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Thank you for the invitation. We are today approximately eighteen thousand Jews living in Sweden -out of a population of nine million and roughly fifty percent of the eight thousand are members of the Jewish communities. There are three major cities, where we have like seventy five-eighty percent of the Jews. It is Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. In these three major cities in Sweden there is a very active Jewish life. In terms of that there are many organizations and many institutions that serve the religious and social needs of the members. There are day schools, there are nurseries, there are afternoon schools, old-age homes and so on, sporting clubs, you may name it, it is all there.
As Sweden is located in the very north of Europe, we were for generations one of the most monoculture countries in the world and I think this is of importance to understand what I am going to come to in a little while.
We can trace Jews visiting Sweden in very small numbers back to the time of the Vikings, we are talking about a thousand years ago.
In seven seventy five the King at that time gave permission for the first Jew to settle in Sweden and shortly after he was allowed to bring in a minion so he could perform and live Jewish life. The heirs of these early Jews have had a strong influence and even though it is not publicly known to the common Swede today they have had a strong influence, many of them were very successful merchants, bankers, industrialists and not at least the cultural life had been eavily influenced of these early Jews, their children and grandchildren. In many of the major cities you will find Jewish names among the people that started universities, major hospitals and so on.
We can see a pattern of immigration waves that have come into Sweden. At the end of the 1800s people came from Eastern Europe, a hundred and thirtyfortunate families from Germany and Austria came just before Second World War.
During the war, half of the Norwegian Jews and almost all of the Danish Jews found refuge in Sweden and at the end of the war tens of thousands were received in Sweden. I am sure that the name Ralph Wallenberg is familiar to all of you.
Sweden was neutral during the war and of course it did not actively participate. But -being raised in Sweden by survivors from the Holocaust -I have many, many times thought about the words of Dante in what he writes in the Inferno, where he writes “The hottest places on Earth are reserved to those who in a time of moral crises remains neutral.” So one can, of course, question whether neutrality was really something that we could be proud of in Sweden.
Only Israel and Sweden have doubled their Jewish population since the Second World War. Today the predominant respect and openness that have characterized relations between Jews and official Sweden is under threat as newer immigrant groups are permitted to maintain prejudices from the society that they have chosen to leave.
There exists today a collective naivety in media and in the political establishment, regarding the changing situation we as Jews feel due to the overt actions, taken by a minority of Muslim immigrants.
There are the regulations and there have been incidents that are threatening Jewish life in the future. Let me give you a few examples from the legal, economic, media and demographic point of view.
From a legal point of view, Sweden, Swedish law does not accept kosher slaughtering, so we have to import kosher meat. Circumcision in Sweden must be carried out by a physician, if the boy is older than two months; if he is younger than two months then a mohel can do it but it has to be in the presence of a physician and local anesthesia is always required.
From an economic point of view and this is an issue that we are taking up every time that we meet members of the Swedish government. Approximately 25percent of the income from membership fees that we collect in the Jewish community has to be used for security arrangements. I am talking about equipment, installations and salaries. And, of course, we raise this issue every time, as I said, this cannot go on. It cannot be so that we, as members of Sweden and citizens of Sweden, pay taxes and then we have to add for our security.
When we approach members of Parliament and members of Government, they always listen and say that this has to be handled, but nothing has happened.
From a media point of view, I am sure many of you have noticed and it was also brought up earlier here, in August last year in Aftonbladet, one of Sweden’s largest daily publication they ran a story implying that the Israeli defense forces were involved in the killing of Palestinians in order to provide organs for the Israeli medical establishment. The newspaper was heavily criticized in media and several papers denounced it as anti-Semitic. The author of the article insinuated the ties exist between alleged IDF activities and the International Illegal Organ Market following the exposure of an organ trafficking ring in New York City which included Jewish individuals.
The article was at best, in poor taste and played of historical themes of Jewish blood libel and international conspiracy. The reactions from the reporters and the media union was very strong and there were no evidence to support the terrible allegations at all. Leading papers demanded the resignation of the reporter, as well as the responsible editor that allowed the article in their papers. The Swedish Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister Carl Bildt explained that the Swedish government refused to comment on the article, claiming legal factors prevented such action. The government standpoint is that there is a unique freedom of the press in Sweden, which is one of the oldest in the world. I am sorry to have to say that almost instantaneous condemnation of Israeli actions has become the standard in mainstream Swedish media.
From a demographic point of view, the immigration of Muslims has had a negative effect. When I grew up in Sweden, I cannot remember ever meeting a Muslim. And today there are, we are not really sure, there are no statistics at all or really in fact, but there are five hundred to six hundred thousand Muslims in Sweden. Mind you, I said that we are eighteen thousand Jews approximately.
So let me come now to the situation in Malmö, the third largest city with approximately three hundred thousand inhabitants. The Jewish congregation counts approximately eight hundred members.
Malmö is located in the very South of Sweden. Over the last thirty years the immigration to the city of Muslims has been heavier. Today, they are around ten percent of the population.
Malmö has faced problem the last couple of years that is alarming. The problem we face stem from two very different sources. One is from a fanatic group, consisting of mainly young Muslims, unfortunately there has been a steep rise in anti-Semitic incidents the last couple of years in Malmö, to the extend some Jewish families have decided to move from the city. These numbers are proximately fifteen families and they are moving to Stockholm, they are moving to Israel, they are moving to other places.
Lately, the municipality has created a dialogue forum, which has been a platform for discussions between representatives of the Muslim community and the representatives of the Jewish community. And one positive outcome of these talks has been that the Muslim representatives in the dialogue forum have prevented their brothers and sisters from using anti-Semitic banners in demonstrations against Israel.
Happy to say that in Stockholm and in Gothenburg, the other major cities, we have had long-lasting, very good relations with the political leadership and we do not face the same situation as we do in Malmö.
The other problem that we face, when it concerns Malmo, comes from the Mayor of Malmö. His name is Ilmar Reepalu, he has been the strong political leader, social democrat, in Malmö for many years. Reepalu was in his youth a volunteer, working at a kibbutz here in Israel and later after he was educated as an architect, he worked for a while as an architect in Haifa. He has expressed several horrendous political statements that not only denied the documents that we can show the raise of anti-Semitism in the city, but also equated Zionism with anti-Semitism and also insinuated that the International Jewry were in some way responsible for the internal affairs of the State of Israel.
Reepalu’s horrible statements have had a cohesive effect on the Jewish community. To the extent that members of the Jewish community in Malmö who before were reluctant to speak up publicly, are doing that today.
Top politicians from all the parties in the Swedish Parliament, including the leader of the Social Democratic Party, but except the Green Party and the Leftist Party we have in the Swedish Parliament, have been visiting Malmö, met with us there and explained their sympathies.
And the problems that we face today as Jews living in Sweden, is a large degree an effect of the failure to successfully integrate recent immigrants into the Swedish society. And we are unfortunately victim of this, as I mentioned before, naiveté. I do not think that in any way we can be compared to what we heard here before from Venezuela or maybe Turkey, this is not at all the situation at Sweden but there is a naiveté -maybe because Sweden has been so monocultural for such a long time that the most important people in media and political life do not really see what effect the last couple of, let’s say, twenty years have had on the Jewish community in Sweden.
Thank you for your attention.
