A Smorgasbord of Swedish Anti-Semitism

• Sweden is a country where using the word “mass immigration” usually gets criticized just for sounding racist. Only anti-Semitism does not get criticized. In Sweden, all other forms of racism — even things that some say could be classified as racism — are criticized, and ruthlessly.

• TV4, one of the most important Swedish media outlets, in 2015 described anti-Semitism as simply a “different opinion.”

• “What is history for us is not the history of others. … When we have other students who have studied other history books, there is no point in discussing facts against facts.” — The administration of an adult-education school, in a reprimand to a teacher who said the Holocaust actually took place.

• “The Jews are campaigning against me.” — Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström.

• There are fewer than 20,000 Jews in Sweden; more than 20,000 Syrians received asylum in 2014 alone. That is why so few politicians — who are eager to win the votes of immigrants — talk about Arab anti-Semitism.

On November 9, an anti-racism demonstration was going to be held in Umeå, Sweden, in commemoration of Kristallnacht (the night in 1938 in which 400 Jews were murdered in Germany, and 30,000 Jewish men arrested and sent to concentration camps). There was just one catch: the Jews in Umeå were not invited to the demonstration. The reason given, according to one of the organizers, Jan Hägglund, was that the demonstration would be “perceived as an unwelcoming or unsafe situation for them.”

The path to this surreal situation, in which an anti-racism demonstration in Sweden in commemoration of Kristallnacht could be perceived by Jews as a threat, has long been in the making. This demonstration was of some significance. The people behind it were not extremists. Four of the Swedish Parliament’s eight parties were involved in organizing it.

This anti-racist demonstration and the strange events surrounding it represent a process that, sadly, has been going on in Sweden for a long time. A new kind of Swedish anti-Semitism has been growing strong; the city of Malmö has been its flagship.

In January 2009, a pro-Israel demonstration in Malmö was attacked by Arabs who were shouting “f-cking Jews.” The police could not protect the pro-Israel demonstrators from the eggs and the bottles being thrown at them. The event had to be temporarily stopped when the Arabs began to shoot fireworks at the pro-Israel demonstrators.

In January 2009, an Arab mob in Malmö pelted a peaceful Jewish demonstration with bottles, eggs and smoke bombs. The police pushed the Jews, who had a permit for their gathering, into an alley.In 2010, for the first time — but not the last — the synagogue in Malmö was attacked. The same year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center began warning Jews to not visit Malmö, “due to harassment of Jewish citizens,”.More here. H/T: Polinco News ‏@PolincoNews