What is Sweden Coming To?

Sweden's anti-Israel attitude shows the same misguided mindset and blinker vision as its attitude toward its own domestic racism.

When I was in Sweden many years ago it was delightful. The people were wonderful. I thought that I had stumbled into paradise. I was just another disheveled trekker back then. I had all my possessions in a backpack, I was a little dirty and could not shower regularly. But people in suits patiently stopped to give me directions; people smiled at me and were polite.

But I don't think that I would like living in Sweden nowadays.

Ingrid Carlqvist informs us that in Sweden racist acts are considered racism only if the victims are not white.

On Thursday, October 22, Sweden was shocked by yet another act of madness apparently connected to multiculturalism. Anton Lundin Pettersson, 21, dressed in a black coat and Darth Vader helmet, and armed with a sword and a knife, entered the Kronan school in Trollhättan and started killing. By the time the police shot him down, he had killed one person and wounded three others severely. One of the wounded later died in the hospital.

The newscasts and television debates were devoted to the attack and focused on the racist motive. Ingrid Carlqvist continues:

In many respects, the attack [at the Kronan school] was similar to the one in the Västerås IKEA on August 10 -- random people killed because of the color of their skin. In IKEA, whites were killed by a black assailant; at the school, blacks were killed by a white assailant.The reaction, however, was completely different.

After IKEA, there was dead silence. But this school attack is all over the news. A white perpetrator killing black victims is apparently considered far worse than a black perpetrator killing white victims.

Ingrid Carlqvist notes that after the double murders at IKEA, there were no such discussions about racist motivation. No one condemned the racist motive of the IKEA murderer, Abraham Ukbagabir, who, when questioned by the police, said that he had chosen his victims because they "looked Swedish."

Carlqvist says that Sweden's Prime Minister Löfven condemns all violence from Swedes but ignores violence perpetrated by immigrants such as the burning of six housing facilities for asylum seekers.

Sweden's anti-Israel attitude is manifest and shows the same misguided mindset and blinker vision as its attitude toward its own domestic racism.

The Swedish government, which was the first European state to recognize officially the Palestinian state, has not issued a condemnation of Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the current terrorism wave. Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs Margot Wallstrom has talked about violence on both sides in general terms. Her comments were neutral and vague, not mentioning who perpetrated the terror attacks. This attitude is reminiscent of the way that the Swedish Government is handling internal racial violence (as described above).

Additionally, Scandinavian Airlines, the national airline, initially announced that it will no longer be flying to Israel due to poor profits and "political(!) instability in the region". The airlines have since backtracked since there was push-back from Israel.

Israeli representatives in Sweden have observed that there is currently an anti-Israel consensus in the country and that politicians are not publicly willing to defend Israel. It seems that Swedish silence is due partly to political motives: The Swedes are interested in obtaining UN Security Council seat, so they are avoiding angering Arab nations by condemning Palestinian terrorism. This diplomatic consideration alone, however, is not sufficient to explain the widespread anti-Israel attitude throughout Swedish society and Swedish institutions.

Ongoing anti-Israel coverage in Swedish media ignores Palestinian terrorism against Israelis. In the Swedish media, these attacks are at most perpetrated by "Palestinian militants," not terrorists acting against unarmed, innocent civilians (even if we disregard, for the sake of argument, attacks on soldiers). Thus, in the beginning of October, the Swedish news agency TT reported the stabbing murder of Nahmia Lavi and Aharon Bennett as "Palestinian shot in Jerusalem." The Palestinian in question was 19-year-old terrorist Mohand Halabi, who had killed the two people.

An anti-Semitic Swedish film, The Dead Still Have a Name, produced by a Swedish organization that organizes flotillas to Gaza, draws comparisons between Israel's actions toward Palestinians and the Holocaust. The city of Gothenburg has decided to include this politically-motivated film as part of its school curriculum. So far, it has not been broadcast on television but only screened privately.

Finally, the Swedish church systematically works against Israel. The church's Swedish Theological Institute operates in Jerusalem, but instead of dealing with relations between Judaism and Christianity – as its mission statement dictates – it is increasingly becoming involved in politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The institute hosts Swedish anti-Israel activists, who come to the Palestinian territories to report on cases of so-called Palestinian abuse.