Anti-Semitism Is on the Rise in Sweden

LONDON (Feb. 26) -- A rapid increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes is tarnishing Sweden's reputation as a tolerant and harmonious land and leading some Jews to quit the country for good.

Swedish police recorded 79 anti-Semitic incidents in the southern region of Skane last year -- roughly double the total for 2008. (Statistics for the whole of the country will be published in June.) Jonathan Leman, a spokesman for the Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism, told AOL News that the actual number of hate crimes committed was probably far higher, as "police believe many more incidents were not reported."

At the center of this hate wave is the city of Malmo (population 300,000), just across the Oresund Strait from the Danish capital, Copenhagen. Forty-nine anti-Semitic acts were reported in Malmo last year. Swastikas were painted on Jewish buildings, a funeral chapel in a Jewish cemetery was torched and masked men chanted "Hitler" at worshipers walking home from prayers, among other incidents.

This air of hostility is causing Malmo's already small Jewish population of 700 to shrink even further. Some 30 families recently left the city for Stockholm, London and Israel. Marcus Eilenberg, a 32-year-old father of two, told the Swedish daily Skanska Dagbladet he was moving to Israel in the spring, as he was no longer willing to be called a "damn Jew" in the street or see his family and friends harassed.

"My children aren't safe here. It's going to get worse," Eilenberg said. "Imagine that my family can't feel safe in fantastic Sweden. It's really terrible."

Although neo-Nazis are believed to be responsible for some attacks, police and the local Jewish community say the majority were carried out by Muslims, who now make up one-fifth of the city's population. Just as Jews were welcomed to Malmo after World War II, the city in recent years opened its arms to people escaping tyranny and terror in the Middle East.

But these new arrivals brought old hatreds with them. "Muslim schoolchildren often ignore me now when I talk about my experiences in the camps," Judith Popinski, 86, who settled in Malmo after being rescued from a Nazi death camp, told The Sunday Telegraph. "It is because of what their parents tell them about Jews. The hatreds of the Middle East have come to Malmo. Schools in Muslim areas of the city simply won't invite Holocaust survivors to speak any more."

Leman said he believes the sudden spike was triggered by Israel's invasion of Gaza at the start of 2009. At the same time, he added, "what happened in the Middle East may have triggered anti-Semitism in Sweden, but it didn't create it."

Muslim radicals and right-wing extremists aren't the only ones blamed for this upsurge in anti-Semitism. Critics also accuse leading politicians -- especially Malmo's left-wing mayor, Ilmar Reepalu -- of fanning the flames of hatred.

In January 2009, shortly after the end of the Gaza war, Reepalu appeared to justify a violent attack on a Jewish rally in support of peace and Israel by Muslim and far-left demonstrators. The mayor declared that the Jewish group had "sent the wrong signals" by holding the protest instead of distancing itself from Israel's actions.

In January, when asked by Skanska Dagbladet to comment on the rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the city, he responded, "Malmo does not accept anti-Semitism and does not accept Zionism." And last week, Reepalu told a reporter from The Sunday Telegraph that while he was opposed to any kind of racial hatred, he believed the recent incidents in Malmo were "anti-Israel attacks, connected to the war in Gaza."

Those halfhearted condemnations angered Swedish anti-Semitism campaigners. "Calling these attacks anti-Zionist, rather than anti-Jewish, is a way of justifying them to some degree," Leman said. He sees the mayor's statements as reflecting a wider problem with Sweden's political left: the inability to separate Jews from Israel.

"They are demanding [that] Jews go out and publicly denounce Israel so they can be safe," he said. "This is a responsibility that other people don't have. We would never have a debate about whether Turkish organizations in Sweden should acknowledge the genocide against the Armenians in order to guarantee their security."

He also said that many on the left are unwilling to stand up for Jews, as they cannot accept that Muslims, who are often discriminated against in Sweden, could themselves be guilty of racism. "They are unable to see people who attack Jews -- if they aren't old-fashioned, white-power racists -- as racists and bigots," Leman said. "The anti-racist left has trouble showing the same sort of solidarity to Jews as it does to other groups."

This refusal to recognize and take action against anti-Semitism has allowed anti-Jewish sentiment to spread throughout the country, especially among the young. "Jew" is now commonly used as a slur by schoolchildren, said Leman, something that would have been unthinkable only a decade ago.

Campaigners hope the international attention given to the Malmo attacks could finally force Sweden to take serious action against this long-ignored hate crime. Several government ministers have already spoken out against the incidents and Reepalu's reaction.

On Thursday, the mayor was forced to back down and admit that he had not been sufficiently informed about the difficulties faced by Jews in Malmo. Leman regards that statement as important but not sufficient. "We want to see funding for anti-racism projects that deal with anti-Semitism and more support for teachers," he said. "We need more than words."