsters pointed to her father and shouted “There’s a Jew!” My friend’s father, who speaks fluent Arabic, replied “Yes, I’m a Jew. So what?” They replied: “We’re going to kill you, you Jew!” During this exchange, one of the gang members threw a glass bottle that hit my friend.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg, showing how widespread hatred of the Jews is among Sweden’s Muslim population – and how openly it is expressed in front of a remarkably silent media and political establishment, with some notable exceptions. It is strongly reminiscent of the open hatred with which Jews were regarded and treated in 1930s Germany.

For this very reason it is not at all surprising that the situation for us Jews in Malmö worsens steadily when political figures such as Social Democrats Sahlin and Reepalu ignore blatant Muslim anti-Semitism and try instead to portray the situation as some kind of general intolerance on the part of unidentified groups. The perpetrators are clearly identified. So too are their victims. Sahlin and Reepalu encourage anti-Semitism by refusing to openly state what everyone else sees and knows – the Muslim source of Sweden’s anti-Semitism.

Mona Sahlin expressed outrage when government minister Göran Hägglund did just that – clearly identified the source of Sweden’s anti-Semitism. Why? Is it because Sahlin remains totally ignorant of the situation despite the fact that she actually met with representatives of the Jewish community in Malmö? Because at that meeting, she must have been informed in no uncertain terms as to the precise source of Malmö’s anti-Semitism.

Or has Mona Sahlin simply made the same deliberate calculation as her party colleague, Malmö mayor Ilmar Reepalu, and decided not to offend the city’s and the nation’s Muslim population this election year? Sweden has about 18,000 Jews and about 400,000 Muslims. Whether Sahlin’s posture stems from cynical vote-catching or sheer ignorance is immaterial – either way the result is unworthy of someone who regards herself as a candidate for the highest office in this country.

My maternal and paternal grandparents were forced to flee the Nazis and lost their entire families in the Holocaust. In 1969 my parents fled Poland as a result of Polish anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism. Today history appears to be repeating itself and like many other Jews in Malmö and elsewhere in this country, I am being forced to consider fleeing Sweden because Jews are regarded as legitimate targets by Muslim anti-Semites disguised as anti-Zionists.

It is time for Sweden to confront its problem, or see an accelerating demographic change take place. Ultimately at risk is this country’s democratic self-esteem.

Peter Rubinstein
The original article in Swedish was published on Newsmill:

Links in English:
Sweden, Israel and the Jews
Anti-Zionist party formed in Sweden
Tundra Tabloids
Ilmar Reepalu - wrong in every language
The unholy trinity


Links in Swedish:
GP
Fred i Mellanöstern - Reepalu angriper Malmös judar
Fred i Mellanöstern - Ilmar Reepalu svävande om judeförföljelserna i Baltikum
IM - rödbrunt i Malmö
IM - Hopplös röd-grön Mellanösternpolitik
Jihad i Malmö - läs denna alltid lika intressanta blogg

Boycott the Jews. In Sweden.

When blood-libels about organ-harvesting don’t work, it’s time to dust off that other weapon that has served racists so well for centuries: the boycott.

Not just any boycott.

A boycott solely against people of one single faith.

People who refuse to betray their own country.

And not just any people either. Academics. The leading thinkers of any democratic society, the progressives who embrace free thought as part and parcel of their pursuit of expertise.

No, we’re not talking about Egypt, whose Muslim majority routinely violate the human rights of the country’s 3 million Coptic Christians.

Neither are we talking about the Shia Muslims of Iraq who slaughter the Sunni Muslims of Iraq in the name of Islam. And vice versa.

Nor are we talking about the Muslim Palestinian Authority in the West Bank (the Jewish provinces of Judea and Samaria where the Palestinian Arabs want to create a second Palestinian state alongside Jordan). In the West Bank, Christian Arabs living in the cradle of Christianity are so relentlessly pursued by their Muslim neighbours that their population in Bethlehem has dwindled to one-third its size in just one generation.

And of course we are not talking about the Gaza Strip, where ethnic cleansing got a head start with the removal of every single Jew, dead and alive, before the territory was handed over to the Gazans as a first step in the establishment of peace and a new nation. What the Muslim-majority Gazans did instead was to turn on the Christian minority, which has since been decimated.

When it comes to use of the boycott as a weapon against people of a single faith, we are, in fact, talking not about any of the above, but about Sweden.

KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, is organizing a “seminar to discuss the case for boycotting Israel”. Presenting the case for a boycott will be such leading lights of democracy and fidelity as Dror Feiler, a communist who renounced his Israeli citizenship and now campaigns in Sweden on behalf of terrorist organizations such as Hamas. He is regarded in many circles as a traitor. He is also President of European Jews for a Just Peace, an organization numbering almost a hundred people. He does not represent more than a handful of Jews in Sweden but is given widespread coverage by a media enchanted with the Palestinian narrative and deaf to any other.

At the KTH event, Associate Prof Jan-Erik Gustafsson will “report about the Birzeit group for international academic boycott”.

So it’s going to be a balanced, fair and above all representative exchange of views, then.

Interestingly, not a word is mentioned by these champions of human rights on the subject of China, which has occupied and annexed Tibet these past fifty years. Or Turkey, which committed unspeakable atrocities against the Armenians and still occupies Armenia. Neither is Russia mentioned, despite its continued occupation of Chechnya. The Kurds still do not have a country of their own and have been hounded over the centuries – yet another subject that KTH chooses not to highlight.

And that’s before we even mention that other paragon of democracy and enlightenment, Iran, which continues to trumpet its determination to erase Israel from the map and is pursuing the development of nuclear technology for that purpose.

The boycott supporters at KTH prefer not to delve into the legion human rights abuses occurring every day in the Palestinian territories – honour killings, systematized rapes of Christian women, the illegal incarceration of the one sole Jew still (hopefully) alive in Gaza – Gilad Schalit who was kidnapped from sovereign Israel three years ago and still held without access to the Red Cross, his family, legal representation (not that he is accused of anything apart from Judaism, a crime in Gaza), the summary executions of political opponents. None of this matters.

There is a considerable risk to constantly crying “anti-Semitism” every time something of a tacit anti-Semitic nature takes place. The term and its meaning risk being diluted.

There is however an even greater risk to ignoring anti-Semitic attacks when they occur in countries that are ostensibly democracies. Because it sets society on the slippery path to indifference. And we know where that leads. Ask the people of Cambodia, Darfur, Bosnia, Tibet, Armenia, Kurdistan. And the decimated Jews of Europe.

Interestingly enough, one of the participants at the KTH seminar is the Egyptian propaganda ministry. That may of course explain the utter silence on the plight of Egypt’s Coptic Christians.

It also raises interesting questions about how one of Sweden’s foremost educational establishments has been infiltrated by a foreign governmental agency with a murky agenda.

For an insight into how Egypt is perceived today, read this article by former Israeli ambassador to Egypt Mr Zvi Mazel.

And for an insight into how Sweden is perceived today, read this interview by Dr Manfred Gerstenfeld.

With Egyptian state infiltration into Swedish academia, Swedish state funding of various anti-Israel NGOs, and the total infiltration of UNRWA by various Palestinian Arab terrorist and criminal gangs, it is time to step back and ponder where we are headed in the Middle East.

Because constellations such as the Sweden/Egypt/Hamas/media/academia axis seem to be working cohesively outside the established policy structures.

The lack of transparency is worrying. Like now at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, which demands that Jewish Israeli academics betray their country if they wish to be treated as equals.

It’s an echo of what Ilmar Reepalu, the mayor of Malmö in southern Sweden said recently: that only Swedish Jews who renounced all affiliations with Israel could reasonably be expected to live in peace and security in Sweden.

He made no corresponding demand on Swedish Muslims.
 
Malmö mayor Ilmar Reepalu may well be an honorary member of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

They certainly speak and act in sync.


Interesting link:
CAMERA reports that government-funded anti-Israel NGOs have been operating for many years.

Sweden: Well on the Way To Becoming The First Islamist Republic of Europe

When Malmö Mayor Ilmar Reepalu expresses anti-Semitic sentiments and decries the legitimacy of only one state in the world - Israel - and no other, this is not an exception to the rule in Sweden.

It is the rule in Sweden.

Reepalu does what he does because he has the full backing of large swathes of the Swedish media. In Sweden, the media set the agenda based on personal political affiliations and the politicians comply.

In functioning democracies, on the other hand, it is usually the politicians who listen to the citizens, set the agenda and run the country, while the media monitor and report on their progress.

The Institute for Global Jewish Affairs recently published an in-depth analysis of the aftermath of last year's controversial Aftonbladet affair in which the Swedish newspaper published allegations - refuted by the people cited as witnesses and subsequently withdrawn by the writer himself - that the Israeli army routinely killed Palestinian Arabs for the purpose of harvesting their organs. The article itself was roundly condemned the world over by journalists and media analysts as a piece of exceptionally shoddy work, devoid of research, blatantly propagandistic and designed to promote racial agitation.

Six months have now passed since the controversial article was published by Swedish left-wing tabloid Aftonbladet. Last week analyst and researcher Mikael Tossavainen published his findings on the original article, the climate in which it was produced and the atmosphere it was designed to engender, in a report entitled The Aftonbladet Organ-Trafficking Accusations against Israel: A Case Study.

Tossavainen's excellent study ought to be compulsory reading for all foreign office staffers and all journalists everywhere. It methodically analyses background and effect. It tangents the dangers of inactivity in the face of increasing polarisation nurtured by a politically motivated and powerful media.

Ignore it at your peril.


Related articles from this site:
How Sweden became anti-Israel (2005)
The art of terror, Swedish style (2004)
In Sweden, silence is golden
Israel does not exist - according to Swedish news agency TT
How the West was won
Sweden boycotts Haiti
Sweden at a crossroads - choice between dignity and anti-Semitism
Code Red in Malmö

The Aftonbladet non-story

Question:
When is organ trafficking involving Palestinian victims not a headline-grabbing story?

Answer 1:
When Swedish extreme-Left tabloid Aftonbladet realizes that the despicable practice cannot be blamed on Jews, Israelis, Zionists or democrats.

Answer 2:
When Swedish extreme-Left tabloid Aftonbladet realizes that the despicable practice is in fact taking place among Muslims in Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza and Egypt.

The Aftonbladet Effect:
Total clampdown. The story does not exist.

Not in the totalitarian media empire run by Aftonbladet, Sweden’s biggest-circulation daily and largest stakeholder in TT, the Swedish news agency that dedicates itself to demonisation of the Jewish state while maintaining absolute silence on human rights abuses in such beacons of democracy and respectful coexistence as Sudan, Syria, Iran, the Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the Fatah-ruled West Bank, Jordan, Pakistan, Afghanistan.

Is there a pattern in the above shortlist?

Scarcely surprisingly, Aftonbladet declined to publish a story about a massive organ-trafficking industry that continues to this day.

That’s because it discovered no Jews were involved. All the alleged perpetrators are Muslims. The victims are all Palestinian Arabs, exactly as in the original story published by Aftonbladet alleging systematic Israeli abuse (later retracted). All the other parameters are similar. It’s only the religion and ethnicity of the alleged perpetrators that are different.

Is a pattern beginning to emerge?

Immaterial really, since the story never made it into Aftonbladet.

CAMERA has published its exchange of correspondence with Aftonbladet on the issue of organised Muslim organ trafficking. “Exchange” is perhaps not the best word to use – Aftonbladet never replied. It’s a non-issue for the newspaper since no Jews were alleged to have been involved.

Is the pattern any clearer now?

No honest, principled or loyal Swedes were hurt in the publication of this article, but a whole lot of rabid publicly funded anti-Semites, virulent anti-Israeli fanatics and blatant pro-Islamists have undoubtedly been significantly aggrieved by its tone and content.

NGO Monitor - Dishonest Reporter Award
The Israel Project (TIP) - background to the organ trafficking allegations
Barry Rubin - The Blood Libel that Won't Die
Tundra Tabloids - Swedish Tabloid Aftonbladet Rejects Story of Organ Harvesting from Amman, Jordan
Mere Rhetoric - The Chinese Organ Harvesting Story that Also Doesn't Exist
Ilya Meyer on Swedish funding of anti-Israel radicalism: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
Ilya Meyer on Swedish news agency TT and its anti-Israel project: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,

Attack Bildt but not Sweden

The following is the English version of an article published in Israeli weekly Makor Rishon by Dr Manfred Gerstenfeld, Chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA).

The recent Swedish proposal to the European Union to recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state was a severe hostile act against Israel. The proposal was watered down by other member countries. The attitude of Sweden which, for another few weeks, holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, may tempt Israel to hit back at the country’s government.

For several reasons, however, this strategy would be wrong. The anti-Israel campaign is led by one person, the Swedish Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister Carl Bildt, who is the dominant figure in this government. Rather than targeting the entire government or country, Israel should focus on its major adversary in the current coalition.

Bildt’s hostile record toward Israel can be easily proved. On a Swedish radio program in April he said: “It is possible to make peace without Hamas the same way it is possible to make peace without Netanyahu on the Israeli side.” An Israeli Foreign Ministry official reacted diplomatically: “He clearly does not understand the difference between the leader of an Israeli political party and a group that is engaging in the terror that threatens Europe as much as Israel.”(1)

Bildt’s anti-Israeli sentiment came to the fore again in the Aftonbladet organ affair. In August this anti-Israeli daily published an article which accused Israel of killing Palestinians in order to acquire organs for transplant. Bildt refused to condemn it, saying that there is freedom of the press in Sweden and that the government therefore cannot condemn the press. When, however, a few weeks later, Aftonbladet published an article by a member of the right wing Sweden Democrats party, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt condemned it. Suddenly, when Israel was not concerned, it was permissible to criticize the same paper.

Ilya Meyer, a writer who has held senior positions in the Swedish Jewish community, has a blog which reports regularly – in both English and Swedish – on Sweden’s misbehavior toward Israel. He notes that the Swedish state finances almost the entire $6 million budget of an extreme pro-Palestinian group in the country, Palestinagrupperna. This body has links to various terrorist organizations. In an annual report Palestinagrupperna claimed that Bildt had told them that he agrees with them on every point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.(2)

There are many friends of Israel in the four parties currently in the Swedish government – the Moderates, the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the Center Party. However, the present coalition is severely trailing the opposition in the most recent polls.(3) New parliamentary elections will take place in September 2010.

The opposition consisting of the Social Democrats, Sweden’s largest party, the Green Party and the Left Party is far more hostile to Israel than the present government, with the main exception of Bildt.

During the Gaza Campaign Mona Sahlin, the leader of the Social Democrats, participated in an anti-Israel rally in Stockholm(4) at which Hizballah and Hamas flags were flown and an Israeli flag was burned.(5) Jan Eliasson, the former foreign minister,(6) and Wanja Lundby Wedin, chair of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation,(7) also took part in that event.

Many senior party members participated in such demonstrations. In Norrköping, an ex-parliamentarian and former party secretary of the Social Democrats, Lars Stjernkvist, spoke with a Hizballah flag and swastikas in the background.(8) In Malmö, the Social Democrat parliamentarian, Luciano Astudillo, spoke as someone next to him held up a picture of Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah.(9)

Sahlin’s attitude toward Israel may develop in directions similar to those of Sweden’s best known prime minister, the Social Democrat Olof Palme. He was the first Western-European prime minister to label Israel as a Nazi state.

In the past few years Israel has missed the opportunity to confront the current government on many anti-Israel matters, including its indirect subsidies to anti-Israel hate bodies, mainly leftovers from the Social Democrat government.

This is especially unfortunate since the Swedish Minister of International Development Cooperation, Gunilla Carlsson, is currently revising the country’s foreign aid policies. She aims to move funding away from corrupt and dictatorial regimes to democracies and to projects that foster economic and political goals that are in line with those of Sweden. Pointing out how Palestinian organizations which receive major Swedish aid are abusing this could have had some actual influence on the country’s foreign aid policy.

If the current coalition, led by the Moderates, remains in power, one can raise these issues anew and try to solve them over a four year period. If the Social Democrats win the elections, ongoing confrontations with Sweden will be almost unavoidable. This is the more so as, for the first time, the Left and Green parties will probably join the government. There are many possibilities for Israeli retaliation against hostile Swedish acts, but it would be counterproductive to disclose them today.

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is Chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He has published fifteen books among which :


Behind the Humanitarian Mask, the Nordic Countries, Israel and the Jews. (2008)


(1) Gil Hoffman, “Swedish FM Likens Netanyahu to Hamas,” Jerusalem Post, 10 April 2007.

(2) Ilya Meyer, “The Swedish Foreign Minister’s Crusade against Israel,” 9 December 2009. www.ilyameyer.com.


(3) Opposition poll lead “very worrying”: Reinfeldt, The Local 14 december 2009.

(4) Per Gudmundson, “Mona Sahlin, hakkorsen och Hamasflaggorna,” Gudmundson, 15 January 2009 http://gudmundson.blogspot.com. [Swedish]

(5) “Israelska flaggan brändes,” Dagens Nyheter, 10 January 2009. [Swedish]

(6) Per Gudmundson, “Rödflaggat,” Gudmundson, 13 January 2009, http://gudmundson.blogspot.com. [Swedish]

(7) Per Gudmundson, “Swedish Leading Social Democrats in Rally with Hezbollah Flags,” Gudmundson, 10 January 2009, http://gudmundson.blogspot.com. [Swedish]

(8) Erik Svansbo, “Folkbladet uppmärksammar ‘bloggkupp,’” Svansbo, 14 January 2009, http://blogg.svansbo.se. [Swedish]

(9) Per Gudmundson, “Rödflaggat,” Gudmundson, 13 January 2009, http://gudmundson.blogspot.com. [Swedish]

Racism or medically treatable obsessive-compulsive disorder?

You’ve got to hand it to the Swedes. Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt (he is nominally Foreign Minister but he pretty much sets the agenda and does as he pleases) thinks nothing of using his nation’s financial resources and political and diplomatic clout to push the EU to recommend giving away the Israeli capital Jerusalem to the non-existent state of Palestine.

He feels it is important to reach “consensus” on this issue, so ideally he would like all 27 EU member states to vote to ostracise Israel.

As luck would have it, however, there are EU member states that still hold dear old-fashioned tenets such as principle, honesty, legal entitlement and burden of proof. Read Professor Dore Gold on the subject as he writes for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA).

Interestingly, Carl Bildt has nothing to say about the fact that his Consul in Jerusalem, Ms Anna Brodin, advocates official and close ties between Hamas and Sweden – and hence the entire EU since “consensus” is an unassailable concept in the Swedish psyche. (Link in Swedish)

A quick reminder: Hamas is regarded by the EU, the UN, the US, the Quartet and NATO as a terrorist organisation. It is regarded as a terrorist entity by everyone, in fact, apart from other terrorist organisations. Even other Palestinians regard Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Hamas is even regarded as a terrorist organisation by Sweden under its Foreign Minster and de facto leader Carl Bildt. Within whose Foreign Minstry Ms Brodin operates…

After more than three years, Hamas still holds Gilad Schalit, an Israeli Jew illegally incarcerated in an underground dungeon in Gaza.Without trial, visitation rights, legal representation, Red Cross visits or family contacts. The Swedish government, which is the world’s largest per capita contributor of aid to the Palestinian Arabs, has consistently refused to make this aid conditional on even the most fundamental demands for humane treatment of Gilad Schalit, let alone his release.

And Carl Bildt’s government now wishes to legalise contacts with Hamas.

Under Carl Bildt, Sweden has an official foreign policy that is as transparent as it is rabidly anti-Israel.

That of course is a perfectly legitimate goal. The Swedish government has been duly elected in democratic fashion and it is free to adopt any policy of its choosing, even if many aspects of that policy are widely perceived as borderline racist when it comes to one single issue, and that issue alone: Israel.

That is not the problem. What is problematic, however, is the “invisible foreign policy by proxy” approach that Sweden has increasingly adopted under Carl Bildt’s time at the helm of state. It is a policy remarkably akin to that of another hardline radical regime, Iran, which performs its dirtier foreign-policy work through proxies such as Hizbollah and Hamas while rubbing shoulders with the political elite in capitals throughout the world. Sweden too handles its official obligations via its recognised diplomats, but does its real work by proxy, under the table, via a plethora of organisations with extremely shady aims, such as SIDA, Diakonia, ISM, Forum Syd, Palestinagrupperna, Palmecentret and so on, all of whom are in receipt of massive state funding for the pursuit of one single goal: the delegitimisation of the sovereign state of Israel. State funding of shady NGOs with the sole aim of sabotaging Israel is by no means a uniquely Swedish malaise but in Sweden it is perhaps more widely practised than anywhere else.

With Swedish diplomat Ms Anna Brodin now openly advocating an illicit activity in contravention of the law, to whit contacts with a terrorist organisation, it is now time to take a leaf out of the book of that other nation at the forefront of obsessive anti-Israeli activitism: Great Britain. A British court recently issued an arrest warrant for former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. In order to avoid any risk of unpleasantness on British soil, Ms Livni apparently recently cancelled a planned visit to London.

Time now to apply the same rules to the Swedish political elite. An international arrest warrant issued for Ms Anna Brodin for aiding and abetting a terrorist organisation, Hamas.

An international arrest warrant issued for Mr Ismail Haniyeh, the Islamist strongman of Gaza’s Hamas regime for his complicity in terrorism against Palestinian Arab and Jewish Israeli civilians.

An international arrest warrant issued for Mr Mahmoud Abbas for breach of contract by failing to live up to signed agreements for peace – his latest tactic is to refuse to negotiate on peace (for which he already has signed legally binding commitments) unless Israel first agrees to give him everything he wants so there is nothing left to negotiate about. Starting off with Jerusalem and all the territory he points at. Carl Bildt eagerly coordinates this policy with Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Arab Prime Minister (link in Swedish).

British Foreign Secretary David Milliband, to his credit, expressed dismay over the absurdity and inappropriateness of legal action against foreign leaders just because they happen to be Jewish Israelis.

No such reaction from the Swedes, however.

A few high-profile court cases with prominent Swedes in the dock are the next – in fact the only – logical step.

Because the time has come to play hardball. What you do is what you get back. No more “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, but rather “Do unto others before they do unto you”.

Starting now. In court.

Carl Bildt and his henchmen may well want to draw a new map of the world showing the ever-decreasing number of countries in which they are welcome. That map may well start shrinking as he takes stock of the countries that he and his aides can visit without risk of legal action.

It’s time Israel learned from the best.

References:
1.  Principle, honesty, foreign policy implementation by shady proxy: What Obama should have said
2.  Unlikely to be the official end-game of current Swedish policy but certainly one very tangible effect felt even in Sweden. Read TundraTabloids to find out how obsession with demonisation of the Jewish state spills over into victimisation of Jews in the countries of their birth. This is France.
3.  "Jews Have No Right To Jerusalem". Here's the view the Carl Bildt Jerusalem-Partition Plan supports.
4.  In Swedish: Expert Swedish journalist and analyst Per Gudmundson refers to a planned campaign by The 18, a US organisation that wants to bring about a substantial improvement by making Swedish FM Carl Bildt pay a political price for his obsessive targeting of the Jewish state.

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

The Swedish Foreign Minister's Crusade Against Israel

Courtesy GraphJam:
http://graphjam.com/upcoming/?pid=14741

165 murdered and more than 550 maimed in the space of a few hours.

That was the result of yesterday’s Islamist attacks on Muslims in Iraq and Pakistan.

In Iran, meanwhile, the nation was in virtual lockdown as the Islamist regime there clamped down on Muslims demanding democracy and the right to free speech.

Total silence from the rotating EU presidency, currently in the hands of Sweden. Yesterday you could read here (EU Buys Swedish Votes) a detailed account of how the Swedish Foreign Minister and his cohorts set their priorities.

Here’s some more information to add to the Carl Bildt profile: radical Swedish fringe movement Palestinagruppen is an extremist pro-Palestinian group with links to various terrorist organizations. It proudly claims in its annual report (link to the Swedish text here) that “When the new government took over we lobbied Foreign Minister Carl Bildt in a variety of ways, for instance through letters in which we asked him what actions he intended to take, and also through the media where we reminded him of the dedication he had previously shown to Palestine, recalling the demands taken on board at the Palestinagrupperna Congress in 2006. We received a detailed and exhaustive response in which he emphasised that he agrees with Palestinagrupperna on every score.”

Palestinagrupperna has a membership of about 800 people. But it has an annual budget of 40 million Swedish kronor. That’s almost 6 million US dollars. Of that, 38 million kronor (about 5.5 million USD) comes in the form of various grants from the Swedish state. That’s a lot of state funding for foreign policy lobbying through unorthodox, unethical, some might even say illicit, means.

And this parallel foreign-policy organisation – an unofficial department manned by 814 staffers on no official Foreign Policy payroll yet wielding political clout way beyond its numbers, verifies that Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt “agrees with Palestinagrupperna on every score”.

But don’t take this shady quasi-Foreign Office department’s word for it. The figures – all 40 million of them – speak loud and clear.

The Swedish state is financing the subversion of a sovereign nation, Israel. It is doing so via a variety of means, both semi-legitimate such as through Palestinagrupperna, and officially via its Foreign Minister in the EU forum and elsewhere.

At a time when the Swedish economy is staggering, flagship carmaker Saab is being dismantled at a cost of thousands jobs and Volvo is on the verge of being sold off to China, the Swedish state coffers are being plundered to fund the delegitimisation of another member-state of the UN.

Officially. With state sanction. With the blessing of Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, the obsessive persistence of Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and the collaboration of the State Bank, whose funds are being diverted from Swedish hospitals, schools, job-creation schemes and climate-enhancing infrastructure to fund the most intransigent and most corrupt recipients of aid the world has ever seen.

Some final statistics: The USA is the largest single contributor of funds to Palestinian Arab welfare. US contributions total in the region of 100 million dollars a year. The population of the USA is about 305 million souls. Sweden, the second largest contributor to the Palestinian Arabs, has a population of just 9 million, but donates about 40 million dollars.

The Palestinians have responded to Israel’s construction freeze in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank, in exactly the same way that they responded to Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

By ignoring it.

Sweden, meantime, keeps diverting much-needed finances from its own population to fund continued Palestinian Arab intransigence.

That’s how important it is to Sweden’s political elite to keep the flames of anti-Israel hatred and anti-Semitic indoctrination burning.

Long-suffering Swedes are being forced to finance their politicians’ private obsession.

While Carl Bildt busies himself castigating and undermining Israel, the victim of Islamist terror, while at the same time aiding and abetting the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, regimes that enshrine terror, most recently today, he may want to pause long enough to do this pop quiz and determine just how justified he is in forcibly diverting tax kronor from his own country and giving them to regimes that cannot spell "compromise", "honesty", "history" or "ethics".

Courtesy Yaakov Kirschen, Dry Bones:

http://www.drybonesproject.com/blog/D09524_1.gif

The New Republic

Washington Post

Washington Post

Muslim Against Sharia

Haaretz,

EU buys Swedish votes

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is using the EU to buy votes in Sweden’s 2010 elections.

Over a hundred people are blown to bits in a series of Islamist attacks throughout Pakistan.

Over a hundred people are blown to bits in a series of Islamist attacks in Iraq.

Several dozen are blown to bits in a range of Islamist attacks in Afghanistan.

That’s just this week.

And it’s only Tuesday lunchtime.

The Palestinian Authority refuses to allow H1N1 vaccine into Gaza because it refuses to legitimise the Islamist Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip.

In several cities throughout Sweden, several hundred vehicles have been set alight by “disaffected” youths of what is euphemistically known as “Middle East origin” in what the youngsters themselves term their Swedish intifada. Here's what Swedish Radio, Tundra Tabloids and English-language Swedish daily The Local (here, here and here) have to say on the subject.

Sweden’s government-funded aid agency SIDA is under investigation for fraud following years of massive funding of various Palestinian, Islamist and other “charities”, including some engaged in terrorism and racist indoctrination. SIDA is currently being audited for gross overspending of its budget.

But Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is way too busy to deal with any of this. He’s busy using the 27-member EU forum to push through his pet project: in the very year that marks the 20th anniversary of the reunification of Berlin, Bildt is pushing the EU to adopt a resolution demanding the partition of Jerusalem. One part will become what he does not recognise as the capital of the Jewish state of Israel, while the other part will be forcibly converted into the recognised capital of the ethnically cleansed state of Palestine. Ethnically cleansed of Jews, that is, along the lines demanded and already achieved in Gaza. As Bildt doubtless knows, about 20 percent of the population of the Jewish state of Israel is made up of Arabs. He is perfectly happy with the glaring inconsistencies.

Carl Bildt simply does not dwell on such niceties. He has other things on his mind. Elections will be held in his country in less than a year. With his party’s popularity not so much flagging as sagging, he needs a miracle to stay in power and continue strapping on his nosebag with the weaker-minded see-no-Islamists people currently heading some of Europe’s nations.

With something like half a million Muslims living in Sweden – but fewer than 18,000 Jews – he needs to work an electoral miracle. Hence his Jerusalem obsession. It’s a guaranteed vote-clincher.

With every new sign of weakness and uncertainty, Islamism storms ahead. But don’t take my word for it, watch the following film featuring a former Islamist extremist. His message in a nutshell: Don’t back down. Maintain your humanity and do whatever you need to preserve your civilised norms as a modern society but don’t ever back down or offer concessions in the face of Islamist aggression – you’ll only pay the price later.


Dr. Hamid Tawfik, a Muslim and a former terrorist found himself unable to continue the path of violent jihadist Islamism after he realised he was being turned into the brainwashed victim of radical Islamism.

The Swedish Foreign Minister doesn’t have time to listen to such advice. He’s too busy to notice that Islamist Abdirisak Waberi has been nominated for parliament in Bildt’s own party, the Conservatives. Mr Waberi is renowned for stating, among other things, that men should be permitted to have four wives, that men should be allowed to hit their wives, that men are intrinsically superior to women, and that Islam is the only way to lead a good life. Bildt is strangely quiet on this score.

Carl Bildt doesn’t even have time to read the reports of hundreds of people slaughtered and maimed by Islamists in their wars against other Islamists. He probably won’t want to be reminded that 3 million Muslims were killed in the internecine fighting between what was then Muslim West Pakistan and Muslim East Pakistan, today Muslim Bangladesh. Another 10 million Muslims were uprooted and displaced, most seeking refuge in neighbouring India. That pattern is being repeated at the time of writing in countless Islamist hotspots throughout Muslim Africa and the Middle East. And that’s before one even mentions the violent Islamist resurgence in the Philippines.

Carl Bildt is just too busy to see any of this.

He’s busy forcing Jews to pay for his electoral victory.

And yes, it’s intended to be “his” electoral victory. Fredrik Reinfeldt may nominally be the Prime Minister of Sweden, but it is the overactive Carl Bildt who sets the agenda and does as he wants.

And what he wants bears an uncanny resemblance to what Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran want.

Who knows, perhaps he’s angling to become the first Palestinian Foreign Minister?

Hostage-taking in Sweden

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

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

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

Now the disease has spread to Sweden.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swedish reporter's change of heart

Swedish photographer Donald Boström made waves in August this year when he abandoned his career as a photographer and instead tried his hand at journalism.

It was a mistake. He does not write coherently, he fails in the elementary ABC of checking on sources, he is subjective and unable to be objective, and his pro-Palestinian agenda shines through the few two-syllable words he succeeds in spelling correctly with the help of his trusty dictionary.

He wrote an article accusing the IDF of a systematic policy of killing Palestinian Arabs to supply a purported Israeli organ-trafficking industry, weaving his allegations together with a number of unrelated, overtly racist anti-Semitic accusations against Jews worldwide.

In early November, Boström travelled to Israel to defend his allegations. So certain was he of the treatment he would receive in the only democratic state in the Middle East that he hired a bodyguard to protect him 24 hours a day during his visit.

He needn't have bothered. This was, after all, Israel, not an Arab dictatorship. As is customary in any democracy, there were demonstrations against his racist views, but he was allowed to defend his views on TV and he left the country without incident. His bodyguard had the easiest assignment of his entire professional life.

Boström's civilised reception in Israel surprised him. Brought up on a decades-old Swedish diet of vilification of the Jewish state and of Jews in general, Boström today announced that he is reassessing his account of alleged official Israeli involvement in organ trafficking.

About time too, bearing in mind there is no story to pursue. He might, however, wish to pursue his enquiries on organ trafficking in Jordan, in Iran, among Palestinian Arabs, and in Egypt, where the practice is rife. In these Arab societies, the illegal trade in organs is a lively one indeed - pardon the pun.

Of course, Donald Boström may not survive any journalistic investigation into organ trafficking in the Arab and Muslim worlds, bodyguard or not. People asking awkward questions tend to be blown up, with some rather terminal side-effects. The unlucky ones tend to have their throats slit and the procedure televised and put on YouTube for other would-be surgeons in the Islamist world to emulate. So don't expect to see any articles on the subject bearing Donald Boström's signature any time soon.

It's good that Donald Boström has had a change of heart. Perhaps there has been some organ trafficking, after all.

Related articles from this site:
Swedish daily Aftonbladet: an ideology in search of a newspaper
Aftonbladet's defence begins to crumble
Swedish silence
Swedish Greens in fashionable brown shirts
Sweden: Open season on Jews
Freedom of the press in Sweden
Tensions in Swedish society
The view from Sweden

The view from Sweden

What exactly are good tone and acceptable behaviour?

Are they the same for everyone? Should we make special allowances for people if we are afraid of them? Or do we make such allowances simply because we believe they are incapable of any better? Doesn't that make such a society institutionally racist?

Recently Jimmie Åkesson, the leader of the Sweden Democrats in this peaceful Scandinavian country, made waves when he wrote an article decrying what he perceived as the threat to Sweden from large numbers of fanatical Islamist immigrants adopting an increasingly strident tone and some alarmingly violent tactics.

While the vein in which Åkesson wrote and some of the aims of his party may leave a lot to be desired in the view of the political mainstream, there is no denying that there is considerable substance to what he writes.

The political establishment and the media immediately tore him to shreds.

Unfortunately, however, that was the typical Swedish knee-jerk reaction to anything critical of Muslims or Islam. The political establishment and the media elite, accustomed to routinely lambasting Israel and, at best, ignoring threats to the well-being of Swedish Jews, have over the years become equally accustomed to banning all critical examination of subjects tangenting Muslims or Islam.

The Jerusalem Post recently published a MEMRI film clip showing the tone that is being spread in Swedish mosques. This follows hard on the heels of a sermon in the Stockholm Grand Mosque a couple of years ago in which the imam thundered that Jews – in Sweden – should be killed on account of the conflict in the Middle East. That was immediately shrugged off by the Swedish authorities as “verbal posturing, part of the customary discourse when the subject is the Middle East”.

These horrendous views from Swedish Muslim religious figures are routinely ignored, while attempts by a right-wing Swedish politician to highlight the threat, are met with massive derision and solid resistance.

Sweden’s unwillingness to adopt a principled, moral stance whereby the same standards are applied to everyone, is very troubling indeed.

It's an unwillingness that is set to garner the Sweden Democrats considerable support in the upcoming elections next autumn.

Nothing happens in a vacuum.

Like cockroaches, anti-Semitism is difficult to eradicate

Case in point: Swedish photographer Donald Boström made the embarrassing mistake of diversifying out of photography into writing.

Problem: he doesn’t know how to write.

He doesn’t know how to research his subject.

He is too subjective to be objective (he is a self-confessed pro-Palestinian radical).

In short, he is a nonentity way out of his depth.

In August, he came up with the idea of linking the death 19 years ago of a Palestinian terrorist on the West Bank, with the fact that Israel, like most other countries, has a programme for organ donation. He then proceeded to link these two unrelated issues with the arrest in the United States in summer 2009 of a man accused of money-laundering. That man was a Jew, and among his alleged shady deals was trafficking in human organs. Not from dead corpses, but from live people willing to sell their organs for money – a trade in which unscrupulous people prey on the poor and make vast amounts of money out of their body parts.

But he was a Jew! This was sufficient for Donald Boström to write an anti-Semitic article that Swedish radical left-wing tabloid Aftonbladet was only too pleased to publish. That article led to particularly strained relations between Israel and Sweden since Israel felt that both the Jewish nation and Jews worldwide were being wrongfully accused of a despicable trade. The allegations aroused added ire owing to the fact that even the Arab family concerned denied that they had ever claimed their son’s organs were harvested for transplantation. Most analysts worldwide concurred that the article was an example of woefully inadequate research employed to disguise raw anti-Semitic propaganda. It echoed the traditional anti-Semitic blood-libels that have prompted innumerable pogroms against Jews worldwide over the centuries and is now a frequently used approach by large swathes of the Swedish media.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and his Foreign Minister Carl Bildt claimed at the time that he could not comment on the article because the Swedish constitution protected freedom of speech and he was therefore not at liberty to make any statement on unfounded racist accusations leveled by radical left-wing Swedes. The Swedish Chancellor of Justice, however, verified that there was nothing in the constitution to prevent the PM or FM from making a statement on the issue, so long as it was just a statement and not an attempt to prevent freedom of speech. He pointed out that all Swedes enjoy freedom of speech - even the PM and FM.

Two months later, on 21 October 2009, unfounded racist accusations (read the article here, in Swedish only) were levelled by radical right-wing Swedish party The Sweden Democrats in the very same newspaper, Aftonbladet. They accused the country’s Muslims of being a threat to the nation. Within a few hours the Swedish Prime Minister went on air to distance his nation from the racist comments.

Observers worldwide shook their heads in disbelief at the two very different responses to two sets of racist allegations made to two different sets of minority Swedes – Jews and Muslims.

Now Donald Boström has added further fuel to the fire by insisting on radical Arab news channel Al Jazeera that his original allegations about Jewish organ harvesting hold true. He said, among other things:


“I showed that the organs were plundered and that illegal organ trade is being systematically undertaken in Abu-Kabir (Israel’s forensic institute in Tel-Aviv).”

“We have evidence that links Israel to this trade.”

“What I wrote in my original article is sufficient evidence, but I am nonetheless continuing to investigate the information and there is other information that other journalists are investigating.”

“In the USA there is a branch of this operation that sells organs to rich Americans.”

“(Israeli Defence Minister) Ehud Barak is lying. He knows there is illegal trade in organs. He knows that people are being killed and that their bodies are being desecrated. He is lying time after time.”


Of course, there is little hope that the Swedish Prime Minister will step in to curb Donald Boström’s anti-Semitic libels. The Swedish PM only comments when Muslim sensitivities are at risk. There are about half a million Muslims in Sweden, and less than 20,000 Jews. The mathematics is quite straightforward, with less than a year before the next national elections in Sweden.

What is remarkable is that even as Donald Boström peddles his anti-Semitisc poison in the Muslim world, his invitation to travel next month to Israel to participate in the Dimona Conference is still being extended.

Incitement to violence is a crime. It is also a very real danger to national security.

Ehud Barak, who has the ultimate responsibility for the security of the nation, ought alreadyw to have a plan for intercepting Mr Boström at the border and turning him back, just as Israel has previously barred entry to adherents of ISM, the radical Palestinian pro-terrorist group, before they could clear passport control at Ben Gurion Airport.

Israel’s security is at risk. It is true that Ehud Barak cannot persuade a cowardly Swedish Prime Minister to abandon his double standards and stand up for principle – that is after all entirely a domestic Swedish issue.

But Ehud Barak can stop the export of Swedish fundamentalism to Israel.

We’ll never rid the world of cockroaches, but we can surely keep our own doorsteps clean.


Thanks to Ron Tennenbaum of Sweden for his help in translating Donald Boström's comments on Al Jazeera.

Andrea Levin: Anatomy of a Swedish Blood Libel

"Tensions in Swedish Society"

"Tensions in Swedish society "

"We must increase tolerance in society." Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, October 20, 2009.

In August 2009 Swedish left-wing tabloid Aftonbladet tried to increase its popularity among radical left-wingers by publishing an article alleging that Israel engaged in the systematic killing of Palestinian Arabs in order to harvest their internal organs for transplantation purposes. The article drew tenuous links to the arrest in the USA of a man suspected of money-laundering. The article specifically emphasised that the suspect was Jewish, labelling him a rabbi.

The 2009 Swedish blood libel was born. It is this kind of intolerant hate-mongering that has given rise to pogroms against Jews over the centuries.

Sweden then deliberately retracted a statement by the country’s ambassador to Israel, Ms Elisabeth Borsiin Bonnier, in which she noted that the article had caused considerable distress to Israelis and Jews and that the Swedish people did not condone this kind of demonisation of people on the basis of ethnicity or religion.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt repeatedly stated that the Swedish constitution and Swedish law prevented him from making any comment on the article, as this would constitute undue government interference in the press and illegal press censorship.

"I acknowledge that there are tensions in Swedish society," said Swedish PM Fredrik Reinfeldt just a few weeks later, on October 20.

However, just like the previous quote, this too had nothing to do with the August Aftonbladet article that built on intolerance and racist stereotypes and that incited hatred of the Jews.

Instead, both quotes are from a statement Reinfeldt made a mere few weeks later, on October 20, 2009, after Swedish right-wing party the Sweden Democrats (SD) wrote an article in the same tabloid newspaper, Aftonbladet, in an attempt to increase its popularity among radical right-wingers by accusing Islam of being a threat to the nation.

Reinfeldt immediately took it upon himself to distance the Swedish nation from the controversial SD statement.

Which naturally begs the question: did Reinfeldt lie to the nation and the world in August when he said that Swedish law forbade him from commenting on an article that insulted Jews, Israelis and Judaism? He had, after all, gone on record as confirming that it was the Swedish constitution that prevented him from commenting on the article. Or is he breaking the law now by commenting very publicly on another article in the very same newspaper, with the only difference that this time it is Muslims who quite rightly feel targeted?

Is this what informs Reinfeldt’s actions? Jews – including their religion and their nation – can be insulted without comment, while followers of Islam cannot?

There can be no other explanation.

It would be ludicrous to suggest that Swedish PM Fredrik Reinfeldt is an anti-Semite. He is not. He is a weak, unprincipled and totally ineffective leader. He is everything a leader is not supposed to be. He is a leader who silent when it does not benefit him politically. And a leader who speaks out when he is scared.

The worst imaginable combination. Because it leaves principle and leadership by the wayside.

In the days when the English language was simple because Political Correctness had not yet conquered reason and erased sound common-sense, this kind of discriminatory behaviour based on religion and ethnicity might have been labelled racism or more specifically anti-Semitism.

Today, however, there are other parameters to be taken into account.

Self-abasement, abject cowardice and a total lack of principle are foremost among them.

While the extremist views of the Sweden Democrats are to be abhorred for their imbecilic generalisations and racist appeal, it is interesting that their actions have painted the Swedish Prime Minister’s lacklustre qualities in sharp relief.

The unfortunate downside is that there will doubtless be plenty of Swedish voters who take note of Reinfeldt’s ineffectuality and draw their own conclusions as this country heads to the ballot in ten months’ time.

A leader who cannot see the discrimination in maintaining silence on insults to Jews while championing the feelings of Muslims who are insulted in the same media, is simply going to hand a resounding victory to the Sweden Democrats.

Fredrik Reinfeldt would do well to read this article and remember it when the votes are tallied in Sweden next September.


Articles in English:
Camera on Swedish Aftonbladet's bigotry
JCPA/Mikael Tossavainen on Swedish reactions to blood libel report
Andrea Levin/Wall Street Journal - Anatomy of a Swedish Blood Libel
GLORIA/Barry Rubin - Taking Stock in Stockholm
GLORIA/Barry Rubin - Blood Libel Goes Mainstream
Ilya Meyer - Freedom of the Press in Sweden
Ilya Meyer - The Carl Bildt Philosophy
Ilya Meyer - Letting the Lunatics Run the Asylum
Ilya Meyer - Silence in the Swedish Social Democratic Party
Ilya Meyer - Spicy Swedish Journalism
Ilya Meyer - Aftonbladet: an Ideology in Search of a Newspaper
Ilya Meyer - Silence is Golden
And others - click on the "English Articles" icon top right

Articles in Swedish:

SD Article, Metro, Aftonbladet, DN, DN, Sydsvenskan, GP,

From the sublime to the ridiculous

But which is which?

The Jerusalem Post reports that rumours are spreading like wildfire throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. They allege an Israeli and Jewish organ trafficking ring led by one or more rabbis is harvesting organs from Algerian children and exporting them to Israel and the US. No evidence is offered in support of the claims, but the story is gaining traction throughout large swathes of the Arab and Muslim worlds. The story originated in the Muslim state of Algeria.

It follows similarly anti-Semitic, equally un-researched and totally unsubstantiated claims by a newspaper in another Muslim state, Sweden, where extremist left-wing tabloid Aftonbladet last month published a tirade about Jewish and Israeli organ trafficking.

That’s on the one hand.

On the other hand we have the Israeli take on these accusations. A rather healthy take that helps put everything into perspective. The perspective of ridicule.

If you understand Hebrew and/or English, watch the following video. If you prefer Swedish, watch the version below this one:

Hebrew/English



Hebrew/Swedish


From the sublime to the ridiculous. Ridicule is a really healthy medicine. Like the swine flu vaccine, however, there just doesn’t seem to be enough of it around.

Maybe the film clip will address that shortcoming.

I’m proposing it for a Golden Globe Award.

JPost, Saudi Telegraph, Iran's Press TV, Al Jazeera, Latma, TundraTabloids, MXP, SapereAude, SapereAude2,

The dangers of letting the lunatics run the asylum

A professional in the foreign ministry.

In Spain.

While it’s still amateur hour in Sweden.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carl Bildt has a lot to learn.

JPost, Haaretz, Haaretz2, TundraTabloids,