Yearly Archives: 2017

Abakozi ba satani,bayoboye amasengesho kuwa 17.08.2014 kuri stade amahoro.

June 18, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments

Bene data bakundwa mwibuke neza ibyahanuwe n’umwuka w’Imana,yavuze ko,mu Rwanda abanyarwanda bo mu bwoko bw’Abatutsi baturutse mu gihugu cy’Ubugande bagiye kwinjizwa mu ishuri bisobanuye ibigeregezo kuko ubu barahanganye mu gihe ingoma yabo igiye kurimbuka.

Bene data bakundwa mwibuke neza ibyahanuwe n’umwuka w’Imana,yavuze ko,mu Rwanda abanyarwanda bo mu bwoko bw’Abatutsi baturutse mu gihugu cy’Ubugande bagiye kwinjizwa mu ishuri bisobanuye ibigeregezo kuko ubu barahanganye mu gihe ingoma yabo igiye kurimbuka.

Mwibuke neza ko,Imana yavuze kuwa 23th werurwe 2014 ko,ubwo APR izahura na Rayon bagakina umukino usa n’uwanyuma kuko Rayon izatsinda APR ibyo bikazaba ar’ikimenyetso cya marembera y’umupira wamaguru mu Rwanda ku ngoma ya fpr.

Ibyakurikiyeho nuko ishyirahamwe ry’umupra wa maguru CAN ryahise rifatira ibihano igihugu cy’Urwanda ko,kitazakina muri 2015 umupira w’ibihugu by’Afrika.

Impamvu yokubibutsa ibi,ni ukugirango mutagwa gitumon’ibyago bigiye kugwirira igihugu cyanyu,ahubwo mushake mu maso h”uwiteka kugirango kubo bishobokera babashe gukuramo akarenge niba bigishoboka.

Igihugu kiri mu kaga gakomeye cyane abantu baricwa umusubirizo,abatabwa mu mazi,abitwikwa,abahambwa babona,ibyo mu gihe birimo kuba bitabatera ubwoba kuko Uwiteka Imana har’icyo yagambiriye kugihugu cyanyu,kandi nimwe azakoresha abazaba bakiriho.

Kuko ababashije kuyumvira yabakirije amagara,naho ibyo satani arimo gukorera igihugu itorero ryiyitirira kristo rirebera kubera gutinya bashaka gukiza ubugingo bwabo,ahubwo nibwo bagiye kububura.

Kugirango imigambi y’Uwiteka ibashe gusohoza nk’uko yabigambiriye hashize igihe kirekire abivugiye mukanwa kabahanuzi bayo.Nuko rero mwirinde umuzi wogusharia kugirango mubashe gukiza ubugingo bwanyu uko niko Uwiteka avuga.

Kuwa 17th 08 2014 bakoze amasengesho ngo yogusengera igihugu,nyamara igihugu n’abantu,ntabwo Imana yabasha kumva amasengesho yabicanyi bakiranirwa umunota kuwundi,noneho bagashaka ngo Imana ibemerere ibikorwa  byabo bakora nyamara bibuke ko,Imana atar’umuntu mbese wowe uwakwicara abana nyumaakaza gusaba ubusabane nawe wamwemerera?.

Uko niko bimeze nta mwana n’igiti kuko abanyarwanda bose ar’ubwoko bwayo,ngirango muzi neza ko abakoze uwo muhango wo gusengera igihugu bose arabakozi ba satani Gitwaza Paul ibyop Imana yamuvuzeho mwarabibonye kugeza ubwo ahnga igihugu agahungira mu gihugu cy’Uburundi kubera gutinya gukorwa n’isoni nk’uko Imana yabivuze.

Nabandi benshi tutarondora mbeese Gitwaza ,Rick Warren nibo asengera igihugu bafatanije na Kagame,kwihana se buhannye iki mu gihe bakomeje ibikorwa by’urukoza soni bituka Imana yacu?Ese Itorero niryo rikwiye kwihana cyangwa niryo rikwiye gutanga urugero kubashaka kwihana,niba bihana ni kuo arabanyaha badakiranuka nuko rero ntibari bakwiye ni kuyobora abantu b’Imana kuko nta Mana bafite ahubwo bari bakwiye kwicara bakaba abakiristu kuko imilimo yabo ibemerera kutaba abayobozi b’Itorero rya Kristo.

Ubuse ko hagiye kuba intambara yindi izatwara abanyarwanda kandi ikaba irimo gutegurwa barebera hanyuma ya jenocide izitirirwa abanyarwanda intambara irangiye,mbere nabwo abapastoro bazongera bihane kandi bararebereye ubwicanyi bukorwa n’ubwoko bwabo nibagire icyo bavuga?Iyo izaba ar’inkina mico.

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A Visit to the Old and New Hells of Europe Provides a Reminder of Israel’s Importance

June 18, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments

I just returned from a week-long journey through Hell! It began with a visit to the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps in Poland, as a participant of the March of the Living, following a conference commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg Laws and the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials. My week was consumed with recurring evidence of the worst crime ever perpetrated by human beings on other human beings – the Holocaust.

 

I traveled from the death camps to several small Polish towns from which my grandparents emigrated well before the Holocaust, leaving behind relatives and friends. During the course of my travels, I discovered the fate of two of my relatives. Hanna Deresiewicz (an original spelling of my family name) was a 16-year-old girl living in the small town of Pilzno when the Nazis arrived; she was separated from her siblings and parents. “The soldiers took several of the most beautiful Jewish girls for sex, and then killed them. [Among those] taken [was] Hanna Deresiewicz, 16.”

Another relative named Polek Dereshowitz, served as an “orderly” to the Commandant of Auschwitz when he was 15. He was suspended “from the ringbolts in his office because a flea had been found on one of his dogs.” He was later gassed.

This is not the first time I have visited Nazi death camps. I was fully familiar with the statistical evidence of how six million Jews were systematically murdered. I was also familiar with how the Nazi death machine searched out Jews in the furthest corners of Nazi occupied Europe, even as far as the island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea, and transported them to Auschwitz to gas them. I also knew that this was the only time in human history when people were brought from far distances to camps designed for one purpose only – to kill every possible Jew they could, find no matter where they lived. And I knew that because this was part of a planned genocide of the Jewish People, it was most important to kill every child, woman and man capable of producing future Jews.

But this visit, during which I learned the fate of two young members of my own family, brought the horrors home to me in a manner more personal than any statistic could provide. I was traveling with my wife and daughter, and I repeatedly imagined what it must have felt like for the parents and spouses of the murdered Jews to realize that everything precious to them was being annihilated, and that there would be no one left to morn them or to carry their seed to future generations.

From the old Hell, Poland, I traveled to a new Hell, called Hungary. Budapest is a beautiful city, but it too, provided a hellish end to its Jewish residents in the final months of the Second World War, when Hungarian Nazis turned the Blue Danube into a red mass grave. They shot their Jewish neighbors and dumped their bodies into the Danube River, even as the Nazis were retreating. And now in modern-day Budapest, I was told of the resurgence of Nazism among many ordinary Hungarians. An increasingly popular fascist party, Jobbik, boasts of its anti-Semitism and of its desire to rid Hungary of its few remaining Jews. The Jobbik party in Hungary also hates Israel, and everything else that is a manifestation of Jewishness.

I ended my trip meeting with a Jewish man of Greek background whose grandfather was murdered by the Nazis and who was now being targeted by Greek fascists for his outspoken defense of Israel and the Jewish people. Athens, too, has become a hotbed of Jew-hatred, with is popular fascist Golden Dawn party.

Left: Supporters of Greece’s fascist Golden Dawn party. Right: Supporters of Hungary’s fascist Jobbik party.

There was not a moment during my visit to Europe that I was not reminded of that continent’s sordid history with regard to the Jewish people. Now, many Europeans — the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who were complicit in the murder of six million Jews — have turned against the nation state of the Jewish People with a vengeance. This time the bigotry emanates mostly from the hard left, but has the support of many on the new fascist hard right. The British Labour Party is as rife with hatred of the Jewish People and Jewish Nation as is the Hungarian fascist Jobbik party. Once again, European Jews are caught between the extremes of the Black and the Red. Extremists on both sides seek the demise of Israel, arguing that there is no place in a world with multiple Muslim and Christian nations for one state that is overtly Jewish in its character. Other Europeans seek to boycott Israel’s products, its professors, and its performers. While still others simply apply a double standard to its actions — a standard they apply to no other nation, including their own.

My visit to Europe made one thing unmistakably clear: if there is any group in the world that needs a safe homeland — a sanctuary from bigotry and hatred — it is the Jewish people. When Hitler was willing to expel them from Europe, before deciding to exterminate them, no country — not even the United States or Canada — would give them asylum. Britain closed the doors of what is now Israel to them. They had no place to go. So they were murdered by the Nazis and their willing executioners throughout Europe. There is no group whose history entitles it to a safe and secure homeland more than the Jewish people.

For reasons that are difficult to explain, the hatred of the Jewish people and its nation defies rationality, but it is as real as the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the emerging fascist parties of Greece and Hungary. Jews today continue to be scapegoated in many parts of the world, and their nation state is demonized at the United Nations, on university campuses, in the media and in legislative assemblies. Following the Holocaust, there seemed to be an understanding that Jews would no longer be victimized. Now, less than a century after the Nazis came to power, that moratorium on Jew-hatred seems to have expired, as the memory of the Holocaust grows dim in most parts of the world.

My week-long visit to Hell reaffirmed my commitment to defend Israel’s right to exist, to speak out for Israel when it is unfairly attacked, and to defeat its enemies in the marketplace of ideas. We owe nothing less to the victims of the worst crime in the history of humanity — a crime that could not have occurred without the complicity of most of the world. And a crime that will not recur if there is a strong and secure Israel.

Professor Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus and author of Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law. This article first appeared on Foxnews.com.

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A Tale of Two Talks: Free Speech in the U.S. by Douglas Murray

June 18, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments
  • During his talk at Georgetown University, Jonathan A.C. Brown condemned slavery when it took place historically in America and other Western countries, but praised the practise of slavery as it happened in Muslim societies, explained that Muslim slaves lived “a pretty good life”, and claimed that it is “not immoral for one human to own another human.” Regarding the vexed matter of whether it is right or wrong to have sex with one of your slaves, Brown, who is director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, said that “consent isn’t necessary for lawful sex”.
  • No mob of anti-sharia people has gone to Georgetown, torn up telephone poles, set fire to things or smashed up the campus, as mobs did at Berkeley.
  • Milo Yiannopoulos has never argued that the Western system of slavery was benevolent and worthwhile, and that slaves in America had “a pretty good life”. He has never argued against consent being an important principle in sexual relations. If he had, then the riots at Berkeley would doubtless have been far worse than they were and even more media companies and professors would have tried to argue that Yiannopoulos had “brought the violence upon himself” or even organized it himself.

Sometimes the whole tenor of an age can be discerned by comparing two events, one commanding fury and the other, silence.

To this extent, February has already been most enlightening. On the first day of the month, the conservative activist and writer Milo Yiannopoulos was due to speak at the University of California, Berkeley. To the surprise of absolutely no one, some of the new anti-free speech brigade attempted to prevent the event from happening. But to the surprise of almost everyone, the groups who wish to prevent everyone but themselves from speaking went farther even than they have tended to of late. Before the event could even start, Yiannopoulos was evacuated by security for his own safety. A mob of 150 people proceeded to riot, smash and set fire to the campus, causing more than $100,000 of damage and otherwise asserting their revised version of Voltaire’s maxim: “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to your death my right to shut you up.”

When conservative activist and writer Milo Yiannopoulos was due to speak at the University of California, Berkeley on February 1, a mob of 150 people proceeded to riot, smash and set fire to the campus, causing more than $100,000 of damage. (Image source: RT video screenshot)

The riots at Berkeley caused national and international headlines. Mainstream media, including Newsweek, also attempted to do their bit for an event they would ordinarily deride as “fake news.” Following a segment on CNN, Newsweek ran a piece by Robert Reich, the chancellor’s professor of public policy at Berkeley and a former Clinton administration official, arguing that “Yiannopoulos and Brietbart [sic] were in cahoots with the agitators, in order to lay the groundwork for a Trump crackdown on universities and their federal funding.” This conspiracy theory would involve Yiannopoulos arranging for 150 masked fanatics not merely to trash a campus on his orders, but to continue to remain silent about it in the days and weeks after the event.

In Newsweek, Reich wrote, “I don’t want to add to the conspiratorial musings of so many about this very conspiratorial administration, but it strikes me there may be something worrying going on here. I wouldn’t bet against it.” And so, a tenured academic made an implausible as well as un-evidenced argument that his political opponents not merely bring violence on themselves but actually arrange violence against themselves.

All of the violence and all of these claims were made in February in the aftermath of a speech that never happened. But consider how little has been said and how little done about a speech that certainly did go ahead just one week later at another American university — not by a visiting speaker but by a resident academic and teacher.

On February 7, at the University of Georgetown, Jonathan A.C. Brown, the director of the entirely impartial Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown, gave a 90-minute talk entitled “Islam and the Problem of Slavery”. Except that the white convert to Islam, Jonathan Brown, apparently did not think that there is a particular problem with slavery — at least not when it comes wrapped in Islam. During the talk (which Brown himself subsequently uploaded onto YouTube) the lecturer condemned slavery when it took place historically in America, Britain and other Western countries, but praised the practice of slavery in Muslim societies. Brown explained how Muslim slaves lived “a pretty good life”, claimed that they were protected by “sharia” and claimed that it is “not immoral for one human to own another human.” Regarding the vexed matter of whether it is right or wrong to have sex with one of your slaves, Brown said that “consent isn’t necessary for lawful sex” and that marital rape is not a legitimate concept within Islam. Concepts such as “autonomy” and “consent”, in the view of the Director of the Alwaleed Center at Georgetown, turned out to be Western “obsessions”.

Of course, Jonathan Brown’s views on Islam are by no means uncommon. One could easily demonstrate that they are all too common among experts in Islamic jurisprudence. Among such people, debates over where and when you can own a slave and what you can or cannot do with them are quite up to the minute, rather than Middle Ages, discussions to have. But until this moment, there have been no protests at Georgetown University. Under a certain amount of online pressure, from the few websites to have reported Brown’s talk, Brown has attempted to clarify or even reverse some of his views. But no mob of anti-sharia people has gone to Georgetown, torn up telephone poles, set fire to things or smashed up the campus, as mobs did at Berkeley.

Here is a stranger thing. Nothing that Yiannopoulos ever said as a visitor speaking to a room full of people has ever come near the level of what Brown said to his ordinary class of credit-seeking students. Yiannopoulos has never argued that the Western system of slavery was benevolent and worthwhile, and that slaves in America had “a pretty good life”. He has certainly spoken out vociferously against the claim that there is a “rape culture” on American universities. But he has never argued against consent being an important principle in sexual relations. If he had, then the riots at Berkeley would doubtless have been far worse than they were, and even more media companies and professors would have tried to argue that Yiannopoulos had “brought the violence upon himself” or even organized it himself.

The proximity of these two events, the difference in the arguments and the vast chasm of difference between the outrage and violence against one, and the great silence and complicity with the other, tells us much about what we need to know about the state of free speech — and academia — in America today.

Douglas Murray, British author, commentator and public affairs analyst, is based in London, England.

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A Supporter of Israel Must Have a “Bias” on Trump Travel Ban: The Newest Bigotry! by Alan M. Dershowitz

June 18, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments

A recent panel discussion regarding the Trump travel ban was infected by the bigotry of one of the participants. The host, Don Lemon, called on former prosecutor, John Flannery, to express his views on the decision of a federal judge to stay the order. This was Flannery’s response:

“…Here’s Trump saying that we have to write rules. What have they been doing? They’ve been sitting on their hands doing nothing this entire time. And our dear colleague, Alan Dershowitz, I think, hopes that this may secure Israel and thinks that this is a bogus argument…”

I asked him what he was talking about, since in my dozens of TV appearances discussing the travel ban, I have never once mentioned Israel, and certainly never made the argument that the ban – which I oppose as a matter of policy – would “secure Israel.”

He replied: “I think that’s what you believe.”

I shot back: “I never said a word about Israel. You know when you focus everything I say on Israel it really raises questions about your own bigotry and bias.”

I then asked him directly “what does this have to do with Israel? Why…do you have to bring in Israel to attack me and criticize me? Is it because I’m Jewish? You know your bigotry is showing?”

He then said it has “everything” to do with Israel. He insisted that Israel is the “reason you’re taking the position you are. Because of your own bias.”

The “position” to which he was referring is my view that although the travel ban is bad policy, it is probably not unconstitutional. Instead of responding to my “position” on the merits, he again – quite irrelevantly – repeated that he doesn’t think the ban “will help Israel.”

Having heard variations on this argument many times in my debates about a wide range of issues – that my loyalty to Israel clouds my judgement and disqualifies me as an objective critic – I really tore into him: “You can’t believe anything I say because I’m a Jew and a Zionist? For shame on you sir.” I then announced that I don’t want to be on panels with him in the future.

At the end of the segment Don Lemon asked if anyone wanted to “apologize” or explain if they feel they “were taken out of context.”

Flannery chimed in: “I have trouble understanding you Alan, in connection with this argument about the appeal…we have an honest disagreement about that.”

I responded: “my only criticism of you was that you raised the issue of Israel and somehow questioned my motives because yes, I’m a Jew who supports Israel.”

There was no legitimate reason for Flannery to bring Israel into the discussion. At no point during my analysis of Trump’s revised travel ban – and I have spoken on this issue broadly both on TV and in print – did I suggest that this executive order relates to Israel, let alone would “secure” her. In suggesting that the reason for my position on the travel ban is “because of [my] own bias” toward Israel – and by doubling down on this position throughout the segment – Flannery engaged in an old trope: that one’s dual loyalty undercuts their objectivity when it comes to analysis of domestic political issues here in the United States. By morphing the discussion about the constitutionality of U.S. immigration policy into a polemic against me and my pro-Israel “bias,” Flannery displayed his own bias.

I’m glad I called Flannery out on this issue. I don’t know generally what his views are about Israel. But his willingness to argue to an international TV audience that I am biased on the travel ban issue because I see every issue through the lens of my pro-Israel views, is dangerous if unrebutted. The reality is that the U.S. travel ban has little or nothing to do with Israel, but in Flannery’s distorted mind it has “everything” to do with Israel if expressed by a Jewish supporter of Israel.

There is an old joke about a European student who was obsessed with Jews. Every time the professor gave an assignment, the student would find a way to bring in the Jews. Finally, in exasperation, he assigned the students to write an essay on the Pachyderm. The obsessed student handed in his essay, with the title: “The Elephant and the Jewish Question.”

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A Smorgasbord of Swedish Anti-Semitism by Nima Gholam Ali Pour

June 18, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments
  • Sweden is a country where using the word “mass immigration” usually gets criticized just for sounding racist. Only anti-Semitism does not get criticized. In Sweden, all other forms of racism — even things that some say could be classified as racism — are criticized, and ruthlessly.
  • TV4, one of the most important Swedish media outlets, in 2015 described anti-Semitism as simply a “different opinion.”
  • “What is history for us is not the history of others. … When we have other students who have studied other history books, there is no point in discussing facts against facts.” — The administration of an adult-education school, in a reprimand to a teacher who said the Holocaust actually took place.
  • “The Jews are campaigning against me.” — Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström.
  • There are fewer than 20,000 Jews in Sweden; more than 20,000 Syrians received asylum in 2014 alone. That is why so few politicians — who are eager to win the votes of immigrants — talk about Arab anti-Semitism.

On November 9, an anti-racism demonstration was going to be held in Umeå, Sweden, in commemoration of Kristallnacht (the night in 1938 in which 400 Jews were murdered in Germany, and 30,000 Jewish men arrested and sent to concentration camps). There was just one catch: the Jews in Umeå were not invited to the demonstration. The reason given, according to one of the organizers, Jan Hägglund, was that the demonstration would be “perceived as an unwelcoming or unsafe situation for them.”

The path to this surreal situation, in which an anti-racism demonstration in Sweden in commemoration of Kristallnacht could be perceived by Jews as a threat, has long been in the making. This demonstration was of some significance. The people behind it were not extremists. Four of the Swedish Parliament’s eight parties were involved in organizing it.

This anti-racist demonstration and the strange events surrounding it represent a process that, sadly, has been going on in Sweden for a long time. A new kind of Swedish anti-Semitism has been growing strong; the city of Malmö has been its flagship.

In January 2009, a pro-Israel demonstration in Malmö was attacked by Arabs who were shouting “f-cking Jews.” The police could not protect the pro-Israel demonstrators from the eggs and the bottles being thrown at them. The event had to be temporarily stopped when the Arabs began to shoot fireworks at the pro-Israel demonstrators.

In January 2009, an Arab mob in Malmö pelted a peaceful Jewish demonstration with bottles, eggs and smoke bombs. The police pushed the Jews, who had a permit for their gathering, into an alley.

In 2010, for the first time — but not the last — the synagogue in Malmö was attacked. The same year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center began warning Jews to not visit Malmö, “due to harassment of Jewish citizens,”.

Today, Malmö is a city well known for anti-Semitism and characterized by it. Jews in Malmö cannot publicly show that they are Jews without being subjected to harassment. Many Jewish families, there for centuries, have fled. In October 2015, two members of the Swedish parliament were involved in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Malmö, in which people shouted anti-Semitic slogans and praised the current Palestinian knife attacks against Israeli Jews.

The reason a country such as Sweden has suddenly become struck by extreme anti-Semitism is largely due to immigration from the Middle East. The Arab and Muslim world — and, since 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has repeatedly threatened genocide — continues in its state-run media to demonize the Jews. The Arab and Muslim world probably wants, in part, to justify its conflict with Israel. Also in part, many members of the establishment and citizens in those countries probably believe these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, calumnies repeated every day in their media and mosques.

Many newcomers keep their Middle East background even after they have settled in Sweden. Many, especially in immigrant areas such as Rosengård in Malmö, regularly watch the Arabic media, which convey anti-Semitic messages non-stop.

At the same time, members of this population are welcome to vote in Swedish elections, so Swedish parties focus on the Arab vote. This courtship is merely a matter of demographics. There are fewer than 20,000 Jews in Sweden; more than 20,000 Syrians received asylum in 2014 alone.

In addition, to vote in the important municipal elections, you do not even need to be a citizen of Sweden. This peculiarity is why so few politicians in Sweden even talk about the Arab anti-Semitism, despite several Swedish reports and documentaries showing that the growing anti-Semitism in Sweden has been largely imported from the Middle East.

That is also why most anti-racism organizations in Sweden would rather discuss “Islamophobia.” Almost all Swedish anti-racism organizations are funded by taxpayers or are somehow connected to political parties — meaning there is an all-too-businesslike “understanding” between political parties and anti-racism organizations. Most of the political parties do not exactly favor anti-racism organizations that talk about Arab anti-Semitism. Such organizations will have trouble getting funds, or are defunded, or else see their board members start to resign.

Despite more Muslims coming to Sweden and more Jews fleeing Sweden — or perhaps because of it — the majority of the anti-racism activists in Sweden consider “Islamophobia” the more serious problem. The influential anti-racism organization, Expo, has done several mappings of “Islamophobia,” but, despite the bigotry, not a single mapping of anti-Semitism.

If you do a mapping of anti-Semitism in Sweden, you see, you also have to discuss immigration from the Middle East. Not many people in Sweden want to do that: those who discuss Arab anti-Semitism are called racists.

Instead of a discussion about the new Swedish anti-Semitism, you get mind-numbing op-ed columns appearing with the message that people should talk less about the Holocaust in Swedish schools, so that Arab youths will not be offended. In criticizing a government proposal to combat anti-Semitism by increasing Holocaust education, Helena Mechlaoui, a high school teacher of history, religion and philosophy, wrote:

“If we talk about students from the Middle East, it may be because many of them bear the traumatic experiences that are related to either Israeli or American policies. And the two states are often seen as one, which is not entirely wrong. They may have lost one or more siblings, cousins, parents or peers in an Israeli or American bombing. A large proportion are here in Sweden because they have been forced to leave their homes because of occupation, war or the misery in some refugee camp. They may have injured parents who cannot really cope with life, and they may still have family in conflict areas. It is likely that they have encountered hostility in Sweden. In this context, it is perhaps not desirable to start talking about the Holocaust.”

Immigration from Arab countries has thoroughly affected the way the majority of Swedes view anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is no longer something Swedish society condemns. Several Swedish celebrities have recently made anti-Semitic statements, and their careers have not suffered at all. The Swedish rapper Dani M spreads anti-Semitic conspiracy theories both on social media and in his songs. After several media outlets in Sweden, at the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015, reported in detail how Dani M spreads anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, he appeared on a reality TV show in September on one of the biggest and most established Swedish channels, TV4. When TV4 was criticized, the show’s executive producer, Christer Andersson, responded:

“TV4’s core values are Zero Racism and has always been, as long as I can remember, but we cannot cut off people who do not feel the same way. TV4 is a portal where people with different opinions pass and we must have a broad level of acceptance.”

Here you have one of the most important Swedish media outlets describing anti-Semitism as simply a “different opinion.” During the same period, another of TV4’s employees used the “N-word” in a YouTube clip, and she was fired within two months. So, anti-Semitism is acceptable, but not racism against Afro-Swedes.

In another example, the Swedish TV celebrity Gina Dirawi, of Palestinian origin, wrote in her blog in 2010 that Israel’s actions could be compared to Hitler’s. Then, in 2012, she advised people, again on her blog, to read a book that questioned the Holocaust. The book’s message was that when the Nazis persecuted the Jews, they were acting in self-defense. These were just two of the many anti-Semitic statements she made on her blog. Today, Gina Dirawi hosts several shows on SVT — the Swedish public broadcasting company — and she hosted SVT’s Christmas show in 2015. As Dirawi is a Muslim, this choice has raised some eyebrows. She is also going to host the 2016 Swedish music competition Melodifestivalen, one of Sweden’s most popular music events.

It is, unfortunately, clear that in Sweden, anti-Semitism is not something that harms one’s career. The Swedish media, like the government, also is not so interested in Sweden’s problems with anti-Semitism. When the Swedish think tank Perspektiv På Israel presented evidence in May 2015 that Islamic Relief’s country director in Sweden was spreading anti-Semitic posts on Facebook, no one in the media was interested in writing about it, despite the fact that Islamic Relief is supported by Sida, the Swedish government agency responsible for Sweden’s official aid to developing countries.

The Swedish media did not even allow an opinion piece from Perspektiv På Israel to be published on the subject. Nyheter24, one of the Swedish media outlets that did not publish Perspektiv På Israel’s information about this scandal, wrote in an email to Perspektiv På Israel that their “readers are, to say the least, not interested in this particular issue.”

As a columnist for the newspaper Samtiden, I mentioned Islamic Relief’s racist statements in an op-ed, and the information was also presented in The Jewish Press. Swedish media showed no interest, even though there was evidence that an organization receiving Swedish tax funds was publishing anti-Semitic statements in social media.

It is important to note that all these incidents happened in a country where using the word “mass immigration” usually gets criticized just for sounding racist. It is only anti-Semitism that does not get criticized in Sweden. All other forms of racism — even things that some say could be classified as racism — are criticized, and ruthlessly.

Although the new anti-Semitism in Sweden has its origin in Arab or Islamic anti-Semitism, to think that anti-Semitism in Sweden today is only Middle Eastern in its nature is a simplification. Anti-Semitism in Sweden has become a smorgasbord consisting of several factors that reinforce each other. Some of these are:

  • Large-scale immigration from countries where anti-Semitism is normalized.
  • A strong pro-Palestinian engagement among Swedish politicians that has resulted in a totally surreal debate about the Israel-Palestine debate, in which Israel is unjustly demonized.
  • A desire among political parties in Sweden to win the votes of immigrants.
  • A Swedish multiculturalism that is so uncritical of foreign cultures that it cannot differentiate between culture and racism.
  • A fear of sounding critical of immigration.
  • Important Swedish institutions, such as the Church of Sweden, legitimizing anti-Semitism by endorsing Kairos Palestine document.

A combination of these factors creates a situation in which anti-Semitism can grow without meeting any real resistance or criticism. The following happened at Komvux, an education program for adults in Sweden, in the city of Helsingborg: A substitute teacher was defending facts surrounding the Holocaust during a class, after a student questioned if the Holocaust had actually happened. The school administration criticized the substitute teacher with the following arguments: “What is history for us is not the history of others. … When we have other students who have studied other history books, there is no point in discussing facts against facts.”

This is an event that occurred in February 2015, in a major Swedish city. It could have happened in any Swedish city where the new Swedish anti-Semitism is rising. A Swedish school no longer knows if the fact that Holocaust actually happened is a fact worth defending. The anti-Semitic smorgasbord normalizes anti-Semitism in Sweden.

When it was reported in mid-November that the Swedish Foreign Minister, Margot Wallström, said “the Jews are campaigning against me,” it did not become major news in Sweden. It was not the first time a famous Swedish politician made anti-Semitic statements and got away with it, and it will not be the last.

So, we return to November 9, 2015 in Umeå, and the anti-racism march for the commemoration of Kristallnacht, to which the Jews were not invited, and to this year’s Muslim Christmas hostess, who has several times expressed anti-Semitic views, and to the schools that are not sure whether to say that the Holocaust actually happened or not, and to a country where in general it is business-as-usual not to invite the Jews.

The media does not report it. The politicians do not care. And everyone knows that in Sweden, the anti-Semites get away with anything they like.

Nima Gholam Ali Pour is a member of the board of education in the Swedish city of Malmö and is engaged in several Swedish think tanks concerned with the Middle East. Gholam Ali Pour is also editor for the social conservative website Situation Malmö.

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