Ankara’s Erdogan and Malmö’s Reepalu: twin souls

Interesting words.

“There haven't been any attacks on Jewish people, and if Jews from the city want to move to Israel that is not a matter for Malmo.”
Malmö Mayor Ilmar Reepalu, Social Democratic Party, in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph

 
Hate crimes against Jews (link in Swedish) in Malmö increased by 100 percent in the past year and Jews are fleeing the city.
Police statistics, Malmö.


“It’s not possible for a Muslim to commit genocide.”
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reported in EuropeNews.

 
Here are the views of other observers with a more objective and less racist viewpoint. The following articles tie together the themes of Genocide, Turkey, Kurds and Armenians.
 
The Times on the Armenian genocide.
 
Turkey’s treatment of the Kurds.
 
Turkey’s treatment of the Armenians.
 
Turkey on how to treat statesmen from friendly countries. Here a picture of a Jew, Israel’s President Shimon Peres, manipulated to look as though he is bowing down to Muslim superiority in the form of Erdogan.
 
 
Other links of interest:
Arutz Sheva
Ynet
JPost
Vos iz Neias
Huffington Post
Debka
Ilya Meyer
 
 

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?

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"

Put an end to the occupation

The sole cause of the ongoing conflict and the continuing inequalities in the Middle East is the occupation.

The UN Human Rights Council’s occupation of the international community’s time, finances, manpower resources and media space.

The UNHRC does not deal with the massacres of hundreds of thousands of black Africans in eastern Africa – because the Janjaweed militia carrying out the massacres are Muslim Arabs.

The UNHRC does not deal with the institutionalised racism to which Christian Copts are subjected in Egypt – because the racism is being practised by Muslim Arabs. The UNHRC does not deal with the fact that Egyptian forces shoot scores of black Africans in the back as they flee the slaughter in their home countries to seek refuge in the world’s only Jewish country, Israel. The Egyptian soldiers shooting them in the back are Muslim Arabs.

The UNHRC does not deal with the state-sponsored suppression of other religions in Saudi Arabia, because the Saudis are Muslim Arabs. The UNHRC does not deal with the fact that in the space of just 20 years, Christianity has gone from being the religion of the vast majority of Bethlehem’s population to being a fast-disappearing religion practiced by a tiny minority of the Christians who dare remain in the place of their birth. They are being raped, stoned, terrorized and murdered into emigrating. The perpetrators are their neighbours, the Muslim Arabs.

Recently a decision was taken to defer debate on the discredited Goldstone Report on Israel’s month-long response to 8 years of Muslim Arab missile bombardment. That decision was today revoked by the Arab members of the UNHCR, who demanded that the Goldstone Report be debated in the UN Security Council.

These are the same Arab members who perpetrate the world’s worst abuses of human rights, and who constantly drain the UN’s resources to wage their own private war against the Jewish state. This is the sixth time that the UNHRC has tied up UN manpower and drained UN finances in special sessions devoted solely to demonising Israel. While at the same time preventing any investigation of human rights abuses anywhere in the Muslim Arab world.

There is also a second occupation that plays an even larger role in the ongoing conflict. It is UNRWA’s occupation of the Palestinian Arab mindset. A mindset in which the sense of victimhood created by UNRWA has been perpetrated for over 60 years. With two aims: firstly, to maintain unrest in the Holy Land so as to divert attention from inequalities throughout the Arab world, and secondly to create jobs for UNRWA employees. UNRWA is not an organisation dedicated to helping the needy. It is an organisation dedicted to helping itself.

Accordingly, for over 60 years UNRWA has been helping itself to the UN’s finances. Huge, disproportionate amounts of the UN’s finances.

There will be no peace in the Middle East without dealing with the root causes of the conflict. Those root causes are to be found not with the two ostensible protagonists, because the vast majority of Israelis and neighbouring Arabs are reconciled to coming to an agreement and getting on with their lives, side by side.

The root causes lie in the UN, specifically in the UNHRC and the UNRWA.

Both swallow unfathomable amounts of money – public money – and produce nothing other than perpetual victimhood, jobs for cronies, and a never-ending cycle of bureaucracy, rising mountains of paper, mounting stacks of one-sided resolutions – and a total absence of any creative, critical, forward-thinking, problem-solving initiative.

Ordinary citizens of the world struggle to make ends meet, to find employment, keep up with home loans, pay children’s school fees, put food on the table.

While at the same time, the UN’s two most aggressively anti-democratic organisations deploy indecent, indescribable sums of money – public money – in prosecuting a private war on the Jewish state. This embezzlement is on an unimaginable scale – which is why most people choose simply to ignore it and leave it to someone else to clean up the mess.

There’s one problem, however. If we’re members of the UN – and we all are – then it’s our mess. We’re financing it, with money we could otherwise use for our children, for education, to create jobs, to build infrastructure.

Africa is on the verge of exploding into flames fanned by the vast inequalities to which that continent is being subjected, but in the West the UN member states ignore the African tragedy and are content to devote their energy and our money to yet more vilification of the Jewish state, fiddling even as the flames lick ever higher.

The key to Middle East peace is to dissolve the UNRWA and the UNHRC.

The only other alternative is to disband the entire UN.

Inaction is not an alternative. Inaction will lead to total collapse. You’re funding the very mechanisms that are causing that collapse, even as you read these words.

Reference material from other websites/sources:
Jerny - Global Law Forum
JPost on Arab change of heart
ME Forum on UNRWA
NGO Monitor on Diakonia
NY Daily News - Exercise the Veto
Jeffrey Goldberg on the origins of the ME conflict - the so-called "Naqba"
Richard Landes - Investigate the Investigators/Goldstone Report
The Australian - UN Bias Binds Gaza
Barry Rubin/GLORIA - The Arab Strategy
Daniel Pipes on solving the refugee problem
Raphael Yisraeli/Hamodia - Blood Libels in the Arab Media are Nothing New
Simon Wiesenthal Center - Stop the UN's anti-Israel bias


From this website:
Dealing with refugees: UNHCR vs UNRWA
Resolving the refugee problem

Has anyone in Israel asked how Gideon Levy got it all so very wrong?

Letter sent to Haaretz following columnist Gideon Levy's article entitled "Has anyone in Israel asked why the Swedes hate us?"

Response to Gideon Levy, Haaretz:

Has anyone in Israel asked how Gideon Levy got it all so very wrong?
By Ilya Meyer, Sweden

Gideon Levy asks “Has anyone in Israel asked why the Swedes hate us?” His article is a textbook example of how journalists sometimes get just about everything wrong.

Levy presupposes everyone’s incompetence. He explains that “(Swedish tennis player) Johansson and his angry fans saw real pictures from Gaza; (Israeli tennis player) Ram and his complacent fans never did.” It never occurred to Levy that perhaps Andy Ram and his fans actually pay their Internet subscriptions and were able to see exactly the same images from the Gaza Strip as everyone else in the world was able to see. The arrogance of assumption apparently knows no bounds.

I do not know if Levy spoke to Ram, and I do not know how much Levy understands about Sweden – the psyche, the politics, the demographic construct and the language. I did speak to Ram, I have lived in Sweden for 25 years and I am fluent in Swedish – both the nation and the language.

Like all Israelis, Andy Ram knew what was happening in Gaza. Apparently unlike Gideon Levy, Ram also knew what pre-empted Israel’s response: 2920 days of merciless missile barrages from Gaza into civilian communities in southern Israel. I’ll stick my neck out here and make an assumption: Gideon Levy does not live in Sderot. Let me stick my neck out further and hazard a guess that Levy lives in or very near Tel Aviv. Well out of the reach of the 10,000 missiles with which Gazans have pounded southern Israel. Levy quite rightly feels very strongly on behalf of the Palestinian Arab civilian casualties. Every civilian casualty anywhere signifies the utter failure of mature human beings to resolve their differences responsibly.

But Gideon Levy suggests it is most important to protect civilian Palestinian Arabs from the consequences of their own choices after they freely elect a government openly dedicated to war on Israel’s civilian population. Levy puts a higher premium on the lives of a neighbor at war with his own country, than on the lives of his own fellow-citizens. In a time of war – which is how Hamas constantly defines its relations with Israel – that is high treason.

Levy makes sweeping statements without any basis in fact. While Gideon Levy was in his apartment in Tel Aviv, far from the Islamist violence in Sderot and Malmö, I was at the tennis match in Malmö, dodging missiles and trying not to get lynched. I interviewed players, officials, police officers, civilian security staff, passersby, fans of both the Israeli and the Swedish teams. Not one single interviewee suggested that the melee in Malmö had anything to do with Israel’s actions in Gaza, opining instead that it had everything to do with a determined Swedish extremist Left-wing political drive to demonize Israel.

Here is what Malmö in Sweden is really like, in the eyes of the city's police oficers and its hard-pressed ambulance and fire rescue services.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzLECtFT4aU

Levy suggests that “the Swedes hate us”. I have news for Levy and for Haaretz’s readers. They don’t. Swedes by and large admire Israel. They also occasionally criticize Israel. On occasion they also criticize Britain over her handling of Ireland, France over her treatment of former colonies, the USA over her policies in the Middle East, Australia over her sometimes staunch refusal to allow in more refugees. They very often criticize their own country, Sweden, for all sorts of issues ranging from high taxation and an increasingly burdened health-care system, to the failure of immigration, asylum and integration policies.

Having said that, the small yet vocal and violent minority of Swedes who have kidnapped the media and taken over the public discourse do not criticize Russia over its decimation of Chechnya, China over its rape of Tibet, Myanmar over the disgraceful treatment of its own citizens, Zimbabwe over its treatment of political rivals, Sudan and Congo over the genocide taking place with official sanction. This vocal and violent minority do not demand the destruction of any of these countries. That is a demand they reserve solely for Israel.

In Sweden, western democracies receive harsh criticism because it is safe to criticize them, while dictatorships rarely merit a attention. This is because, over the years, a small but highly motivated cadre of media-savvy extremist Left-wingers have stormed the Swedish media scene and taken it hostage through infiltration, indoctrination and subjugation.

Unlike Gideon Levy, I was in Malmö. I heard the 7000-strong crowd of mostly Muslim rioters waving Hamas banners while chanting “Khaiber, Khaiber ya yahud, ya’ish Muhammad saufa ya‘ud” (which roughly translates into Khaiber, Khaiber, Oh Jews, Mohammed’s army will return to finish you off) – a blood-curdling racist battle-cry recalling the Muslim slaughter of Jews about 1300 years ago in the oasis of Khaiber in the Arabian peninsula for their refusal to convert to Islam. The marchers were led by leaders and other prominent figures of the Socialist (nee Communist) Party, the Labour Party and the Green Party. And yes, Gideon Levy is right, they were Swedes.

From Sweden on the weekend of 7-8 March 2009 when the slaughter of Jews was being celebrated on the streets of Malmö:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMP0_DMaIjU

And yet no, they weren’t Swedes. Most people in this country do not go around threatening the slaughter of their fellow-citizens. “The Swedes” most emphatically do not hate Jews or Israelis. Only some Swedes do: those on the extreme Left and their staunch supporters among the recent extremist Islamist imports to this country.


While marching under a Hamas banner, Swedish Socialist Party leader Lars Ohly wears a keffiyah depicting all of Israel replaced by a single Islamic state called Palestine.

Of course, it would take a knowledgeable eye to discern these nuances. Not always easy when commenting on northern Scandinavia while sitting in a trendy café on a Tel Aviv beachfront.

Has anyone in Israel asked how Gideon Levy got it all so very wrong?

Links:
JCPA, GLORIA, WeeklyStandard, IM, IM1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, TundraTabloids, TundraTabloids

Is Sweden anti-Semitic?

The answer is an emphatic “no”.

There is no institutional anti-Semitism in Sweden. Among the vast majority of Swedes anti-Semitism provokes the same revulsion as all other forms of racism do.

There are exceptions, however. One may safely discount the oddballs on the extreme Right – there are few people in Swedish society who would ever say a word in their defence.

The problem, instead, lies on the extreme Left, which is embracing ever-larger tracts of the mid-Left and huge swathes of this small country’s fast-growing Muslim minority. Of a total population of about 9 million, there are about 400,000 Muslims living in Sweden.

This Nordic country has traditionally had a very generous policy toward asylum-seekers and immigrants from the Muslim Middle East. The problem is that by and large, networking with immigrants or “New Swedes” as they are known is generally limited to throwing large sums of money at them and then proceeding to leave them to get on with life. Good-quality housing is provided, schooling – including Swedish classes for adults, job training, social benefits when needed (statistics suggest that 25 percent of the southern Swedish city of Malmö’s population is Muslim, and that 40 percent of them are unemployed).

And integration? Very little. It is little wonder then that Muslim immigrants increasingly group together in ethnic sub-communities, having little interaction with the host society in which they live and into which their children are born. It is no coincidence that Swedish local politician Adly Abu Hajal states (the article is in Swedish) that “the best Islamic state is Sweden”. He is talking about a state within the state.

The result is a sub-culture of outsiders who are permanent outsiders. It is here that the political and religious fanatics are harvesting followers. And it is here that Sweden is nurturing a generation of “New Swedes” who ought to be labelled “Old Swedes” – people either born in Sweden or living here for so long that they ought by now to be fully integrated with and aware of both the facilities available to them and the moral and legal obligations under which they live in their adopted country.

None of which is happening. That is why a popular TV debate programme bringing together Jews and Palestinian Arabs results in the Arabs refusing even to look at the Jews. That is why people demonstrating their support for the Palestinians march under the flags of Hamas and Hizbollah – both classified as terrorist organisations by Sweden and the rest of the EU, as well as the USA. That is why marches to support the Palestinians can bring together thousands of Swedish Muslims shouting “Khaiber, Khaiber ya yahud, ya’ish Muhammad saufa ya‘ud” (which translates as "Khaiber, Khaiber, Oh Jews, Mohammed’s army will return to finish you off") – a blood-curdling racist battle-cry recalling the Muslim slaughter of Jews about 1300 years ago in the oasis of Khaiber in the Arabian peninsula. And it is why these racist marchers are led by leaders and other prominent figures in the Socialist (nee Communist) Party, the Labour Party and the Green Party.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMP0_DMaIjU

With some notable exceptions, Swedish journalism is of the “tell me who to feel sorry for” variety – nothing sells like a good sob story and most mainstream Swedish journalists would not recognise terms like “fact-finding” and “background check” if they so jumped up and bit them in the nose. Swedish journalists – again with some notable exceptions such as Per Gudmundsson (http://gudmundson.blogspot.com/) and Dilsa Demirbag-Sten (kulturen@expressen.se), among others, enjoy a quiet life. Nothing is simpler to handle than black-and-white concepts. Like an electric switch, either on or off. Nothing in between.

Sweden has quite rightly traditionally prided itself on its cultural, religious and ethnic diversity. And has made the cardinal mistake of assuming that it is sufficient to feel sorry for a bunch of people, bring them here, shower them with all the physical trappings of a safe life and a decent living standard, and then convince themselves that in order to make their new citizens feel at home in their new culture, they need to efface their own culture.

Immigration is all about integration. It is not about the physical relocation of the human body, but about the adjustment of the mind to a new cultural setting. It most emphatically does not mean discarding or in any way demeaning one’s original culture, but it does require a desire to live alongside the new culture, not supplanting but enriching it.

Which is where Sweden falls flat on its face. Leaving 400,000 immigrants from a very different culture and sometimes very difficult origins to fend for themselves is the first step toward failure.

Giving people the impression that nothing they do, however reprehensibly racist, anti-Semitic or anti-democratic, will ever result in a severe reprimand, is the second step. That is simply praying on the altar of Political Correctness.

And allowing extremist political parties who refuse to distance themselves from racist stances to work their poison into the very fabric of the immigrant society is the third and final step. It creates the only functioning interface between New and Old Swedes. Greens Party figurehead Per Gahrton said on national TV on March 12, 2009 that thousands of Arabs calling for the slaughter of Jews in Sweden was simply a matter of “a few enthusiastic people letting of steam”.

So is Sweden anti-Semitic? Definitely not. Are political correctness, lame-duck journalism and opportunistic political extremists creating a cesspool of anti-Semitism among a huge section of the population left to their own devices? Definitely.

Is anything being done to counteract this trend? Not a thing.

Are leaders of Left-wing political parties continuing to march under terrorist banners, wearing terrorist symbols and leading demonstrations where thousands chant their desire to slaughter Jews? Yes. Prominent Socialist Party figure Muhammad Omar openly supports his party leader (this article is in Swedish).

Lars Ohly, leader of the Socialist (nee Communist) Party wearing a scarf showing the obliteration of Israel and its replacement by an Islamist Palestinian state. Party leader Ohly has said that his favourite blogger is reviled anti-Semite Jinge whose work is considered so extremist that even many far-right-wingers will not associate with him.

So is Sweden anti-Semitic? Ask me the same question in a year’s time.

Articles in English on this subject:
WeeklyStandard, IM, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, TundraTabloids, TundraTabloids

Newspaper articles in Swedish:
SvD, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, DN, 2, Dag, 2, 3, Hd, Ab, 2, 3, 4, 5, Debatt, 2, Hd, B, 2, Smp, 2, 3, Kri, 2, 3, Y, Tra, ST, SVT

More in mixed Swedish and English:
Johan Ingerö om SvD-skribenten Paulina Neudings artikel ‘Welcome to Ramallmö‘ i Weekly Standard
Johan Ingerö om debatten inom vänstern
Jonathan Leman om gårdagens SVT Debatt
MXp om Hamasledarens son som tar avstånd från faderns terrorgrupp

More in Swedish:
Gudmundson, 2, Svansbo, Expressens sportblogg, MXp2, ‘Som jag ser det’ med bild på Ohly, IiS, Kamferdroppar om ett vänsterupprop mot antisemitism, 2, FiM, 2

Swedish independence in jeopardy

Who sets the political agenda in Sweden?

And who actually holds the reins of power?

A large number of Swedish Muslims, backed up by extremist supporters flooding in from Denmark, marched through the streets of Malmö in southern Sweden shouting the notorious Muslim battle-cry ”Khaiber, Khaiber ya yahud, ya’ish Muhammad saufa ya‘ud" (Khaiber, Khaiber, Oh Jews, Mohammed’s army will return to finish you off). This racist call to arms refers to the Muslim slaughter of Jews about 1300 years ago in the oasis of Khaiber in what is now Saudi Arabia. The problem is that this racist battle-cry is echoing through the streets of Malmö in March 2009 – and nobody is being arrested for racial incitement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMP0_DMaIjU

This is one picture of how some Muslims choose to profile their social mores, political beliefs and religious affiliations.

A totally different picture of Muslim-Jewish relations is obtained when reading an article written by an objective observer of Israel from the inside.

The writer is an Arab. And a Muslim.Ishmael Khaldi holds is Israel’s deputy consul general for the Pacific Northwest in the United States. He writes as follows.

Other Muslims with insight into both the Muslim and the Jewish Israeli worlds also provide a different view. Their perceptions are based on their flight from Muslim Sudan through Muslim Egypt and past a whole raft of Muslim states in order to seek and receive asylum in the world’s only Jewish nation, Israel.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGa2_8tgsKw&eurl

There thus appears to be a worrying disconnect between how Swedish Muslims view Jews on the one hand, and the way Israeli Muslims and Muslim refugees from countries formally at war with Israel view Jews.

How is it that perceptions in Sweden are so radically and frighteningly different?

Could it be because of Sweden’s infatuation with political correctness, no matter what that costs Swedish society? Or because the Left has so totally infiltrated the media that there is no longer any room for an alternative discourse other than the radically pro-Islamist and anti-Semitic narrative pursued among an increasingly vociferous Muslim population? It should be noted that about one-quarter of the population of Malmö is Muslim and the Left-wing parties are currently in opposition, with the government being headed by a centrist coalition. With Sweden’s Muslims numbering about 400,000 (out of a total population of 9 million) the next election could be decided on the streets of Malmö. One TV report among many others that poses interesting questions can be seen here.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRnP-XzB_U0

Irrespective of whether one’s political affiliations are aligned towards the Left or the Right or anywhere in between, these contrasting snapshots undoubtedly pose some interesting questions.

Perhaps foremost among these questions is: how is it that the Swedish Left consistently refuses to strongly, openly and unequivocally distance itself from the extremist Islamist forces that always seem to figure so prominently in Left-wing gatherings? The demonstration against Israel’s participation in the Davis Cup tennis tournament in Malmö on March 7 turned into an outright anti-Semitic hate-fest, yet Socialist Party (formerly known as the Communist Party) leader Lars Ohly was proudly wearing a keffiyeh which showed all of Israel erased and replaced by the single Islamistic Arab state of Palestine. A policy entirely in line with what prominent – and highly vocal – Socialist Party figure Muhammad Omar openly supports (this article is in Swedish).

A Swedish Member of Parliament wearing a keffiyeh that clearly shows the whole of Israel eradicated and replaced by a single Islamist Palestine. Democracy in Sweden in 2009 has a distinctly worrying future.

If Swedish domestic security is not to continue to be shaped by cruel events from Middle Ages Khaiber in the Arabian Peninsula, and if Swedish foreign policy is not to continue to be dictated by political demagogues sowing seeds of racist hatred in order to reap a political harvest in the next elections, then Swedish politicians, the media, the police and judiciary, the nation’s schools – in short, Swedish society – is going to have to think very carefully about where the nation is headed.

Towards democracy, or towards democracy’s destruction.

Not the cause

The following article was published in the English-language Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram, no. 937, 5-11 March 2009.
Source: Al-Ahram, Egypt
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/937/letters.htm

Sir-- 'Piecing the jigsaw' ( Al-Ahram Weekly, 26 February-4 March) was a revealing and disturbing piece of analysis. Not because the article was in any way incorrect but rather because it was so very correct. The bombing at the Al-Hussein Mosque was an atrocious act of terrorism. That anyone could link the killing of French tourists and maiming dozens of other civilians to events in the Gaza Strip is ludicrous. Exactly 2,920 days of Gaza rockets fired at civilians in Israel, followed by 21 days of Israeli retaliation to put a stop to the terror emanating from Gaza, has no bearing whatsoever on events in Egypt. This was terror on Egyptian soil with a very specific domestic agenda of political subversion in Egypt. Tenuous links to events abroad are nonsensical, a convenient way of deflecting attention away from the real aim.

What isn't nonsensical, however, is the way such acts and such thought processes are finding their way far beyond the borders of Gaza, Egypt and the Middle East.

The Swedish cities of Malmö and Södertälje were recently rocked by Islamist/left-wing violence claiming inspiration from the Hamas war against Israel and Israel's response. Battles with the police, massive demonstrations against the presence of Jews guilty of the crime of playing tennis, shops being blown up and torched and schools being shut by the police to protect the children. All in the name of Islamist and left-wing "dissatisfaction" with events in Gaza.

When enough is enough, you have to say so. Hopefully Egypt will be firm in saying "enough" and will deal with its problem, and that Sweden will do exactly the same. Firmly.

Ilya Meyer
Stockholm
Sweden

Newspaper articles (in Swedish):
BLT, BLT, Corren, Dagen, Folkbladet, VLT, VLT, SvD, GP, TrA, KrB,

Websites (English and Swedish):
FiM, TundraTabloids, TundraTabloids

Other articles on the subject from this website (English and Swedish):
For more articles in English, click on the "English" icon at the top right of the starting page.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Swedish democracy falters on stony ground in Malmö

Saturday 7 March will see 10,000 rabid anti-democrats streaming into the centre of Malmö in southern Sweden. Their mission: to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the fact that the Swedish government allowed four Jews from Israel to compete in the internationally acclaimed Davis Cup tennis tournament – a tournament that has played host to such stars as Björn Borg, Boris Becker and Andy Murray over the years.

The Swedish government, the Swedish police and the Swedish press all know about the forthcoming demonstration against Israeli Jews being allowed to play tennis in Malmö, where about 30% of the population is Muslim.

The consequences may be devastating for an already fragile Swedish democracy, a democracy that is already rocking on its heels after a synagogue was repeatedly set alight in the town of Trelleborg near Malmö, Jewish cemeteries have been vandalised, and pro-Israel and pro-democracy rallies in Malmö have been attacked by mobs wielding iron bars, rocks, rockets and glass bottles. In the presence of police.

What gives the situation added piquancy is the fact that the protests are against the admission into Sweden of Israeli Jews for the purpose of playing tennis, at the same time as a sizeable portion of the demonstrators are being imported from abroad, mostly from nearby Denmark and northern Germany, and furthermore that many of the demonstrators are in fact not Swedes by birth but recent immigrants from Muslim countries. The situation may thus develop into an international incident on a scale seldom witnessed in this otherwise quiet part of the world.

To this should be added that Malmö’s radical left-wing city council first tried to prevent the Jews from entering the city because they come from Israel, in a direct challenge to the country’s foreign policy as formulated by the centrist government in Stockholm. When that attempt failed, the city council banned all spectators from the match series this weekend, so the matches will be played in an empty stadium.

Malmö city council, which in these dire economic conditions has an even bigger financial deficit than most other Swedish cities, thus prefers to do without the massive earnings generated by ticket sales and in the city’s hotels and restaurants, in order to make its own foreign policy statement. Recently the same city council also banned a 45-strong team of Taekwondo competitors from participating in the Swedish championships because the team consisted of Jews from Israel. Another massive loss of potential earnings. Instead of being held accountable for gross mismanagement in these times of considerable financial difficulty, the city fathers are touting themselves as craftsmen of an alternative Swedish foreign policy – one directed squarely against the Jewish nation.

The demonstrators are of the opinion that Jews from Israel playing tennis on Swedish soil are an insult to Swedish sovereignty, the country’s much-vaunted democratic principles and its upright stance in support of human rights. These concerns over human rights have not resulted in mass demonstrations where such paragons of human rights as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Venezuela, Burma, Cuba, China, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Libya, White Russia, the Congo, Sudan or Yemen are concerned. With these countries, Sweden enjoys close and well-established relations in the financial, cultural, sporting, diplomatic and research & development areas.

However, when four Jews from Israel arrive to play tennis, 10,000 demonstrators gather to voice their violent opposition. It certainly puts a new spin on the term “proportionality” – rather like the 1500 murderers that Hamas is insisting Israel free in exchange for one Israeli, Gilad Schalit, who the terror organisation kidnapped 1000 days ago. Fascists, anti-democrats and Islamists seem to love large figures.

And the reason for the uproar? It’s as follows:

After 2920 days of missile attacks on Israel from Gaza, at end December 2008 Israel responded with a military offensive that lasted 21 days.

During the 2920 days of the Palestinian missile onslaught, with more than 10,000 projectiles falling on schools, kindergartens, hospitals, factories and homes in southern Israel, a total of 1177 Israelis died. They were all civilians. The perpetrators came largely from Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Fatah in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank in the aftermath of Jordan’s illegal occupation of the area from 1948 to 1967.

During the 21 days of the Israeli response, 1100 Palestinian Arabs died, of whom 900 were terrorists with weapons in their hands.

Earlier this week, the world community issued its response to this state of affairs: approximately 4.3 billion dollars to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. This is over and above the 5.4 billion dollars that Fatah on the West Bank received about a year ago. Terror is apparently something to be rewarded, not punished. Rewarded from the pockets of those who dutifully pay their taxes even as they see their already dwindling financial resources being further depleted.

Israel is now under strong international pressure to allow the import of materiel for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, although history has repeatedly shown that construction and infrastructure materiel are used almost exclusively to boost the Hamas terror industry.

Malmö did not want the Gazans to go it alone. Just ahead of the Davis Cup tournament, a huge stockpile of granite cobblestones was delivered to a strategically selected area right outside the front gate of the Baltic Hall stadium in the city centre.

Either the city fathers are particularly stupid, or they are particularly callous. People living nearby started packing their bags to leave the city.

At the very last minute, however, the Health & Safety officer of the Police Union issued an ultimatum: no police would report for duty on Saturday if the granite cobblestone ammunition dump was not removed, down to the very last stone, out of very real concern for the safety and indeed the lives of the Swedish police. What is remarkable, however, is that the police protest made little mention of the need to protect the players or general public, focusing instead on the police who would be attending the event in full riot gear.

It is of course commendable that the stockpile of ammunition has now been removed and the lives of Swedish police officers have thus been protected. The police have the unenviable task of seeing their weekend ruined in a face-off against unruly hooligans who share neither the Swedish love of democracy nor the Swedish concern for human rights. The Swedish police generally do an admirable job against all odds, shoring up Swedish values against an onslaught of radicalism, fascism and Islamism that few people here understand and even fewer appreciate.

But it is nonetheless a bitter indictment on Swedish society that the main concern was for the safety of the police, not the safety of the general public. Or the four Jews who would be playing tennis for their country inside the Baltic Hall stadium.

Media articles on the subject (in Swedish):
Ny24, KvP, Svd, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, DN, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Syd, Dag, DN, Ab, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Hd, Ps, Syd, 2, 3, 4, Dn, Syd, 2, 3, Smp,Kri, 2, Hd, N, 2, 3, B, 2, 3, Hd, 2, 3, Etc, Vg

Read also what other bloggers have to say on this hate-fest (in Swedish):
FiM

The legal status following Malmö’s decision to ban spectators (in Swedish):
FiM

Other articles from this website dealing with the situation in Malmö. Some are in English, others are in Swedish. Otherwise, click on the “English” icon top right of the starting page to read all the English articles on this website:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Other views on the subject (in Swedish):
Gudmundson, Erixon, Erixon, Ingerö, Ingerö, Svansbo

Gaza i händerna på Hamasrasister

Hamas krig mot den judiska staten Israel:
Orsak och verkan. Citat och bilder säger allt. Kommentarer egentligen överflödiga, men frågorna hopar sig.

Hamas stadgar, introduktion:
”Israel får existera tills Islam utplånar det, precis som Islam tidigare har utplånat andra.”

Paragraf 7:
“Profeten, Allah prisar honom, har sagt: Domedagen kommer inte förrän muslimerna strider mot judar och dödar dem, då judarna gömmer sig bakom stenar och träden. Då säger stenarna och träden ’O muslim, O Abdullah, en jude gömmer sig bakom mig, kom hit och döda honom’.”

Någon som fortfarande tror att Hamas krig mot Israel har med gränser att göra? Eller handlar det helt enkelt om den värsta sortens primitiva rasism, den som bygger på förnekande av andra religioners rättigheter?




Som svar på Hamas rasism levererar Israel ambulanser och lastbilar till Gaza medan Hamas skjuter raketer mot gränsterminalen som används för att leverera fordonen.

Hamas stadgar, introduktion:
”Vår strid mot judarna är oerhört allvarlig och viktig.”
Notera: inte israeler, utan judar. Alltså inte ett politiskt ställningstagande utan ett religiöst.



Medan Hamas slår fast att det är varje troende muslims religiösa plikt att döda judar varhelst de finns skickar Israel tonvis med mat till Gaza. Terminalen som används för denna införsel av förnödenheter för civila Gazabor bombas ändå dagligen av Hamas.

Israel tar hand om skadade palestinska civila: en israelisk sjukvårdare i hjälm skakar hand med en palestinsk sjukvårdare som lämnar över en skadad palestinsk pojke för vård på israeliskt sjukhus.




Samtidigt fortsätter Hamas att regna ner raketer på israeliska civila. Förloppet under 32 minuter 090101:

12.28 Brand i en byggnad som träffades av en Hamasraket i den israeliska staden Ashdod
12.36 Hamas raketattack mot hyreshus i Ashdod, inga personskador
12.39 Missilalarm i Ashkelon i Israel, inkommande raketer
12.40 Tre raketnedslag i Ashkelon
12.52 Två raketer i bostadsområde i Ashkelon
13.01 Byggnaden i Ashdod som några minuter tidigare träffades av raket nära kollaps
13.04 Fjärde Hamasraketen inom loppet av 21 minuter träffar bostadskvarter i Ashkelon

Det är lättare att förstå Hamas aktioner mot civila judar om man läser organisationens programförklaring och inser vilken central roll rasismen spelar för Hamas.

Klarnar bilden nu? Eller förstår Joakim Wohlfeil, Pierre Schori, Birger Schlaug, Helle Klein och Bitte Hammargren fortfarande inte varför läget är som det är?

Gazas civila vill ha fred. Israels civila vill ha fred. Hamas vill ha krig i religionens namn.

Hur primitivt får man lov att vara och fortfarande åtnjuta frikostigt svenskt bistånd?

Palestinian, Israeli – and Jew

Daniel Barenboim makes some remarkable comments in his article in the International Herald Tribute of Jan 30, 2008, entitled “Israeli and Palestinian”. What he fails to do is to anchor these comments in either fact or logic.

Having immigrated from Argentina, he is of course entitled to refer to himself as an Israeli and a Palestinian if he so wishes. After all, hundreds of thousands of Arabs flocked to Palestine looking for work in the Yishuv – the forerunner to the Jewish State of Israel – and even if they only lived there for two years the UN granted them the right to call themselves Palestinians and has been giving them huge cash grants ever since, provided they abstain from working. One of the often underrated benefits of living in a democracy such as Israel is that Daniel Barenboim too can title himself as he pleases, although as a Jew no UN body is going to offer him cash grants for doing nothing. But then neither is any Israeli going to kill him for what many might regard as an act of high treason during a time of war. It’s all part of what we term democracy and freedom of expression.

What’s in a name?
Like Barenboim, I too am Palestinian and Israeli. And Jewish. Palestinian because my maternal grandmother was born in Jerusalem into a highly religious Mizrachi Jewish family, at a time when the entire territory including today’s Jordan was known as Palestine. Her husband was an Iraqi Jew, both my parents are Jewish. I have my father’s Palestinian ID card from the period before the 1948 War of Independence. Even though I didn’t come to Israel from as far away as Argentina, my Palestinian and Israeli credentials are thus clear, so perhaps I will be allowed to debate with Daniel Barenboim on an equal footing.

Fact versus fiction
There is much to comment on in his article, but perhaps most astonishing in its departure from fact is the following (the emphasis is mine):

“A true citizen of Israel must also ask himself why the Palestinians have been condemned to live in slums … rather than being provided by the occupying force with decent, dignified and liveable conditions … in any occupied territory, the occupiers are responsible for the quality of life of the occupied, and in the case of the Palestinians, the different Israeli governments over the last 40 years have failed miserably.”

Set against this unsubstantiated claim is the truth: that the PLO and Arab League forced the UN to ensure that Palestinian Arab refugees from the war instigated against the Palestinian Jews by the Arab League would remain incarcerated in refugee camps. They were to be used as political pawns in the pan-Arab geo-strategic drive to rid Palestine of Jews from the Jordan River all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.

UN demanded that Israel stop helping the refugees
The only nation that took any steps to alleviate the situation of the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza was the Palestinian Jewish nation, Israel. This Jewish country built not only proper housing and then donated that housing to the predominantly Muslim (but also Christian) Palestinian Arabs, it also created the proper infrastructure to service that housing.

This, however, was anathema to the PLO, which represented the Palestinian Arabs. It worked through the Arab League to force the United Nations to demand the destruction of the housing and the adoption of the following resolution:
The UN General Assembly Resolution 31/15 from November 23, 1976:
Calls once more upon Israel:
(a) To take effective steps immediately for the return of the refugees concerned to the camps from which they were removed in the Gaza Strip and to provide adequate shelters for their accommodation;
(b) To desist from further removal of refugees and destruction of their shelters.
Acknowledging the truth is an essential stepping-stone to reconciliation. Daniel Barenboim’s article ignores the truth.

Racism as official government policy
Barenboim writes rather naively that “in the sense that we share one land and one destiny, we should all have dual citizenship”. He might care to re-examine that sentiment against the oft-repeated statement of the Palestinian Hamas government – most recently on the 60th anniversary of the UN decision to partition Palestine into two states – that “Palestine is Arab Islamic land, from the river to the sea, including Jerusalem ... there is no room in it for the Jews.” Barenboim might wish to use his new-found Palestinian citizenship to persuade his government that racism is not really politically correct in 2008.

Having said that, it might be safer for him not to. In Israel, criticism of the state is commonplace in a country characterized by the Jewish ideals of debate, democracy and equality. Daniel Barenboim might find these traits somewhat lacking in his adopted country of Palestine, where political dissidents and religious minorities are routinely murdered by official sanction.

Better then for Daniel Barenboim not to voice an opinion in Gaza. After all, he can still be published in Jerusalem or New York.

And live to tell the tale.

Convoluted Swedish politics impacting the Israeli political scene

Dusted-off Swedish politician and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is mixing it up in Israel. He's where he best likes to be - under the spotlight.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt recently addressed the Herzliya Conference and, speaking to journalists on the subject of Iran, said:

“A military option doesn’t exist. You can only delay” Iran’s nuclear armament through military means (“Ya’alon: Crisis Management, Not Peace”, Jerusalem Post, Jan 22).

While this writer does not necessarily advocate a military option to combat Iran’s increasingly strident and racist stance on Israel, this is not a surprising statement on the part of the Swedish Foreign Minister.

A discredited politician
Carl Bildt is a member of the Conservative party and is in many eyes a largely discredited and discarded politician on account of several rather dubious financial dealings over the years. His appointment as Foreign Minister when the centre-right coalition came to power surprised many – apparently including himself (“On Friday I was appointed Foreign Minister of Sweden in a move that was widely seen as somewhat surprising. And in many ways it was.” Carl Bildt’s blog, October 07, 2006).

Swedish politics at play
Apart from Carl Bildt’s rather abrasive comments on Israel over the years (he calls Israel’s drive to stop Palestinian firing of Kassam rockets “indiscriminate killings”), perhaps stemming from personal antipathy towards the Jewish state, one needs also to look at his comments against the backdrop of a variety of less visible considerations.

Perhaps foremost among these driving forces is that Bildt put a lot of faith in and staked his personal reputation on the success of the Oslo Accords. That process has now been killed and buried. Killed by Arafat who on the verge of receiving what he always purported to want – an independent Palestinian state – baulked at the realization that it would also mean something which for him invoked the utmost revulsion: recognition of a Jewish state as his neighbor. And buried by the Palestinian intifada and its deliberate murder of innocent civilians as a means of achieving political and geostrategic aims. Carl Bildt needs desperately to salvage his name. Oslo failed him, Arafat failed him, now he wants to rehabilitate his name on the Iran-Israel seam line. It is Israel that is the stage for his personal brand-name marketing campaign.

A wider backdrop
Carl Bildt may be Sweden’s Foreign Minister, but his words and actions need also to be seen against the wider backdrop of pressing domestic issues rather closer to home. Bildt’s Conservative-led coalition is not doing very well in the popularity stakes. Sweden’s Jewish minority has been in the country for almost 300 years and numbers about 20,000. The country’s Muslim minority has lived in Sweden for 30-40 years and already exceeds 400,000. Bildt and his party need votes. Principles and ethics aside, a politician is in the game of politics to do just that – stay in the game. Failure to mouth words and express sentiments that will fall in fertile soil would see that possibility evaporate. Exit Bildt. But Carl Bildt, startlingly resurrected from the sidelines, has no intention of sidling off the world stage once again.

"Kill the Jews" is merely lively public discourse in Sweden
Carl Bildt is a Swede. Just two years ago Swedish Chancellor of Justice Göran Lambertz took the unprecedented step of interfering in an ongoing police investigation and directed the courts to drop a preliminary hearing. In a sermon at the Grand Mosque in Stockholm, the imam exhorted his followers to “kill the Jews”. Not even in Sweden is racism allowed. Nor is incitement to murder ratified by law. There were audio tapes to verify the imam’s fiery statements. The Swedish Chancellor of Justice, however, directed the prosecutor to drop the case with the motivation that such statements “should be judged differently – and therefore be regarded as permissible – because they were used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict”.

Swedish Jews are thus expected to live with calls for their death owing to an ongoing conflict on a different continent more than 3000 kilometers away. There are all sorts of theories regarding what motivated Lambertz’s remarkable departure from protocol – fear of a Muslim backlash, a well-intentioned but poorly executed attempt to defuse a potentially violent situation, latent anti-Semitism – but Carl Bildt was not in government at the time. He is, however, a product of the same background.

There may well be many Israelis who are grateful that a faraway country like Sweden should take an interest in its demographic well-being and strategic survival. There may also be many other Israelis who, upon examining Sweden’s record on immigration, absorption and integration, might well ask what Sweden could possibly teach Israel. Sweden has since the end of the Second World War accepted many different groups of immigrants. Some were survivors of Hitler’s death camps, some were political activists fleeing repression and death at the hands of despotic regimes, and many others were asylum-seekers looking to escape political strife in which they were not personally involved but which nevertheless placed their lives in jeopardy.

New demographics
The largest single group of immigrants – and it is not a homogeneous ethnic group by any means – represents a massive influx of Muslims over the past 30 or so years. While all previous waves of immigrants took to their new country and integrated quickly and smoothly into the fabric of their new society, these more recent immigrants have remained apart, isolated, literally a foreign body within the country. Sweden is of course not exceptional in this regard; France, Britain, the Netherlands and Germany, for instance, all echo this same pattern. While it is both impossible and wrong to make generalizations about any ethnic group, it is safe to say that these immigrants – disenchanted, separate, many of them unemployed and, they claim, unemployable owing to unofficial discrimination, semi-lingual in two half languages instead of bi-lingual in two – these immigrants have totally failed to integrate, to identify themselves with their new country. The number of parabolic antennae pointing east is perhaps an indication of their affiliations and interests.

None of this is remarkable in the Europe of today, perhaps, but bearing in mind the failed state of Sweden’s immigration and absorption program, it is scarcely likely that Israel can benefit much from listening to Carl Bildt on how best Israel should come to terms with its own indigenous (and often very intractable) Muslim minority and the highly aggressive Muslim nations surrounding Israel. While it is naturally incumbent upon the host nation to listen politely when a visiting Foreign Minister speaks, Israel may well conclude there is not much need to make extensive notes of his Herzliya Conference speech.

Tiptoe on Iran - or else...
Of course, Carl Bildt does have to tread warily whenever he tackles the Iranian issue. A large proportion of the Iranian asylum-seekers living in Sweden want no truck with the mullahs of Teheran. Among the foremost reasons they have fled their home country are religious-inspired persecution and Iran’s failing economy. This latter is due in no small measure to Iran’s hugely costly drive towards nuclear capability which, according to many observers, also embraces nuclear weapons. Any hairdressing salon or pizzeria in the city of Gothenburg where this writer lives will probably be run by an Iranian – one who has sought and is grateful for Swedish refuge.

Yet the weekly flights to Teheran are packed – these are supposed to be terrified asylum-seekers, remember – and first-hand accounts relate that on almost every flight there are fit, burly young Iranian men sporting crew-cuts and neatly trimmed moustaches who disembark not from the front of the aircraft like the rest of the passengers but from the rear, and that they are not seen again in passport control or in the luggage terminal. Iran’s covert activities in Sweden are a major worry for Carl Bildt and most Swedes. And rightly so, the regime has never failed to bomb its critics into submission even as far afield as London and Buenos Aires. Carl Bildt does well to handle Iran with kid gloves, he is quite rightly looking after Sweden’s interests. But Israel should not lose sight of where his natural interests lie when he speaks on the subject of Israel and the wider Middle East.

Carl Bildt endorses PM Ehud Olmert and praises Mahmoud Abbas – the former apparently has a 2 percent popularity rating and the latter famously does not even control the streets beyond his compound in Ramallah – as “partners for peace”. This is scarcely surprising. Whatever Prime Minister Olmert’s and Mahmoud Abbas’s sterling qualities may be, “uncontroversial” and “strong leadership” are not the words one might instinctively choose to characterize their periods at the helms of state. The Israeli and Palestinian Arab publics may choose to view Bildt’s endorsement as valuable backing, or they may choose to regard it as yet more evidence of a trio of rather inadequate public figures holding hands under the public spotlight.

Right-wing politician is the darling of the Far Left and Communists
Finally, the Swedish perspective on Carl Bildt’s visit to Herzliya needs to make the following clear to anyone unfamiliar with this Scandinavian nation’s politics. Carl Bildt is a Conservative. But to a public attuned to 30 years of unadulterated criticism of Israel no matter what she does or does not do, any sentiment that undermines Israel’s legitimacy or strategic security is music to the ears of a Left that is vicious in its condemnation of the USA and, by some inexplicable link, Israel. Conservative politician Carl Bildt is in the peculiar position of being the darling of the Swedish Left, Far Left and Communists, and generally rather disparaged by Sweden’s Centre and Right.

And you thought Israeli politics was convoluted?