BRUSSELS – Sweden has become “a center of anti-Semitism,” the president of the
European Jewish Congress, Dr. Moshe Kantor, told
The Jerusalem Post
Tuesday night, ahead of a ceremony at the European Parliament in Brussels to
commemorate the Holocaust.
“Sweden, previously a calm country where there
was no anti-Semitic problem just a few years ago, is a center of anti-Semitism,”
Kantor said. He added that it was “unthinkable that in the 21st century Jews
need to move from the city of Malmo to Stockholm and elsewhere.”
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Swedish government, he said, is the only government in the European Union
refusing to talk about anti- Semitism in its borders with the European Jewish
Congress – an umbrella organization of communities from across the
continent.
Kantor said he had repeatedly contacted the office of Swedish
Prime Minister Fredik Reinfeldt, but has received no reply.
“It’s a
conspiracy of silence. They apparently think that if they say nothing, the
problem will go away but we know it persists,” Kantor said.
Markus
Friberg, press secretary of the Swedish prime minister, told the
Post he could
not provide Reinfeldt’s reaction in time for this edition, but noted that Sweden
“invests four million Swedish crowns in increased security for the Jewish
community. [Sweden’s] Jewish Central Council will have most of the money, 3.5m.,
at its disposal.”
Sweden’s integration minister, Erik Ullenhang, said:
“Anti-Semitic expressions and other behavior based on racist beliefs are never
acceptable in a democratic society.” The extra funding for security owed to the
fact that “the Jewish congregations are today forced to take extra precautions
to ensure that people dare to visit synagogues, Jewish meetings etc. in
Sweden.”
Asked about new cross-European trends of modern anti-Semitism,
Kantor said that research, which he initiated by Tel Aviv University’s watchdog
on European anti-Semitism, shows numerous Iranian-funded NGO’s are “behind the
publication and encouragement of anti-Semitism.”
Speaking before a crowd
of 500 people at the European Parliament ahead of International Holocaust Day,
January 27, Kantor referred to new sanctions that the Council of Europe approved
against Iran as a “necessity.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Kantor referred to the
decision to boycott Iranian oil as an “historical move.”
But he said this
move must be followed by further sanctions – including a total embargo on
Iranian exports – if it fails to deliver results. The decision to delay the
application of the new sanction until May through June was “wrong,” Kantor
said.
“Giving the Iranians a month to comply would have
sufficed.”
Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein, who also spoke
before the parliament, warned that “we will not live under threat, we will not
beg for compassion and wait for another conference with abated
breath.”
Kantor – who received the decoration of the French Legion of
Honor on Tuesday – spoke at the event in Brussels after Martin Shultz, the newly
appointed German-born president of the European Parliament.
Referring to
the Wannsee Conference, in which, 70 years ago, Nazi leaders decided on the
“final solution to the Jewish problem,” Schultz said: “This decision was made in
the name of the German nation.
“As a representative of the German people,
it is my responsibility to keep the memory and never forget what happened 70
years ago in our name.
The German nation’s duty is to take in account its
responsibility for Jews today.”
The last and fourth speaker at the
ceremony was Gabriel Bach, a former senior justice of the Supreme Court, who was
the prosecutor at the trial of Adolf Eichmann 50 years ago. Eichmann, Bach said,
never felt regret for the mass murder of Jews. Eichmann’s expressions of regret,
he said were “mere lip service.”
Eichmann is reported to have said during
his trial – after which he was executed – that the Holocaust was the “worst
crime committed in history.”
In his address, Bach recalled testimony by a
Dutch journalist who spoke to Eichmann after the war, who said Eichmann told him
in the 1950s that his only regret was that “not being tougher on the Jews.”
Eichmann reportedly added that the proof that “tougher” treatment was necessary
“is the establishment of Israel, a Jewish state.”