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.

read more @ Gatestone Institute

Sweden: Firebombs hurled at synagogue after protest march about Jerusalem

The Local has a photo of Swedes burning the Israeli flag.  Have a look.

Via Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

More than a dozen men hurled firebombs at a synagogue in Gothenburg in southern Sweden hours after locals marched in the city against the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. 

No one was injured in the attack Saturday night, which ended without major damage to property, the online edition of the Expressen daily reported.

Dvir Maoz, the World Bnei Akiva youth movement’s emissary in Gothenburg, told JTA that the attack happened a little after 10 p.m. while youths from the local Jewish community were attending a party inside the synagogue complex. Looking outside from inside the synagogue lobby area, he said he saw in the corner of his eye “a ball of fire” approaching the building. “The guards saw it in the security cameras and called police right away. The children were stressed, it was the first time they had ever experienced a terrorist attack near them.” (...)

Hours before the attack, which police are investigating, several hundred people marched through the city’s center in protest of President Donald Trump’s declaration on Wednesday that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, George Braun, the head of the community, told JTA. Police do not have suspects in custody.

“It is unconscionable that Jews are under attack on the streets of Europe, whether by terrorists hurling Molotov cocktails or openly and brazenly calling for the mass murder of Jews in Malmo, Vienna and Paris,” European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor said in a statement. 

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Sweden: Antisemitism in Malmö leads to shrinking Jewish community

Via Arutz Sheva 7 (Manfred Gertenfeld):

The third-largest Swedish town Malmö is considered by many experts to be the capital of contemporary European anti-Semitism. A few of the many aspects that justify this characterization are exposed in part of a new German documentary titled “The eternal anti-Semite – the story of an unrequited love.” It was shown very early this morning –- on the occasion of the anniversary of Kristallnacht -- on Bavarian TV.

The film follows the German Jewish author, Henryk Broder, who travels in Germany, France and Sweden. He is often accompanied by Hamad abdel Samad, an Egyptian writer living in Germany. Several Egyptian Muslim theologians have issued a fatwa that abdel Samad must killed for heresy. In the film he is seen with police bodyguards. 

Before Broder and Abdel Samad came to Malmö they made appointments with the head of the police and the mayor, but those were cancelled at the last minute. They met the town’s American rabbi, Shneur Kesselman. He tells them that the shrinking community had to put bullet proof windows in the synagogue. Even that did not help. A bomb went off in front of the synagogue and another bomb was thrown into the chapel of the Jewish cemetery and totally destroyed it. 

The rabbi, who belongs to the Chabad movement, says that he is regularly harassed when walking on the street. From passing cars people may shout insults at him such as “Death to the Jews.” Objects thrown at him include an apple, a lighter, a glass and a bottle. Kesselman arrived in  Malmö twelve years ago. He says that if he had known the reality for Jews in the town he would not have come, but now he will not leave out of loyalty toward the shrinking Jewish community. 

Kesselman expects many children of community members to leave Malmö. A few weeks ago, long after the movie was completed, stones again shattered the synagogue’s windows. On that occasion a former chairman of the Jewish community told the press that most incidents are perpetrated by Muslims or Arabs. 

A Jewish teacher at a public elementary school in a problematic neighborhood in Malmö is also interviewed. He speaks about shootings in the neighborhood, sometimes with lethal consequences. Children from other classes sometimes open the class doors and shout anti-Semitic insults at him. An eleven year old yelled Heil Hitler. The school’s management does not want to publicize the anti-Semitic incidents saying: “they are only children.” 

Before driving through a Malmö neighborhood with a large number of migrants, the police warns the filmmakers that they should not leave the car or even stop. This translates into plain English as: “This is a Muslim ghetto where the police have lost control.”

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Sweden: Islamist-inspired antisemitism is spiraling out of control

Via The Jerusalem Post (Ilya Meyer):

(...) For instance, Sweden is probably the only Western, nominally democratic country that is currently engaged in multiple wars, all financed by an extremist government that freely uses Swedish tax revenues to further its political agenda at home and abroad.

The Swedish government’s first war is against Israel. The day after it took office in 2014, the government announced its recognition of something called “Palestine,” with absolutely no strings attached.

No demands for a stop to the Palestinian Authority’s antisemitism, genocidal violence against Jews, indoctrination of vulnerable young Arab children, and abuse of sporting, educational and cultural contexts to vilify the Jewish State of Israel.

Sweden could have stopped all this by conditioning its financial and diplomatic aid on an end to such activities. Instead, the Swedish government actively chose not to impose any such conditions on the use of Swedish tax revenues.

The Swedish government’s second war is against all measures that have any chance of bringing about coexistence or peace for Israel. Sweden actively supports efforts to encourage Palestinian Arab intransigence, including massive funding of educational and cultural activities that condemn new generations of Arab children to an upbringing steeped in hatred and racism.

The Freedom Theatre is just one way in which Sweden ensures that future generations of Arab children remain firmly stuck in the moral morass of antisemitism, hatred, violence and rejection of peaceful coexistence.

The Swedish government’s third war is against its own Jewish citizens and their indelible links to their families in Israel.

This can be seen perhaps most clearly in the actions of former Swedish housing minister Mehmet Kaplan, who announced his first policy decision back in autumn 2014 as – I quote – the “liberation of Jerusalem.” The Jewish city of Jerusalem – all of Jerusalem, was to be liberated from Jews, by Muslims. As the official foreign policy of the Swedish government. On its first day in power. (...)

Islamist-inspired antisemitism in Sweden is spiraling out of control, including public calls in some mosques to – I quote – “kill the Jews wherever they are found.”

This kind of rabid antisemitism from a sizable Islamist minority has been routinely ignored as just “the jargon of that culture,” while identical antisemitic sentiments uttered by a tiny, idiotic neo-Nazi minority have attracted loud government condemnation. The discrepancy in responses is remarkable. Yet despite Sweden’s ongoing domestic social implosion, the only consistent government policy does not even relate to domestic issues but to a foreign one – namely criticism of Israel.

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Sweden: Public TV refuses to air major antisemitism documentary

Via Algemeiner (by Ben Cohen):

Audiences in Israel are currently flocking to see a Swedish film about the relationship between terrorism and antisemitism that Swedish national TV, which partly financed the production, continues to refuse to screen. 

“Watching the Moon at Night,” directed by the veteran Swedish documentary-maker Bo Persson, will be playing to a sold-out audience at Jerusalem’s Cinematheque on Monday night, following screenings this week in Tel Aviv. The 90-minute documentary has been shown at film festivals in 12 different countries since its release in 2015, but Sweden’s national public television, SVT, has refused to air it because of pressure from a small group of executives who object to the portraits of Israeli victims of terrorism in the film, Persson told The Algemeiner on Friday. 

“Many people in Sweden were shaken by this decision,” Persson said. “Sweden is a fairly open and democratic society, so when Swedish TV decides to cancel a film that they themselves were involved with, that leaves people shocked and bewildered.” 

Persson said that the bulk of the film’s financing had been provided by the prestigious Swedish Film Institute, which continues to support the director in his dispute with SVT. He also alleged that editors in SVT‘s documentary film department had breached the broadcaster’s guidelines concerning the editorial independence of outside contributors.  

Persson said that he and his colleague Joanna Helander spent five years working on the film, which includes harrowing interviews with survivors and relatives of terror attacks and insightful analysis from some of the leading scholars of antisemitism. Dan Alon, a fencer who survived the 1972 Palestinian terrorist atrocity against Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, features prominently, as does Arnold Roth, whose 15 year-old daughter Malki was murdered in a Palestinian suicide bombing attack on a Jerusalem pizza restaurant in 2001. Among the authorities on antisemitism who appear are two leading academics who have passed away in the last two years — Professor Robert Wistrich of the Hebrew University, and Andre Glucksmann, the French philosopher and writer.

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Sweden: Former PM says Israel pushing US into region-wide war with Iran

Carl Bildt, former Swedish PM, and nowadays Co-Chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations wrote on twitter:

Egged on by Netanyahu it seems Trump wants to take the US into a region-wide war with Iran. Europe will suffer. Everyone will lose.

Joshua Muravchik calls him "a longtime anti-Israel fanatic":

Bildt, a longtime anti-Israel fanatic, endorsed Goldstone report, later disavowed by Goldstone, within hours of release w/o having read it.

Sweden: Netanyahu refused to meet with Swedish Prime Minister in New York

Via European Jewish Press:

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has refused a request from his Swedish counterpart Stefan Löfven to meet at the United Nations General Assembly in New York because Sweden’s recognition of a Palestinian state, the Israeli media reported. 

It is the second year in a row that Netanyahu has turned down the Swedish Prime Minister’s invitation for a meeting. According to Israel’s Channel 2, the request was rejected as “not possible.’’ 

Relations between Israel and Sweden have been rather tense since the decision of the Swedish Prime Minister to recognize a Palestinian state shortly after his election in 2014.Sweden was the first European member to do so. 

Israel also protested comments made by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom when she linked Palestinian frustration to the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris by the Islamic State.

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Sweden: Nazis to march outside Gothenburg synagogue on Yom Kippur, police fail to see the problem

The Nazis wanted to march through one of the city's main avenues, but did not receive a permit to do so.  Instead, they'll march through side streets, right by the city's main synagogue.

Via Ilya Meyer:

On Yom Kippur this year, NMR – a neo-Nazi party – will be holding a racist demonstration in Gothenburg, Sweden. Their route takes them close to the doors of Gothenburg’s main synagogue.

On Yom Kippur.

The Gothenburg Jewish Community has always enjoyed an excellent, warm and professional relationship with the police, both the uniform branch and the security police. We have never hesitated to turn to the police with our security-related concerns over the years, and the police have always responded with the utmost attentiveness, flexibility and consideration.

Not this year, however. When the Jewish Community leadership pointed out that the date of the march and its route posed a particular security concern owing to their overt anti-Semitic symbolism, the police responded that they had taken into consideration the “security aspects” of the Nazi march and demonstration, explaining they are not concerned with the religious niceties of the Jewish religion on this or any other particular day. From the point of view of a security operation, the police say, this route allows them to keep everything under control.

Despite our decades of close and smooth cooperation, this response seems to suggest that the Gothenburg police have learned little over the years. The Gothenburg Jewish Community is not asking the police to reroute the march because we are upset that Nazis are insulting our religion or upsetting our emotions.

We are requesting that the march be rerouted because Jews both young and elderly will be coming to and from the synagogue all day long. As such, having a Nazi demonstration route that takes a few hundred uniformed racists close to our main doors is very much a security issue. Not an emotive one. It is not our sensibilities that are under threat, but our physical well-being.

(...)

It is the route, the venue, that is a serious security risk. A security risk to Jewish worshippers who will be entering and leaving the synagogue all day long.

It is a risk that the Gothenburg police are refusing to acknowledge.

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Europe: Anti-Semitism in Europe: new official report

Via Gatestone Institute (Bruce Bawer):

To some of us, it is hardly a secret that anti-Semitic violence is on the rise in Europe, or that the chief perpetrators are Muslims. But many politicians and news media have been so indefatigable in their efforts to obscure this uncomfortable fact that one is always grateful for official -- or, at least, semi-official -- confirmation of what everyone already knows.  

It is a pleasure, then, to report that a new study, Antisemitic Violence in Europe, 2005-2015 --written by Johannes Due Enstad of the Oslo-based Center for Studies of the Holocaust and the University of Oslo, and jointly published by both institutions -- is refreshingly, even startlingly, honest about its subject. Enstad notes that while anti-Semitic violence has declined in the U.S. since 1994, it has been on the rise worldwide. That, of course, includes Europe -- most of it, anyway. 

Examining statistics from France, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Russia, Enstad points out that one of these seven countries "clearly stands out with a very low number" of anti-Semitic incidents despite its "relatively large Jewish population"; the country in question, he adds, "is also the only case in which there is little to indicate that Jews avoid displaying their identity in public." In addition, it is the only one of the six countries in which the majority of perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence are not Muslims. Which country is Enstad referring to? Russia. (...)

Nearly 10% of French Jews say they have been physically attacked for being Jewish during the past five years; in Germany and Sweden the figure is about 7.5%, in Britain nearly 5%. Asked how often they "avoid visiting Jewish events or sites" for fear of danger, 7.9% of Jews in Sweden say they do so frequently, followed by their coreligionists in France, Germany, and Britain (where the number is only 1.2%). Asked if they "avoid wearing, carrying or displaying things" in public that would identify them as Jews, 60% of Swedish Jews say they do so "all the time" or "frequently," with, again, France, Germany, and Britain following in that order.

Almost 50% of French Jews have considered emigrating because they feel imperiled in their own country; for Germany the figure is 25%, and for Sweden and Britain it is just under 20%. 

Enstad weighs official statistics from all of the countries under examination, but finds that while those from most of the countries essentially jibe with the results of independent studies, those published by both Germany and Sweden are fishy, in some cases betraying an apparent effort by officials to massage the numbers to avoid certain uncomfortable facts. While an independent survey, for example, concludes that right-wing extremists make up a small minority of perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence in Germany, German police statistics blame most such violence on just right-wingers. (...) Another problem is that German officials categorize some incidents -- including the fire-bombing of a synagogue -- as anti-Israeli, not anti-Semitic. 

Of course, the exclusive attribution of anti-Semitism to the far-right is ridiculous, as is the distinction between "anti-Israeli" and "anti-Semitic." But this kind of wordplay on the part of German officialdom is not surprising. Such fiddling with semantics and statistics in order to avoid pointing the figure at Muslims is thoroughly consistent with the current practice by both the German government and media of downplaying the extent of Muslim sexual assaults and other crimes -- most notoriously, of course, in the wake of the New Year's Eve 2016 mass sexual assaults in Cologne, after which, as the commentator Ezra Levant put it, not only did Cologne's police chief lie about the extent of the atrocities, but "[t]he media lied. The Justice Minister lied too. The mayor lied." It is also consistent with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration's fierce determination to stamp out criticism of Muslims. 

The Swedish government's numbers are also dubious. While attributing a "minority" of anti-Semitic incidents to "right-wing extremists," official Swedish reports prefer not to say who is responsible for the majority of them. The closest they come to doing so is to state that many "expressions of antisemitism" are "linked to... conflicts in the Middle East." It seems clear that this is a euphemistic way of indicating that the perpetrators in question are Muslims. In any event, anecdotal evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that most of the people who commit anti-Semitic violence in Sweden are, indeed, Muslims. For example, Judith Popinski, a concentration-camp survivor living in Malmö, told the Sunday Telegraph back in 2010 that she had begun experiencing the same "hatred" in that city that had once been directed at her by the Nazis, only this time, she said, it "comes from Muslim immigrants. The Jewish people are afraid now." (...)

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Sweden: Anti-Semitic demonstration in the town of Helsingborg

Via Ynet News (Noah Klieger):

Anti-Israel protest in Helsingborg

Why am I not surprised by the anti-Jewish protest held last week in the town of Helsingborg in southern Sweden? I wrote "anti-Jewish" and not "anti-Israel" because the main slogans that were shouted there—such as "the Jews are offspring of apes and pigs"—have nothing to do with the Middle East. This is blatant anti-Semitism of the ugliest kind.  

Source

So why am I not surprised? Because in this Scandinavian country, with a prime minister like Stefan Löfven, and a foreign minister like Margot Wallström, anti-Semitic displays, all the more so anti-Israel, are not supposed to "knock us off our feet."  Sweden was the first country to recognize "Palestine," it contributes great sums of money to the Palestinian Authority, and its government is hostile towards Israel. Wallström herself makes no effort to hide the fact she loathes us. Two small reminders: In November 2015 she tied the ISIS terror attacks in Paris to "Palestinian desperation," and shortly after that—at the height of the wave of terrorism—she called for an investigation into allegations Israel carries out "extrajudicial killings" of Palestinians. (...) 

Another factor that undoubtedly affects the level of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments in Sweden is the massive, ever-growing Muslim population in the country, whose positions on Jews in general and Israel in particular are no secret.  It's enough to mention that Gothenburg, the second largest city in the country, has been used for years as one of ISIS' largest recruitment centers in Europe, while in Malmö, the third largest city, some 40 percent of the population is Muslim, and they essentially "control" the city.

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Sweden: Anti-Israel protesters in Helsingborg call Jews "offspring of apes and pigs"

Via Local:

 Police in southern Sweden are investigating an anti-Israel protest where Jewish people were allegedly labelled the "offspring of apes and pigs".

Aside from the investigation the Jewish Community of Northwest Skåne (Judiska Församlingen i Nordvästra Skåne) is also preparing a report to submit to the police, SVT Helsingborg reports.

Several protests have been held by the Swedish-Palestinian Centre in Helsingborg following the unrest at Temple Mount in Jerusalem in July, and films of the demonstrations in the Swedish city have spread on social media.

"We can see that there are elements in these protests that are worrying and serious because they contain anti-Semitic insults and anti-Semitic claims in combination with a violent rhetoric, in a really unfortunate way," Jewish Community of Northwest Skåne chairperson Josefin Thorell told SVT.

Representatives of the Swedish-Palestinian Centre say however that the criticisms expressed in the protests were not aimed at Jews as a group but against the state of Israel. Police in Helsingborg are now attempting to establish what was said.

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Meanwhile, Facebook shut down the Facebook page of the Swedish-Palestinian Centre in Helsingborg after numerous complaints about their antisemitic posts.

Europe: Antisemitic violence mostly perpetrated by Muslim extremists

Via Israelly Cool and the University of Oslo:

The University of Oslo Center for Research on Extremism has published a report entitled Antisemitic Violence in Europe, 2005-2015 Exposure and Perpetrators in France, UK, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Russia. 

If that documentary on antisemitism in Europe bent some noses out of shape, the findings here most certainly will. 

I can’t say I am surprised in the slightest. You need only have seen those recent Al Quds day protests to feel the same way. 

No doubt the Israel haters will claim this proves only that antisemitism is caused by Israel. Not so, concludes the report.

The increase around the turn of the millennium coincided with rising tensions in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, marked by the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000. Nonetheless, the connection between events in the Middle East and acts of violence against Jews in Europe is vague. First, the number of reported attacks on Jews does not always increase when the conflict in the Middle East flares up. Second, even though some attacks on Jews in Europe do occur in the wake of events in the Middle East, there is no direct causal link between Israeli government actions and subsequent attacks on Jews in Europe. Antisemitic attitudes and violence propensity are likely necessary conditions to trigger such attacks. In other words, events in the Middle East provide individuals in Western Europe who hold antisemitic views and are prone to violence with an occasion to attack Jews.

 Read the whole disturbing thing.

Sweden: The Left Spreads the Right’s Hatred

Via Marxist-Humanist Initiative:

Originally published in Expressen (May 10, 2017, at 2:18 pm) as “Vänstern sprider högerns hat.” Translated by Erik Olofsson.

Two weeks ago, Arbetet [The Work] published an editorial text about the Nazi presence at the annual Book Fair[1] and at the Almedalen Week.[2] The title was “Six million Jews apparently weren’t enough,” and it aimed at the remarkable blindness of the organizers of these events to the anti-democratic intentions of the Nazis.

As expected, during the days that followed, the inbox was filled with comments—not, as expected, primarily from the right, but from the left. They all had the same general content, that not only the Jews fell victim to the Nazis.

“Why do mainstream media conceal Communism’s victims under Nazism? Why are you only mentioning Jews?,” one of the posts asked.

“You’re running errands for the Jewish and Israeli cause when you deny the communists who were killed,” another said.

And then the direct attacks:

“You contribute to the confusion of facts” … “cowardly ducking the issue” … “hypocrisy” … “infantile” … “only the Jews are of importance—you can’t handle anything else”.

The comments became so numerous and so similar that there could only be one explanation: they must be orchestrated.

With the help of a reader, the source could be located. In the April 2017 issue of FiB Kulturfront,[3] the left-wing paradigm-publication of the 1970s, diminishing for a long time and now growing again, the old ideologue Jan Myrdal writes a frustrated chronicle against the allegedly false history that the Jews succeeded in creating around the Holocaust. “The prevailing lie” is, as he says, “to falsely make the Jews the main victims.”

Several passages are similar to those that appear in the comments to the editorial in Arbetet. The past household-god of the left,[4] Jan Myrdal, thus writes a text that relativizes the Holocaust, totally in line with the historical writings of the extreme right.

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Sweden launches program to fight Holocaust denial and antisemitism

 The problem with European Holocaust education today is that no effort is made to teach kids that calling Jews Nazis is a type of Holocaust denial, or why Israel is not Nazi Germany and is not committing genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Via Jerusalem Post:

 With surveys showing “lots of Swedish Jews are afraid of showing their Jewishness,” Stockholm has stepped up efforts to teach about the Holocaust as a means of fighting against antisemitism, the director of a government-run program targeting the issue said.

“The Swedish government is investing a lot of money to combat the phenomenon of antisemitism and Islamophobia,” Ingrid Lomfors, director of the Living History Forum in Sweden added, in an interview with The Jerusalem Post this past week.

The Forum is a public authority established by Sweden some 15 years ago with the aim of “promoting democracy, tolerance and human rights using the Holocaust as a starting point.”

In November the government announced an additional 156 million Krona (NIS 65 million) stipend to develop a new national program for Holocaust remembrance, with the aim of combating antisemitism and racism.


“Our task is to teach Holocaust education but also to learn from history – to learn about the Holocaust and to learn from the Holocaust – what lessons can be drawn in terms of how we look at democracy, the risk of populism and racism, how do we find early warnings,” Lomfors said.

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Europe: Manchester bombing highlights UN and Europe hypocrisy on terror

Via Washington Examiner (Michael Rubin):

As thousands of teens and young adults enjoyed an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester Arena, Salman Abedi, a 23-year-old detonated a bomb he had strapped to his body. That he packed the bomb with nails made his goal clear: He not only wanted to kill as many innocents as possible, but maim many times more. 

The Manchester attack is terrorism, plain and simple. There is no justification nor would any self-respecting politician nor diplomat even attempt to offer one. 

But what if someone detonated a nail-packed bomb amidst a crowd of children and other civilians and both the human rights community and European diplomats said it was justified? 

That's exactly what happened 15 years ago when the United Nations Human Rights Commission, operating under the leadership of former Irish President Mary Robinson, did just that against the context of a wave of suicide bombings in Israel. 

In an April 15, 2002 vote, 40 countries — including Austria, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain and Sweden — argued that Palestinians could engage "all available means, including armed struggle" to establish a Palestinian state. That U.N. Human Rights Commission resolution enshrined the right to conduct suicide bombing in international humanitarian law. After all, many academics, diplomats, and human rights activists argue that the U.N. and its human rights wings set the precedent that becomes the foundation for international humanitarian and human rights law. 

When the Human Rights Commission voted, Israel was weathering a months-long suicide bombing campaign that, at its height, saw multiple bombings of buses, cafes and other public buildings every week. Many European diplomats might have been frustrated with Israel's counter-terrorism policies and unwillingness to accept the European view of the peace process, but to channel that frustration into a resolution that legitimized deliberate targeting and murder of civilians created a precedent which went far beyond the politics of the day.

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Sweden puts Israel's MFA and ambassador on social media blacklist (update)

The only ambassador 'mistakenly' blocked by Sweden and accused of engaging in "baiting, threats, hatred and incitement against immigrants, women and LGBTQ-persons, but also against organizations that are committed to human rights"?  

Update via The Jewish Chronicle:

Isaac Bachman

A Swedish government agency has apologised for blocking Israel’s ambassador to Stockholm on Twitter, after wrongly flagging the account as having engaged in hate speech. 

The Swedish Institute published an apology for blocking Isaac Bachman and thousands of other Twitter users, on its website on Tuesday. 

By blocking the accounts of some 14,000 users on Twitter the Swedish Institute prohibited people from mentioning its user name @Sweden and reading its Twitter feed. 

The institute confirmed all the blocks had been removed from all accounts that had been suspended. The statement on its website read: “The Swedish Institute apologises to those who have been blocked mistakenly.”

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Via The Jerusalem Post:

Sweden has blocked the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israel's Ambassador to Sweden Isaac Bachman on social media, placing the government office and the envoy on a list naming the entities blocked on Twitter by the state for disseminating hate speech online.  

The full list of users who are allegedly engaged or could potentially engage in online slander was composed by the Swedish public agency The Swedish Institute, which operates under the authority of the Swedish Foreign Office. 

Among the individuals on the list are parliamentarians from different parties in Sweden as well as journalists and public figures, according to Swedish online newspaper Nyheter Idag.  

The Swedish Institute provided an explanation on its official website, saying that: "Approximately 12,000 international Swedish accounts that engage in baiting, threats, hatred and incitement against immigrants, women and LGBTQ-persons, but also against organizations that are committed to human rights [have been blocked]." 

"These accounts often have a right-wing extremist and/or a neo-Nazi tendency, and they also incite to violence," the Swedish Institute added.  (...) 

Isaac Bachman, Israel's Ambassador to Sweden, responded to the ban on Tuesday, and took to Twitter to express his dismay over his inclusion in the list. "Now, that #Israel's MFA and ambassador are blocked- #Sweden is much safer in reading Iran and others, that were not blocked," the ambassador wrote in a jab aimed at the Swedish Institute. 

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Sweden: Article equates the Jewish nature of Israel to the Aryan race-based Nazi Germany and Nazi Adolf Eichmann to Ariel Sharon

Via CIJ News:

Mississauga-based Meshwar newspaper published in its latest issue (182, May 12, 2017, p. 15) an article entitled “On the Occasion of Remembrance Day of the Palestinian Holocaust” penned by Khalid Issa Dhiyabat, a Palestinian national who lives in Sweden. 

In a article drafted as a letter to an Israeli Jew, the author claims that the Palestinian people are victims of a Holocaust inflicted on them by the survivors of the Holocaust who escaped Nazism in Europe and settled in the Holy Land (Palestine/ The Land of Israel). 

He also implicitly equates the Jewish nature of the State of Israel to the Aryan race-based Nazi Germany and Nazi Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, to former prime minister of Israel Ariel Sharon. The following is Khalid Issa Dhiyabat’s article (originally in Arabic): 

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