[Mendelssohn]

No prizes for guessing where Sverker Astrom - he of that "Israel's Ambassador equals Nazi" jibe - used to work. That's right, this odious man, one of Sweden's "greatest" diplomats, used to be Sweden's Permanent Representative at the United Nations.

[GeronL]

What a One-derful world it will be when we are all controlled by the UN.... not.

[Salman]

bump

[livius]

Very, very creepy. Bump.

[Charles Henrickson]

Hej! to the Swedish Ping List.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[Alouette]

"The message they get here is that Israel is not an ordinary democratic or Western state; but that it is a problem."

On the contrary -- Israel IS a Western state and a democratic country, and that is what the problem is (for Muslims).

Welcome to Free Republic, BTW.

[wtc911]

More of your pals at work on the global stage...

[LauraJean]

Modern Swedon digraces the name of Raul Wallenberg. But then I guess the Swedish leftist support the fact this great man was left to die in a Soviet prison.

[RogerFGay]

I think this needs to be seen in context. Jews are still upset about the display at the National Art Museum a couple of weeks ago, showing a picture of a homocide bomber floating on a pool of red liquid. That lead to a diplomatic fiasco after a rep from the Isreali embassy knocked over some of the lights that surrounded it and the Israeli government demanded it be taken down before the Stockholm Conference on Genocide.

That being said -- of course political extremists are nasty people, no matter what country they're in. The left is famous for supporting dictators and homocidal maniac terrorists and hating everyone else.

[monkeyshine]

there was no reason to expect the Arabs to stop hating the Jews so long as the latter are occupying their lands. Muslims who seek to take out their frustrations on Israel are met with understanding in Swedish society.

The professor who said this knows well that the Arabs have claimed all of Israel as "occupied land", and also that the Arabs have waged a non-stop war against Israel since 1948 - indeed before that even.

Yet, he understands the Arab position - and call the land "arab land" as if the world should be put on standstill as of 1967 (no complaints about Arab aggression in Sudan, Professor?). And moreover, in other cases like in Kashmir, or Tibet, or North Ireland, westerners call for peace and negotiations. But in this conflict, they "understand" the side of the Arabs - a culture which breeds the suicide bomber as a religious rite. Not just in Jerusalem, but in Turkey, and New York, and Bali, and Africa, and Iraq (i.e. it is a part of their expansionist war culture to murder civilians, unrelated to the Jews-Arab conflict)

What he is saying is that he, along with popular sentiment, thinks Israel is not legitimate, even though the people who are there were mostly born there, developed the land, the language, the culture etc... Maybe they think this out of fear of the Arabs, or maybe it's just that they hate the Jews, or maybe they fear the Arabs more than they love the Jews. I dunno, but these so called academics and experts make no sense to me.

[rmlew]

bottles throws at a synagogue or the daubing of swastikas in a Jewish cemetery.
Not all bottles are equal. Ineptly made molotov cocktails, like those thrown at the Synagogue in Malmo are quite another matter.
As for anti-Semitic incidents, why is the constant vandalism of Jewish-owned stores in Malmo ignored?

[fdsa2]

Very interesting article and I must say after joining Freeper I have increased my knowledge about Anti-semitism (through Freeper and Israeli press especially the "new" version of anti-semitism) and I enjoy the perspective only someone viewing the problem in Sweden (and rest of the EU) from the outside can provide. However there are some points in this article and also with the recent Snowwhite debacle I want to put forward:

1. Linking crimes (because thats what they are, threats, violence etc.) committed against jews together with crimes against muslims, homosexuals etc. is in my view correct, not least from a Swedish legal point of view.

In Swedish criminal law, all these crimes are defined as "hate-crimes" committed against someone because of his/her religious beliefs, sexual orientation, race etc. And thats just what they are. The punishment for these crimes is in Swedish terms quite strict (severity of Swedish punishments are a different discussion). This is what the police and the public prosecutor has to work with and it is a workable system (not perfect but no system is). The most useful crime-description (does not require damages to property/person) is probably unlawful (racial) agitation which is often used when rightwing/leftwing extremists demonstrates/publish writings (can include unlawful verbal racial agitation, use of unlawful symbols etc etc.). In my opinion this should have been used below.

2. Snow white incident. Bachner is dangerously simplifying things when he bashes "a large group of academics". This is an intellectually dishonest argument. What is a large group? I say they are a miniscule minority of Swedish academics. More interesting, who are included in this "group". Narrow the sweeping accusation against the people he claims belong to this group so these can be dealt with - you can´t make accusations like these without backing them up, this would result in Swedish academics having to prove that they do not belong to this "group".

I have said it elsewhere, you do not have to be an anti-semit to critizise Israel polices, you can be but you do not have to. In retrospect Swedish media and public debate after the Snow white incident was quite balanced. No one had difficulties understanding why/how upset the Ambassador was interpreting the piece of "art/crap". What got ordinary people fuming was the following events:

- Israeli government pressuring our government to remove the piece. My view here is - it´s my tax money paying for the historical museum (been there many times and I usually like what they do), if I don´t allow my government to touch "my" museum I sure as hell don´t like it when a foreign goverment tries the same thing. I hold our "constitution (Grundlag)" as high as any other Freeper member does his/her. No, the peter pan argument is crap, I don´t care if a musuem in some other country have a picture idolising Mihalovich´s murder of Anna Lindh. I let that countries court figure out whether it is lawful of not and thats what should have been the case here. Someone, should have brought charges against it (see above)- no one did.

- Couple of days after the incident, Mazel outright claimed Sweden to be a country of anti-semits. period. No, there was no way of misinterpreting this quote, and he repeated it. I guess this really was the drop in this affair (which could also be seen in the public debate). I believe there are idiots in every country, in my opinion he is one by accusing the 9 million inhabitants of Sweden of being anti-semits. He later announced he is retiring/moving on from beeing ambassodor to Sweden and I say good riddance. Hopefully the new one wont hold hostile sentiments against us.

Having said all of that, no one in Sweden should have to be afraid because of their origin, religious beliefs etc. and perhaps one good thing coming out of all of this is that perhaps the spotlight now is on the problem of growing anti-semitism in Sweden (Europe) - no argument there.

Ok, let the ranting begin.

[DonaldDuke]

No surprise at all. Sweden is probably the most racist and xenophobic of all the Scandinavian countries.

Nor do they only go after Jews - any minority or immigrant group will do. Finns in Sweden, for example, will have stories to tell.