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

Ilmar Reepalu of Malmö: Wrong in every language

Estonian-born mayor of Malmö Mr Illmar Reepalu seems to have an inbred need to disseminate hatred of everything Jewish.

He also appears to have a rather uncomfortable relationship with the truth.

And he seems to have a markedly selective grasp of the English language.

In fact, every time he speaks or writes – whatever the language of his choice – he adds further anti-Semitic hatred to a race crisis he deliberately sparked over a year ago when he attempted to prevent Jews from playing tennis in the southern Swedish city of Malmö.

In his latest diatribe, the Social Democratic mayor of Malmö, more than one-quarter of whose population is Muslim, makes a wildly inaccurate claim about the Community Security Trust (CST), a British charitable organisation that, among other things, monitors cases of anti-Semitism in the British Isles. Ilmar Reepalu writes in Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet:

“The UK saw a record increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2009. The Community Security Trust, a Jewish security organisation, says the reason for this is Israel’s offensive in Gaza. But when I say exactly the same thing, I am called an anti-Semite.”

Here follows a lesson in English, truth and integrity all in one:

Start off with what the CST actually wrote, in its own words:

“The reason for this unprecedented rise in antisemitic incidents lies in the reactions to the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and southern Israel, which led to record numbers of incidents in January and February.”

(Page 10 of the CST report)

And again, more specifically:

“The unprecedented rise in the number of antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2009 occurred largely because of the extreme reactions to the trigger event of the Gaza conflict …

(Page 23 of the CST report)
At no stage does the CST write, claim or otherwise insinuate that the reason for the spike in anti-Semitic attacks in the UK is because of “Israel’s offensive in Gaza”, as Ilmar Reepalu claims.

The CST makes no value judgements as to who did what first. That is beyond its remit. The CST does not state that Hamas started the conflict by kidnapping an Israeli teenager from inside sovereign Israel. Nor does it state that even before the kidnapping, Hamas had fired more than 10,000 missiles on civilian Israeli communities in southern Israel, with the rate of Hamas missile fire actually increasing during a six-month cease-fire.

Nor, for that matter, does the CST say that Israel’s actions are a subsequent response, or an initiated action, or anything else. It simply notes that the Gaza conflict served as a “trigger event” for a sharp increase in anti-Semitic attacks in the UK. Nothing else.

Mr Reepalu’s misrepresentations do not stem from an inability to understand English.

They stem from his animosity toward Jews.

In Malmö, in the rest of Sweden, in the Middle East and even in Britain.

Several Swedish journalists and politicians have taken the Social Democratic mayor of Sweden’s third-largest city to task for his unsavoury views and his extremist statements.

After weeks and months of highly troubling silence, the leader of the Swedish Social Democratic party, Ms Mona Sahlin, has finally spoken on the subject. Mr Reepalu has previously gone on record as saying that the Jews of Malmö have only themselves to blame for anti-Semitic attacks against them because they did not clearly state their animosity towards the Jewish state of Israel. He has never required that the Muslims of Malmö adopt an equally dismissive stance towards rogue Muslim regimes such as Iran, Hamas, Hizbullah, Saudi Arabia or Somalia, for instance. Disparity in the treatment of two ethnic groups or two religions is recognised the world over as a clear expression of racism.

Now Mr Reepalu’s party leader Mona Sahlin says in an interview with Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet that “Ilmar is not an anti-Semite but rather someone who fights against racism”.

Bearing in mind Mr Reepalu’s track record of animosity towards Jews, this has been perceived as a rather extraordinary statement.

Ms Sahlin had more to say: “Jews deserve strong support but it is also necessary never to confuse the issues of anti-Semitism and Zionism”. Some analysts in Sweden see this as advice to the country’s Jews not to cry “anti-Semitism” every time Swedish Jews are attacked by Islamist and left-wing mobs demonstrating their hatred of the Jewish state by attacking Jews in the streets, Jewish places of worship and Jewish cemeteries. It calls into question Social Democratic party leader Mona Sahlin's judgement and credibility.

Ms Sahlin, who hopes to win the general elections in Sweden this September, did, however, concede that “Ilmar did make some rather unfortunate statements”.

That might go down in the history books as the understatement of the year. And this is still only February.


Links to articles and blogs condemning Ilmar Reepalu for racism (in Swedish):
Gulan Avci: Are Jews worth nothing to the Social Democrats?
Matthias Sundin: Reepalu is responsible for increase in attacks on Jews
Svenska Dagbladet: Big debate in the media following SvD's editorial about Reepalu
SvD article: Ilmar Reepalu should resign
SvD article: The Jews flee Malmö as Ilmar Reepalu watches
Sydsvenskan: An unpleasant picture of Malmö emerges

 
Links on the situation in which the Jews of Sweden find themselves:
Unholy Trinity
Boycott the Jews in Sweden
Sweden: an Islamic republic in Europe?

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

Code Red in Malmö

Sweden’s third-largest city is Malmö.

Malmö is ruled by a Social Democratic mayor with extremist left-wing leanings. In deference to his red political leanings, Malmö mayor Ilmar Reepalu states – publicly and on the day that the civilised world commemorates the 6 million Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust – that Swedish Jews are required to publicly display their animosity towards the Jewish state of Israel. If they don’t, they deserve what’s coming to them.

And what’s coming to them is anti-Semitic attacks, physical attacks on individual Jews, mass attacks on Jews congregating in public places, attacks on synagogues, vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and a ban on Jews playing tennis in public, if these Jews are Israelis.

In this context it ought to be mentioned that something in the region of 30 percent of Malmö’s population is Muslim. In fact, with Reepalu at the helm, Malmö has forged student-exchange links between schools in Malmö, Sweden, and that other beacon of democracy, gender equality and religious freedom, Saudi Arabia. (Link in Swedish.)

Furthermore, it needs to be pointed out that 2010 is election year in Sweden.

The mayor of Malmö, Ilmar Reepalu, his brown shirt sleeves rolled up for action, is fishing for votes. In some very murky waters indeed.

To their credit, large swathes of the Swedish media have been scathing in their condemnation of Reepalu’s overtly racist comments.

What is disturbing, however, is the politically correct disconnect that this media condemnation highlights: Ilmar Reepalu was born in Estonia, a country which during the Second World War was noted for its strong Nazi sympathies. Virtually identical statements by Swedish citizens with Islamist affiliations, however, have for years passed by without media comment.

It is a worrying discrepancy in a country that is nominally a democracy. It would appear that Sweden's direction is not determined by elections but rather by political correctness.

Ilmar Reepalu’s party leader, Social Democrat Mona Sahlin, continues to remain silent. It’s a silence that speaks volumes.

Sweden's voters have the opportunity to speak far louder in the upcoming parliamentary elections this September.

Because in Sweden, red truly signals danger.


Read also:
The Local
Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post
Cnaan Liphshiz
5T Jewish Times
CFCA
WJC
YNet
Pravda
Islam Online
AOL
EAJC
UJF
CBN
Le Monde


To review the situation in France, read JTA's "Islamic extremists threaten Jewish-friendly imam"

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.


Links in English:
Tundra Tabloids

A legal precedent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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,

Mummy Knows Best

“As [US] President Barack Obama has made clear, the key factor that prevents peace is the continuing building of Israeli settlements in Palestine.”
JIMMY CARTER (former president of the United States)

“Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself, 'Lillian, you should have remained a virgin.'”
LILLIAN CARTER (mother of Jimmy Carter)

Question:
When does self-delusion cease to be a personal embarrassment and start becoming an existential threat?

Answer:
When an unhealthy obsession with the world’s sole Jewish state overrides everything else.

That perpetual jack-in-the-box of American politics, Jimmy Carter, just keeps popping up everywhere, with startling irregularity but predictable effect.

You’ve got to feel sorry for Hussein Obama.

Not only is he America’s first president from an ethnic minority.

Not only has he so far succeeded in getting absolutely everything wrong on the international political horizon.

Not only has he trashed America’s reputation and image internationally.

Not only has he succeeded in the amazing feat of losing the support and respect of both Arabs and Israelis at one and the same time.

He is also being constantly shadowed – some would say overshadowed – by has-beens from the Democratic Party who have also made their mark on US history and Middle East events. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton just won’t disappear off the US political stage.

The UN Climate Summit has Bill Clinton basking in the media floodlights, while the situation in the Middle East sees Jimmy Carter making one increasingly bizarre statement after the other.

Jimmy Carter is of the considered opinion that “the key factor that prevents peace is the continuing building of Israeli settlements in Palestine”. Really? The key obstacle wouldn’t be the Arabs’ refusal to cease their constant barrage of anti-Semitic propaganda via the state media, in school textbooks, in mosques?

The key obstacle wouldn’t be their insistence on a Palestine ethnically cleansed of Jews, while demanding that the Jewish state of Israel become home to a flood of Arab immigrants in addition to the 20 or so percent of Arabs who already make up the population of Israel?

The key obstacle wouldn’t be the Arab states’ refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish nation-state, while at the same time repeatedly demanding that Palestine be recognized as an Arab nation-state – the 22nd such state in the Middle East?

The key obstacle wouldn’t be Iran's strident calls to wipe Israel off the map, accompanied by repeated Holocaust denials and a rapid burst of activity in the final hours of its pursuit of nuclear weapons to allow it to do just that?

The key obstacle wouldn’t be the fact that it is only under Israeli rule that the holy sites of the three main monotheistic religions have finally been opened freely to all worshippers, that Jewish and Christian sites were desecrated under Muslim rule, and that more of the same is on offer should Israel relinquish control over its own capital city?

The key obstacle wouldn’t be the fact that Jerusalem has over the past 1400 years of Islam’s existence never been mentioned once in the Muslim holy scriptures? That it has never figured once in any Muslim prayer, never been the capital city of any Muslim state, never figured on any Muslim coin? While at the same time being named 669 times in the Jewish holy scriptures, served as the capital of Jewish nations over the millennia, and has had a continuous Jewish population since time immemorial – since way before either Islam or Christianity were born.

It seems to be beyond the ken of Jimmy Carter’s limited powers of reasoning that it takes two to tango. Israel was offered peace with Egypt – and promptly pulled out of all of Sinai, handing over the only oil reserves it has ever had. Israel was offered peace with Jordan – and promptly built up joint industrial and agricultural zones for the benefit of both nations and peoples.

Israel tried kick-starting a similar process in the Lebanon by pulling completely out of that country – even though southern Lebanon had repeatedly been used as the launching pad for vicious attacks on Israel. The result was all-out war. Instigated by Iran’s Hizbollah militia invading Israel, killing and kidnapping Israelis and then unleashing thousands of rockets on civilian Israelis from Lebanese territory.

One bad experience doth not a trend make, so Israel tried kick-starting a similar process in Gaza by pulling out completely – even digging up the dead for reburial in Israel, so insistent were the Gaza Arabs on a Jew-free, ethnically cleansed Gaza Strip. The result was all-out war. Instigated by Iran’s Hamas militia invading Israel, killing and kidnapping Israelis and then unleashing thousands of rockets on civilian Israelis from Gaza territory. Now THERE'S a trend.

Jimmy Carter doesn’t see that any of this prevents peace in the Middle East.

They say “Mummy Knows Best”. It was never truer than in the case of Lillian Carter. Just think how much anguish could have been prevented if only she’d had the courage of her convictions.

JPost, Gloria, Gloria2, Tundra Tabloids/Daniel Pipes, Israel Matzav, Ilya Meyer, Ilya Meyer2, Ilya Meyer3, IlyaMeyer4

Read also Alan Dershowitz's 6-part exposé of Jimmy Carter, "Ex-President for Sale":
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6,

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,

Freedom of the press in Sweden

A month ago a controversial newspaper article in left-wing Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet alleged systematic Jewish and Israeli organ harvesting involving body parts from Palestinian Arabs.

With the initial shock of those sinister –and unsubstantiated – claims now dying down, this is a good time to examine what that article signified and how it plays out in the wider Swedish media discourse.

Much of the controversy hinged on “freedom of the press”, with the newspaper and its supporters claiming that in a democracy like Sweden the press is free from the fetters of outside control.

And so indeed it is.

Or is it? On Friday September 11, rockets were fired from the Lebanon into civilian Israeli territory in an unprovoked surprise attack by militants under the control of Hizbollah. Hizbollah maintains de facto control of southern Lebanon and, as a major parliamentary faction, is in negotiations to play a sizeable role in the next Lebanese government.

Newspapers in countries with a free press all ran headlines along the lines of “Rocket fire from Lebanon” or “Rockets from Lebanon provoke Israeli artillery response”.

Not so the Swedish press. To a man, virtually every newspaper in Sweden carried headlines such as “Rockets rain across Lebanon-Israel border”, “Exchange of fire between Lebanon and Israel”, “Cross-border rocket fire between Lebanon-Israel”.

No mention of who initiated the unprovoked attack. The headlines and the articles were skewed to show that Israel was engaged in military action. One newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, wrote “At least eight rockets struck Lebanese territory” and only much later in the body of the article mentioned that the attack was initiated from the Lebanon.

So was the Aftonbladet article last month an aberration, or was it symptomatic of how Israel is treated in Sweden?

Most foreign news coverage in Sweden is provided by Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå (TT), a Soviet-era Pravdaesque nest of left-wing and ultra-left-wing journalists obsessed with only one subject: Israel.

TT has a virtual monopoly on foreign news dissemination since for budgetary reasons most media outlets here subscribe to its services. This therefore means that a radical left-wing entity, an unelected political power broker with a highly specific political agenda, is in competition with the Swedish government to determine how Swedes perceive one aspect of Stockholm’s foreign policy: Israel. TT’s news is distributed in the printed media, the electronic media and over the airwaves on both radio and TV.

Since Swedes are avid news consumers, this puts TT in a critical position of power. And it exercises that power 365 days a year.

The question therefore has to be asked: was the Aftonbladet article a one-off piece of poor judgement, woefully inadequate research, immature language, sinister innuendo, offensive racism and subjective pursuit of one particular newspaper’s policies?

Or was it yet another example of the daily battering that Israel takes in the wider Swedish press? A crude, vicious, calculated, blatantly anti-Israel and barely concealed anti-Semitic attack on the world’s sole Jewish nation?

The answer depends entirely on the ethical integrity of anyone who reads, watches and listens to the Swedish press. In other words, it depends on the honesty with which one views the question and objectivity with which one analyses the facts.

What is beyond doubt, however, is that Swedes as a nation are not anti-Semitic. The government are not anti-Semitic. The politburo of the Church of Sweden is anti-Semitic in its obsession with Israel. The general membership of the Church of Sweden is not. Not for nothing are increasingly large numbers of Swedes leaving the Church of Sweden and opting not to pay Church dues.

Large swathes of the Swedish press are totally consumed by hatred of Israel. They produce unsubstantiated stories, regurgitate hearsay without corroboration, deliberately rewrite facts, deliberately mistranslate articles from the foreign press, deliberately omit the truth, deliberately disseminate lies – all in the cause of an anti-Israel policy pursued by a shadowy non-governmental agency with very real power, the power to shape citizens’ minds.

Targeting Israel has developed into a religion in Sweden. It is a religion practised by a majority of the Swedish media. The foremost victims of this religion are Sweden’s own Jewish minority: it is no longer safe for Jews to wear a skullcap or Star of David in the country in which they have been living as a recognized minority for 250 years.

It is against this background that the Aftonbladet article should be seen. In Sweden freedom of the press is unassailable. Unfortunately it is abused to give the press total freedom to vilify Israel and, increasingly, Jews.

Considerable foreign media focus was trained on what the Swedish government did or did not say in the aftermath of the Aftonbladet debacle.

The spotlight needs instead to be trained on the agency that really runs the country: the Swedish media and its shock-troops in a propaganda machine with far-reaching tentacles and very real power – news agency TT.

Ynet, JPost, Haaretz, Haaretz2, JIW, Global Arab Network, Daily Telegraph, Washington Post, SBS Australia, Australian Herald, Euronews, WN, Tiscali, Gloria Center, Israel i Sverige (in Swedish),

Socialdemokratins oroväckande tystnad

Under två veckor har Sveriges och även omvärldens fokus legat på Aftonbladet för dess kontroversielle publicering av en artikel som av många anses som otillräckligt underbyggd. Förväntningarna har även varit stora på statsminister Fredrik Reinfeldt, många medborgare och analytiker väntar med intresse på att se om och i så fall hur han reagerar på Aftonbladets artikel.

Det element som tycks saknas från omvärldens förväntningar och från inrikes håll är hur den svenska oppositionen håller sig till kontroversen. Aftonbladet anses av många gå i socialdemokraternas ledband. I den fortsatta tystnaden ifrågasätter allt fler vilka skillnaderna egentligen är mellan Socialdemokrater och Sverigedemokrater i fråga om rasism.

Två veckor har gått sedan Aftonbladet publicerade 17 år gamla obekräftade antydningar om systematiska israeliska organstölder från araber.

Aftonbladet länkade ihop dessa anklagelser – som tillbakavisas av den enda arabiska familjen som tidningens reporter åberopar – till en story om organhandel i USA. Länken bestod av att en av de misstänkta amerikanerna är jude. Resultatet blev en artikel med starka påminnelser om urgamla grovt antisemitiska beskyllningar mot judar.

Artikeln var ofin, stilistiskt omogen, journalistiskt ogenomtänkt och researchmässigt bristfällig. Betraktat som exempel på svensk journalistik kan man med fog hävda att vilken 17-årig praktikant som helst hade kunnat åstadkomma ett mer professionellt arbete.

Inget av detta är dock relevant. Det som är relevant är Aftonbladets avsikt med artikeln. Till och med palestiniernas kände förkämpe Per Gahrton vägrade att ta med dylika beskyllningar i sin hårda och frekventa kritik mot Israel eftersom han inte ansåg att bevis fanns. Bevisbrist var dock inget hinder för Aftonbladet.

Flera medicinska experter har intygat att den process som Aftonbladet beskriver inte kan resultera i organ lämpliga för transplantation – beskyllningarna fallerar såväl logiskt som logistiskt och medicinskt. I valet mellan att publicera obekräftade antisemitiska beskyllningar mot judar och att publicera bekräftade uppgifter om systematiskt arabiskt människorov, människohandel och andra arabiska brott mot de mänskliga rättigheterna, har Aftonbladet valt den klassiska antisemitismens väg.

Anledningen är enkel. Det första fallet svartmålar världens enda judiska stat, Israel, samt judar i avlägsna länder. Det andra fallet pekar ut Hamas i Gaza, som i mer än tre år har hållit en ung jude, Gilad Schalit, fången efter att ha kidnappat honom från Israel. Schalit har inte tillåtits få besök från Röda korset i enlighet med den internationella lagen om hur fångar ska behandlas. Han har inte fått representeras av någon advokat – han är heller inte anklagad för något förutom att vara jude, ett brott i Gaza. Han har inte fått träffa eller kontakta sin familj – ett brott enligt de mänskliga rättigheterna.

För Aftonbladet är inget av detta intressant. Det är fakta som går att bekräfta. Men det målar inte precis Gazas arabiska och muslimska härskare i någon positiv färg, alltså är det en ickehändelse. Aftonbladets läsare får inget veta.

Aftonbladet försvarar istället sina grova anklagelser mot den judiska staten med hänvisning till ”tryck- och yttrandefrihet”. Detta verkar begränsa sig till friheten att förtala ett enda land, en enda religion och folkgrupp: Israel och judarna.

För Aftonbladet vill inte yttra sig i lika klara ordalag om arabisk och muslimsk människohandel i Gaza. Eller om systematisk tortyr och våldtäkt på politiskt oliktänkande – kvinnor som män – i Iran (annat än att återge de iranska myndigheternas dementi).

Yttrandefrihet är inte likställt med frihet att förstöra eller förtala. Pressfrihet är inte likställt med frihet att fara med lögner i ena riktning samtidigt som man förtiger sanningen i en annan – allt beroende på tidningens politiska dagordning.

Återstår då vad som är Aftonbladets dagordning. Så här ett år före valet kan man misstänka att tidningens påhopp endast utgjorde en av många kommande populistiska drag ämnade att generera röster vid valet 2010.

Om så är fallet är den stora frågan om ett demokratiskt Sverige verkligen har råd med en kommande regering vars främste fanbärare är Aftonbladet. De som räds SD bör vara minst lika rädd för AB.

Det bådar inte gott för demokratin när rasistiska påhopp blir ett bejublat verktyg.

Till syvende och sist är det inte enbart den nuvarande regeringen som bör ta avstånd från Aftonbladets artikel; lika viktigt är det att Socialdemokraterna klart uttrycker sitt avståndstagande.

Eller vill Mona Sahlin att Aftonbladet ska fortsätta profilera sig så här i Socialdemokratins namn?


Mats Skogkär, Lisa Abramowicz, Jonathan Leman, Viggo, Jackie Jakubowski, Ilya Meyer, Sapere Aude,

Why is the Swedish Social Democratic party silent?

For two weeks now the world has been focusing on Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet in the wake its publication of a controversial article regarded by many as insufficiently researched and poorly executed. The spotlight is also on Swedish PM Fredrik Reinfeldt – many Swedes and foreign analysts wait with interest to see if, and if so how, he will ultimately respond to Aftonbladet’s article.

The one element that appears to have escaped the world’s attention is the position of the Swedish Social Democratic opposition party on this controversy. Aftonbladet is regarded by many as serving the Social Democratic party’s interests. With continued silence from that quarter, many Swedes are asking what exactly separates Sweden’s left-wing Social Democratic party from the right-wing Sweden Democrats on the issue of racism.

A fortnight has passed since Aftonbladet published unsubstantiated 17 year old allegations regarding systematic Israeli organ theft from Palestinian Arabs.

Aftonbladet linked these allegations – which have been refuted by the Arab family named in the article – to an unrelated story about organ trafficking in the USA. The link consisted of the fact that one of the American suspects is a Jew. This was sufficient for Aftonbladet. It published an article with devastating elements of the kind of medieval anti-Semitic blood-libel in which Jews are accused of killing innocents for religious ritual and/or financial gain.

The article was linguistically coarse, stylistically immature, journalistically limp and woefully lacking in research integrity. Any 17 year old intern fresh from high school would have been able to produce a far more professional piece if proper journalism had been the objective.

None of these observations, however, are particularly relevant two weeks after the story broke. What is relevant today is Aftonbladet’s intentions, and the Swedish Social Democratic party’s silence. Even Sweden’s rabidly anti-Israel pro-Palestinian Per Gahrton refuses to include accusations of the Aftonbladet ilk in his frequent and vicious attacks on the Jewish state because he maintains there is not sufficient evidence to back the claims. Lack of evidence, however, appears not to be an obstacle to Aftonbladet.

Several medical experts have vouchsafed that the process Aftonbladet describes could under no circumstances produce human organs suitable for transplantation – the accusations crumble on logical, logistical and medical grounds. Faced with the choice between publishing unsubstantiated anti-Semitic claims against Jews and publishing confirmed and verifiable information on systematic kidnappings, human trafficking and other crimes against humanity in the Arab and Muslim worlds, Aftonbladet chose the path of classic anti-Semitism.

The reason is simple. The first case denigrates the world’s only Jewish state, Israel, and Jews all over. The second implicates Gaza’s rulers Hamas, who for more than three years have held a young Jew, Gilad Schalit, captive after kidnapping him. Schalit has not been granted visits by the Red Cross in accordance with international legislation governing the treatment of prisoners. He has not received legal representation – not that he is accused of anything other than being a Jew, a crime in Gaza. He has not been allowed to meet or have contact with his family – a crime against his established human rights.

For Aftonbladet none of this matters. These are all facts that can be confirmed. However, they do not exactly paint Gaza’s Arab and Muslim leaders in a positive light, so Schalit’s three years of illegal incarceration is a non-event. What is an event is a 17 year old unsubstantiated claim of Jewish organ theft – denied even by the victim’s family.

Aftonbladet shields its demonisation of the Jewish state behind claims of freedom. Not freedom for Gilad Schalit but freedom of the press and freedom of expression. But the tabloid’s freedom seems limited to the slander of one single country, one single religion and people: Israel and the Jews.

Because Aftonbladet refuses to write in equally clear terms – in fact it refuses to write at all – about Arab and Muslim human trafficking in Gaza. Or about systematic torture and rape of political dissidents – both women and men – in Iranian prisons (other than to report on the Iranian authorities’ denial).

Freedom of expression is not the same as freedom to destroy or libel. Freedom of the press is not the same as telling lies on the one hand while suppressing the truth on the other – all depending on the niceties of the tabloid’s political agenda.

So what is Aftonbladet’s political agenda? Today, one year before Sweden goes to elections there is every reason to suspect that the newspaper’s attack was merely one in a string of many populist measures designed to generate votes for its mentor, the Social Democratic party. There are about 15,000 Jews in Sweden, and something like half a million Muslims. Despite the immense outrage felt by Swedish Jews over the Aftonbladet attack and countless media outrages in previous years, no buildings have been burned down, no pensioners have been beaten in the streets, no police officers have been attacked or police vehicles vandalized. It’s not the way we Swedish Jews do things. We sit back and think, we try to make people see sense through reasoned argument, we use the persuasive power of the spoken and written word. It’s all part of something that we call “democracy”. Jews here in Sweden have never understood the need to attack people, public institutions, religious edifices or officers of the law as a means of expressing our dissatisfaction. We tend to address our concerns to the people concerned.

So we are now addressing the Swedish Social Democratic party. In the wake of Aftonbladet’s actions and the party’s silence, the big question to party leader Mona Sahlin is as follows:

Can a nominally democratic Sweden really afford a Social Democratic party whose foremost standard-bearer is Aftonbladet? Those who fear the Sweden Democrats should be at least as afraid of Sweden’s Social Democrats. For the very same reason.

On the bottom line it is therefore not only the current Right-Centre coalition government that needs to mark its revulsion for the Aftonbladet article; it is at least equally important for the Social Democratic party to clearly state its opposition to the use of racism as an electioneering tool.

Unless, of course, party leader Mona Sahlin is happy for Aftonbladet to continue profiling itself this way in the name of Swedish Social Democracy.

Links on this and related topics:
Wikipedia, Honest Reporting, TNR, JTA, Washington Post, JPost, JPost2, Arutz7, The Local, Expressen (Swedish),

Hamas and Aftonbladet: a marriage made in hell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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