This story, similar to one that was published in February, describes more cases of violence by Muslims against Jews in Malmo. The logical question, then, is: what are they doing in Malmo to stop this behavior, which is so utterly antithetical to Swedish values? Well, they’ve appointed an “anti-hate-crimes coordinator.” Yeah, that oughtta fix it.
“Hate crimes force Jews out of Malmo,” by Karl Ritter for the Associated Press, March 29:
Marcus Eilenberg is a Swedish Jew whose family roots in Malmo run deep. His paternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors who found shelter in this southern Swedish city in 1945. His wife’s parents fled to Sweden from communist Poland in the 1960s.
Now the 32-year-old law firm associate feels the welcome for Jews is running out, and he is moving to Israel with his wife and two children in May. He says he knows at least 15 other Jews who are leaving for a similar reason.
That reason, he says, is a rise in hate crimes against Jews in Malmo, and a sense that local authorities have little desire to deal with a problem that has exposed a crack in Sweden’s image as a bastion of tolerance and a haven for distressed ethnic groups.
Anti-Semitic crimes in Europe have usually been associated with the far right, but Shneur Kesselman, an Orthodox rabbi, says the threat now comes from Muslims.
“In the past five years I’ve been here, I think you can count on your hand how many incidents there have been from the extreme right,” he said. “In my personal experience, it’s 99 percent Muslims.”
Sweden prides itself on having taken in tens of thousands of the world’s war refugees. About 7 percent of Malmo’s 285,000 people were born in the Middle East, according to city statistics, and the city has large numbers from the Balkans, including the Macedonian who heads the city’s largest mosque. After the Holocaust, it took in many Jews who survived the World War II Nazi genocide.
Malmo police say that of 115 hate crimes reported in 2009, 52 were anti-Semitic. Bejzat Becirov, the mosque head, estimated there are about 60,000 Muslims in Malmo. But the number of Jews is about 700 and shrinking – it was twice as big two decades ago, according to Fredrik Sieradzki, a spokesman for the Jewish community. […]
The city recently appointed an anti-hate-crimes coordinator, Bjorn Lagerback, who said Mr. Reepalu has sent a letter to the city’s 20,000 employees denouncing all attacks against minorities in Malmo, though without specifically mentioning Jews.
The coordinator’s priority seems to be downplaying the severity of the situation and drawing false equivalences with hate crimes and violent intimidation:
Asked whether Jews were particularly targeted by hate crimes in Malmo, Mr. Lagerback said anti-Semitism had become “more explicit.” He added that “we also have discrimination against women who wear a hijab. They are also exposed to various kinds of insults.”
And no time is ever a bad time to sidestep the issue by playing the victim card:
Mosque leader Mr. Becirov spoke similarly, saying he feels “great sympathy for the Jewish community” and knows what it’s going through because “the Muslim community, too, is exposed to Islamophobia.”…