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Sweden and the Jews

(BESA Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University) Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld - Jews in Sweden account for less than 0.2% of the population, but they are the targets of profound hatred. This does not comport very well with Sweden's image as a near-perfect liberal democracy. In Malmo, Sweden's third-largest city, the shrinking community had installed bullet-proof windows at the synagogue. In December 2017, two Palestinians and a Syrian threw Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in Sweden's second-largest city, Gothenburg. In recent years, Sweden has taken in the highest number of migrants in Western Europe as a percentage of population. Most immigrants come from Muslim countries where societies are permeated by extreme anti-Semitic prejudices. Sweden can thus be characterized as a major importer of anti-Semites out of humanitarian motives. The problems with immigrants have given rise to the growth of a right-wing populist party, the Sweden Democrats. In the September 2017 elections they got 17% of the vote, an unprecedented level of support. This party promotes the prohibition of nonmedical circumcision, aimed primarily against Muslims, but it also serves to introduce a new anti-Semitic element into Sweden. The writer, a senior research associate at the BESA Center, is a former chairman of the Steering Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
2018-12-07 00:00:00
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