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Posted on 03/04/2010 11:16:44 PM PST by WesternCulture
Representatives for the Jewish Community in Malmö have slammed the city's mayor, Ilmar Reepalu, for his use of the term "Israeli lobby" in a Danish television interview.
"I encounter a great many people from what one could call the Israeli lobby, who are not interested in what I say and what I think, but who do want to attribute lots of opinions to me," Reepalu said in an interview with Danish TV2.
Reepalu and the Jewish Community (Judiska församlingen) have been at cross purposes of late after the mayor drew parallels in newspaper interviews between anti-Semitism and Zionism.
He has also denied that there had been any attacks on Jews in the city despite police figures showing that violent incidents against Jews have doubled over the last year.
Reepalu responded to a call from Social Democrat party leader Mona Sahlin last week to engage in a dialogue with Malmö Jews, meeting with representatives last week. His latest comments on the Danish TV2 show Lorry have been met with consternation by the Jewish Community.
In a letter to Reepalu and Mona Sahlin, the Jewish Community representatives have expressed their disappointment with the mayor's televised comments.
"This is the kind of wording used by anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic forces, who claim that it is the Jews who control the media," wrote Fred Kahn and Fredrik Sieradzki.
A recent series of articles in local newspaper Skånska Dagbladet detailed how Jews were choosing to leave the city as their situation become increasingly vulnerable in the face of attacks from extreme elements in the Muslim community and far-left political circles.
Reepalu reiterated to Danish TV his view that his quotes had been misrepresented, despite the fact that Skånska Dagbladet has released all its tapes and written correspondence with the mayor in a bid to show that he had not been misquoted.
Kahn and Sieradzki also referred Reepalu to their meeting with the mayor last week as part of the effort to patch up their differences.
"This was exactly the kind of comment we advised you to avoid if you didn't wish to be misunderstood by people who take this as their cue to direct threats and harassment at Swedes of Jewish extraction."
Reepalu said last week he was ready to act, via the newly formed Dialogue Forum, to ease tension between the city's plethora of ethnic groups.
- I'm Swedish and have lived almost all of my life in Sweden.
For 40 years, I've been hearing our politicians drivel about establishing “dialogs”. Even as a 7 year old school child, I understood that this is the typical way PC politicians respond to social problems they don't know how to handle (and in many cases don't really care about).
Yes, it's true that at least some people who do evil actually can change and that dialog, education and sincere human engagement can help bring about such changes. In some cases. But this doesn't mean you can educate or negotiate away Nazism, Communism or Islamofascism without the use of force.
We can all learn from history, if we wish to. Nazi-Germany, Soviet and even a once Islamofascist nation like Turkey actually changed. No, we don't know, for instance, if Turkey will continue to be a (rather) democratic nation (unlike most of the Muslim World), but Turkey is an example of that, to some extent, even Islam is controllable.
However, evil can never be conquered without the use of brute force or the threat of it.
If a nation does not accept this aspect of sheer reality, it will go under.
Civilization is the result of education in combination with the wise usage of superior and well organized physical force. If you don't understand this, you don't belong in politics.
- As a European, I fear you're right.
I'm convinced many leading politicians in Europe are, at least, somewhat aware of the Muslim threat to our culture, but dare not speak the truth as they are even more afraid of losing voters.
One important thing these political “leaders” fail to understand is the fact that many European Muslims, in fact, are very secularized and fear Islamofascism even more than native European Christians do. Such people do not vote for politicians who are appeasers of hard core Islamists.
A lot of people who are born into Islam don't wish to have anything to do with that religion (or what to call it).
Over here in Sweden, we have many Iranians who've fled the present regime over there and believe me, they hate Islamofascism. Most Iranians I have met with have actually tried to convince me and other native Swedes that Sweden, as a nation, is doing far to little to stop the Islamists in my country. I believe they are right.
Politicians tend to listen to the loudest voices.
I would say that I'm glad my granparents aren't around to see this, but how many days till their cemetary is desecrated again.Rabbi Shneur Kesselman Speaks Out About Underreported Hate Crime in Malmö
Recently the hate crimes in Malmö and Skåne County have come under increased surveillance as the numbers have doubled since last year. According to the Swedish daily newspaper Expressen, “During the year of 2009, 270 hate crimes were reported in Skåne County and about 25 percent of these were aimed towards Jews.”
One of those exposed to anti-Semitic hate crime is Rabbi Shneur Kesselman of the Malmö Jewish community. He states in an interview with Expressen on March 5th that “ever since I came here people have been shouting ‘fucking Jew’ and ‘heil Hitler’ at me.”
What is worth noting about Rabbi Kesselman’s statement in Expressen is that out of the 65 incidents in 2009, according to the Skåne police, three of these incidents were directed at Kesselman. Yet according to Kesselman, 15 separate reports were filed concerning anti-Semitic hate crimes aimed towards him. The worst incident involved someone trying to run him over with a car. Apparently, the authorities have a different method for calculating these figures, as the full number of incidents does not appear in the Skåne police statistics.
Another disturbing aspect of this case is the time it took before police brought Kesselman in for a hearing. An attack Kesselman reported in September 2009 was only dealt with in February 2010.
The most common anti-Semitic hate crimes have been graffiti or engraved swastikas or Stars of David on buildings or cars but there have also been several arson attacks on Jewish sites in Helsingborg as well as Malmö Jewish community.
According to Expressen, some of the most serious anti-Semitic hate crimes occurred in Northwest Skåne where a family from Helsingborg was threatened with death and a man later tried to run their car off the road. In another northern Skåne town a man is suspected of etching a swastika into the hand of another person with sulphuric acid.
It seems as if the police in Skåne lack the will or ability to protect the Jewish population of Skåne County from hate crime. This is especially evident since some Jews have resorted to leaving their Malmö homes and relocating to safer places. Rabbi Shneur Kesselman also comments:
“I hope that the debate on anti-Semitism in Malmö leads to taking hate-crime more seriously. The police must act with more force, and we need to create some sort of dialogue between those who threaten and those who are threatened.”
One must wonder what the actual figures are for hate crime in the Malmö area. Additionally, why do the authorities act as if minimizing the numbers is the most effective method of dealing with hate crime incidents?
[Hate crimes in Sweden are defined as: agitation against a group of people, illegal discrimination, homophobic crimes, violence and threats against elected representatives as well as crimes where the aim is to insult a person, a group of people or another such group of people because of their race, skin colour, nationality, ethnic origins, profession of faith, sexual orientation or other similar circumstance.]
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Could this be forwarded to Obambi a 1000 times?
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