by Nima Gholam Ali Pour
• January 2, 2016 at 5:00 am
- 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.
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.
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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.
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