Germany accused of mislabeling anti-Semitic attacks by Muslims as 'far right'

Via JTA:

The annual al-Quds Day march in Berlin is often cited as a prime example of the rise of so-called new anti-Semitism in Europe: hatred of Jews in connection with Israel, often by people from Muslim societies.

Despite attempts by organizers in recent years to suppress some expressions of anti-Semitism, the march by hundreds of participants features frequent calls about killing Israelis, Zionist conspiracies and chants of “free Palestine from the river to the sea.” Flags of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are on display, and imams regularly preach anti-Semitic verses from the Quran to the crowd in Farsi and Arabic.

“Under the guise of ‘Israel criticism,’ they use classic anti-Semitic stereotypes, identifying Israel as having ‘Jewish characteristics’: ‘domineering,’ ‘greedy’ or a ‘child killer,'” sociologist Imke Kummer observed about the marchers.

(Iran launched al-Quds Day in 1979 to express support for the Palestinians and oppose Zionism and Israel, and international events of support have followed. Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem.)

Such agitation is seen worldwide. To many, it’s especially troubling on streets where the persecution of Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators was so brutal that it moved whole societies in Europe to vow “Never again.”

Curiously, however, some of the incidents documented at the Quds Day march in Berlin have been classified by authorities as forms of far-right anti-Semitism, independent watchdog groups have discovered.

Critics say the march example and other mislabeled incidents are facilitating attempts to politicize anti-Semitism and complicating the apparently losing battle to solve it.

“It means we can’t really use the official statistics on anti-Semitism in Germany,” Daniel Poensgen, a researcher at the Department for Research and Information on Anti-Semitism, or RIAS, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Germany’s Interior Ministry did not respond to JTA’s request for comment.

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UK: Jewish Voice for Labour secretary Glyn Secker tells pro-Palestine rally that Jews are ‘in the gutter’

Via Jewish Chronicle:

A leading member of the fringe pro-Corbyn Jewish Voice for Labour group has been filmed by the JC issuing a chilling “warning” to Jewish leaders opposing antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party suggesting: “You are part of the problem.”

Accusing the same “Jewish leaders” of “turning a blind eye to the extreme right”, Glyn Secker, JVL's secretary, told a Labour-backed pro-Palestinian march in central London at the weekend: “What on earth are Jews doing in the gutter?”

Dulwich and West Norwood Constituency Labour Party (CLP) member Mr Secker was loudly cheered by around 3,500 pro-Palestinian activists as he delivered his inflammatory speech at the start of the National Demonstration for Palestine in Portland Place, central London.

He said: “Here's a warning to the Jewish leadership.

“While you foment your campaign of allegations of antisemitism against Corbyn and the left to silence Israel's critics while you cry wolf, month after month, year after year in the Labour Party and remain blind to the explosion of the far-right and Islamophobia, you are not part of the solution - you are part of the problem.”

Mr Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell had openly supported the march on which there were regular calls for the destruction of Israel, the “right of return” for “seven million Palestinian refugees” and claims by one speaker that Israel, America, Australia and India are “despicable settler colonial states.”

Three counter-demonstrators - two of whom raised an Israeli flag while another professed “love for both Israel and Palestinian - needed protection from around ten Metropolitan Police officers on Regent Street after a succession of visibly seething activists attempted to lunge at them.

(...)

When confronted later by the JC over his remarks, Mr Secker claimed not to have spoken of “Jews”.

In a statement on Twitter, JVL suggested he had directed his comments towards “these Jews” - those who had allegedly aligned themselves with the far-right. The audio recording however shows no use of the word “these”.

Mr Secker - a former member of the far-left anti-Zionist Socialist Workers Party - has previously been the subject of complaints from Jewish members of his local Labour Party about his hostile comments.

He was also a member of the Palestine Live Facebook group which was littered with antisemitic remarks.

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Portugal: Cartoonist blames ‘Jewish propaganda machine’ for condemnation of his drawing

Via Times of Israel:

Antonio Antunes denies his NY Times caricature of Netanyahu as a dog leading blind Trump is anti-Semitic, says it critiques Israel’s ‘criminal conduct in Palestine’

The Portuguese cartoonist behind the New York Times cartoon that depicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog has rejected charges of anti-Semitism, calling critics part of the “Jewish propaganda machine.”

Antonio Moreira Antunes, who draws for the Expresso newspaper published in Lisbon, told CNN Wednesday that Jews were not “above criticism.”

The calls of anti-Semitism were “made through the Jewish propaganda machine, which is, anytime there’s criticism it’s because there’s someone anti-Semitic on the other side, and that’s not the case,” Antunes told CNN.

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On Monday, Antunes said the cartoon was “a critique of Israeli policy, which has a criminal conduct in Palestine at the expense of the UN, and not the Jews,” Expresso reported.

“The Star of David is an aid to identify a figure [Netanyahu] that is not very well known in Portugal,” the cartoonist explained to Expresso.

He blamed right-wing figures saying: “The Jewish right doesn’t want to be criticized, and therefore, when criticized they say ‘We are a persecuted people, we suffered a lot… this is anti-Semitism.'”

Antunes claimed he was personally hurt by the Times’ statements of apology since publishing the caricature, saying the paper should have seen his work as “a political issue and not religious.”

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Norway prosecutor: Rapper’s ‘F**king Jews’ slur could be criticism of Israel

Via Times of Israel:

A Norwegian rapper who cursed Jews while performing at an event in Oslo promoting multiculturalism will not be charged with hate speech because his words may have been criticism of Israel, prosecutors said.

Kaveh Kholardi said “f***ing Jews” on stage at an event last year for which he was hired by the city.

Tor-Aksel Busch, Norway’s director of public prosecutions — a title equivalent to attorney general – rejected legal action last week, the news site Document.no reported Sunday.

Pro-Israel activists had filed a police complaint but it was dismissed. Busch rejected their appeal, explaining that whereas what Kholardi said “seems to be targeting Jews, it can however also be said to express dissatisfaction with the policies of the State of Israel.”

At the concert, the rapper wished Muslims a happy Eid al-Fitr holiday and acknowledged Christian listeners. He did not mention Israel.

On June 10, 2018, five days before the concert, Kholardi wrote on Twitter “f***ing Jews are so corrupt.”

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Belgium: I spoke to the creators of the anti-Semitic carnival float. They’re not sorry.

Via JTA:

I had hoped to introduce some nuance to what was condemned universally as crass racism. Were the creators aware that they were trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes? Did they get carried away in the aesthetics of the float without really considering the content? Was there a level of irony or parody an outsider couldn’t understand?

But rather than offering real explanations, or even expressing any regret for the fallout or trying to acknowledge where it came from, Soleme doubled down. The 52-year-old father of three, who works for the Aalst Police Department, said he thought the float was funny and cited the support of his mayor.

“Mayor Christoph D’Haese totally has our backs, he told us we’ve done nothing wrong,” Soleme told me. D’Haese even told the group that his office would cover any fine imposed by the authorities, Selome said.

D’Haese defended the Vismooil’n group, saying on Tuesday that its float was not intended to offend and that “such things should be allowed at the Aalst Carnaval.” The event was added in 2010 to UNESCO’s list of events that contribute to the “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.”

Filip de Vidts, a technician and the secretary of Vismooil’n, even referred me to D’Haese for a reaction. Treasurer Johan de Plecker, who works for the Education Ministry, did not reply to my request for an interview.

As for Soleme, he has “absolutely no regrets” about participating in the display.

“I think the people who are offended are living in the past, of the Holocaust, but this was about the present,” he said. “There was never any intention to insult anyone. It was a celebration of humor.”

The Jewish theme, he said, was “because we weren’t sure we’d be doing a 2020 tour [because of rising costs]. So that would mean we’d be taking a sabbatical, and it went on from there.”

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UK: "In my personal experience, anti-Semitic sentiments are usually conveyed with a wink and a nod"

Frank Furedi @ Spiked:

There is a spiral of silence surrounding anti-Semitism today. Statements signalling negative views towards Jews are almost always coupled with the phrase, ‘I am not anti-Semitic’. In my personal experience, anti-Semitic sentiments are usually conveyed with a wink and a nod. For example, recently I was having a drink with a well-known English public figure after a panel discussion. Suddenly, he got animated by ‘those people who work at Goldman Sachs’. When I pretended not to understand and asked, ‘What do you mean by those people’, he looked away in embarrassment. His reaction spoke to a growing phenomenon – the anti-Semitism of bad faith.

Germany: foundation under fire for awarding prize to antisemitic BDS group

Via Jerusalem Post:

The Central Council of Jews in Germany and American Jewish organizations blasted the Roland Röhl Foundation for its decision to award in March a peace prize to a BDS group which is widely considered to be antisemitic.

(...)

The group is called Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East and is an energetic supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that targets the Jewish state.

The nearly 100,000 member Central Council of Jews in Germany classified Jewish Voice as an “antisemitic association,” according to a German DPA wire service report.

Dr. Josef Schuster, the president of the council, wrote a letter last week the city of Göttingen’s Mayor Rolf-Georg Köhler urging him to take a stand against the antisemitism prevalent in the group.

“The association is an active supporter of events of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel,” wrote Schuster, adding “I certainly do not have to explain which historical precursors have had boycotts against Jewish institutions or Jews in Germany, and what associations are created with such actions.”

Schuster was referring to Hitler movement to boycott Jewish businesses – a nascent phase in the Holocaust. Köhler, who is a member of the foundation’s board, announced on Wednesday that the city will not participate in the award ceremony this year, according to a report in the daily paper Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten by the journalists Thoralf Cleven and Ansgar Nehls.

In response to Schuster’s criticism, the mayor called for the slated March 9 event to be suspended until the antisemitic allegation could be clarified.

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Germany: Center for antisemitism research hires alleged ‘antisemite’

Via Jerusalem Post:

The Berlin-based Center for the Research of Antisemitism faced a flurry of criticism this week from Israeli and German experts for employing a researcher who worked for a British organization that promotes the London version of the al-Quds Day rally. The rally calls for the destruction of the Jewish state each year.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the head of the Jerusalem office for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post, “You would imagine something like this would be done in Iran. Set up an institute to study antisemitism and invite antisemites to work there.”

The center, which is part of the Technical University of Berlin, hired Luis Hernandez Aguilar, who was previously listed as a research officer of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, a main organizer of the Iranian regime-sponsored al-Quds Day march.

According to a June report in the London-based The Jewish Chronicle, Hezbollah flags were on display at the march in London, where one speaker said Israel should be “wiped from the map.” Shaykh Mohammad Saeed Bahmanpour claimed Zionists’ “days are numbered,” wrote the paper. Speakers at the al-Quds march have also spread wild anti-Jewish conspiracy theories over the years.

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Ukraine: Jewish activist: Facebook banned me for posting antisemitic graffiti

Via Jerusalem Post:

 Eduard Dolinksy, a prominent Ukrainian Jewish activist, was banned from posting on Facebook Monday night for a post about antisemitic graffiti in Odessa.

Dolinsky, the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, said he was blocked by the social media giant for posting a photo. “I had posted the photo which says in Ukrainian ‘kill the yid’ about a month ago,” he says. “I use my Facebook account for distributing information about antisemitic incidents and hate speech and hate crimes in Ukraine.”

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Now Dolinsky’s account has disabled him from posting for thirty days, which means media, law enforcement and the local community who rely on his social media posts will receive no updates.

(...)

Dolinksy says that he has been targeted in the past by nationalists and anti-semites who oppose his work. Facebook has banned him temporarily in the past also, but never for thirty days. “The last time I was blocked, the media also reported this and I felt some relief.

It was as if they stopped banning me. But now I don’t know – and this has again happened. They are banning the one who is trying to fight antisemitism. They are banning me for the very thing I do.”

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UK: JVL chair sparks fury by comparing IHRA definition of antisemitism to homophobic Section 28

Via TheJC:

The chair of Jewish Voice For Labour has sparked fury by comparing the internationally recognised definition of antisemitism to controversial 1980s legislation that banned promoting homosexuality in schools.

Speaking at Wednesday's meeting of Finchley and Golders Green Labour Party, Jenny Manson claimed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition prevented support for Palestinians, in the same way Section 28 prevented support for gay pupils.

The comments infuriated many in the room.

Jack Lubner, 17, was said to have been left "upset and intimidated" after Ms Mason strode towards him after he said he objected to her remarks.

He tweeted: "Jenny should be ashamed of herself. How dare she."

Local Labour member Luisa Attfield, tweeted: "As a Jewish lesbian I am offended and as person with a brain its a baseless comparison."

(...)

JVL, a pro-Jeremy Corbyn group founded in September 2017, has backed a campaign to support the new antisemitism guidelines Labour's national body approved, which omit key examples from the IHRA Jew-hate definition about how criticising Israel can be antisemitic.

The issue has caused huge outrage among the Jewish community.

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UK: Leftie lawyer hired by Labour to oversee anti-Semitism cases is ‘friends with anti-Jewish activists’

Via The Sun:

Labour bosses have been blasted for hiring a leftie lawyer who is friends with members accused of anti-Semitism to advise them.

Gordon Nardell QC was last week announced as the party’s new in-house legal counsel to help deal with the backlog of anti-Semitism cases - and will oversee the party’s disciplinary processes.

But critics claim his links to grassroots members accused of anti-Semitic comments undermines his independence, and it could be a conflict of interest if he rules on their cases. It has been revealed that the former councillor and wannabe-MP has a long history of links to the hard left and is friends on Facebook with suspended members.

Labour figures have demanded that the new General Secretary, Jennie Fornby, think again about her decision to hire him in the role. Jewish groups have demanded more progress on dealing with pockets of anti-Semitism in the party, and were left fuming after Jeremy Corbyn refused all of their demands. Labour has set an August deadline for resolving complaints relating to anti-Semitism.

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UK: Jews worry too much...

Via Weekly Standard (Irwin M. Stelzer):

Jews worry too much. That seems to be the point of a recent article in the otherwise sensible Economist. Sure, two German rappers won that country’s highest music award by bragging their torsos are “better defined than an Auschwitz inmate’s” and vowing to “make another Holocaust.” But, says the Economist, the intended targets of this aspirational Holocaust were “unclear” and could “possibly [be] rival hip-hop artists.”

No reason to worry then that Germans were not alone in figuring out “whom.” The rappers’ invitation to another Holocaust was broadcast on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.

There’s more. Pears Institute scholar David Feldman is quoted by the magazine for the proposition that “competitive victimhood” prompts “claims of oppression by Jews, Muslims, and other groups [to] step on each other’s toes.” Anti-Semitic, is merely part of a “general wave of chauvinistic sentiment” that has also seen hostility towards Muslims, gays, and Roma to rise. The comfort that Jews should take from this is similarly unclear.

In the past, French, German, and other European Jews could look to a short hop across the channel for a safe haven. Now, not so much. 

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France: Macron says 2003 slaying of Jew was anti-Semitic

Via Artuz 7:

French President Emmanuel Macron said that anti-Semitism was the reason for the deadly stabbing in 2003 of a young Jew whose killer was found unfit to stand trial.

Macron said this in a letter dated May 20 to Meyer Habib, a French-Jewish lawmaker who last month wrote the president to request belated recognition for Sébastien Selam, a 23-year-old DJ who was killed by his Muslim neighbor, as a victim of anti-Semitic violence.

“Recalled because of the heinous killing of Mirelle Knoll, the memory of this young Frenchman who fell a victim to the darkest of fanaticism lives on,” Macron wrote. Knoll, a Holocaust survivor, was stabbed to death in her Paris apartment on March 23. Prosecutors said a neighbor and an accomplice killed her, partly because she was Jewish.

The memory of Selam, Macron wrote, is part of “our national community, which is profoundly affected by anti-Semitic crimes like the one perpetrated against Sébastien Selam,” Macron wrote. It was the first time that a French official recognized the slaying as anti-Semitic. However, this recognition is symbolic and will not be reflected in the judiciary’s records on the case.

A French court in 2010 ruled that Selam’s killer, Adel Amastaibou, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and was unable to control his actions. He was released from a psychiatric institution earlier this year, in what Habib described in his letter to Macron as an “affront” to Selam’s relatives. Meyer wrote this on Facebook on Sunday.

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Poland: Former politician sues Jewish museum over use of tweet deemed anti-Semitic

Via JTA:

A former Polish presidential candidate said she has filed a lawsuit against the director of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews over a tweet deemed anti-Semitism in an exhibit.

In a tweet Monday, Magdalena Ogórek announced the lawsuit filed in Warsaw District Court against Dariusz Stola.

Ogórek, who is now working as a broadcaster for Polish Television, also posted on Twitter a letter of support signed by several people, including Eli Zolkos, a member of the Jewish community who calls himself “an assistant to the Chief Rabbi of Poland.”

“Zolkos is not my assistant and has never been my assistant,” Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich told JTA.

Last year, Ogórek suggested on Twitter that Sen. Marek Borowski changed his surname “from Berman to Borowski.” The Polin Museum used the tweet as a contemporary example of an anti-Semitic statement in its exhibit “Estranged: March ’68 and Its Aftermath,” which deals with the organized anti-Semitic campaign by Polish authorities that resulted in the exodus of several thousand Jews from Poland.

Ogórek  had threatened to file the lawsuit unless the museum removed the tweet and apologized. The museum did not respond to the threat.

“Please remember that you have the support of many people from the Jewish community in Poland, because of the unnecessary and harmful attack on you,” read the letter of support to Ogórek signed by Zolkos and Tomasz Małodobry, a board member of the Anioły Kultury (Angels of Culture) Foundation.

The letter said the museum’s use of the tweet creates an anti-Polish and anti-Jewish atmosphere.

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Poland’s ‘enemies’ trying to fan anti-Semitism, says ruling party boss

Via Times of Israel:

The influential leader of Poland’s ruling conservative party on Saturday accused “enemies” of the country of trying to fan anti-Semitism, as Warsaw is under fire over a controversial Holocaust law.

The new law sets fines or a maximum three-year jail term for anyone ascribing “responsibility or co-responsibility to the Polish nation or state for crimes committed by the German Third Reich — or other crimes against humanity and war crimes” and set off criticism from Israel, the United States and France.

“Today, the enemies of Poland, one can even say the Devil, are trying a very bad recipe… This sickness is anti-Semitism. We must reject it resolutely,” said Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the head of the Law and Justice (PiS) party.

“But this doesn’t mean that we provide fodder” for those who insult Poland, he said.

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UK: How Some Wikipedia Editors Tried—and Failed—To Erase The Labour Party’s Anti-Semitism Problem

Via Tablet Magazine (h/t glykosymoritis)

Lansman was likely referring to leftist activists on the ground who have attacked the party’s nascent efforts to expunge anti-Semites as a “witch hunt.” But he might as well have been referring to activists on the internet, who have been quietly attempting to erase traces of the party’s Jewish problem from Wikipedia.

Last month, these enterprising editors attempted to delete the entire “Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party” page from the online encyclopedia. The ensuing debate over the prospect can be read here. The initial advocate for deletion called the entry “an attack page” that “lacks notability,” as though an outpouring of prejudice that caused nearly half of the Labour party’s own sitting politicians to denounce it was simply a slander served up by shadowy (presumably Jewish) smear artists. Other similarly inclined editors asserted that there should be no “Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party” page given that there was no parallel “Anti-Semitism in the Conservative Party” page, as though the solution to incomplete documentation of hate is to suppress that which has already been documented.

To be sure, like many Wikipedia pages, this one could surely have used more citations, research, and polish. But that was clearly not what its critics had in mind. They did not want to remedy the page’s deficiencies, but to eliminate it entirely. Ultimately, the facts of the case won out, and no consensus was reached to delete the page. It remained published but in limbo.

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Europe: Trivializing and paying lip service to antisemitism

Via The Jerusalem Post (Alan Baker):

The annual Holocaust remembrance events, whether in the UN or in individual countries, held on and around the official, international day of remembrance on January 27, have now passed, until next year.

The hollow and disingenuous lip-service payed by international leaders to the greatest tragedy that has befallen the Jewish people, has passed.

The annual “day in the sun” of professors, Holocaust researchers and experts, whether in research centers in Israeli universities or elsewhere, is over until next year.

Life must go on.

The international community can now get back to its routine and regular agenda of political correctness. It can get back to ignoring and sidestepping the most tragic violations of human rights in the centers of conflict in Syria, Africa and elsewhere. (...)

Europe can get back to ignoring its own serious and pressing immigration issues to concentrate on its fixation with blaming Israel and with allowing itself, through naiveté and political correctness, to be manipulated by a corrupt, divided and violent Palestinian leadership intent not on peace with, but on the boycotting of Israel.

So what, then, remains of the annual Holocaust remembrance events? What practical measures are the international community taking in order to prevent future Holocausts? Is the international community doing anything to stem the alarming resurgence and spread of antisemitism – especially in Europe – often under the guise of anti-Israel sentiments and actions?

Apart from arguing among themselves as to the best way to define antisemitism in today’s international realities, what are the leaders of the world’s Jewish organizations doing to encourage countries to act definitively to criminalize and prevent antisemitism?

The trepidation of the world’s Jewish leadership – whether out of political correctness or just pure fear – and their hesitation to come out and boldly present antisemitism to the world as an age-old phenomenon that stands on its own, that has existed from time immemorial and that cannot and should not be equated with other forms of racism and bigotry, is perceived by the world as indulgence, absolution and weakness.

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"Germany was always Antisemitic, that hasn’t changed much", says Holocaust survivor on TV

Via Algemeiner (Ben Cohen):

A 93-year-old survivor of Auschwitz stunned the viewers of one of Germany’s most popular political talk shows on Sunday night when — asked to compare the Nazi era with the situation today — she asserted that the two periods had more in common than many people may care to admit.

“I think that Germany was always antisemitic, that has not changed much,” Esther Bejarano — who was enslaved in the infamous “women’s orchestra” of the Auschwitz death camp — told the ARD Network‘s flagship “Anne Will Show.”

Bejarano was one of several guests on an International Holocaust Remembrance Day edition of the show that asked the question, “How antisemitic is Germany today?” Other guests who participated in the candid and often emotional discussion included two government ministers, a prominent human rights advocate and a leading scholar of modern Jewish history.

Much of the show was dedicated to a harrowing interview with Bejarano about her incarceration in Auschwitz. She began by relating that her father had been a stalwart German patriot, convinced that the German people would reject Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party. But after the Nazis came to power and prevented the family from emigrating to British Mandatory Palestine, Bejarano was imprisoned in a hard labor camp in Germany, before being deported to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland in April 1943. (...)

It was Bejarano’s status as a Holocaust survivor who has spent decades sharing her experiences with younger Germans that amplified the shocked response to her claim that Germany remains deeply antisemitic. 

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Some comments after the article are worth reading.

Austria: Vienna police charge 3 men for waving Israeli flag at rally

Via Jerusalem Post:

The Vienna police are pursuing criminal charges against three pro-Israel activists for waving an Israeli flag in protest of antisemitic slogans at a demonstration against Jerusalem having been recognized by the US as the capital of the Jewish state.

The police are seeking a €100 fine or two days in jail for the display of Israel-support at the December 8 anti-Israel rally near the US Embassy in Austria’s capital.

The criminal notice, dated January 3, states that the activists “showed an Israeli flag at a rally in an extremely provocative way and manner that was visible for participants at the rally and thereby produced considerable offense and provocation among the Palestinian protesters.”

The German-language edition of the news site Vice first reported on Tuesday on the penalties against the three men and conducted an interview with one of the pro-Israel protesters.

“My mother is Israeli, her family [members] are refugees from Iraq and Libya,” the pro-Israel protester said. “An Arab-speaking friend from Israel was able to translate some of the slogans yelled [at the rally], for example, the Arab battle cry to massacre Jews: ‘Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning,’ and... ‘Death to Israel.’”

The Arabic cry references an ancient Muslim attack on Jews in the town of Khaybar in what is now Saudi Arabia, killing many and looting their homes. The provocative chant is frequently used when attacking Jews and Israelis, and was chanted on the Mavi Marmara Gaza flotilla ship in May 2010.

The activist, who was given the name Matthias  F. by Vice to ostensibly protect his privacy, said he heard other chants of “Intifada” and “Child-murder Israel” at the rally that was attended by hundreds of anti-Israel protesters.

He added that, “We were shocked by these slogans and did not want to leave the slogans unchallenged. Antisemitism and hate of Israel should not be tolerated.”

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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.