Decades of Anti-Israel Hate by Swedish Social Democrats

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

The writer has been a long-term adviser on strategy issues to the boards of several major multinational corporations in Europe and North America.He is board member and former chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and recipient of the LIfetime Achievement Award (2012) of the Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism.

It is not just the immediate recognition of “Palestine” that is behind Israel’s negative reaction to Sweden’s new government. The Social Democrats have a long history of hate-mongering.

Last month, Swedish foreign minister Margot Wahlstrom postponed her visit to Israel after foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and other Israeli top officials refused to meet with her.[1] The Israeli refusal was a reaction to the new Social Democrat Swedish government’s initiative to recognize the Palestinian state shortly after its arrival to power.

The Israeli attitude should also be seen, however, against the background of decades of extreme anti-Israeli hatemongering by Swedish Social Democrats.

The late Swedish Social Democrat Prime Minister Olof Palme – murdered in 1986 – was a pioneer of anti-Israel incitement. He accused Israel of Nazi practices.[2]

In 1984, Swedish Deputy Foreign Minister Pierre Schori visited Israel. He praised Arafat and his “flexible policy.” In an article, Schori claimed that “the terrorist acts of the PLO were ‘meaningless,’ while Israel’s retaliatory acts were ‘despicable acts of terrorism.’”[3]

Surprisingly, this century started, however, with a very positive event for the Jewish people in Sweden. In January 2000, a major conference on Holocaust education in Stockholm came to a close. The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust had been initiated by Göran Persson, then the Swedish Social Democrat prime minister. Political leaders from almost fifty countries participated in the conference. Nowadays representatives of tens of countries meet regularly to discuss Holocaust education, research and remembrance in the framework of an intergovernmental organization, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.[4]

Yet Zvi Mazel, who was Israel’s ambassador to Stockholm from December 2002 to April 2004, said, “Despite Persson’s personal attitude, he has to carry part of the blame for his party’s discriminatory stance toward Israel. For decades, the Social Democrats helped create the country’s anti-Israeli atmosphere. He also has to take responsibility for the behavior of the Swedish International Development Corporation Agency (SIDA), which blames Israel for all the many wrongs in Palestinian society.”

Mazel added, “Another leading socialist, the late foreign minister Anna Lindh, usually made the most vicious attacks on Israel. Her hatred of Israel can only be described as almost pathological. Under her leadership, Sweden published the greatest number of one-sided condemnations of Israel of any EU country. Lindh was stabbed to death in 2003 by a mentally disturbed Swede of Serbian origin.”[5]

Lindh’s successor as foreign minister, Laila Freivalds, visited Yad Vashem in June 2004 to honor murdered Jews. She then heavily criticized Israel at a meeting with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Freivalds remained silent on the extensive anti-Semitism in Sweden, much of which is of Muslim origin. This phenomenon of paying honor to dead Jews, criticizing Israel, and ignoring or belittling one’s own country’s major delinquencies toward living Jews is common in Europe.

Freivalds’s behavior was subsequently exposed by four former chairmen of the Swedish Jewish community, who wrote about the rampant racism and anti-Semitism in the country. They sent a letter to the editor of Haaretz in which they summarized contemporary Swedish anti-Semitism. The letter first praised Sweden for having received Jews fleeing the Holocaust during World War II, and Prime Minister Göran Persson for initiating the Living History Project.

Czytaj dalej tu: Decades of Anti-Israel Hate by Swedish Social Democrats

UN Security Council condemns killing of Spanish peacekeeper in southern Lebanon

The Associated Press

A Spanish U.N. peacekeeper in an armored vehicle patrols the Lebanese-Israeli border, Lebanon.

Russia blocks French-drafted statement that also condemned Hezbollah attack that killed two Israeli soldiers, labeling it ‘unbalanced.’

AP – The UN Security Council on Wednesday condemned “in the strongest terms” last week’s killing of a Spanish peacekeeper in southern Lebanon.

Wednesday’s statement comes a week after Cpl. Francisco Javier Soria Toledo was killed during the Israeli military’s exchange of fire with the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group in a disputed border area.

Spain’s UN ambassador quickly blamed Israel, and a UN diplomat has said Israel apologized through several sources, including an apology from its ambassador in Madrid to Spain’s foreign minister.

The violence along Lebanon’s border, which also killed two Israeli soldiers, was the deadliest escalation on the disputed frontier since the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.

Israel’s ambassador quickly pointed out that the council statement didn’t mention the Israeli soldiers or condemn Hezbollah. “The Security Council seems to think that some lives have more value than others,” Ron Prosor said in an emailed statement.

A council diplomat said Russia blocked a French-drafted press statement on Tuesday that would have condemned the Hezbollah attack on the Israeli soldiers as a violation of the resolution that ended the 2006 war as well as the death of the Spanish peacekeeper, saying it was “unbalanced.”

The blocked statement, supported by Spain and many other council members, also expressed grave concern over the deterioration of the situation along both sides of the so-called Blue Line separating Lebanon and Israel, the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because discussions were closed.

Also Wednesday, a senior UN official said a UN technical investigation on the ground, to determine the facts of what happened in the violence, should be completed in the next three days. The UN is also launching a board of inquiry to look into the wider aspects of the incident.