Malmö, Sweden: Where BDS brings together Islamist and Leftist anti-Semites

Malmö, Sweden: Where BDS brings together Islamist and Leftist anti-Semites

The news of the week is that Sweden faces “collapse” from the unrestricted flow of migrants, as the Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström recently acknowledged in an interview:

“I have to admit that there have been moments recently of very great disappointment. I have heard statements from member states that have been completely astonishing and very discouraging,” Wallström said in the interview which was published on Friday morning.

An unprecedented number of people are expected to seek asylum in the Nordic nation in 2015 and while Prime Minister Stefan Löfven has widely praised his country’s response to the crisis he has said that Sweden is “approaching the limit” of its reception capacity.

“I think most people feel that we cannot maintain a system where perhaps 190,000 people will arrive every year – in the long run, our system will collapse. And that welcome is not going to receive popular support,” said Wallström, echoing her Social Democrat colleague’s comments.

In Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, that migrant crisis resulted in a Roma shanty town that was just torn down by police.

For the Jews of Sweden, and Malmö in particular, the collapse came many years ago, long before the current migration crisis.

I’ve been following the situation of Jews in Malmö since 2010. My first post, Malmö Syndrome on February 21, 2010, detailed the flight of Jews from Malmö due to attacks from Muslim immigrants tolerated if not encouraged by anti-Israel leftist politicians:

Malmö is the third largest Swedish city, and now the poster child for what I call Malmö Syndrome, the anti-Semitic violence which results from the shared anti-Israeli agenda of Islamists and leftists.

The result is that Malmö is being depopulated of Jews as a result of street violence by Mulsims and disinterest by left-wing politicians….

Over the years I documented numerous acts of anti-Semitism in the name of anti-Zionism in Malmö:

• All Swedes Are Malmö Jews Now
• “Kippah Walk” in Malmö in solidarity with Jews persecuted in … Malmö
• More anti-Israel violence … in Malmö, Sweden
• The anti-Semitic shame of Malmö, Sweden continues with attack on Rabbi
• “Sweden ever so quickly has gone from so-called anti-Zionism to open anti-Semitism”

That Malmö had become dangerous for Jews was demonstrated in the video below by a non-Jewish Swedish reporter who put on a Kippah and walked the streets, thereby experiencing the harassment, name-calling and threats that come with walking while Jewish. The original article in Swedish is here (translation by Elder of Ziyon):

Our mission was to spend a week in Sweden’s third largest city, dressed with Jewish symbols. On his head reporter Petter Ljunggren wore a kipah. Around his and his colleague True Klinghoffers necks were hanging Stars of David.

The reporters are usually treated kindly, but every now and then, a look, a comment or a solicitation to leave the area. The worst comes on the outskirts of the city, and in some places the reporters have been warned to stay away. In Lindängen center they are called “fucking Jew swine” from a person. Another man stops – almost shocked – when he sees the reporters with a kipah and Star of David.

Here is a clip from the video (click image for video – no translation needed) (full video with computer generated captions here):

As detailed in an article in Mosaic Magazine by Annika Hernroth-Rothstein, which we featured last March, Time for Swedish Jews to Leave?, what was happening in Malmö reflected a larger trend in the country:

They canceled Jewish winter camp. It sounds like a little thing, but in Sweden, where we have very few venues in which to lead our Jewish lives, it means a great deal. Winter camp is a yearly highlight, a place where our children can learn and play with other Jewish children, without worry. This year, they won’t be able to go, and for a simple reason—because it’s not safe….

Now that there are policemen with automatic rifles outside our children’s schools, guards outside our synagogues, and no go-zones in our cities, the community has at last awakened to the harsh truth. This is no longer a matter of fighting a ban on kosher slaughter, or of retaining the right to circumcise our sons; at risk is the security of each and every Jew in the country, whether affiliated with the community or not, whether religiously observant or not, whether politically left, right, center, or none of the above….

Today I don’t know what’s next for me, or for Europe. But I know that for my children and for me, this is not living.

Throughout this growth of anti-Semitism in Malmö, leftist anti-Zionism and the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement played a critical role.

In our earliest posts, we noted how in Malmö, BDS activists went door-to-door to businesses to intimidate store owners not to stock Israeli products (h/t Elder of Ziyon):

Join Malmö’s Apartheid Inspectors when they visit stores and companies around Malmö to investigate dangerous levels of apartheid-supporting products! Support the inspectors to inform shop-owners and consumers on how they through consumer-boycott can push for apartheid-free zones.

Columnist Luke Berggren wrote in Varlden Idag:

Scary rhetoric is being used, which is unfortunately reminiscent back to the 30s. “Support inspectors in their efforts to inform shopkeepers and consumers about how they can promote the apartheid-free zones through consumer boycott.” In practice, this will disadvantage Jewish businesses in Israel. There seems to be no distinction between Israel Criticism and pure hatred of Jews. Talk about apartheid.

Many shopkeepers will be pressured to not buy Israeli goods. Let us do the opposite. Ask your retailer for Israeli goods. And buy Israeli goods. Boycotts of this kind suffered by Jews and is another worrying sign of the growing anti-Semitism. We can not accept this.

In 2009, violent riots broke out as part of BDS in Malmö:

A group of anti-Israeli protesters clashed with riot police outside an Israeli-Swedish Davis Cup tennis match in Sweden on Saturday, but did not break through police lines.

More than 100 masked demonstrators outside a sports arena threw bottles of paint, stones and firecrackers at police in riot squad vans and on horseback, sending the horses into a panic, amid a larger protest against the Scandinavian country’s match with Israel.

Due to security concerns, the three-day match is being played in an empty stadium in this southwestern port city, which has a large immigrant population.

The youths clad in black, their faces covered with masks carrying banners saying “Turn left, smash right,” and “Boycott Israel” joined a peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstration by about 6,000 people.

About 200 of the hardliners began pelting police with stones, fireworks and paint bombs, Reuters witnesses said, while organizers of the official demonstration shouted at the masked protesters not to use violence against the authorities.

A May 15, 2015 article in Haaretz by Swede Nima Gholam Ali Pour, Sweden’s Third-largest City Is Not a Welcoming Place for Jews, noted the role of the BDS movement in creating the atmosphere in which anti-Semitism flourished:

But it’s not just residents of Malmo, which has a large immigrant Muslim population, who are making the city an unwelcoming place for Jews. It’s also the city itself.

For a week in March, the city allowed parts of Israeli Apartheid Week to be held in a building owned and administered by the municipality, at no charge. It thus provided municipal support to the organization Isolate Israel, which inspected Swedish businesses for the week and urged them to remove Israeli products from their stores as part of its campaign advocating a boycott of Israeli goods….

The fact that the city of Malmo has allowed the BDS movement to use municipal facilities is just one of the most recent in a long line of events demonstrating the absurd reality that Sweden’s third-largest city has adopted a foreign policy that is hostile to the State of Israel.

A Gatestone Insitute analysis examined the political dynamic in Malmö which created the destructive anti-Semitic dynamic:

Malmö has nearly always been governed by Social Democrats — a party that has every reason to keep on the good side of Muslims. In municipal elections, the Social Democrats can normallycount on 30% of the general vote, and on 70% of the Muslim vote.This circumstance was undoubtedly the most important reason the city’s former Social Democratic Mayor, Ilmar Reepalu, refused to do anything about rampant Jew-hatred. He surely must have been aware that the perpetrators of anti-Semitic excesses were his own voters.

For many years, Malmö’s Jews have reported a growing number of hate crimes against their synagogue and themselves, but nobody has taken their complaints seriously. Eventually, a journalist by the name of Andreas Lovén from the local newspaper Skånska Dagbladet wrote in a series of articles that Jew-hatred was causing more and more Jews to move to other Swedish cities or to Israel.

For the first time, it was openly said who was behind the anti-Semitism — the city’s Muslim population. Many Jews told the paper that they dared not let their children grow up in Malmö — the town where, on January 25, 2009, a Muslim mob was allowed to pelt a peaceful Jewish demonstration in support of Israel with bottles, eggs and smoke bombs (see video).

Instead of breaking up the anti-Israel demonstration, which took place without a police permission and which seriously threatened the Jews and friends of Israel assembled at Malmö’s Great Square (Stortorget), the police chose to revoke the Jews’ right to assemble.

Seeing this background on the toxic mix of Islamists, Leftists and BDS, is it any surprise that a little over a week ago “pro-Palestinian” protesters chanted “slaughter the Jews” and showed images of knives and stabbing?

(longer video here and here)

The Times of Israel reported:

Hundreds of protesters in the Swedish city of Malmo were filmed Monday chanting in Arabic about slaughtering Jews and stabbing soldiers.

Isaac Bachman, Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, posted on his Facebook account a video taken at the rally showing hundreds chanting “’slaughter the Jews, stab soldiers.” In other slogans, the chanters encouraged “heroes to carry out attack after attack” and to “start a third intifada.”

“These are extremely troubling instances of a grotesque but nevertheless very real – and murderous – incitement which must be dealt with by the full force of the law,” Bachman wrote.

A local paper reported:

The Palestinian Culture Society (Palestinska kulturföreningen), which arranged the demonstration, told Swedish tabloid Expressen on Tuesday that the event had been organised to “help Palestine” and said that it had been “individuals” who had talked about knives and not anyone representing the group.

Two Swedish leftist politicians participated in the rally (though she claims to be unaware of the chants and images)?

Malmo Sweden 4 #Palestine today ?
Wonderful member of parliament @HilleviLarsson spoke great as always! pic.twitter.com/rnne7DqGat

— Bea (@HerNameIs_Bea) October 18, 2015

Talat på Palestinamanifestation – för fred och frihet! pic.twitter.com/VEhAOsvrPA

— Hillevi Larsson (@HilleviLarsson) October 18, 2015

As a Swedish #Jew I want to know why parliamentarians spoke at a rally where they chanted "slaughter the Jews". pic.twitter.com/v36eo6wboe

— Annika H Rothstein (@truthandfiction) October 19, 2015

Malmö was the canary in the coal mine as to what happens when Islamists, Leftists and BDS merge.

It’s a sign of worse to come in Sweden, as it approaches its collapse.

[Featured Image via Jerusalem Post: A protester chants slogans near a banner reading “Boycott Israel” during an anti-Israel march in Malmo. (photo credit:REUTERS)]

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