In The Days

• Source: SLT
• News Date: 8/15/10
• Author: DONALD SNYDER

MALMÖ, Sweden • Finally, the shouts of “Heil Hitler” that frequently greeted Marcus Eilenberg as he walked to the synagogue were too much. Fearing for his family’s safety, Eilenberg moved himself, his wife and two children to Israel.

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Anti-Semitism

“Fear•Strongs 3372: aérÃŽy yare}, yaw-ray´; a primitive root; to fear; morally, to revere; caus. to frighten:—affright, be (make) afraid, dread(-ful), (put in) fear(-ful, -fully, -ing), (be had in) reverence(-end), x see, terrible (act, -ness, thing). not: for I am with thee: I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth;”
—Isa 43:5-6

“O Israel, trust•Strongs 982: batach, baw-takh´; a primitive root; properly, to hie for refuge (but not so precipitately as 2620); figuratively, to trust, be confident or sure:—be bold (confident, secure, sure), careless (one, woman), put confidence, (make to) hope, (put, make to) trust. thou in the LORD: he is their help and their shield.”
—Psalms 115:9

Israel in the Last Days

“And it shall come to pass, that as ye were a curse among the heathen•Strongs 1471: ywø…g gowy, go´-ee; rarely (shortened) y…Og goy, go´-ee; apparently from the same root as 1465 (in the sense of massing); a foreign nation; hence, a Gentile; also (figuratively) a troop of animals, or a flight of locusts:—Gentile, heathen, nation, people., O house of Judah, and house of Israel; so will I save you, and ye shall be a blessing: fear•Strongs 3372: aérÎy yare}, yaw-ray´; a primitive root; to fear; morally, to revere; caus. to frighten:—affright, be (make) afraid, dread(-ful), (put in) fear(-ful, -fully, -ing), (be had in) reverence(-end), x see, terrible (act, -ness, thing). not, but let your hands be strong•Strongs 2388: chazaq, khaw-zak´; a primitive root; to fasten upon; hence, to seize, be strong (figuratively, courageous, causatively strengthen, cure, help, repair, fortify), obstinate; to bind, restrain, conquer:—aid, amend, x calker, catch, cleave, confirm, be constant, constrain, continue, be of good (take) courage(-ous, -ly), encourage (self), be established, fasten, force, fortify, make hard, harden, help, (lay) hold (fast), lean, maintain, play the man, mend, become (wax) mighty, prevail, be recovered, repair, retain, seize, be (wax) sore, strengthen (self), be stout, be (make, shew, wax) strong(-er), be sure, take (hold), be urgent, behave self valiantly, withstand.. For thus saith the LORD of hosts; As I thought to punish you, when your fathers provoked me to wrath, saith the LORD of hosts, and I repented not: So again have I thought in these days to do well unto Jerusalem and to the house of Judah: fear•Strongs 3372: aérÎy yare}, yaw-ray´; a primitive root; to fear; morally, to revere; caus. to frighten:—affright, be (make) afraid, dread(-ful), (put in) fear(-ful, -fully, -ing), (be had in) reverence(-end), x see, terrible (act, -ness, thing). ye not.”
—Zechariah 8:13-15

“I didn’t want my small children to grow up in this environment,” Eilenberg said. “It wouldn’t be fair to them to stay in Malmö.”
Sweden, a country long regarded as a model of tolerance, had been a refuge for Eilenberg’s family. His paternal grandparents made a home in Malmö in 1945 after surviving the Holocaust. His wife’s parents came to this port city from Poland in 1968 after the Communist government there launched an anti-Semitic purge.
But the combination of a rapidly growing Muslim population living in segregated conditions and widespread anger at Israeli policies and actions has been toxic for local Jews. As in many other European cities, Jews in Malmö report being subjected increasingly to threats, intimidation and actual violence as stand-in targets for Israel.
Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city with a population of roughly 294,000, including fewer than 800 Jews, reached a turning point of sorts in January 2009 during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. A small, mostly Jewish group held a demonstration billed as a peace rally but seen as a sign of support for Israel.
The demonstrators were attacked by a much larger mob of Muslims and Swedish leftists. Police seemed unable to stop the violence.
“I was very scared,” recalled Jehoshua Kaufman, a Jewish community leader. “Scared because there were a lot of angry people facing us, shouting insults and throwing bottles and firecrackers at the same time. The sound was very loud. And I was angry because we really wanted to go through with this demonstration, and we weren’t allowed to finish it.”
Alan Widman, a non-Jewish member of the Liberal Party who represents Malmö in Parliament, said simply: “I have never been so afraid in my life.” The demonstrators were eventually evacuated by the police.
A bomb exploded on the steps of the Malmö synagogue shortly after 2 a.m. July 23. The police classified the explosion as an act of vandalism, crimes that receive low priority and are rarely solved, according to a Swedish police official. Anti-Semitism in Europe has historically been associated with the far right, but the Jews interviewed for this article say the threat in Sweden now comes from Muslims and from changing attitudes about Jews in the wider society. There are an estimated 45,000 Muslims in Malmö, about 15 percent of the city’s population. Many of them are Palestinians, Iraqis and Somalis, while others came from the former Yugoslavia.
But the problem is not just Muslims, and not just Malmö’s.
A continent-wide study conducted by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, released last December, found that 45.7 percent of the Europeans surveyed somewhat or strongly agree with the following statement: “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.” And 37.4 percent agreed with this statement: “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.”
“(There is) quite a high level of anti-Semitism that is hidden beneath critics of Israel’s policies,” said Beate Kupper, one of the study’s researchers, in a phone interview, citing a tendency to “blame Jews in general for Israel’s policies.”
Kupper said that in places where there is a strong taboo against expressions of anti-Semitism, such as Germany: “Criticism of Israel is a great way to express your anti-Semitism in an indirect way.”
According to Bassam Tibi, professor emeritus of international relations at the University of Göttingen in Germany and author of several books on the growth of Islam in Europe, Muslims form a significant subset of this problem. “The growth of the Muslim diaspora in Europe is affecting the Jews,” said Tibi. He said many European Muslims think “every Jew is responsible for what Israel is doing and can be a target.”
In Malmö, this population’s role is seen as especially significant. Most of Malmö’s Muslims live in Rosengard, the eastern part of the city, where the jobless rate is 80 percent. Satellite dishes dot the high-rise apartments to receive programming from Al Jazeera and other Arabic-language cable networks that keep Malmö’s Muslims in constant touch with Arab-Israeli developments.
Sylvia Morfradakis, a European Union official who works with the chronically unemployed, those who have been without work for 10 to 15 years, said the main reason why 80 percent to 90 percent of Muslims between the ages of 18 and 34 can’t find jobs is because they can’t speak Swedish.
But Per Gudmunson, chief editorial writer for Svenska Dagbladet, a leading Swedish newspaper, is critical of politicians who blame anti-Semitic actions on Muslim living conditions. These politicians offer “weak excuses” for Muslim teenagers accused of anti-Semitic crimes, he said. “Politicians say these kids are poor and oppressed, and we have made them hate. They are, in effect, saying the behavior of these kids is in some way our fault.”
The plight of the Jews worries Annelie Enochson, a Christian Democrat member of Parliament. “If the Jews feel threatened in Sweden, then I am very frightened about the future of my country,” she said in an interview.
Because he is the most visible Jew in Malmö, with his black fedora and long beard, Malmö’s only rabbi, Shneur Kesselman, 31, is a prime target for Muslim anti-Jewish sentiment. In his six years in the city, the Orthodox Chabad rabbi, an American, has been the victim of more than 50 anti-Semitic incidents. He is a gentle man with a steely determination to stay in Malmö in spite of the danger.
The rabbi recalled the day he was crossing a street near his house with his wife when a car suddenly went into reverse and sped backward toward them. They dodged the vehicle and barely made it to the other side of the street.
Newspapers report the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Malmö doubled from 2008 to 2009. Meanwhile, Fredrik Sieradzki, spokesman for the Malmö Jewish community, estimates that the small Jewish population is shrinking by 5 percent a year. “Malmö is a place to move away from,” he said, citing anti-Semitism as the primary reason. “The community was twice as large two decades ago.”
The synagogue has elaborate security. Its glass is not just bullet-proof, say Jewish communal officials; it’s rocket-proof. Guards check strangers seeking to enter the building.
Some Jewish parents try to protect their children by moving to neighborhoods where there are fewer Muslims in the schools to minimize confrontations.
Six Jewish teenagers interviewed reported anti-Semitic abuse from Muslim classmates. According to the victims, none of the perpetrators were arrested, much less punished.
Many Jews fault Swedish police for not cracking down on anti-Semitism. Most hate crimes in Malmö are acts of vandalism, said Susanne Gosenius, head of the police department’s newly created hate crime unit. These include painted swastikas on buildings. According to Gosenius, police do not give priority to this type of crime. “It’s very rare that police find the perpetrators,” she said.
Members of Parliament have attended anti-Israel rallies where the Israeli flag was burned while the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah were waved and the rhetoric was often anti-Semitic, not just anti-Israel. But such public rhetoric is not branded hateful and denounced, said Henrik Bachner, a professor of history at the University of Lund, near Malmö.
“Sweden is a microcosm of contemporary anti-Semitism,” said Charles Small, director of the Yale University Initiative for the Study of Anti-Semitism. “It’s a form of acquiescence to radical Islam, which is diametrically opposed to everything Sweden stands for.”
The Imam of Malmö, Saeed Azams, who claims to represent 80 percent of the city’s Muslims, said it was wrong to blame Swedish Jews for Israel’s actions. During an interview in his office, Azams stressed the importance of teaching young Muslims to stop equating the Jews of Malmö with Israel.
“Because Jewish society in Sweden does not condemn the clearly illegal actions of Israel,” he said, “then ordinary people think the Jews here are allied to Israel, but this is not true.”
The Imam played down the seriousness of the problem, saying that the anti-Semitic incidents were the result of ignorance and that there are “not more than 100 people, most under18 years old,” who engage in violence and belong to street gangs.
The imam is an advocate of dialogue with Jewish leaders and welcomed the creation of a “conflict committee.” Malmö’s Social Democratic mayor, Ilmar Reepalu, created the committee in the wake of last year’s violence against the Jewish demonstrators.