A tough time for Jews in Sweden

In theory it is, of course, legitimate to oppose Israeli government policies without being against Judaism, the Jewish people or the Jewish state. In practice, however, that’s by no means always the case. Take Sweden as an example. By all accounts it has no reason to be hostile to Israel, yet recent pronouncements by its government, particularly its foreign minister, that single out the Jewish state for condemnation because it defends itself against deadly terrorist attacks while seemingly tolerating similar actions by other states, have made it very difficult for Jews to live in Sweden.

Its anti-Israel campaign seems to have less to do with what’s happening in the Middle East and more with what’s happening in Sweden itself. Its government is said to want to make sure that its growing Muslim population, including the new immigrants, will support the party in power. A pathetic but apparently effective way to woo them is to express hostility to Israel. This, therefore, may be the real reason why what looks like Sweden’s foreign policy is really no more than local scheming that uses local Jews as scapegoats.

Malmo, the country’s third-largest city, is a case in point. It has a relatively large Muslim population with whom the authorities want to curry favour. Making life difficult for the Jewish residents by attacking the Jewish state and thus implicitly inciting violence against local Jews is a cheap and despicable way of doing politics.

I write this as a beneficiary of Sweden’s famed hospitality to newcomers.

In the last days of the Second World War, the Swedish Red Cross brought Jewish Holocaust survivors to — yes — Malmo. My wife was a child when, days before the end of the Second World War, she arrived there with her mother from a Nazi concentration camp. Two of my surviving aunts came at the same time from another camp. In 1948, they helped my parents and me to immigrate to Sweden from war-ravaged Poland.

My wife and I have, therefore, compelling reasons to be most grateful to Sweden for having brought stability into our lives and given us a language and an education. The fact that some seven decades later Jews are advised to hide their identity — as I’ve been on two separate recent visits — to avoid being attacked is a source of bewilderment and pain. It’s not the Sweden we once knew and remember with respect and affection.

Ironically, the same largesse to refugees that gave us purpose and hope and is currently saving hapless victims of the turmoil in Syria and elsewhere is now used against Jews in the guise of censuring the Jewish state. Unintentionally these attacks implicitly vindicate the Zionist contention that Jews need Israel to have a country where they’ll always find freedom and safety, despite the volatile neighbourhood in which it finds itself.

Other governments react more positively. In France, for example, where Jews have been murdered and maimed by Muslim immigrants, the government has come out strongly in support of Israel and its own Jewish citizens, publicly declaring that France wouldn’t be France without the Jews. Sadly the Swedish government seems to think otherwise.

Mercifully Canada is refreshingly different. With its long history of welcoming refugees who, with their offspring, have made this the great country it is today, it continues to respond to the needs of displaced persons around the world not by turning against the Jews but by engaging them as valued partners in absorption and integration.

Today’s Sweden appears to have forgotten that states are judged by how they deal with all their minorities. The criteria are justice and morality, not expediency.