Jewish Identity

Translator’s note.  Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, across the sound from Copenhagen, has become a place  of Jewish emigration.  Although attacks on Jews by Muslims are a common occurrence in Europe, blaming the Jews for these attacks is apparently unprecedented.  This article from “Goldberg,” Denmark’s magazine of Jewish art, culture, religion, and society, analyzes the situation.  Explanatory footnotes by the translator.                                              

JVM

The old shining picture of Sweden as the Jews’ land of salvation was effectively updated last fall, when the threats and assaults that are now a regular occurrence raised a stir in the media across the world¹.

“I never thought I would experience such hatred again, and certainly not here in Sweden.”  So says Judith Popinski, herself a survivor of Auschwitz.  It is commonplace that Malmö’s Jews do not dare to wear a kippah or a Star of David in the streets. One is advised to not go alone to the Jewish cemetery, the site of numerous arson attempts.  The number of anti-Semitic attacks has doubled in one year. But what placed Malmö in the media spotlight were not simply the police statistics and the fact that a large number of Jewish families are leaving because they no longer feel safe there.  No, what gave the story a special perspective was the reaction of the highest political leadership.

Malmö’s mayor Ilmar Reepalu² reacted by expressing his wish that the Jews of Malmö would have publicly distanced themselves from Israel’s attack on Gaza.  The fact that they had not done so “may have sent mixed signals,” said Reepalu.

The collective guilt that the mayor thus laid upon the Jews gave rise to loud protests –and led to accusations that Reepalu’s comments were anti-Semitic³. The mayor’s response was of course to deny the charges, but he nonetheless provided his opponents with more ammunition when he replied to the criticism: “We accept neither anti-Semitism nor Zionism. Both are forms of extremism which place themselves above other groups and consider them of less value.”  In this way Reepalu, a longtime critic of Israel, made things even worse. By equating anti-Semitism with Zionism–the political ideology of a Jewish homeland in Israel–he of course created a new wave of criticism.  His next move was to claim was that he was systematically victimized by journalists’ inaccurate quotes due to the fact that “the Israel lobby attempted to distort my words.” With this argument, the mayor stumbled menacingly into classic anti-Semitic rhetoric, which many of his critics in the media storm that arose in Sweden pointed out.  Nevertheless, he received support from, among others, the author Jan Guillou: “ It is a well known political strategy that every debate on Israel is transformed into a question of anti-Semitism.”

The leader of the Social Democrats, Mona Sahlin stated in a debate program on Swedish TV that Reepalu himself admitted that he had known too little about the extent of anti-Semitism in his own city, and that the party did not support his comments.  But when Sahlin’s debate opponent (a member of the Christian Democratic Party) pointed out that the hatred of Jews was to be found primarily among Malmö’s immigrant population, of whom over fifty percent are Muslims, Sahlin retorted,  “You owe an apology to Sweden’s Muslims.  You stand here and insinuate that hatred of Jews comes from Muslims.”

A self-described “secular Muslim,” Seyfettin Balta said in a news article, “I cannot deny that an extremist form of Islam is on the march in Sweden.  But they do not represent all Muslims.  On the contrary, moderate and secular Muslims, together with the Jews, constitute the primary target for their hatred.”  The same point is made by Bajzat Becirov, chairman of the Islamic Center of Malmö, which runs the city’s large mosque.  The mosque, with 90 nationalities under its roof, has been exposed to arson attempts, gunshots, and pigs released into the prayer room.  And Becirov can certainly identify with what the Jews in Malmö feel: “I have personally been exposed to threats numerous times.  There are people who like to fan the flames.  Even though they are a minority, many fear to protest,” he says.  “People can have differing opinions, but groups should not threaten each other.  It is also wrong to look down on Judaism because of what occurred in Gaza.  We can show that Malmö is a good example of tolerance.”

But it is a long way from Becirov’s mild statement of brotherhood to the aggressive young men who under a fluttering green Hamas flag shout “Death to the Jews!” and “Heil Hitler!” at demonstrations in Malmö.  And this tension is hard to grasp, perhaps especially in an overwhelmingly homogeneous country such as Sweden, which today is considered by many, including itself, an open, tolerant multi-cultural society.  But as the Swedish-Kurdish commentator Sakine Madon recently wrote, immigrants can also be racists.  “Politicians find it difficult to speak openly, since the issue of racism practiced by those of foreign background is ‘sensitive.’ But silence is indefensible,” he says, and continues, “The situation in Malmö should not surprise anyone.  Many have, like Reepalu, climbed on the shoulders of anti-Semitism and opined that ‘one should be permitted to criticize Israel.’  Political posturing has interested them more than reacting against the Jew-hatred exhibited by a segment of immigrants with roots in the Middle East.  The media and the politicians are afraid that they will be playing the anti-foreigner Swedish Democratic party’s game if the conflict is exposed.  But anyone who thinks that there is no racism among immigrants is starry-eyed.”

Pernilla Ouis, a researcher at Malmö College who studies the Muslim culture of honor, and who herself converted to Islam in the 1980's, says, “Typical opinions in the Muslim milieu of which I was a part, namely, the Muslim Brotherhood, were, for example, that the Holocaust is a lie, that Jews control the western media and cultural life, and that they were behind 9/11.” She calls for open debate on Muslim anti-Semitism in Sweden.  “Especially on the left it is difficult to see that The Other it supports isn’t always good.  In my view this is a misunderstanding and indeed a deeply arrogant white middle-class sentimentality.  The question is whether the democratic debate in Sweden is served by extreme positions where we either idealize or demonize The Other.  I hope we can begin to listen and take each other more seriously, even if that produces unpleasant and difficult discussions,” says Ouis.

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