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 on New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/opinion/sweden-antisemitism-jews.html