2004 installation by Israeli artist Ori Melamed protesting a Swedish artist's depiction of a Palestinian suicide bomber. (AFP)

Bad blood between EU and Israel

The Israeli prime minister’s visit to Europe tomorrow, the 25th of August, could not be taking place under worse auspices: the Swedish EU presidency is embroiled in a diplomatic crisis with Israel since last week’s publication of an article in the Stockholm daily Aftonbladet accusing Israeli soldiers of killing Palestinians for their organs back in 1992.

Published on 24 August 2009 at 16:03
2004 installation by Israeli artist Ori Melamed protesting a Swedish artist's depiction of a Palestinian suicide bomber. (AFP)

Within the space of a few days, notes Le Temps in Geneva, “the affair has turned into a major diplomatic incident between the two countries – but also between Israel and the European Union”. Euobserver.com sums it up thus: “With Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu arriving in Europe on Tuesday (25 August) for talks set to focus on settlement expansion, EU presidency country Sweden is embroiled in a diplomatic crisis with Tel Aviv over a newspaper article about Israeli soldiers harvesting Palestinian organs. Mr Netanyahu on Sunday demanded that Sweden formally condemn the story, which was published last week in Sweden's top selling Aftonbladet daily.” Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt refuses to do so: “Bildt wrote in his widely-read blog on Friday that the country's principle of freedom of expression means that the government is in no place to condemn any story in a newspaper,” cites euobserver.com. The Brussels-based site goes on to report that “Israel's finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, increased diplomatic tension by saying that Mr Bildt, due to visit Israel on 10 September, is no longer welcome.”

Le Temps, for its part, reports that “the Hebrew State’s interior minister, Elie Yshaï, confirmed Sunday that he would not renew the visas and residency permits of several Swedish journalists based in Israel. And while they are at it, the government press office are going to withhold the press cards the correspondents need to move freely in the Palestinian territories, among other things.” euobserver.com reminds its readership that “EU-Israeli relations have been on a downward trajectory since the beginning of the year, when Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip killed more than 1,400 Palestinians. In the wake of the attack, Brussels suspended a planned ‘upgrade’ to EU-Israel relations and has said the move will not go ahead until Israel halts Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories and accepts a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict."

For Der Spiegel this is “the heaviest diplomatic crisis in years between Sweden and Israel”. The German weekly also sketches the backdrop to the Israeli perspective: “This accusation of organ theft recalls the medieval ‘blood libel’ – the anti-Semitic myth that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood for religious rituals.”

Eli Barbur, Polish-Israeli journalist and blogger, writes in his salon24.pl blog: “In the Israeli perception, Sweden with its 9 million inhabitants is the most anti-Israeli country in the EU (some 40% of Swedes admit to anti-Semitic sentiments in public opinion polls).” He foresees that “Sweden as the head of the EU during its presidency will not be able to negotiate effectively in the Middle East (something that it, with the rest of Europe, damn wants to succeed in) if it doesn't officially apologise for Aftonbladet's anti-Semitic antics.”

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In the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post, ex-Israeli ambassador to Sweden Zvi Mazel remarks: “In the last two decades, Israel has been indiscriminately attacked by European governments while the European press routinely distorts information coming from the Middle East. The Swedish press has been at the forefront of this trend, and with the article published last week by Aftonbladet it has clearly gone over the bend.” Mr Mazel goes on to recall the pro-Nazi past of Sweden’s No. 1 daily and the anti-Semitic bent of the Swedish press in general: “About 80 percent of the newspapers there, especially the four national papers in Stockholm and hundreds of papers in the countryside, which set the tone in Sweden, are connected in some way to the Social Democrat movement and the trade unions, both of which are anti-Israel. There is a kind of dictatorship of the Social Democrats over the press in Sweden” (including Aftonbladet). He concludes: “We have to face the facts. Israel cannot keep ignoring the onslaught coming from Europe, especially Western Europe and the EU countries. This demonizing of Israel is a very real threat that must be taken seriously.”

Another leading Israeli daily, Haaretz, tries to put the events in context, citing Lena Posner, president of the Official Council of Jewish Communities in Sweden, who said that “Israel's demand that Sweden officially condemn the article that accused Israel Defense Forces of harvesting Palestinian organs ‘had blown the issue completely out of proportion’.” According to Posner, “No one even noticed the article – which is, incidentally, anti-Semitic and absolutely untruthful – when it was buried in the last pages of Aftonbladet. But the Israeli response pushed the journalist who wrote it, Daniel Bostrom, to the front of the stage and into the heart of the Swedish mainstream. What's even worse is that by making the preposterous demand for a government condemnation, the debate has changed from anti-Semitism to freedom of speech in Sweden: Instead of concentrating on debunking the story, they have made it a freedom of speech issue. The government is not going to condemn the article – freedom of speech here is sacrosanct.” In this regard, points out the Austrian daily Die Presse, “when it was a matter of the Mohammad caricatures, the Swedish foreign minister sent a letter of protest to the Danish government”.

Finally, in the columns of Aftonbladet, editor-in-chief Helle Klein opines that the Israeli government’s reactions “beat the record for exaggeration”. According to Ms Klein, “the Israeli government, one of the most conservative in the history of the country, need to unite public opinion around an outside enemy”. The Aftonbladet article, she says, has become an “opportunity for the Israeli government to show its determination to combat alleged anti-Semitism”, which, she adds, ought to “worry even the most ardent friends of Israel”.

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