Jewish Group
Related: About this forum(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 Swedens 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 Trumps 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.
Malmos 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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Mosby
(16,161 posts)Its no surprise that U.S. President Donald Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels 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 Swedens far south, called for their own intifada and threatened to shoot Jews.
Whats 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 whats happening today in Sweden can happen tomorrow throughout the rest of Europe.
The synagogue attack in Gothenburg didnt come out of nowhere, of course. Its 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