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Why Did Sweden Recognize a Non-Existent Palestinian State?

Oct. 14 2014

The answer lies in an all-too-familiar combination of runaway multiculturalism, muddled thinking, anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism, and a Muslim immigrant population that contains a vocal and unchecked Islamist element. Denis MacEoin writes:

Swedish Muslim hatred of Israel and Jews found a perfect vehicle for expressing the very things that, under other circumstances, might have brought that hatred hard against a brick wall of national tolerance. That wall would have been built from the bricks of Swedish liberal values, the widespread absence of anti-Semitism among native Swedes, the country’s long-standing sense of individual and communal democracy, concern for the downtrodden, moral conscience, moderate socialism, and commitment to human rights. In a sane world, all these things would lead to strong support for Jews under attack and sympathy for a Jewish state beleaguered from all sides by Islamist forces, from Hamas to Hizballah to Islamic State. In Sweden now, anti-Semitism dressed as anti-Israelism is widespread, not least among sections of the political class.

Read more at Gatestone

More about: Anti-Zionism, European Islam, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Sweden

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic