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Behind the Aegis

(53,823 posts)
Fri Dec 15, 2017, 02:06 PM Dec 2017

(Jewish Group) The Uncomfortable Truth About Swedish Anti-Semitism

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

STOCKHOLM — This past Saturday, a Hanukkah party at a synagogue in Goteborg, Sweden, was abruptly interrupted by Molotov cocktails. They were hurled by a gang of men in masks at the Jews, mostly teenagers, who had gathered to celebrate the holiday.

Two days later, two fire bombs were discovered outside the Jewish burial chapel in the southern Swedish city of Malmo.

Who knows what tomorrow may bring?

For Sweden’s 18,000 Jews, sadly, none of this comes as a surprise. They are by now used to anti-Semitic threats and attacks — especially during periods of unrest in the Middle East, which provide cover to those whose actual goal has little to do with Israel and much to do with harming Jews.

Both of these recent attacks followed days of incitement against Jews. Last Friday, 200 people protested in Malmo against President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The protesters called for an intifada and promised “we will shoot the Jews.” A day later, during a demonstration in Stockholm, a speaker called Jews “apes and pigs.” There were promises of martyrdom.

Malmo’s sole Hasidic rabbi has reported being the victim of more than 100 incidents of hostility ranging from hate speech to physical assault. In response to such attacks, the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a travel warning in 2010 advising “extreme caution when visiting southern Sweden” because of officials’ failure to act against the “serial harassment” of Jews in Malmo.

Today, entering a synagogue anywhere in Sweden usually requires going through security checks, including airport-like questioning. At times of high alert, police officers with machine guns guard Jewish schools. Children at the Jewish kindergarten in Malmo play behind bulletproof glass. Not even funerals are safe from harassment.


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(Jewish Group) The Uncomfortable Truth About Swedish Anti-Semitism (Original Post) Behind the Aegis Dec 2017 OP
When the 'Arab Street' Comes to Sweden Mosby Dec 2017 #1

Mosby

(16,161 posts)
1. When the 'Arab Street' Comes to Sweden
Fri Dec 15, 2017, 07:37 PM
Dec 2017

It’s no surprise that U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has sparked violence in the West Bank and Beirut, or even protests in far-flung Indonesia, which is majority Muslim.

But Sweden? Yet the western Swedish city of Gothenburg, headquarters of Volvo Car AB, saw the firebombing of a synagogue on Friday. The same evening, demonstrators in Malmö, in Sweden’s far south, called for their own “intifada” and threatened to shoot Jews.

What’s going on in Sweden reflects a changed demographic and psychic reality. The “Arab street,” if that abstraction ever existed, is no longer restricted to Arabic-speaking countries. Arab and other Muslim immigrants now living in Europe increasingly play just as active a role in enacting collective political opinion as their counterparts who did not leave their home countries.

Indeed, because Western European states respect civil liberties, allow peaceful protest and punish at least some kinds of violence mildly, Arabs and Muslims living in places like Sweden may have more freedom to protest -- and to go overboard into violence -- than their counterparts in majority-Arab or Muslim countries.

And what’s happening today in Sweden can happen tomorrow throughout the rest of Europe.

The synagogue attack in Gothenburg didn’t come out of nowhere, of course. It’s the product of a gradual process in which Arab and Muslim immigrant and refugee communities in Sweden first grew, then developed pockets of radicalization. Several of the Sweden-based jihadis who went to join Islamic State mostly came from Gothenburg.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-11/when-the-arab-street-comes-to-sweden

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