Love of the Land: Sweden, again

Sweden, again

David Harris
In the Trenches/JPost
31 January '10

Last time I wrote about Sweden, it was in regard to a one-two punch.

First, it was Aftonbladet, Sweden's largest-circulation newspaper, devoting two full pages to accusing the Israeli military of killing Palestinians to harvest their organs. Then came the refusal of Sweden's foreign minister, Carl Bildt, to condemn this modern-day blood libel.

That the paper could produce no evidence of this libelous charge didn't seem to bother those making the decision to go with the story. Why should a little thing like truth get in the way of selling papers or smearing Israel?

And that Minister Bildt, seldom shy to express his views, suddenly went silent on an issue affecting Sweden's image abroad and bilateral ties with Israel - even ignoring a plea from some EU colleagues to say something - couldn't have been more telling.

Oops - a slight correction. He wasn't silent when it came to calling his own ambassador in Israel onto the carpet for speaking out. When asked for her reaction to the Aftonbladet article, she appropriately condemned it. That was too much for the minister. His high-minded principles applied to defending freedom of the press, but not to criticizing its abuse.

Now it's the turn of Ilmar Reepalu. He's the mayor of Malmo, Sweden's third largest city.

You might think that the mayor has his hands full with local issues. After all, Malmo has, shall we say, more than its share of challenges.

The city has the largest concentration of Muslim immigrants in Sweden. And things aren't exactly going according to plan. The Swedish model of integration, played out in Malmo, has not begun to live up to the expectations of the social engineers who cooked it up. Instead, there's trouble galore.

Seething resentment among immigrants about isolation in what are effectively ghettoes, as well as a staggeringly high unemployment rate, has spilled over into periodic protests, some violent.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Sweden, again

Love of the Land: The Aftonbladet Organ-Trafficking Accusations against Israel: A Case Study

The Aftonbladet Organ-Trafficking Accusations against Israel: A Case Study

Mikael Tossavainen
JCPA
Institute for Global Jewish Affairs
Published January '10

-In August 2009, Sweden's largest daily Aftonbladet, a tabloid, published an article implying that the Israel Defense Forces kills Palestinians to provide the Israeli medical establishment with organs. The article was heavily criticized in the Swedish media, and several papers denounced it as anti-Semitic. The Swedish government refused to comment on the article, claiming legal factors prevented them. When the Swedish ambassador to Israel published a condemnation of the text, she was forced to retract it.

-In Israel the article stirred outrage and shock. The Israeli government demanded that its Swedish counterpart condemn the article. The Swedish government still refused to comment. As a consequence of the harsh official reactions in Israel, the debate in Sweden shifted, and Aftonbladet now portrayed itself as the defender of free speech against pressures from a foreign government.

-The affair created an echo in international media, and the Italian government tried to get the Swedish government to join it in a common condemnation of anti-Semitism. The Swedes still refused.

-Swedish-Israeli relations suffered from the affair. A planned visit to Israel by Foreign Minister Carl Bildt was canceled. Since Sweden held the rotating presidency of the European Union, the EU's role as a broker in the Middle East peace process also suffered.


The Swedish media tends to be biased against Israel in its reporting from the Middle East.[1] Nevertheless, the Swedish mainstream media is generally free of anti-Semitism. However, the summer of 2009 offered one of the rare exceptions when the country's largest daily, the tabloid Aftonbladet, published an article that stirred reactions beyond the limited Swedish public discourse.

(Read full report)

Love of the Land: The Aftonbladet Organ-Trafficking Accusations against Israel: A Case Study

Love of the Land: The Ugly European

The Ugly European

FresnoZionism.org
06 December 09

There was a popular book in the 1950’s called “The Ugly American”, which proposed that the US was losing ground in the struggle against Communism because of its arrogance and refusal to try to understand other cultures.

Today a great deal of ugliness comes from Europe. It includes an arrogant belief that they can continue to remake the map of the Mideast however they want, as they’ve done for the past several centuries, as well as a deliberate ignorance about the intentions of the players there.

News item:

Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist and author of a controversial UN report which accused Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during the Israel Defense Forces’ military offensive in the Gaza Strip last winter, will receive the Stockholm Human Rights Award, it was announced on Thursday.

“Richard Goldstone has made an outstanding career in the promotion of the rule of law and human rights, first in his home country South Africa and during the last fifteen years in various highly prestigious international fora,” the International Legal Assistance Consortium, a Sweden-based umbrella group of non-governmental organizations which oversees the awarding of the prize, said on Thursday.

Someone — I’m sorry that I don’t recall who — said that they would have given him a Nobel, but he spoiled it by saying that ‘Palestinian armed groups’ (not even ‘Hamas’) “may be guilty of war crimes” along with Israel. And of course they needed to give it to Obama, for reasons not clear to anyone including the recipient.

Sweden is at the forefront of Israel-hatred in Europe. Its government refused to condemn the Aftonbladet organ-stealing slander, and it is the source of funding for many of the most biased NGOs. So naturally Goldstone is a hero to them.

(Continue article)

Love of the Land: The Ugly European

Love of the Land: Yossi Melman proposes: Let's take the "Zion" out of Zionism

Yossi Melman proposes: Let's take the "Zion" out of Zionism

Ami Isseroff
Israel News
07 December 09

It seems you don't have to be Swedish to love the idea of transferring the Israeli capital.

We Jews are no doubt a very clever people. Just ask any Jew and he or she will tell you about our Nobel prize winners, about Maimonides, about Baruch d'Espinoza, about Albert Einstein and many others. Any Anti-Semite will also tell you how clever and shrewd we Jews are. So it is not surprising that one of the tribe has come up with an earthshaking proposal that will make the Middle East safe for peace. He is not just any Jew. He is a journalist for Ha'aretz, which considers itself the cleverest and most sophisticated of all Israeli newspapers, and he is not just any journalist. He is the internationally renowned Yossi Melman. Everyone knows how clever and knowledgeable he is.

Melman's proposal is that Israel will give up claiming Jerusalem as its capital. Don't get excited, it's only temporary, maybe for a thousand years or so, until tempers cool down a bit. After all, we waited 2,000 years, so what's another little temporary delay for us Jewish people? This will, Melman assures us, remove a major obstacle to peace. Who among us is not ready to make sacrifices for peace? Melman also proposes that the Palestinians will give up claiming Jerusalem as their capital. Since the Palestinians do not have men of genius among them like Melman, that is not likely to happen until Hell freezes over, so perhaps Melman's proposal is a bit impractical. On the other hand, Melman's proposal is timed impeccably to coincide with the EU resolution proposed by the Swedes. That which would recognize a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, but would not recognize West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Swedes will love the Melman plan.

(Continue to full article)

Love of the Land: Yossi Melman proposes: Let's take the "Zion" out of Zionism

Love of the Land: Swedish Meatballs

Swedish Meatballs

The story according to Reuters, as quoted by the Daily Times ( a Pakistani Site)

JERUSALEM: "A proposal before the European Union to endorse the division of Jerusalem would risk closing off half the city to non-Muslims, according to a think tank close to the Israeli government. The Israel Project said the plan could be backed at a regular meeting of the bloc’s 27 foreign ministers on Monday, as part of what it called a bid to “forge a high-profile role” in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Diplomats in Brussels said the EU meeting was likely to discuss the stalled Middle East peace process, but no radical new policy change was in the works. East Jerusalem has been seen for years as prospective capital of a future Palestinian state. The think tank singled out current EU president Sweden and its foreign minister Carl Bildt, saying he aimed to sideline the EU’s more balanced existing policy. Relations between Sweden and Israel have been irritated recently by what was seen in Israel as an anti-Semitic story in the Swedish press and Israel’s refusal to let a Swedish minister visit Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip." -more

Love of the Land: Swedish Meatballs

Love of the Land: Stop the Spread of the Swedish Blood Libel

Stop the Spread of the Swedish Blood Libel

The false accusations of organ harvesting continue to spread.

Backspin/Honest Reporting
03 December 09

Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet's August 2009 story (translated into English in full here) accusing the IDF of harvesting Palestinian organs caused an uproar. Donald Bostrom, the author of the offensive piece, duly demonstrated his utter lack of any basic journalistic standards when he said: "But whether it's true or not - I have no idea, I have no clue." On top of this, the story was further undermined as one of the Palestinian families interviewed said they never told any reporter that their son was missing organs.

With the credibility of the story in tatters one might have expected the outrageous accusations to have a limited shelf life or to disappear altogether. However, the Swedish blood libel is a textbook case study of how what starts as an article published in a language read by few from a country of limited international influence can turn into a poison that spreads much wider.

As Ha'aretz reports:

Stories appearing on several Ukrainian Web sites claim Israel has brought around some 25,000 Ukrainian children into the country over the past two years in order to harvest their organs. ...

Vyacheslav Gudin told the estimated 300 attendees of the Kiev conference a detailed story about a Ukrainian man's fruitless search for 15 children who had been adopted in Israel. The children, Gudin said, had clearly been taken by Israeli medical centers, where they were used for "spare parts." Gudin said it was essential that all Ukrainians be made aware of the genocide Israel was perpetrating. ...

Many Ukrainian Web sites covered the speeches without putting them into context. In response to a request by the country's Jewish community Ukraine's police force is investigating ZUBR, one of the Web sites that reported the speeches. (Continue reading...)

Love of the Land: Stop the Spread of the Swedish Blood Libel

Love of the Land: Anti-Israeli Swedish government pushes EU towards backing unilateral declaration of Palestinian state and division of Jerusalem

Anti-Israeli Swedish government pushes EU towards backing unilateral declaration of Palestinian state and division of Jerusalem

Robin Shepherd
RobinShepherdonline.com
01 December 09

Sweden, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, is pushing the EU to make an official statement next week backing both a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood and also the division of Jerusalem, a draft resolution obtained exclusively by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper shows.

EU foreign ministers may now make a declaration along such lines at a meeting on December 7. It would be the first significant foreign policy initiative following the creation of a de facto EU foreign ministry under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty which came into effect today.

Israel is still reeling from the refusal of the Swedish government to distance itself from a report during the summer by the country’s top selling newspaper, Aftonbladet, which alleged an international Jewish conspiracy in which the Israel Defence Forces were said to be harvesting the bodily organs of Palestinian children for sale on the black market. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt was, however, among the first to condemn Switzerland for its decision on Sunday to ban the construction of Muslim minarets which he described as “an expression of quite a bit of prejudice and maybe even fear”, adding that it was “a negative signal in every way.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Love of the Land: Anti-Israeli Swedish government pushes EU towards backing unilateral declaration of Palestinian state and division of Jerusalem

Israel Matzav: The truth about IKEA?

The truth about IKEA?

Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.

IKEA may have stores in Israel like this one in Netanya, but if the claims in a book recently published in Swedish are true, the Israeli stores don't make up for its founder's racism and Nazi-linked past.

Kamprad's former personal assistant, Stenebo reveals in a new book published in Sweden that the budget-furnishings monolith seems to have quite a few sordid secrets. The Truth About Ikea has yet to be translated into English, yet it's already sent ripples through the media, as Ikea fans learn that all may not be sunshine and meatballs at their favorite cheap, simple, eco-friendly big-box home-furnishings store.

Stenebo's position has given him amazing access to Kamprad, but he's not the first to question the furniture tycoon's morality. A journalist in 1994 threatened to expose Kamprad's adolescent membership in Nazi youth organizations. Kamprad addressed the matter publicly, apologizing to his Jewish employees and dismissing this revelation as a brief and foolish flirtation with Nazism. But it appears he may have been raising funds and recruiting members as late as September 1945, and he remained friends with a Swedish fascist politician through the 1950s.

And Kamprad's Nazi adventure may have been indicative of a deeper vein of racism. Stenebo says Ikea execs often refer to foreigners as "niggers" and deny them promotions. All of Ikea's top executives come from the same small region of Sweden as Kamprad, Stenebo alleges; he also characterizes Kamprad's heir apparent, Peter, as an "incompetent racist."

There's more too. Read the whole thing. It will make you think twice before shopping at IKEA again. Especially considering that the store is Swedish.

Israel Matzav: The truth about IKEA?

Love of the Land: Anti-Semitic contagion…from Sweden to Algeria

Anti-Semitic contagion…from Sweden to Algeria

Robin Shepherd

Think Tank Blog

15 September 09

Well that’s not the kind of headline you’d have seen a few years ago. But the times they are a changing. Contemporary Europe is not merely competing with anti-Semitic bigotry in the countries of the Muslim world, it is now exporting it to them.

In the wake of the story in Sweden’s Aftonbladet newspaper last month which suggested that Israeli soldiers were involved in an international conspiracy to harvest the bodily organs of Palestinian children, it now appears that stories are rife across the Middle East that Jews and Israelis are harvesting the organs of Algerian children too.

The Jerusalem Post reports today that the story surfaced in Algeria’s Al-Khabar newspaper. According to the report, gangs of Moroccans and Algerians have been sweeping through the streets of Algerian cities and hunting down children who are then slaughtered and dismembered so their bodily organs can be sold to American Jews and Israelis.

According to the Post, the source of the allegations appears to be Dr. Mustafa Khayatti, head of the Algerian National Committee for the Development of Health Research who is quoted as saying:

“The arrest of Jewish organ trafficking gangs does not mean that the danger has gone; top officials and specialists in this issue assert that there are other Jewish gangs who remain active in several Arab countries.”

Iran’s Press TV, now a feature in living rooms across Europe, has apparently picked up on the story with glee. It is also being disseminated widely across the Middle East.

Sweden, its press and its government can be mightily proud of their achievements. Sweden will be remembered for something more than Abba after all.

To read the Jerusalem Post article in full, click here:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251804571092&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull.

Love of the Land: Anti-Semitic contagion…from Sweden to Algeria

Love of the Land: Top Spanish newspaper to run “expert” interview with Holocaust denier David Irving in WWII anniversary week

Top Spanish newspaper to run “expert” interview with Holocaust denier David Irving in WWII anniversary week

Robin Shepherd
Think Tank Blog
03 September 09

David Irving, Europe’s most prominent Holocaust denier, is fond of arguing that time is on his side. “All that interests me now,” he said on his website in August, “is the question, whose books will scholars be using in a hundred years’ time — mine, or those of the conformist historians like Sir Ian Kershaw and Sir Martin Gilbert?”

But why wait a hundred years? On Saturday this week, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo is set to run an interview with Irving as part of a series of stories with “experts” for the 70th anniversray of the start of World War II. Irving, always keen to portray himself as a kind of hunted hero, gleefully reports on the controversy that the article has aroused in Israel with a headline in his online newsletter saying: “Israel’s Ambassador to Spain pleads wth Madrid’s leading daily newspaper El Mundo not to publish their major interview with British Historian David Irving.” (My italics)

It is only a matter of weeks since Sweden’s top selling newspaper Aftonbladet published a two-page spread of its own alleging that American Jews and Israeli soldiers were involved in a conspiracy to harvest the bodily organs of Palestinian children and sell them on the international black market. Is there something in the air?

I have said before that, for those who follow such matters, there is always a danger of getting too close to one’s subject. But it certainly seems that the boundaries of acceptable discourse about Israel and the Jews in Europe have widened considerably in recent months. Apartheid analogies now look routine. The attempt to compare Israel with Nazi Germany is heading in the same direction.

Events in Sweden and Spain may indicate that conspiracy theories, blood libels and Holocaust denial are on the verge of a resurgence of their own. It is too early to tell. But the general drift is surely cause for concern.

According to the Jerusalem Post, El Mundo plans to run the interview with Irving the day after an interview with Avner Shalev, the chairman of Yad Vashem. The timeline will not be coincidental. It is a standard technique in journalism to run opposing viewpoints on consecutive days in order to provide a rounded picture to readers. So, for readers of El Mundo, Friday’s edition will assert that the Holocaust did happen. Saturday’s will assert that it did not. Who knows, perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle?

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Love of the Land: Top Spanish newspaper to run “expert” interview with Holocaust denier David Irving in WWII anniversary week

Israel Matzav: The undiplomatic Carl Bildt

The undiplomatic Carl Bildt

On Monday, I reported that Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini was working on a face-saving measure by which the European Union would condemn the Aftonbladet blood libel and Sweden would go along with that condemnation. On Tuesday, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt threw cold water on the entire idea.

However, in a further twist to this diplomatic crisis that swings from the bad to the farcical, Bildt – in Kabul for talks with international representatives and Afghan officials – has flatly denied that he and Frattini even discussed Sweden’s standoff with Israel, according to the Swedish news agency TT.

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Israel Matzav: The undiplomatic Carl Bildt

Love of the Land: Swedish Future

Swedish Future

The cartoon shows a future Miss Sweden in a burqa, the body-bag in which Islamists want to imprison all women. The demonization of Jews and the Jewish State continues in full force. The insane Islamist antisemitic incitement has now commandeered the European press. The end will, of course, be the Arabization of Europe. Here's Alan Dershowitz commenting on the latest outrage out of Sweden:

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Love of the Land: Swedish Future

Sweden's hatred for Israel boils to the surface...

Sweden's hatred for Israel boils to the surface...

Sweden's Refusal
to Condemn Organ Libel is Bogus

by Alan M. Dershowitz

Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Posted: 25 Aug 2009 03:58 PM PDT

The Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, has refused to condemn a “blood libel” published by one of Sweden’s leading newspapers, Aftonbladet. The article outrageously claims that Jewish soldiers in Israel killed Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. The writer of the article, Donald Bostrom has acknowledged, according to the New York Times, that “he has no idea whether the accusations are true.” Yet a widely-read Swedish newspaper was prepared to publish this undocumented and highly volatile accusation, without requiring its author to present any credible evidence.

This false accusation is reminiscent of the medieval blood libels that falsely accused Jews of killing Christian children in order to use their blood for religious rituals.

Not only has foreign minister Bildt refused to issue to a personal condemnation of the current “organ libel,” his foreign ministry explicitly disavowed the denunciation that was issued by Sweden’s Ambassador to Israel, who had called the article “shocking and appalling.” In a self-righteous statement, Mr. Bildt claimed that condemnation of the article would be inappropriate because freedom of expression is a part of the Swedish Constitution.

This is a bogus and ignorant argument, as anyone who understands freedom of speech will attest. I have devoted much of my life to defending freedom of speech and consider myself something of an expert on the matter. Nobody is talking about censoring the Swedish press or imprisoning the writer of the absurd article. What we are talking about is expanding the marketplace of ideas to include a completely warranted condemnation of sloppy journalism and outrageous accusations that foment an already increasing anti-Semitism in Sweden. Freedom of speech is based on an open and vibrant marketplace of ideas. No journalist is immune from criticism for bigotry and defamation, even from high ranking government officials.

Recall that virtually every government official in Europe went out of their way to condemn the depiction of perfectly innocent cartoons that offended some Muslims by portraying Mohammed. (More recently, the Yale Press withdrew these cartoons and other classic art depicting Mohammed out of fear of violent reaction.) Without getting into the business of comparative offensiveness, no reasonable person could argue that depicting a long-dead religious figure comes anywhere close to falsely accusing contemporary Jews of murdering innocent Palestinians to steal their organs.

The reality is that the Swedish government, long known for its cowardice, simply does not want to get into a fight with the Muslim world, much as it didn’t want to get into a fight with the Nazi’s during the Second World War. Sweden is perfectly willing to sell out the Jews in the name of neutrality, or in this case, in the false name of freedom of expression. Its silence is beneath contempt.

I am offended by Sweden’s craven complicity with evil not only as a Jew, but also as a strong defender of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech carries with it certain obligations as well. One of those is to condemn false speech. The best answer to false speech is not censorship, it is truthfulness. By remaining silent in the face of the bigoted falsities contained in the Aftonbladet article, the Swedish foreign minister inevitably creates the impression that he sympathizes with the writer, and perhaps even with his conclusions. Mr. Bildt, too, has freedom of speech, which he has exercised on many occasions. By choosing not to exercise it on this occasion—or even worse, by exercising it to criticize the Swedish Ambassador to Israel for her condemnation of the article—Bildt becomes a facilitator of bigotry. He should be ashamed of himself. His country should be ashamed of him. And if his country is not ashamed of him, then every decent person in the world should be ashamed of Sweden.

Silence in the face of evil is not an option. As Edmund Burke reminded us many years ago: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” To that I may add, “Or say nothing.”

taken from B'NAI ELIM (Sons of the Mighty)

Israel Matzav: Swedish Chancellor of Justice to determine charges of racial agitation

Swedish Chancellor of Justice to determine charges of racial agitation

The Swedish Chancellor of Justice has been asked to determine whether the Social Democratic party's daily tabloid Aftonbladet is guilty of racial agitation in light of its unsubstantiated blood libel that charges IDF soldiers with having murdered 'Palestinians' and stolen and sold their organs.

"Is that true? I am perplexed," Åsa Linderborg, Aftonbladet's culture editor, said after being informed by the The Local of the report on Tuesday.

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Israel Matzav: Swedish Chancellor of Justice to determine charges of racial agitation

Israel Matzav: Sweden's long history of terror support

Sweden's long history of terror support

If anyone out there really believes that Israel's empty threats to boycott IKEA and Volvo are going to bring the Swedes around to stop supporting terror, David Frankfurter has news for you: The Swedes can take the heat.

In March of 2004, I highlighted reports from Swedish newspapers that showed that Sweden had, from 1997 to 2004, deliberately and consistently classified as secret their own reports that their donations to Arafat’s Palestinian Authority were being diverted to corruption and the creation of a police state. Why? So that they could continue to knowingly channel billions of crowns to Palestinian corruption and violence. Also hidden from view of the Parliament was tens of millions in donations to the Palestinian Negotiations Support Unit. An organization which had stopped negotiating and had become a pure Palestinian propaganda agency. Swedish politicians were “shocked” – but the money kept flowing.

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Israel Matzav: Sweden's long history of terror support

Israel Matzav: More proof Sweden is an anti-Semitic country

More proof Sweden is an anti-Semitic country

Here's some more proof for my claim that Sweden is an anti-Semitic country.

THE RESULTS of media distortion and constant demonizing of Jews and Israelis are felt in Sweden all the time - most recently Saturday in a soccer match involving Jewish youth club IF Hakoah, in which spectators raced onto the pitch during and after the match to assault the Hakoah players for the crime of being Jewish.

One problem, however: at this particular match, none of the Hakoah players happened to be Jewish. Not that it mattered in a climate of hate cloaked in government silence.

Other aspects of Swedish silence that are equally worrying if one steps back and examines the broader canvas. Sweden is one of the world's largest per capita donors to Palestinian Arab welfare. This funding comes in the form of tax revenues paid dutifully by hard-working Swedes lucky enough to still have a job, to the tune of about of 700 million kronor per annum and increasing yearly.

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Israel Matzav: More proof Sweden is an anti-Semitic country

Israel Matzav: Sweden has a long history of funding anti-Semitic NGO's

Sweden has a long history of funding anti-Semitic NGO's

Gerald Steinberg reports that Sweden has a long history of funding anti-Semitic NGO's (non-governmental organizations).

An NGO Monitor research report on Swedish government funding, published on June 29 2009, documented this pattern in detail, and warned of the incitement and anti-Semitic language being used routinely by these organizations. This systematic study examined over 20 major NGOs funded through the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), Diakonia, the multi-national NGO Development Center (NDC), and the Swedish Mission Council (SMR).

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Israel Matzav: Sweden has a long history of funding anti-Semitic NGO's