When Democracies Fight: Israel and Sweden, Round 2

Israel and Sweden: When Democracies Fight

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Last weekend, we wrote about an article in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet by Donald Bostrom, calling for an investigation into numerous claims in the 1990s that Israeli soldiers stole the organs of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and the furious response from Israeli diplomatic circles. Although the Swedish Embassy in Israel distanced itself from the report, the Swedish government. Stockholm refused to condemn the article, saying briefly that Sweden has a “free press".

Israel has maintained its criticism. Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz claimed:

This is an anti-Semitic blood libel against the Jewish people and the Jewish state. The Swedish government cannot remain apathetic… We know the origins of these claims. In medieval times, there were claims that the Jews use the blood of Christians to bake their Matzas for Passover. The modern version now is that the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) soldiers use organs of Palestinian to take money.

Then, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman compared today’s Sweden with the country of the 1940s, telling Sweden’s ambassador on Thursday evening:

It's a shame that the Swedish Foreign Ministry fails to intervene in a case of blood libels against Jews… This is reminiscent of Sweden's stand during World War II, when [it] had failed to intervene as well.

Predictably, politics is now on the streets, with thousands of Israelis signing an online petition to boycott the Swedish furniture retailer IKEA.

What should not be forgotten, as we noted in the earlier article, is that this dispute overlays diplomatic frictions over Israel's policy toward Palestine and possible political advantage in displacing that issue. So expect the rhetorical battle between neo-Holocaust scenarios, in which the Israeli military is victimised,  and the claims of freedom of the press to continue for some time.