Sweden: Hospital official quits over alleged anti-Semitic bullying by surgeon

Via Times of Israel:

A department head at a Swedish hospital resigned following media reports about a physician in the department continually bullying Jewish staff.

The former manager left Karolinska University Hospital, near Stockholm, due to “a combination of personal reasons, but also because he has not handled the situation [efficiently] enough,” Annika Tibell, the hospital’s director, told Sveriges Television, the broadcaster reported Tuesday. The department head was not named in the report.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center made accusations against a surgeon from the hospital in a letter sent in October, the Aftonbladet daily reported.

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Management at Karolinska knew about the “obvious and open anti-Semitism” expressed by the physician to at least one Jewish employee since February, but the complaints were “ignored,” the center’s dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, wrote in the letter, which was obtained by JTA.

At least two other Jewish employees quit until only the one mentioned by the Simon Wiesenthal Center remained, Cooper said.

Tibell told Aftonbladet that the institution has a “zero tolerance for all types of harassment and offensive treatment.” She also said that “relevant investigative measures” are being taken when “misunderstandings arise.”

According to Aftonbladet, Karolinska has launched an internal investigation and asked outside counsel to review the complaints.

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Sweden: 'Anti-Semitic' motive suspected in arson attack on politician's home

Via The Local:

A Jewish rights group has said that a fire affecting a politician's house in southern Sweden was likely a deliberate "anti-Semitic attack" and followed threats and harassment of local public figures with a Jewish background.

Police were called to a fire at a private property in Lund, owned by a local politician, shortly after 2am on Tuesday morning. Police later said that several people in the same row of terraced homes had been evacuated but no one had been injured in the fire.

The Jewish Community of Malmö chairman Fredrik Sieradzki told The Local that the property owner had previously received anti-Semitic threats.

"This person has been threatened and harassed earlier this year, and been given messages that were clearly anti-Semitic. We had already been helping her with these threats, and our suspicion is very strong that it's an anti-Semitic attack. Police also see this as an arson," Sieradzki said.

The organization called the fire "an attack on Swedish democracy" and said that it had a "strong suspicion" that there was an anti-Semitic motive in a statement released on Wednesday.

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Sweden: Members of far-right party caught making anti-Semitic statements online

Via JTA:

Regional politicians from the far-right Sweden Democrats party were caught making anti-Semitic statements online, including using a picture of Anne Frank to mock Holocaust victims.

Per Olsson, who represents the party on the city council of Oskarshamn, a coastal Swedish city, posted earlier this year a picture of Frank captioned “coolest Jew in the shower room” on the Russian social network VKontakt, the Expressen daily reported Friday.

The Expressen report was part of a project in which journalists for that daily and the Expo magazine looked into the digital footprint of many politicians from various parties ahead of the country’s September 9 general and local elections.

Sweden Democrats is currently in third place according to various polls, with 18.7 percent of the vote. Its share was just under 13 percent in the 2014 elections.

The journalists also found anti-Semitic material on the social media accounts of Raghu Jacobsen, who represents the party on the city council of Stenungsund, located in western Sweden.

“As long as Rothschild controls the economy and with the modern slavery on this planet, there will be anti-Semitism. #Jews #israel,” he wrote in English in February on Twitter.

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Europe: SodaStream BDS lobbyists were particularly effective in Europe

Via The Washington Times (Clifford D. May):

[...] Unsurprisingly, champions of the Palestinian cause denounced Mr. Birnbaum [SodaStream's CEO] as anti-Palestinian. In particular, advocates for BDS (the campaign to de-legitimize and demonize Israel through boycotts, divestments and sanctions) accused him of stealing Palestinian land, profiting from the “occupation” and exploiting Palestinian workers.  

“Suddenly,” Mr. Birnbaum recounted to me over dinner in Tel Aviv three years ago, “I’m a walking war criminal!”  

BDS lobbyists were particularly effective in Europe. For example, they persuaded retailers in Sweden to ask Mr. Birnbaum not to send them SodaStream products from the West Bank. Those retailers had no problem receiving merchandize made in China, a country where about a million Muslims are right now incarcerated in “re-education camps,” a country that occupies Tibet (offering no “two-state solution”), a country where persecution of Christians and other minorities continues to worsen.  

When Mr. Birnbaum needed a new and bigger factory, he decided not to build in the West Bank but instead to relocate to the Negev Desert, well within the “armistice lines,” the temporary borders drawn in 1949 when the war between the fledgling Jewish state and the Arab nations surrounding it came to a halt.

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Sweden: Politician denies calling Jews ‘impure’

Via Times of Israel:

A Swedish politician from Malmo who has worked on integration of immigrants denied saying that Jews and Armenians have “impure spirits.”

Muhammad Khorshid, who represents the Liberals on the city council of the municipality in southern Sweden, told Expressen that the comment in his name from 2016 on Facebook belonged to a fake account. The person behind that account wrote in Turkish about the two ethnicities: “We call them out for their impure spirits,” the daily reported Thursday.

The issue is the subject of an internal probe within the party, the report said. 

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Sweden: Caught between jihadists and neo-Nazis, Jews fear for their future

Via JTA (Cnaan Liphshiz):

When Carinne Sjoberg dissolved the Jewish Community of Umea in northern Sweden, she knew it would send shockwaves far beyond the small congregation that she had spent decades building.

The move in May owed to intimidation by neo-Nazis, making it the first time in decades that a Jewish organization in Western Europe acknowledged that it felt compelled to close shop over safety concerns.

Neo-Nazis from the Nordic Resistance Movement, beginning in 2016, pasted stickers with fascist imagery on Umea’s Jewish community center, “making the place look like after Kristallnacht,” Sjoberg said. The closure followed surveillance activity on the center by the neo-Nazis, who published details about individual visitors.

“I didn’t take it lightly,” Sjoberg, a 56-year-old Jewish mother of two, told JTA about the decision to close. “I hate giving neo-Nazis this victory. But I can’t bear the responsibility for people’s lives, not under such threats,” she said of her city’s Jewish community of 70 people.

The closure caused a national uproar. Amid intense media coverage in Sweden of the affair, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven mentioned it in a speech denouncing anti-democracy forces in his country.

But the indignation did little to change the fact that in Sweden, Muslim extremism and the far right are part of a broader set of challenges to Jewish communal life. So while the Jewish community of Stockholm may be growing, the problems are nonetheless causing some Swedish Jews to fear for their future as a minority here.

“We have a vibrant community in Stockholm but even here we face multiple threats, from Muslim extremism to far-right violence,” said Aron Verstandig, president of the Council of Swedish Jewish Communities — an umbrella group with approximately 6,000 members out of Sweden’s estimated 20,000 Jews.

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Sweden sentences 3 to prison for synagogue arson attack

Via Ynet News:

A Swedish court has found three men guilty of attempted arson against the Jewish synagogue in Sweden's second-largest city of Gothenburg last year, causing minor damage.

Two men got two years in jail and the third was sentenced to 15 months.

The Gothenburg District Court says Monday the case involved two Palestinians and a Syrian.

The 22-year-old Palestinian had his asylum application turned down following the December 9 attack and will be deported after serving his sentence. The others, aged 19 and 24, have Swedish residency permits.

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Sweden: Top politician reported for claiming Jews are 'not Swedes'

It is estimated that there are between 15-20,000 Jews living in Sweden.

Via The Local Sweden:

One of the most senior members of the populist Sweden Democrats has been reported to the police after writing on Facebook that Jewish and Sami people were “not Swedish”.

Björn Söder, who is the deputy speaker of the Swedish parliament, made his argument on the Facebook page of Sweden’s Centre Party, as part of defence against accusations from the party’s leader Annie Lööf.

“Annie Lööf adversely affects the position of Jews and Sami in Sweden when she indirectly claims that they are Swedes,” he wrote.

“These groups have minority positions in Sweden just because they are not Swedes. Shame on you Annie Lööf for your racist attitude.” (…)

Söder accused Lööf of using “low” tactics and taking his reply out of its context, which was to defend himself against accusations of racism for earlier comments made in 2014.

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Sweden: Foreign Minister tells Palestinians: ‘We will fight with you and for you’

Via JTA:

Sweden’s foreign minister told Palestinians that her country will “fight with you and for you,” prompting pro-Israel activists to accuse her of encouraging violence against Israelis.

Margot Wallstrom, whom Israel has accused of pursuing hostile policies against the Jewish state, made the pledge last month during a visit to an exhibition at the Palestinian Authority representative’s office in Stockholm.

“You know how much we care about Palestine, you know that we will continue to hopefully fight with you and for you,” Wallstrom said, adding: “And we will fight for a two-state solution, we will remain a close friend.”

The Sweden-Israel Friendship Association said in a statement last week that Wallstrom’s language, which is unusual for a top diplomat of a major member of the European Union, suggests that “the government of Sweden has placed itself on the ‘Palestinian’ side in their armed struggle to wipe out Israel.”

But a spokesperson for Wallstrom told JTA that her referencing of “fighting” was for “a negotiated two-state solution,” and that the “security of both Israel and Palestine is fundamental to Sweden.”

Sweden is the only country in the European Union that recognizes a state it calls Palestine.

“Palestinians walk around with keys in their pockets to homes that they once owned,” she said in reference to the Palestinians’ aspiration for what they call “return” to places inside Israel that some 700,000 Palestinians left during the 1947-48 war that led to Israel’s creation.

“It is so important to know your history, to honor and to cherish your history,” Wallstrom said, but “also to think about the future.”

In 2015, Wallstrom said that terrorist attacks in Paris by radical Islamists were rooted in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, drawing protests from Israel.

Sweden: Jewish group shuts down after Nazi threats

Via The Local:

Sweden’s most northerly Jewish community group has closed down following a succession of threats from neo-Nazi groups.

The Jewish Association in the city of Umeå shut itself down at a board meeting at the end of May.

“It’s a heavy blow. I’m very sad about it, and have even shed a few tears,” said Carinne Sjöberg, the Liberal Party politician who chaired the association. “In some way, it feels like we lost.”

In a tweet, Sweden's Jewish Youth Association thanked Sjöberg and other board members for the work they had done since the group was established in 2010.

"This means that there is no Jewish organisation in Sweden north of Uppsala," it wrote.

 The association moved out of its premises in April last year, after swastikas were painted on the walls alongside antisemitic stickers which included pictures of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, the text ‘we know where you live’.

Association members also received threatening emails and Sjöberg was even visited at her home.

According to the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, the threats came predominantly from the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement, which has been growing in strength in recent years, and is very active in northern Sweden.

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Sweden: Former PM Carld Bildt relativizes current anti-Semitism with odd and inaccurate historical arguments

Via Politico (Paulina Neuding, editor-in-chief of the online magazine Kvartal)

Sweden may be known for its popular music, IKEA and a generous welfare state. It is also increasingly associated with a rising number of Islamic State recruits, bombings and hand grenade attacks.

In a period of two weeks earlier this year, five explosions took place in the country. It’s not unusual these days — Swedes have grown accustomed to headlines of violent crime, witness intimidation and gangland executions. In a country long renowned for its safety, voters cite “law and order” as the most important issue ahead of the general election in September.

The topic of crime is sensitive, however, and debate about the issue in the consensus-oriented Scandinavian society is restricted by taboos. (...)

In March, Labor Market Minister Ylva Johansson appeared on the BBC, where she claimed that the number of reported rapes and sexual harassment cases “is going down and going down and going down.” In fact, the opposite is true, which Johansson later admitted in an apology.

Similarly, in an op-ed for the Washington Post, former Prime Minister Carl Bildt described the country’s immigration policy as a success story. He did not elaborate on violent crime. After repeated attacks against Jewish institutions in December — including the firebombing of a synagogue in Gothenburg — Bildt took to the same paper to claim that anti-Semitism is not a major problem in Sweden.

“Historically, in Sweden it was the Catholics that were seen as the dangerous threat that had to be fought and restricted,” Bildt claimed, seemingly unaware that the laws he cited also applied to Jews. Intermarriage was illegal and hostility was based on ideas of Jews as racially inferior. Bildt’s attempt to relativize current anti-Semitism with odd and inaccurate historical arguments reflects how nervously Swedish elites react to negative headlines about their country.

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Read also:
Sweden: Son of Holocaust survivor explains why he left Sweden to Israel
Sweden: Former PM Carl Bildt says Israel pushing US into region-wide war with Iran

Sweden: Son of Holocaust survivor explains why he left Sweden to Israel

Via The Times of Israel (Stefan Shaul Lindmark):

Madam Foreign Minister! I’m here now. You know, in Israel. Just like I said I would be. I wrote to you two years ago, you may remember. And I told you about the people who built the state of Israel; the survivors of the Holocaust, the Jews expelled from the Arab world and Iran, and who were robbed of all of their possessions, the Ethiopian Jews who walked through the deserts of death, the Soviet Jews who fled from the anti-Semitism and all the other Jews who have moved here to live together with the Jews who have lived here for generations.

Madam Foreign Minister, now I am one of them – I, the son of a survivor from the Holocaust. I, who have lived all my life in Sweden and have served the country as a soldier, as an ambulance nurse, as a therapist and above all as, a lecturer of the Holocaust and its consequences. I have left a Sweden that is no longer the country I have known my whole life. Sweden, a country that has changed further over the years since I wrote to you – and the change is not for the better.

Madam Foreign Minister, I’m leaving Sweden where violence, gangs fight for territory, power and “respect”, shootings, rape and especially gang rapes have become the norm – my Sweden which is now a country where anti-Semitism is dramatically increasing even further, a country whose government suffers from at severe case of megalomania and believes itself to be morally superior to any other country in the entire world. (...)  

Madam Foreign Minister, since I last wrote to you Sweden has adapted to hearing people screaming in the streets that “Jews are the offspring of monkeys and pigs” and “shoot the Jews”. Without ramification. Petrol bombs have been thrown against my synagogue and against the chapel in Malmö. The Jewish community center pays 53% of its budget, based on their members’ fees, on its own security. But you don’t want to see this, you did not want to hear the warning signs, you who habitually will blame Israel like you always do – my Israel – to be the cause of all evil in the world. And then you wonder why the Swedish Jews leave. In the Jewish Chronicle you claim not to understand why Jews want to leave to Sweden in order to move to a life “behind walls”.  

But Mrs Foreign Minister, if the interview was made on the Jewish community’s premises, you had to cross the high fences, the walls and security controls in order to enter. The fences and walls that make the Jews safe in Sweden. There are plenty of people in Sweden who want to kill us. So what is the fundamental difference between the fences and walls of Jewish institutions in Sweden and fences and walls against those who want to kill and hurt people in Israel? Who can we trust? Not those who are aiding and abetting. Not those who make hollow promises. Not those who lay the blame on the victims and coddle and defend the perpetrators. The history of experience has taught us that we can only trust ourselves against those who want to kill us.

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Europe: As attacks on Jews rise, antisemitism Is the new cool

Via The Algemeiner (Abigail R. Esman):

More disturbing than the alleged arson at a suburban Paris kosher supermarket on Tuesday — the third anniversary of the terror attack at the kosher Hyper-Cacher market, also outside Paris — is this: no one was terribly surprised. Shocked, yes; of course people were shocked — but not entirely surprised.

How could they be, after a rash of antisemitic attacks and regular calls for “death to Jews” that have plagued Europe in recent months? At this point, in Europe, Jew-hatred has practically become the norm.

The fire, which destroyed the kosher shop, broke out in the early morning hours in the southern suburb of Creteil, where about a quarter of the population is Jewish. But the shop owner, who is Muslim, also found swastikas painted on the door a week ago, as did the owner of a neighboring market, which was also slightly damaged in the fire.

Such events are hardly new in France. In addition to the HyperCacher attack– in which Muslim terrorist Amedy Coulibaly gunned down four people after a standoff lasting several hours — in 2017, a Jewish woman was killed by a Muslim neighbor who pushed her out a window, and a Jewish family was robbed and held hostage, also in a Paris suburb. “You’re Jews, so where is the money,” the assailants allegedly said. Yet these are only the latest in a heinous string of attacks on French Jews, mostly, but not exclusively, by Muslims, including the 2012 massacre at a Jewish school in Toulouse. Three children and a teacher were killed in that attack.

In 2006, as many as 20 people participated in the kidnapping, torture and murder of 23-year-old Ilan Halimi. “We have a Jew,” one said in a ransom call.

But France is not alone. Sweden, too, whose national Jewish population (18,000) is smaller than that of Creteil alone (23,000), has seen a disproportionate amount of antisemitic activity in the past few months. In December, Muslims hurled Molotov cocktails at Jewish teens at a synagogue party in Gothenburg, and firebombs were planted at a Jewish cemetery in Malmo. At a Stockholm protest against President Trump’s call to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, The New York Times reported that, “a speaker called Jews ‘apes and pigs,'” a common anti-Jewish epithet among Muslim anti-semites. And in Malmo, according to the Times, “Children at the Jewish kindergarten … play behind bulletproof glass.”

This is not just because of Muslims, however. Even Sweden’s mainstream media has attacked the Jews. A 2009 article in the respected Aftonbladet claimed that Israel regularly kidnapped and killed young Palestinians for their organs.

And in the Netherlands, where anti-Jewish chants filled the hot afternoons during pro-Gaza protests in 2014, it is not always the Muslims who are to blame. Indeed, as Muslim youth waved the ISIS flag and called for death to Jews in The Hague, the city’s mayor, Jozias van Aartsen, refused to denounce them, insisting “no boundaries had been crossed.” More recently, Jewish groups have learned of the plight of 86-year-old Dutch Holocaust survivor Inge Prenzlau, who, after forced to work in her father’s Amsterdam pill factory as a small girl, to prevent the Nazis from seizing it after he became ill, now receives a €140 monthly stipend from the German government — about $150. Germany does not tax this payment; but the new Dutch government has different ideas. “Pay up,” they told her in December. The move outraged the renowned and outspoken Dutch author, Leon de Winter. The son of Holocaust survivors, De Winter posted on Twitter:

[The King] receives a tax-free royal salary, yet this 86-year-old Jewish woman must pay taxes over her so-called ghetto-compensation of 140 euros a month.

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Denmark cuts funding and is reviewing all funding of PA NGOs

Via Palestinian Media Watch (Itamar Marcus and Maurice Hirsch):

• Denmark announced this week that it cut funding and is reviewing all funding of NGOs, in response to PMW exposing that money it provided was used to build a community center that Palestinians named for a mass murderer 

• Other countries cutting or freezing funding this year following PMW reports: Norway, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland
   
• PMW is changing European attitudes one country at a time 

On May 26, 2017 PMW reported that funds provided by Norway, the UN and a conglomerate of countries including Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland had been used to build a center for young women that was subsequently named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi. Mughrabi led a terror attack that resulted in the murder of 37 Israelis, including 12 children, in 1978.

Denmark
Last week, Denmark decided to cancel some grants and review further funding of Palestinian NGOs. The decision was made following an investigation initiated after PMW's report that the women’s center funded by Denmark, was named after a Palestinian terrorist murderer. Denmark announced that it will also tighten the conditions for providing funding to all Palestinian NGOs and that the majority of the aid, suspended after PMW’s report, will not be paid.

“Denmark will tighten the conditions for providing money to Palestinian NGOs, Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said... The review followed revelations [by Palestinian Media Watch] in May that a women’s center partly funded with European aid money... was named after Dalal Mughrabi, who took part in the Coastal Road massacre in 1978 that killed 37 people... Samuelsen also said that the 'majority of aid' suspended from the summer while the review was under way will not be paid.” 

[The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 24, 2017]

Norway

When PMW released its report documenting the center named for terrorist Mughrabi, Norway immediately demanded that the Norwegian money be returned:

Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende: 

"The glorification of terrorist attacks is completely unacceptable, and I deplore this decision in the strongest possible terms. Norway will not allow itself to be associated with institutions that take the names of terrorists in this way... We have asked for the logo of the Norwegian representation office to be removed from the building immediately, and for the funding that has been allocated to the centre to be repaid."

[Norwegian Foreign Ministry website, May 26, 2017]

Belgium
When PMW reported that a Palestinian school built with Belgium funds, was also named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi, Belgium condemned it and froze the construction of ten additional Palestinian Authority schools.

Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Didier Vanderhasselt:

“Belgium unequivocally condemns the glorification of terrorist attacks [and] will not allow itself to be associated with the names of terrorists... Belgium has immediately raised this issue with the Palestinian Authority and is awaiting a formal response... In the meantime Belgium will put on hold any projects related to the construction or equipment of Palestinian schools.”

[The Algemeiner, Oct. 7, 2017]

Additional Countries

Germany,  Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands also cut off funding to one or more Palestinian projects following PMW reports on the ways in which Palestinians are using donor funding to glorify terror.

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Sweden: Former PM hints far-right is not a threat to Jews because they're "staunchly pro-Israel"

Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister of Sweden, recently wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post titled "Why anti-Semitism won’t flourish in Sweden"

Swedish politicians keep on saying that they take antisemitism seriously, but articles such as these show that they either don't understand the problem or don't care about it at all.

For example, Bildt claims that the ADL global survey of antisemitism shows antisemitism is barely a problem.  What he forgets to mention is that the ADL survey only checked on classic antisemitism.  


Moreover, according to a survey by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, 60% of Swedish Jews think antisemitism is a big problem.  About half think hostility towards Jews in public places and in the media is a big problem.  40% of Jews have personally experienced antisemitic comments in social situations and in public areas.

Moreover, Bildt then claims that the far-right are now pro-Israel and that therefore Jews have no need to worry about them any more. 

In the article Bildt writes:

Sweden certainly has its share of far-right groups and political parties, and we have unfortunately seen the strengthening of them during the past decade or so. But like elsewhere, these groups have often turned staunchly pro-Israel, in the belief that an enemy of your enemy has to be your friend. And their enemy is clearly the Muslim world.

Bildt ends his article as follows:

Sweden’s problems are there, including anti-Semitism. But overall I am confident that if the Anti-Defamation League were to repeat its global poll measuring support for anti-Semitic views, it would come up with the same — or an even better — result for Sweden today.

I am sure that if the ADL repeats its survey, Sweden will come out squeaky clean.  I also know for a fact that Sweden is extremely antisemitic, with an antisemitism that mostly manifests itself as "anti-Zionism".   In fact, one of the only places in the world where Trump's recent "Jerusalem Declaration" was met with violence against Jews - was Sweden.  

If Sweden wants to ensure that antisemitism doesn't flourish in their country, it's time its leaders open their eyes to reality.   Denying the problem exists is not the way to deal with it.

Europe's "Arab Street" rises up

Via Gatestone Institute (Douglas Murray):

- Hamas called for a "Day of Rage" -- as opposed to the days of peace and harmony the terrorist group ordinarily calls for -- but this did not spill out very far.
- In Stockholm, meanwhile, the new "locals" contented themselves with setting light to the Star of David rather than to real live Jews as their compatriots in Gothenburg had tried to do
- The fabled "Arab Street" had been meant to rise up. And it did rise up. But not in the Arab world... instead it lit up in Europe.

(...) In Germany, however, as in Sweden, Holland, Britain and every other country in Western Europe, there is no point in merely being nervous. It appears that the instinct that really has a point is wilful optimism. After this recent spate of attacks, the former Swedish politician Carl Bildt summed up the view of an entire establishment. While lamenting the anti-Semitism and misogyny of many migrants from the Arab world, Bildt wrote: 

"Most refugees coming to our country from Muslim countries have adjusted to the values of tolerance central to our society. The fact that many of these people have often fled different systems of intolerance helps that process." 

Mr. Bildt, like so many other politicians of his generation, is now willing to admit some truths about the effects of mass migration which he would never have admitted even a few years ago. But the successor to silence turns out to be this blind, wilful optimism. It recognises that, sure, some of the migrants come to us with rampant Jew-hatred. And sure, some of them do not like women or gays. But in time they will become as friendly towards Jews as any other European.

Perhaps Mr Bildt is right to have his optimistic vision of the migrants becoming just like everyone else. Or perhaps -- and a lot rides on this -- he is wrong. Considering that possibility, all of these recent events present the most ominous possible warning-sign. Events such as those since President Trump's announcement should be sending up the clearest possible flare. Yet it is one that too few people are still willing to see. It is taking people time to recognise that the fabled "Arab Street" did light up in recent days. But it lit up in Europe.

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Sweden: Not even Jewish funerals are safe from harassment.

Via The New York Times (Paulina Neudig):

This past Saturday, a Hanukkah party at a synagogue in Goteborg, Sweden, was abruptly interrupted by Molotov cocktails. They were hurled by a gang of men in masks at the Jews, mostly teenagers, who had gathered to celebrate the holiday. Two days later, two fire bombs were discovered outside the Jewish burial chapel in the southern Swedish city of Malmo. Who knows what tomorrow may bring?

For Sweden’s 18,000 Jews, sadly, none of this comes as a surprise. They are by now used to anti-Semitic threats and attacks — especially during periods of unrest in the Middle East, which provide cover to those whose actual goal has little to do with Israel and much to do with harming Jews.

Both of these recent attacks followed days of incitement against Jews. Last Friday, 200 people protested in Malmo against President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The protesters called for an intifada and promised “we will shoot the Jews.” A day later, during a demonstration in Stockholm, a speaker called Jews “apes and pigs.” There were promises of martyrdom.

Malmo’s sole Hasidic rabbi has reported being the victim of more than 100 incidents of hostility ranging from hate speech to physical assault. In response to such attacks, the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a travel warning in 2010 advising “extreme caution when visiting southern Sweden” because of officials’ failure to act against the “serial harassment” of Jews in Malmo.

Today, entering a synagogue anywhere in Sweden usually requires going through security checks, including airport-like questioning. At times of high alert, police officers with machine guns guard Jewish schools. Children at the Jewish kindergarten in Malmo play behind bulletproof glass. Not even funerals are safe from harassment.

Jewish schoolteachers have reported hiding their identity. A teacher who wouldn’t even share the city where she teaches for fear of her safety told a Swedish news outlet: “I hear students shouting in the hallway about killing Jews.” Henryk Grynfeld, a teacher at a high school in a mostly immigrant neighborhood in Malmo, was told by a student: “We’re going to kill all Jews.” He said other students yell “yahoud,” the Arabic word for Jew, at him.

A spokesman for Malmo’s Jewish community put the situation starkly. You “don’t want to display the Star of David around your neck,” he said. Or as spokesman for the Goteborg synagogue put it, “It’s a constant battle to live a normal life, and not to give in to the threats, but still be able to feel safe.”

The question that has dogged Jews throughout the centuries is now an urgent one for Sweden’s Jewish community. Is it time to leave? Some are answering yes. One reason is the nature of the current threat.

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.

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Europe: "Trump is not to blame for Muslims re-enacting Kristallnacht on the streets of Amsterdam"

Via Tablet Magazine (James Kirchick):

(...) Donald Trump is not to blame for Muslims re-enacting Kristallnacht on the streets of Amsterdam. Neither is Israel. Europeans are. In particular, Nazi Germany’s attempt to solve Europe’s “Jewish problem” has been followed by decades of nauseating indulgence of Arab and Muslim fantasies about wiping out Israel, and the assumption that every adverse development in the mostly one-sided “peace process” between Israel and the Arab world, and every real or imagined indignity visited upon any Palestinian by any Israeli–Arab offenses against Palestinians or other Arabs don’t count–is a natural reason for people to attack and murder Jews anywhere and everywhere in the world.

Encouraging poor and disenfranchised Muslims to stew in hate propaganda so as to direct their resentments away from their lazy and corrupt rulers and towards “Zionists” is a threadbare trick that only people hardened by centuries of colonial administration could continue to play, especially in the wake of the Holocaust. Europe has grown rich through such grotesqueries, which also provide a convenient safety-valve for the social and economic dissatisfactions of the continent’s underclass along with a self-administered dose of exculpation for the mass extermination within living memory of the vast majority of Europe’s Jews in gas chambers and before firing squads. Claiming that divide-and-rule tactics used against one’s own population constitute some higher form of morality is a truly rare kind of obscenity. As anti-Semitic mobs raged across his country, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt—a fervent twitterer who is never at a loss when it comes to criticizing baleful developments in other countries—saw fit to tweet this.

Yet to obfuscate the ways in which Muslims are actually attacking Jews in Europe and the Middle East, fueled by hate-propaganda produced by other Muslims, is to engage in an equally dangerous species of denialism. Events over the weekend should spark a long-overdue, honest conversation about anti-Semitism in Europe, the sources of which people are too afraid to talk about–but should. The rise of nationalist movements across the continent in recent years has led many to assume that the far-right is mainly responsible for resurgent anti-Semitism. But the facts indicate that assumption is false: Anti-Semitic harassment in Europe is predominantly Muslim in origin, with leftists coming in a strong second place.

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Sweden: Second synagogue firebombed

Via European Jewish Congress:

A second synagogue in Sweden was firebombed, this time in Malmö. An attempt was also made to set light to a funeral chapel at a Jewish cemetery in the city. This comes after a synagogue was firebombed in Gothenburg on Saturday. According to reports in the Swedish press, two firebombs were found at the site and had burned out on the spot.  

No injuries were reported. Police were investigating the incident as a suspected hate crime. Sveriges Radio reported that on Friday, demonstrators at a rally in Malmö against the US declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Jerusalem chanted: “We have announced the intifada from Malmö. We want our freedom back, and we will shoot the Jews.”  

Protests held in other European cities also involved antisemitic chants. In London, protesters shouted the Jihadi chant ‘Khaybar, Khaybar’ outside the US Embassy. This “can only be interpreted as a call to incite violence against Jewish people,” said British Jewish leaders in a statement released on Monday.

Sweden: Outpouring of anti-Semitism for which officials blame Israel

Via Mosaic Magazine:

Following the American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, there have been anti-Semitic demonstrations in many European countries. Particularly severe is the situation in Sweden: crowds walk through the streets threatening violence against “the Jews,” and both a synagogue and a Jewish funeral home have been firebombed. Bruce Bawer examines the reactions:

Svante Weyler, head of the Swedish Committee against Anti-Semitism, told the daily Aftonbladet that . . . anti-Semitism is, indeed, quite severe and on the rise in Europe—especially in Sweden—but, unless Aftonbladet cut something out, he was careful not to mention Islam. (That is par for the course.) . . .

Weyler [also] pointed out that “those young people who were gathered together in the synagogue [at the time of the attack] have no direct connection to what is happening in the Middle East or to what Trump does.” Rarely does a European Jewish leader—or anyone, for that matter—simply stand up and defend Israel.

It is not just European Jewish leaders who, in such cases, feel driven to draw a sharp distinction between European Jews and the Jewish state. In an interview with [another Swedish paper], a member of the city council in Gothenburg, [where the attack on the synagogue took place], lamented the fact that “Jews in Sweden are held responsible for what Israel thinks is right or wrong.” Such remarks, of course, imply, [first of all], that Swedish Jews, being Swedes, are surely too sensible and humane to agree in any large numbers with Israeli (or pro-Israeli) policies or actions, and [second], that Israel, by virtue of its supposedly provocative behavior, is at least indirectly responsible for anti-Jewish attacks in Europe. . . .

The attack on the Gothenburg synagogue may have been immediately triggered by Trump’s recognition of Israel’s capital, but it is part of a pattern of persecution and savagery that has [long] been in place, and that has been systematically ignored, denied, or played down by the news media and public officials.

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