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Sweden Has an Anti-Semitism Problem. But Politicians Would Rather Blame It on Israel Than Acknowledge Where It Comes From

Dec. 18 2017

For the past several years, Swedish Jews have grown accustomed to taunts, harassment, and sporadic violence, emanating mostly from the country’s Muslims. Just recently, there have been two separate fire-bombings of Jewish institutions, and some 200 people marched through the city of Malmo chanting “we will shoot the Jews.” To compound the problem, politicians simply refuse to acknowledge that their country’s openness to immigrants and refugees and supposed tolerance are a threat to its Jewish citizens, while the media are content to contribute to the rampant anti-Semitism. Paulina Neuding writes:

On December 6, Sweden’s state TV [channel] attributed President Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem to the supposed extreme strength of the so-called Jewish lobby in the United States. The channel later apologized. TT, Sweden’s leading news agency, cited “influential Jewish donors” in its own analysis of the move. “Attack against synagogue linked to Trump,” was the headline chosen by Swedish Metro to explain the fire-bomb attack [on a synagogue in the city of] Gothenburg. . . .

Historically, anti-Semitism in Sweden could mainly be attributed to right-wing extremists. While this problem persists, a study from 2013 showed that 51 percent of anti-Semitic incidents in Sweden were attributed to Muslim extremists. Only 5 percent were carried out by right-wing extremists; 25 percent were perpetrated by left-wing extremists.

Swedish politicians have no problem condemning anti-Semitism carried out by right-wingers. . . . There is, however, tremendous hesitation to speak out against hate crimes committed by members of another minority group in a country that prides itself on welcoming minorities and immigrants. In 2015, Sweden was second only to Germany in the number of Syrian refugees it welcomed. Yet the three men arrested in the Molotov-cocktail attack [in Gothenburg] were newly arrived immigrants: two Syrians and a Palestinian.

The fear of being accused of intolerance has paralyzed Sweden’s leaders from properly addressing deep-seated intolerance. Some of the country’s leaders have even used Israel as a convenient boogeyman to explain violence. After the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, explained radicalism among European Muslims with reference to Israel: “Here, once again, we are brought back to situations like the one in the Middle East, where not least, the Palestinians see that there isn’t a future. We must either accept a desperate situation or resort to violence.”

Sweden will not succeed in combating the problem, Neuding concludes, “without openly acknowledging the nature of modern anti-Semitism” in its midst.

Read more at New York Times

More about: Anti-Semitism, Immigration, Politics & Current Affairs, 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