HonestReporting subscriber Robert Skole is a reporter and
author who has lived for many years in Sweden, where the
media is, he says, "viciously anti-Israel."
Skole alerted HonestReporting to a cartoon, published in
Sweden's largest morning daily, Dagens Nyheter, penned
by the paper's staff cartoonist. It appeared on the "Family"
page, a section of light columns and "humor," and shows a man
with a dog who says: "I don't think one should build walls
between people."
The Jew (who is drawn as an ugly chareidi with a very long
nose) answers: "Cursed antisemite!"
Such portrayals of the stereotypical, wicked Jew are common
in Sweden today.
Robert Skole reports that this cartoon is far from unique:
"Day after day, week after week, year after year, the Swedish
media run a constant stream of news stories, editorials,
photographs, letters and cartoons attacking the State of
Israel. In the Swedish media, Israel is portrayed as the
aggressor, an occupying force that violates human rights and
international law, and should get out of `Palestine.'"
One example is the headline "The Crucifixion of Arafat" that
was given to an editorial that appeared in Aftonbladet,
the most widely circulated newspaper in Sweden, on the
eve of Easter 2003, while Operation Defensive Shield was
underway. In a Christian nation, such a headline on such a
date carries heavy bias.
Some more recent examples:
-- The Swedish Journalists' Union's weekly publication,
Journalisten, is regularly filled with anti-Israel
invective. A search of its online archives shows 37 Israel
stories since 10/98, almost all highly critical of Israel.
Jan Guillou -- whose writing lionizes Arab dictators and
butchers -- was elected president of the Association of
Journalists by its 5,200 members.
Guillou coauthored a book about Iraq, in the 1970s, praising
Saddam Hussein's prisons as `better than Swedish apartments,'
and predicting that Jews who fled from Iraq to Israel would
soon choose to return. A few days after the 9/11 attack,
Guillou wrote in Aftonbladet that the New York death
toll "was about one-third of those innocent people killed
when Israel attacked Lebanon in the early 1980s." And the day
after 9/11, an international book show in Sweden held a
moment of silence for the American victims. Guillou, then
president of the Association of Journalists, walked out in
protest that there was never a moment of silence for Muslims
killed by Americans and Israelis.
-- The Sept. 7, 2004 issue of Journalisten included a
long, sympathetic interview with Robert Fisk, the Beirut-
based Mideast correspondent whose anti-Israel vitriol is
unmatched. Fisk makes himself out to be fearlessly
`independent,' not afraid of criticizing Israel, `unlike many
others.' Journalisten's fawning interviewer never
asked the key question: How long would Fisk stay alive if he
wrote the truth about the Arab dictators and terrorists among
whom he dwells?
-- The first-ever $33,000 Anna Lindh Stipend, in memory of
the Swedish Foreign Minister who was murdered last year, was
given to Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist who identifies so
closely with the Palestinians that she's lived for years in
Palestinian-controlled Ramallah where Yasser Arafat has his
headquarters. Hass received the usual obsequious Swedish
media coverage granted to Israelis who criticize Israeli
policies, and was praised for `her uncompromising
reporting... contributing to the understanding of the
Palestinians' situation under Israeli occupation. By
informing the Israeli public on daily life in Palestine, she
contributes to creating conditions for meaningful
dialogue.'
Robert Skole asks: Why is Sweden -- known for its Nobel
Prizes and solemn proclamations of peace and neutrality -- so
viciously anti-Israel?
His answer: "1) As in the rest of Europe, it's fashionable in
Sweden for the political left to despise Israel and glorify
Arafat, Hamas and the Palestinian "freedom fighters," and 2)
the old, moth-eaten communists and the new radical left
dominate the Swedish media and public debate on international
affairs."
Some publications do try to be honest -- like Svenska
Dagbladet, a morning daily, and magazines like the
Jewish Chronicle. But with a Jewish community of about
15,000, compared with the 300,000-400,000 Muslims in Sweden
(total population 9 million), the voices of fairness toward
Israel are, Skole says, "whispers against a hurricane."
On February 10, 2004, under the headline "Jews in Sweden are
afraid to be known as Jews," Ha'aretz reported,
"Daniel Schechner, a 21-year-old law student from Stockholm,
makes sure to conceal even the slightest hint of his
Jewishness when he goes out in public . . . He uses a non-
Jewish last name, which he asks the reporter not to print. He
does not dream of walking down the street while wearing a
skullcap, and when he went to Israel, he told people that he
went to another country . . . Schechner says that when he and
his friends speak about `Jewish' subjects like synagogue or
kashrus, they use code words . . . "
And that's the situation in Sweden.
