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,

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

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,

Aftonbladet’s defence begins to crumble

STOP PRESS STOP PRESS STOP PRESS
The Swedish Chancellor of Justice Göran Lambertz commented this afternoon on the Aftonbladet affair.
He says that the government could go much further in its criticism of the Aftonbladet article without in any way contravening the constitution. "The government has considerable leeway in such matters. A minister can without risk say something along the lines of 'We have no reason to believe these allegations', but would be contravening the constitution if he or she actually criticised the decision to publish the article," according to Mr Lambertz. He went on to say that the decision not to comment on the article was a nod to political considerations, not legal constraints.
Link to the article on Swedish TV website, filed by news agency TT: http://svt.se/2.22620/1.1666252/lag_tillater_hardare_artikelkritik


Aftonbladet’s defence begins to crumble along with its libellous story as the truth begins to emerge.

Read Khaled Abu Toameh in the Jerusalem Post. He makes clear that at no time did the Palestinian Arab family figuring in Aftonbladet’s libellous article tell Swedish writer Donald Boström that their son's organs had been removed.

It is worth repeating: at no time did they speak to this or any other journalist about suspicions of organ harvesting. They never, ever, spoke to Donald Boström about this subject. His article is based on a fabrication. He took a photograph. The rest is a myth.

Donald Boström evidently has a highly creative relationship with the truth.

Now, however, in an almost comical reversal of logic and ethics, the family claim that since Boström has made the claim – about a conversation they never had with him – they now want an inquiry to substantiate his claims. Claims proven to be the figment of Boström’s imagination. Anything that can be used against Jews and/or Israelis is grist to the mill.

It never occurred to either Boström or Aftonbladet to point out the absurdity of organ-harvesting claims when the donors in question have been killed with extreme trauma – which would render their organs unusable. Not just through physical damage to the organs themselves, but through infection after bodily fluids leaked through surrounding tissue into the organs to be harvested. Organ transplantation requires the utmost clinical sterility; shooting someone dead in a dusty street and then waiting while a suitable vehicle is found to transport the corpse to a nearby facility for the necessary immediate surgery is not exactly a scenario that is set to succeed.

But none of these considerations mattered to Boström or Aftonbladet.

Boström’s article is sourced from material he originally wrote in a book published back in 2001. That book was financed by the Swedish Foreign Ministry as well as other Swedish government-financed organisations, most notably several Church of Sweden organisations.

One might well ask what conclusions can be drawn from the fact that the Swedish government plays an active role in defaming a sovereign nation – yet claims it is unable to comment on an article when this government-supported defamation takes the form of a virulently anti-Semitic blood-libel.

One might also well ask why the Church of Sweden feels it is so important to spend its funds financing anti-Semitic libel. The Church of Sweden has played no part in alleviating the plight of Christian Arabs in the Gaza Strip or West Bank. All its resources – both time and money – are spent on demonizing the world’s only Jewish state.

For a detailed and well-researched study on the Church of Sweden’s long-standing antipathy to Israel and its extremely active Swedish government-funded role in promoting anti-Semitism in the Arab world, read the NGO Monitor’s excellent report entitled “Diakonia: An Analysis of Activities in the Arab-Israeli Conflict”.

There is an increasingly wide gap between the vast majority of everyday, honest, highly ethical Swedes in this country, on the one hand, and the deeply anti-Israel/often anti-Semitic politicized leadership of the Church of Sweden, the rabidly anti-Israel Left-leaning media, and politicians paralysed by blinkered dedication to political correctness, on the other.

The problem is that it is politically correct politicians who are financing the activities of rabid anti-Semites.

With Swedish tax revenues.

Which is what some Swedish newspapers are finally beginning to investigate. It’s a slow process – because these newspapers are taking the time to verify their stories and corroborate their sources.

Normal journalistic measures alien to Boström and Aftonbladet.

Articles on the subject:
NGO Monitor1, NGO Monitor2, JPost1, JPost2, JPost3, JPost4, IlyaMeyer1, IlyaMeyer2, IlyaMeyer3, IlyaMeyer4, IlyaMeyer5, Barry Rubin, TundraTabloids, Metro (in Swedish), SvD (in Swedish)

In Sweden, silence is golden – literally

Just ask Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt

The gold is in the form of Swedish tax revenues paid dutifully by hard-working Swedes lucky enough to still have a job.

That gold is used by the Swedish government. Not for the Swedish population but for the Palestinian Arab population. 700 million kronor per annum, and increasing year on year. As can be seen from the pictures in the following articles, the Gaza Palestinians don’t exactly seem to be in any danger of under-nourishment…

Silence is golden according to Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, the government official who insists his country’s ambassador to Israel must refrain from expressing an opinion on virulent anti-Semitic accusations in Swedish left-wing tabloid Aftonbladet. Accusations intended as a blood-libel against all Jews and Israelis everywhere.

Silence is so golden according to Carl Bildt that despite the millions that he takes from Swedish citizens to give to Palestinian Arabs, he deliberately chooses not to condition these payments on the Palestinians’ release of the only Jew in the otherwise ethnically cleansed Gaza Strip: the young Gilad Schalit who was kidnapped by Palestinian government party Hamas 1200 days ago and since then not allowed contacts with his family, legal representation or the Red Cross – or indeed even granted the privilege of seeing sunlight.

Carl Bildt firmly believes in silence. He maintains total silence on the issue of the Jewish hostage Gilad Schalit, while at the same time plundering Swedish state coffers to support the Palestinians in Gaza.

Carl Bildt firmly believes in silence. He insists that his ambassadors remain silent in the face of raw anti-Semitism.

Carl Bildt firmly believes in silence. That’s why there is no Foreign Ministry investigation into the link between the increasing Swedish funding of Palestinian Arabs and the corresponding increase in Palestinian Arabs disappearing from life-supporting dialysis sessions, only for them to turn up instead abroad where they purchase organs from cash-strapped donors and have them transplanted into their own bodies before returning to the West Bank.

Is the Swedish Foreign Minister thus suffering from an inability to see, as well as his documented inability to speak, hear, think and do elementary maths?

Ultimately we have to remember what the whole fuss is about: Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet published a story about organ trafficking that involved people in the US – but when it turned out that one of the people involved was a Jew, angled the entire article as a blatant anti-Semitic tirade.

In Sweden, anti-Semitism is not punishable. Nor is crass stupidity. Neither is gross incompetence in public office. But an ambassador who expresses her honest dismay over anti-Semitism while at the same time upholding Sweden’s proud tradition of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, is censured by the Swedish Foreign Minister. The same Foreign Minister who declines to say a word about the kidnapped Jew Gilad Schalit, held by Muslim Arab human traffickers in the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s Ambassador to Sweden Benny Dagan gave a resounding interview in Swedish daily Sydsvenskan, summarising his nation’s and his people’s view of the situation.

Rampant Swedish media distortion and the tacit and blatant anti-Semitism expressed in various Swedish governmental and quasi-governmental organisations can be charted with the utmost clarity in a report by NGO Monitor.

The results of media distortion and constant demonising of Jews and Israelis are felt in Sweden all the time – most recently yesterday in a soccer match involving Jewish youth club IF Hakoah, in which spectators raced onto the pitch during and after the match to beat up the Hakoah players for the crime of being Jewish. One problem, however: at this particular match, none of the Hakoah players were actually Jewish. Not that it mattered in a climate of hate fuelled by large swathes of the Swedish media and government silence.

So back to the infamous article in populist left-wing tabloid Aftonbladet. The article’s author Donald Boström freely admits that he has absolutely no evidence of any of his allegations but says it is up to Jews and Israelis to prove themselves innocent. An interesting twist – Jews are guilty until they prove themselves innocent. Now where have we heard that before? Democracy doesn't appear to be Boström’s or Aftonbladet’s strongest suit.

Much of the material in Boström’s article came from a book he published in 2001, “Inshallah” (the title is something of a giveaway, you can probably already see where this is going), which was jointly financed by the Swedish Foreign Ministry and various other government-backed organisations. Here in fact is what Boström writes in the acknowledgements section (comments in brackets are my explanations):

"Thanks to Diakonia [90% government-financed Christian aid organisation], Forum Syd [government-financed aid organisation], Graphics Industry Union, Stockholm Graphic Workers' Union [part of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation, co-owner of Aftonbladet], the Swedish Christian Study Center, the Brotherhood Movement [Christian branch of the Social Democratic Party], the Swedish Palestinian Solidarity Movement [partly government-financed], Trade union TCO and the Swedish Foreign Ministry for their financial donations."

It appears Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has every reason to be tight-lipped. There’s too much at stake if people start talking, writing or asking questions. Swedes might start demanding some of their tax money be spent on their welfare rather than on organ-harvesting for Palestinian Arabs.

And Israel, which sees Sweden spending huge amounts on Palestinians involved in organ trafficking and human trafficking, might start considering legal action.

That would put Sweden’s selective silence in jeopardy.


For additional perspective on the subject of selective treatment of Israel, read Professor Barry Rubin's blog: http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-is-israel-demonized-while-real.html

With thanks to Dmitri Wasserman, Stockholm, for valuable supplementary material.

Haaretz, Barry Rubin, Vlad Tepes, Tundra Tabloids

Sweden's highly voluble Carl Bildt suddenly prefers silence

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt says it is improper for his government or any of its designated diplomats to comment on racist slurs by a Swedish newspaper.

This after Swedish left-wing tabloid Aftonbladet published unsubstantiated anti-Semitic allegations linking together the shooting of an Arab terrorist in the West Bank in 1992, a nationwide Israeli campaign to boost organ donations, and the recent revelation of an alleged organ-trafficking ring in the United States. By all accounts one of the people arrested in that ring was a Jew – and that was enough to set Aftonbladet off on an anti-Semitic tangent of unparalleled viciousness.

Both the HeraldSun of Australia and the Daily Telegraph of Britain criticized the Aftonbladet article for the extreme shoddiness of its research and for its obvious pandering to racist conspiracy theories.

So what do we make of Carl Bildt’s stand on this issue? He says: “In our constitution our defence of freedom of speech and freedom of the press remains steadfast. And the defence of these principles has served our democracy and our country very well.”

To the best of my knowledge, Sweden’s ambassador to Israel Ms Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier is entitled to freedom of speech. That same freedom of speech that her boss in Stockholm, Carl Bildt, is so keen to defend – depending on the circumstances, of course.

After all, Carl Bildt truly practises what he preaches: he went on record as virulently condemning Israel’s eviction of two Arab families from their illegally occupied properties in Jerusalem. He did not do so merely as a private citizen but from his unique position as Foreign Minister and backed by Sweden’s key position in the EU Presidency. The blog in which he makes his strong comments is in Swedish, but in the relevant piece Carl Bildt says that the evictions jeopardise the entire Middle East peace process. Now that’s a leap of faith, logic and chronology that simply defies all parallels.

Carl Bildt upholds the entitlement to freedom of speech for himself in his official capacity. He even upholds the entitlement to freedom of speech for himself in his private capacity – the fact is he wrote the above rambling explanation in his private blog. It’s only his ambassador to Israel who does not enjoy the same freedoms that he grants himself – she is not entitled to express her opinions on the subject of virulent anti-Semitism.

And what was it she said? She said that the people of Sweden found the unsubstantiated allegations “shocking and appalling”. Does Carl Bildt believe that Swedes would NOT find raw anti-Semitism both shocking and appalling? Nor did the ambassador suggest at any time that the Swedish government should regulate or in any other way censor the press. On the contrary, she was at pains to emphasise that “Just as in Israel, freedom of the press prevails in Sweden”, adding: “However, freedom of the press and freedom of expression are freedoms which carry a certain responsibility.”

Carl Bildt’s behaviour is anything but consistent. Or responsible.

It would be as grave an error for the government to interfere with the press in Sweden as it would be in Israel. Few people in Sweden are suggesting that the government take legal or official action against the newspaper.

But an awful lot of people both here and worldwide are waiting in dumbfounded silence for the Swedish government to apply what it professes to defend: its right to express an opinion.

If it is acceptable for Aftonbladet to publish the racist hatred that it chooses to publish, it is equally acceptable for the Swedish government to distance itself from the putrid nonsense. Both are utilising their freedom of speech.

It is this absence of any comment on the subject matter by the Swedish government that is worrying. It’s why many analysts and commentators worldwide are asking just how closely Aftonbladet is ideologically supported by leading figures within the Swedish government.

The Swedish government’s silence is deafening. It is resoundingly failing to exercise its right to freedom of speech.

Now THAT’s worrying.

JPost, JPost2, JPost3, Daily Telegraph, HeraldSun, Haaretz, Haaretz, NYT1, NYT2, NYT3, WashingtonPost1, WashingtonPost2, WashingtonPost3,