WORLD SEPTEMBER 18, 2009
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When Zvi Mazel was summoned to the Swedish Foreign Ministry back in January 2004, he knew he was in trouble. As Israel’s top diplomat in Stockholm, the 64-year-old had just done something markedly undiplomatic--not exactly rare for Israeli envoys. No, he hadn’t remarked upon the “yellow skin and slanted eyes” of Asians. No, he hadn’t taken part in a child-pornography ring. And no, he hadn’t been found wallowing in his backyard--drunk, naked, and strapped in sexual bondage gear.
Mazel’s offense was of a different order, the sort that would turn him into a national hero, not a national embarrassment. Attending a Stockholm art exhibit, he’d come across an unusual piece: “SNOW WHITE AND THE MADNESS OF TRUTH.” The Snow White in question was a 29-year-old Palestinian woman who’d recently blown up herself and 21 Israelis at a restaurant, and her smiling photo draped a mini sailboat drifting about a rectangular basin of blood with Bach’s Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut (“My Heart Swims in Blood”) playing in the background. An enraged Mazel unplugged the display’s power chords, toppled one of its spotlights, and was promptly escorted out of the museum.
In the ensuing fracas, Mazel enjoyed the full-throttled backing of Israeli officials, who defended his act as a suitable response to the glorification of a mass murderer. But the Swedish government treated Mazel’s behavior differently, as an inexcusable assault on the nation’s sacrosanct value of free expression.
Fast forward five-and-a-half years, and the two countries find themselves in a similar kerfuffle. The month-old spat began with the now-infamous “organ-harvesting” article in Aftonbladet, Sweden’s largest newspaper, which accused Israeli soldiers of extracting kidneys from dead Palestinian combatants (and somehow transporting them to rabbis in New Jersey). To Jewish ears, the charge sounded suspiciously familiar, like a 21st century version of the blood libel that sparked pogroms in Europe from 1144 to 1946 (and that has lately gotten a new lease on life in the Muslim world).
The Israeli government, not to mention Jewish organizations worldwide, immediately called on the Swedish government to condemn the “organ libel.” But after Sweden’s ambassador to Israel initially distanced her countrymen from the article, the Swedish Foreign Ministry proceeded to distance itself from her. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, and other government officials have all since repeated the mantra that Swedish laws and norms prevent them from interfering in--or even opining on--a media matter. And polls show that an overwhelming majority of Swedes stand behind them. A headline in the Swedish English-language daily The Local managed to capture the popular perception of this imbroglio in just seven words: “Sweden’s free speech tradition draws Israeli ire.”
This is the self-portrait Sweden has painted, one of a free-expression paradise where citizens can say or publish whatever they please without consequence.
It’s a lovely image. It’s also a lie.
Now, Reinfeldt and Bildt aren’t lying, per se, when they tell you that freedom of the press is enshrined in the Swedish Constitution. It is. But so are explicit restrictions on that freedom. Chapter 7 of the relevant section catalogues 21 types of “offences against the freedom of the press.” Some, like #4 (“unauthorised trafficking in secret information”) and #17 (“threats made against a public servant”), are standard even in the most libertarian democracies. Others are more draconian, like #15: “insulting language or behaviour, whereby a person insults another by means of offensive invective or allegations or other insulting behaviour towards him.”
There’s also #11, a form of which can be found in almost every Western democracy but America: “agitation against a population group, whereby a person threatens or expresses contempt for a population group or other such group with allusion to race, colour, national or ethnic origin, religious faith or sexual orientation.”
Swedish judicial authorities have repeatedly invoked this clause and similar regulations in the country’s penal code to investigate, charge, and fine or imprison Swedes who vilify minorities.
The most famous such case involved Lutheran pastor Åke Green, who in June 2004 was sentenced by a district court to a month in prison for a sermon that called homosexuality “a deep cancerous tumor in the body of society.” After 17 months of appeals, during which the Green case became an evangelical cause célèbre, the Supreme Court reluctantly acquitted the clergyman--not on Swedish legal grounds, the Court noted, but in deference to the religious-freedom provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Others haven’t been so fortunate. 30-year-old white supremacist Björn Björkqvist, for example, has already served multiple jail terms for his incendiary writings against essentially every non-Aryan minority in Sweden.
Even Aftonbladet has run afoul of Swedish hate-speech laws, albeit not for anything the newspaper itself has published. At least twice in recent years, the tabloid’s editor has been found liable for failing to censor the ravings of a commenter on one of its website’s chat forums.
As for Swedish legal action against anti-Semitism, context is key. In January 2002, for instance, a district court sentenced neo-Nazi Fredrik Sandberg to six months in prison for publishing a Third-Reich-era pamphlet (“The Jewish Question”). But four years later, the official who initiated that case (Swedish Chancellor of Justice Göran Lambertz) discontinued an investigation into the Stockholm Central Mosque regarding its distribution of tapes that encouraged Muslims to kill Jews, described therein as “the brothers of apes and pigs.” His legal justification? “[Such statements] should be judged differently--and therefore be regarded as permissible--because they were used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict.”
Alas, such unabashed double standards aren’t confined to Swedish judicial proceedings.
Green Party elder statesman Per Gahrton, for example, was among the first Swedish politicians to publicly castigate Ambassador Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier for her Aftonbladet condemnation, demanding that she be recalled from Tel Aviv and “taught the basics of Swedish freedom of speech.” Yet just five months ago, strangely enough, Gahrton scolded new NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen--the Danish prime minister during the country’s blasphemous-cartoon bout with the Muslim world--for “failing to condemn the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed caricatures.” Confronted with the contradiction, Gahrton backtracked (“condemn” was a poor word choice, he admitted).
Aftonbladet hasn’t even acknowledged its record of hypocrisy. As most European publications stood in solidarity with Jyllands-Posten and other Danish newspapers during the 2006 controversy, the Swedish tabloid branded Denmark “the most prejudiced, bigoted and narrow-minded country in Western Europe.” But now that its own work is under attack, Aftonbladet has embraced the free-speech defense (and unlike Jyllands-Posten, which apologized for its slight, has expressed no regrets).
And then there’s Prime Minister Reinfeldt, who faced his own cartoon crisis less than a year after taking office. In August 2007, the regional newspaper Nerikes Allehanda published an editorial on freedom of expression and, to illustrate the point, included a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed with the body of a dog--a drawing initially slated for a Stockholm art exhibit before it was jettisoned at the eleventh hour by the hosting museum (and subsequently rejected by others) for fear of violent reprisals.
As the cartoonist submitted himself to 24/7 police protection after receiving death threats, including a $100,000 bounty on his head from Al Qaeda in Iraq, Prime Minister Reinfeldt moved swiftly to prevent a Swedish sequel to the Danish affair, which claimed over 200 lives. While he resisted Muslim pressure to prosecute the offender--blasphemy, unlike group defamation, is legal in Sweden--he invited Muslim ambassadors and local community leaders to a summit. Algerian envoy Merzak Bedjaoui hailed Reinfeldt’s proposed get-together as “an excellent initiative taken in a spirit of appeasement.” And that spirit pierced the air as the prime minister addressed the gathering: “I regret if people have taken offense or feel offended,” he said. “I personally would never intentionally act in a way that could be perceived by other religions as provocative or offensive.” This time around, Reinfeldt has professed no regrets, nor has he expressed any desire to defuse the situation by meeting his Israeli counterpart. (Foreign Minister Bildt already cancelled a scheduled visit to Jerusalem.)
How, then, does Sweden handle hate speech? When does it prosecute the offenders, when does it merely apologize for them, and when does it rally to their cause while pretending that that’s what the country always does? In short, whenever Sweden pleases and for whatever reasons suit the moment.
Benjamin Birnbaum is a reporter-researcher for The New Republic.
17 comments
Benjamin Birnbaum writes: -- How, then, does Sweden handle hate speech? When does it prosecute the offenders, when does it merely apologize for them, and when does it rally to their cause while pretending that that’s what the country always does? In short, whenever Sweden pleases and for whatever reasons suit the moment. As Benjamin Birnbaum knows full well, because he happily takes its 30 pieces of silver, he works for a magazine that supports Israel regardless of the hate speech that the magazine promotes and regardless of the war crimes commited by an Israel that this magazine will support until the last Palestinian is killed. How, then, does Isreal handle war crimes? When does it prosecute the offenders, when does it merely apologize for them, and when does it rally to their cause while pretending that that’s what the country always does? In short, whenever Israel pleases and for whatever reasons suit the moment. If Benjamin Birnbaum had an ounce of sense in him he would recognize the correcteness of my rewriting of his assertion and, more specifically, of how decades of Israeli war crimes dwarf Swedish hate crimes. But like too many TNR writers he will continue to do what is necessary for "the good of the cause," as Solzhenitsyn phrased it, and go on to spend his pieces of silver earned cheaply with the blood of dead Palestinians and Israelis. Cheers, Benjamin.
- ndmackenzie
September 18, 2009 at 3:35am
For heaven's sake ndmac, try to stay focused on the actual topic on hand, which is Swedish inconsistency in how they apply their press laws. Why don't you try to address this issue, try to explain how the inconsistency is justified (or even not, depending on your opinion) instead you take it as an opportunity to dive off the deep end. If they wrote an article about solar panels being built in Mexico you would shriek about how the Palestinians would love to have them and how they are being denied them due to big bad TNR. As to the Swedes, they are just as prone to hypocrisy and mush headedness as anyone. I love Swedes (well, the women anyway) but see no reason to call them out. Luckily, for us, for the world, etc. no one anywhere really gives a rats ass about Sweden. The best way to combat this type of stupidity is to condescend to them, to treat them like an ignorant and silly child.
- blackton
September 18, 2009 at 10:29am
by the way ndmac, I am still waiting for my reparations and apology from you due to the barbarism of your own country, the war crimes that you continue even now on a daily basis stagger the imagination, and never once do you ever see fit to mention or condemn them. You have so much blood on your hands.
- blackton
September 18, 2009 at 10:33am
My experience during extensive travels throughout Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia is these are wonderful people, generally as free from prejudice as anywhere else in the world -- or more so -- and genuinely committed to free expression for all. On the other hand, they're also as afraid of being shot or blown up as anyone else, so they bend over backwards not to offend radical Islamists. That might seem unfair, but it is also fairly common just about everywhere. I noticed all those swaggering right-wingers who rushed to condemn anyone worried about negative media portrayals of the Prophet Muhammad, didn't exactly go out of their way to put themselves in danger. Let's see Ann Coulter show the guts to walk down a street wearing a shirt depicting Muhammad as a pig or a dog. Let's see Mr Birnbaum or Mr Peretz do it. People don't like getting blown up and right now they think radical Islamists are more likely to do that to them than anyone else. So they go out of their way not to offend those dangerous people. It's not exactly hard to understand and not exactly confined to Sweden, Europe or left-wing college campuses. Are there people here so stupid they really need this stuff explained to them?
- DC Spence
September 18, 2009 at 11:00am
DC Spence, you are attibuting Swedens inconsistency in how they apply their laws to fear of being blown up, I understand your take though I don't agree with it. The reason not to offend Muslims is the same reason not to offend Christians or jews, or Zoroastrians for that matter, mainstream newspublications should conduct themselves with decorum and good taste. Insulting Christ or Mohammed or Moses is not a legitimate news story, and for that matter neither was that ridiculous fantasy that Israeli soldiers were taking organs and shipping them to NJ. That is loonie tunes material. Why would they publish such nonsense? It has nothing to do with fear of provoking Muslims, it has more to do with a strain of leftist idiocy in Europe that finds Israel to blame for all of the problems in the Middle East. I see nothing wrong with calling the writer an idiot for believing it, and the newspaper for publishing it. I also don't agree that Swedes are motivated by cowardice. I would not insult Islam not because I am afraid of the reaction but because I respect the integrity of others beliefs.
- blackton
September 18, 2009 at 12:08pm
BB: How, then, does Sweden handle hate speech? When does it prosecute the offenders, when does it merely apologize for them, and when does it rally to their cause while pretending that that’s what the country always does? In short, whenever Sweden pleases and for whatever reasons suit the moment. george: And this is not also the case in, say, Israel? How is hate speech against Arabs and Palestinians handled there? As in all democratic republics there are those in Israel who stand against hate speech and there are those who do not. No nation can be singled out as a paragon of either Good or Evil in this regard. If you follow Marty Peretz in The Spine you follow his own [at times barely disguised] extreme prejudice against all things Arabs. That is his right of course. TNR online is a bastion of free speech and permits wide extremes of political opinion. In such liberal climates however hypocrisy can often reign supreme. Hypocrisy is the lifeblood of extremists at both ends of the political spectrum. From Wikipedia: Characterizing the anti-Arabism of Oriental Jews (Mizrahi and Sephardic) as "vociferous", Conor Cruise O'Brien in The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism writes that, "Anti-Arabism is, for obvious reasons, very widespread in Israel, among all Jews."[48] During the latter part of the Arab riots in October 2000 events, thousands of Jewish Israelis counter-rioted in Nazareth and Tel Aviv, throwing stones at Arabs, destroying Arab property, and chanting "Death to Arabs".[49] Haaretz editorialized that that year's "Yom Kippur will be infamous for the violent, racist outburst by Jews against Arabs within Israel".[50] The Israeli political party Yisrael Beiteinu, whose platform includes the redrawing of Israel's borders so that about 500,000 Israeli Arabs would be outside them, and under the jurisdiction of a future Palestinian State, won 15 seats in the 2009 Israeli elections; increasing its seats by 4 compared to the 2006 Israeli elections. This policy, also known as the Lieberman Plan, has been described as "anti-Arab" by The Guardian.[51] Israeli Labor Party chairman Amir Peretz, referring to Yisrael Beiteinu, has said "Anyone who opposes racism must not let the extreme right-wing bloc run Israel"[52] Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of Yisrael Beiteinu, was later given the position of Minister of Strategic Threats by Ehud Olmert. Guardian columnist Jonathan Steele has described Lieberman's politics as "anti-Arab racism", quoting Arab MK Ahmad Tibi who has released statements describing Lieberman as "a very dangerous and sophisticated politician who has won his support through race hatred".[53] Some Israeli politicians and leaders have used negative language when discussing Arabs and Palestinians. In 2004, Yehiel Hazan, a member of the Knesset, declared at the Knesset that "The Arabs are worms. You find them everywhere like worms, underground as well as above." and went on to describe them as "murderers" and "terrorists".[54][55] Rafael Eitan, former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, said on 12 April 1983 that Palestinians who endanger cars on the road should be treated aggressively and their freedom of movement should be narrowed until they will be like "drugged cockroaches in a bottle". In 2004, then Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Boim asked "What is it about Islam as a whole and the Palestinians in particular? Is it some form of cultural deprivation? Is it some genetic defect? There is something that defies explanation in this continued murderousness."[56] In Hebron, the slogans "Arabs to the crematoria" and "Arabs - sub-humans" were once spray-painted on a wall by an unknown, and anti-Arab graffiti has been spraypainted in Jerusalem.[57] Leftists have noted that this graffiti remains for long periods of time compared to others, and have therefore painted swastikas beside the graffiti in order to hasten the city to take action.[58] A comic strip for children was carried in an Zionist-modern-Orthodox Jewish weekly, Sh'a Tova, that negatively depicted Arabs, and made the statement, "Yes, a good Arab is a dead Arab."[57] The article "The Arab Image in Hebrew School Textbooks" by professor Dan Bar-Tal of the Tel Aviv University makes a study of 124 textbooks used in Israeli schools and reports that "over the years, generations of Israeli Jews were taught a negative and often delegitimizing view of Arabs." The two main traits of Arabs in the textbooks are "primitiveness, inferiority in comparison to Jews" and "their violence, to characteristics like brutality, untrustworthiness, cruelty, fanaticism, treacherousness and aggressiveness." In the 1980s and 1990s "Geography books for the elementary and junior high schools stereotype Arabs negatively, as primitive, dirty, agitated, aggressive, and hostile to Jews … history books in the elementary schools hardly mention Arabs … history textbooks of the high schools, the majority of which cover the Arab-Jewish conflict, stereotype the Arabs negatively. Arabs are presented as intransigent and uncompromising."[59][60] The Bedouin claim they face discrimination and have submitted a counter-report to the United Nations that disputes the Israeli Government's official state report. They claim they are not treated as equal citizens in Israel and that Bedouin towns are not provided the same level of services or land that Jewish towns of the same size are and they are not given fair access to water. The city of Be'er Sheva refused to recognize a Bedouin holy site, despite a High Court recommendation.[61] Israeli Arabs complain of racism and discrimination and community leaders have said they will draw up a blacklist of grievances. The decision to draw up this list was taken after the terrorist attack of Eden Natan-Zada. "This was a planned terror attack and we find it extremely difficult to treat it as an individual action", Abed Inbitawi, an Israeli-Arab spokesman, told The Jerusalem Post. "It marks a certain trend that reflects a growing tendency of fascism and racism in Israeli society generally as well as the establishment towards the minority Arab community", he said.[62] Often Israeli-Arab soccer players face chants from the crowd when they play such as "No Arabs, No Terrorism".[63] Abbas Zakour, an Arab Member of the Knesset, was stabbed by a gang speaking Russian-accented Hebrew who shouted anti-Arab chants. The attack was part of a "stabbing rampage" and was described as a "hate crime".[64] In 2006, a research institute poll reported that 41% of Israelis were in favour of Arab-Israeli segregation, 40% believed "the state needs to support the emigration of Arab citizens", and 63% believed Arabs to be a "security and demographic threat" to Israel. The data went on to report more than two thirds would not want to live in the same building as an Arab, 36% believed Arab culture to be inferior, and 18% felt hatred when they heard Arabic spoken.[51] In 2007 the Association for Civil Rights in Israel released a report claiming that the expression of anti-Arab views had doubled, and anti-Arab racist incidents had increased by 26%.[65] The report quoted polls that suggested 50% of Jewish Israelis do not believe Arab citizens of Israel should have equal rights, 50% said they wanted the government to encourage Arab emigration from Israel, and 75% of Jewish youths said Arabs were less intelligent and less clean than Jews. The Arab Association for Human Rights reported in 2008 that several parent removed their children from a daycare centre in Israel after they found out that a 16 month old boy was an Arab.[66] The Mossawa Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel reported a tenfold increase in racist incidents against Arabs in 2008. Jerusalem reported the highest number of incidents. The report blames Israeli leaders for the violence, saying "These attacks are not the hand of fate, but a direct result of incitement against the Arab citizens of this country by religious, public, and elected officials".[67] In March 2009, following the Gaza War, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) drew criticism when several young soldiers had T-shirts printed up privately with slogans and caricatures that were deemed offensive to Palestinians.[68][69][69][70] In March 2009 a series of Arab cultural events titled "Jerusalem, the capital of Arab culture" which were scheduled to be held in Jerusalem, Nazareth, and other parts of the country by the Palestinian Authority was banned by Avi Dichter the Internal Security Minister of Israel. Nazareth Arab Mayor Ramiz Jeraisi criticized the move as anti-Arab and compared Dichter to Avigdor Lieberman. According to Dichter, the events would constitute a violation of the interim agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.[71] In June 2009, Haaretz reported on the widespread phenomenon of Israeli Border Police forcing Palestinians to humiliate themselves on camera and then publishing the video on YouTube. The police forced the Palestinians to sing anti-Arab songs with lyrics such as "Let every Arab mother know that the fate of her children is in the hands of the Company". The YouTube videos are popular in Israel and have attracted many anti-Arab comments written in Hebrew such as "Stinking Arab".[72] In June 2009, Haaretz reported that Israel's Public Security Minister, Yitzhak Aharonovich labeled an undercover police officer a "dirty Arab" whilst touring Tel Aviv. Aharonovich is a member of the controversial far-right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party that has been accused of racist policies.[73] george walton
- iambiguous
September 18, 2009 at 1:32pm
Having followed this story from the beginning, I appreciate Benjamin Birnbaum's effort to expose the hypocrisy of Sweden, which is what has bothered me the most. My image of Sweden as neutral, tolerant, and a role model for other countries has been shattered. Aftonbladet is partly owned by a coalition of Swedish labor unions, including the union that assembles the Saabs and Volvos that many Jews buy in part as an alternative to German cars because of that neutral tolerant image. No one, including the author Bostrum, had a shred of evidence for the claims made in the body part story. Reinfeldt and Bildt hid behind 'freedom of the press' for political reasons. Their center right government is presiding over one of Europe's weakest economies due to a serious decline in exports, and they are slipping in the polls. It was very interesting that, when Bildt was under fire from most of the rest of the EU on this prior to the recent meeting of EU Foreign Ministers, Der Spiegel ran an investigative piece on a German company harvesting body parts and tissues from Ukrainians while the British Independent dug into China's official policy of harvesting organs from condemned prisoners. Ah, no Jews involved. No media echo. You can follow the Aftonbladet story into the real Israel-bashing media where Bostrom's fabricated story is cited as "proof". Why? Because it is Sweden's newspaper, and Sweden is currently president of the EU. The new twist is the conspiracy where Moroccan and Algerians kidnap children to sell to the "illegal global Jewish body part trade." Seems even the Palestinians could not prove the IDF shoots Palestinians in order to harvest organs. Sweden's image is not what it seems. THAT is the real story.
- K2K
September 19, 2009 at 12:31am
"....the real Israel-bashing media..." george: For those of us unfamiliar with the metaphysical construct "Israel-bashing", please offer us a few examples of criticism of Israel that is reasonable and criticism that is not---bashing criticism. What are some of the policies coming out of Tel Aviv that are not above criticism? How does one know when this legitimate criticism crosses the rubicon into racism or blind prejudice against Isreal. Finally, is there criticism coming out of Isreal that might be construed as the bashing of others? george
- iambiguous
September 19, 2009 at 12:58am
blackton, Thanks for your series of eloquent, thoughtful and well-argued posts. It was a pleasure to read them.
- malahat
September 19, 2009 at 3:36pm
I meant the media in countries where the state of Israel is not acknowledged to exist when I wrote "real Israel-bashing media". There are still at least twenty countries who officially deny the existence of Israel as a Jewish State, like Pakistan and Malaysia (unfortunately), where this Aftonbladet story was been cited as "proof" solely because it is a large circulation newspaper from Sweden, the country that gives out the Nobel prize. Carl Bildt allegedly aspires to become Secretary-General of the United Nations.
- K2K
September 19, 2009 at 4:48pm
The Israeli government asked the Swedish Foreign Ministry to condemn Aftonbladet's anti-semitic blood libel; it did not ask that the newspaper's freedom of expression be curtailed. This is not a free speech issue as the Swedes disingenuously claim.
- amidut
September 19, 2009 at 9:44pm
bl462 "blackton, Thanks for your series of eloquent, thoughtful and well-argued posts. It was a pleasure to read them." Same here.
- jacksondyer
September 20, 2009 at 12:31pm
ndmackenzie "As Benjamin Birnbaum knows full well, because he happily takes its 30 pieces of silver," The Christian antisemite is back full of medieval Jew hating imagery. (Birnabum, btw, doesn’t support Israel for money, he does so because he believes in the justice of Israel’s cause, as do I. It is mackenzie who takes money from the Arab League to post these blood libel messaged against the Jewish people.) "he works for a magazine that supports Israel regardless of the hate speech that the magazine promotes and regardless of the war crimes committed by an Israel that this magazine will support until the last Palestinian is killed." This magazine is one of the few places where you can get truthful articles about Israel without the usual anti-Israel hatred one encounters in The Nation and almost every other leftist antisemitic magazine. This is what bothers the mackenzie's of this world who will not rest easy till the last Jew has been driven from Eretz Israel. As to "war crimes" there is no European country including Great Britain that has not committed war crimes a thousand times more hideous than anything Israel is accused of. To people like mackenzie when Palestinians commit war crimes they are just acting in self defense when Israel fights back it is committing war crimes.
- jacksondyer
September 20, 2009 at 12:44pm
As to the charge of war crimes, here is a well thought artcile about that: http://blog.z-word.com/2009/09/because-wars-are-either-won-or-lost/#more-1394 “Because Wars Are Either Won Or lost” by Eamonn McDonaghon “You remember all the fuss at the start of the year about Israel’s supposedly disproportionate use of force in Gaza, no? Well, unless you are a close student of Afghan affairs it may have escaped your attention that last Thursday Spanish forces killed 13 members of the Taliban without suffering so much as a scratch on their own side. We know that they were members of the Taliban because there were independent NGO or ICRC people on the spot who checked and made sure that none of the dead were civilians who grabbed the family AK47 and stuck their heads outside when they heard the firefight start, don’t we? It’s inconceivable that the Spanish soldiers on the spot might have sought to avoid future embarrassing questions by making sure there was a weapon close to each dead Afghan, isn’t it? Even to hint at the possibility of such a thing would be to stain the honor of a noble army, wouldn’t it? El País of Madrid is the newspaper that reports the story. If a Palestinian falls over and twists his ankle within sight of Israeli soldiers El País is quick to talk of the thirst for blood inherent in the makeup of the only army in the world that has mostly Jewish members. In this case, however, it reports the story in the most matter-of-fact way and makes no attempt to call into question the Spanish army’s version of events. Natalia Junquera and Miguel González, the authors of the report, even manage to give a humanitarian slant to the calling up of a Mangusta attack helicopter to assist the Spanish infantry by saying that it was called off when the Taliban took refuge in caves near to a village with civilian inhabitants. The Mangusta has a three barrel 20mm steerable cannon under its nose as well as a variety of other weapons mounted on pods. A 20mm cannon shell that doesn’t hit its intended target is quite capable of killing a person miles away. It can also penetrate light armor and the walls of domestic residences and kill anyone in the wrong place on the other side. How good that Junquera and Gonzaléz are so certain that nothing like this occurred in this case. Gabriel Albiac has his say on the matter in ABC today. There follows an edited translation of his column. “Disproportionate use of force” has become, for the current Spanish prime minister, the sacred litany of a profitable liturgy. It harvests votes by evoking two puppet show villains: anti-Americanism and antisemitism. There’s nothing new about that. Hitler and Stalin also made use, exhaustive and lethal use, of the same two-faced demon. “Jews and plutocrats”, was the oft-repeated totalitarian slogan of the 1930s. “We firmly reject the disproportionate use of force”, by Israel in south Lebanon was the joint view of Spanish socialist Prime Minister Rodríguez Zapatero and Islamist Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan, as announced on the 7th of July, 2006. That was the unforgettable summer when Zapatero was photographed wearing a Palestinian keffiye at a fervently anti-war, that is to say, anti-Israel rally. The “disproportionate use of force” mantra was repeated there too. A catalog of the ritual repetition of the same formula by Spanish socialists leads to Jenin, where more than one of them had no hesitation in raving about genocide or insulting the human condition by making comparisons with Warsaw and Auschwitz, and all arising from a skirmish that left 52 dead on one side and 23 on the other, as a result of both parties’ “disproportionate use of force”. How is it possible to measure whether the use of force is “disproportionate”? In military terms, by its effectiveness, measured by the ratio between enemy casualties and one’s own. There’s no other criterion. On Friday [Thursday], the Spanish army faced an Afghan guerrilla attack. The result was thirteen enemy dead and one wounded on our own side. [I think the reference to a wounded Spanish soldier is an error arising from a separate incident that took place in the same area] That figure is on the very limit of the optimum that military effectiveness requires. The “disproportion” between our own and enemy casualties tend towards infinity. […] The Spanish action on Friday [Thursday] was a model one, because the force used was sufficiently disproportionate to destroy the attacker without suffering more casualties than a single soldier wounded [see previous insertion on this point]. The name for this sort of thing is war. The Spanish prime minister and the Minister of Defense continue to treat the army as a sort of NGO and deny its merits in what actually happened: an efficiently massive and disproportionate use of force. Or, to put it another way; war. Because wars are either won or lost.”
- jacksondyer
September 20, 2009 at 12:48pm
Sweden is one of the most disgusting hypocritical countries in Europe when it comes to Israel and that is saying a lot. It was supposed to be neutral during WW2 while many of its leading intellectuals supported the Nazis and its business people made money from trade with Nazi Germany and from Jewish confiscated property. That same intellectual class now supports "Palestinian Arabs” in their quest to destroy the Jewish State. They use “morality” as a pretext for Jew hatred just as they had used it in the past as a pretext to support the Nazis in their campaign against “Jewish parasites.” Nothing has changed. New excuses but same old Jew hatred.
- jacksondyer
September 20, 2009 at 12:56pm
More on the Swedish blood libel article: http://globalpolitician.com/25891-israel-sweden “A New, Old and Ugly Spirit” Jonathan Spyer, Ph.D. - 9/10/2009 “The article in the popular Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet alleging the Israel Defense Forces were involved in organ theft was the latest and most heinous example of an increasingly familiar phenomenon: classic anti-Semitic tropes and expressions of open hostility to Jews turning up in statements by members of the European liberal left. This process derives from the growing popularity of openly anti-Semitic, Islamist organizations in the Middle East, and the accompanying regional political culture. These Islamist organizations are seen by a growing part of the Western left as partners for civilized dialogue. Some toward the more radical fringes see them as natural comrades in the joint battle against common enemies. It is normal to give a respectful hearing to a friend's allegations and claims. One is not accustomed to believing that respected friends have a tendency for pathological lying and paranoia. And the fact is that if you have decided to make friends with the regional political culture of anti-Israel militancy, you are going to be hearing an awful lot of claims of the kind that appeared in Aftonbladet. Both oppositional and mainstream political discourse in the Middle East afford numerous examples of the crudest anti-Jewish stereotyping and sentiment. There is Hezbollah, which invented the curious allegation that 4,000 "Israelis" failed to turn up for work at the World Trade Center on September 11. The accusation was first broadcast on its television station Al-Manar, which three years ago also screened the Syrian-produced series "Al-Shatat" ("The Diaspora"), which contained dramatic depictions Jews making matzot with the blood of Christians. Officials from the organization have referred to Jews as a "lesion on the forehead of humanity," along with a variety of other medical metaphors. There is Hamas, whose Al-Aqsa TV station in April broadcast a play from the Islamic University in Gaza that contained a Jewish father exhorting his son to "drink the blood of Muslims," and whose very founding document references the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" to prove the nefarious plans of the Jews. There is of course the Iranian president, with his Holocaust denial cartoons and conferences. There is the Egyptian, Qatar-based, so-called "reformist" cleric Yusuf Qaradawi, who praised Adolf Hitler for "punishing" the Jews on one of his popular broadcasts on Al Jazeera, and so on. And on. Thus far the Middle East. In the past, Western leftist supporters of the Palestinians adopted the language of secular Palestinian nationalism. The latter tends to avoid the worst excesses of anti-Jewish rhetoric, at least in the English-language statements of its spokesmen. When it recalls the motifs of classical anti-Semitism, it tends to direct them at "Zionists," rather than at Jews per se. But secular Palestinian nationalism is in decline. The radicals who increasingly set the tone today come dressed in Islamic religious garb. They care little for the niceties of political correctness. And so the many Westerners whose search for a cause leads them for whatever reason to the Palestinians are today speaking in tones and adopting stances that would have been quite unimaginable even a decade ago. The Aftonbladet article by Donald Bostrom, with his tales of an international conspiracy involving IDF organ thieves and ultra-Orthodox rabbis in New Jersey, is only one example. Earlier in August, Holland's largest daily newspaper, De Telegraaf, published an interview with medical journalist Desiree Rover, who asserted that the global swine flu pandemic was the result of a "Khazar Jewish" conspiracy to reduce the world's population. And who can forget Jostein Gaarder, Norwegian author of the best-selling novel "Sophie's World," who in late 2006 stated in an article in the major Aftenposten newspaper, "For two thousand years, we have rehearsed the syllabus of humanism, but Israel does not listen," before helpfully (if inaccurately) pointing out, "It was not the Pharisee who helped the man who lay by the wayside, having fallen prey to robbers. It was a Samaritan; today we would say a Palestinian." These tones are both new and very old. They are not the language of humanism and the enlightenment. They are instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with the tone of anti-Israel literature in the Middle East. They are also redolent of another, older Europe. These stalwarts of the bon ton left are adopting ideas whose original purveyors were situated, and are still situated, on the extreme right of the political spectrum. The ideas in question, which hark back to medieval Christianity, migrated from the European radical right to the Middle East, from where they have now migrated back to Europe, finding a new political home in the process. Irony aside, a British organization that monitors anti-Semitism recorded an eight-fold increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the U.K. that coincided with the launch of Operation Cast Lead last December. It is hard to draw causal lines in such cases, of course. The British citizens who write "slay Jewish pigs" on London walls, or the foreign activists who chanted "Jewish racist pigs" at a demonstration in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah last month, may well never have heard of Bostrom, Rover or Gaarder. Still, all these instances taken together confirm that a new and old and ugly spirit is abroad.”
- jacksondyer
September 20, 2009 at 12:59pm
jacksondyer said, "...It was supposed to be neutral during WW2 while many of its leading intellectuals supported the Nazis and its business people made money from trade with Nazi Germany and from Jewish confiscated property. " In particular, Sweden supplied Nazi Germany with ball bearings for tanks during World War Two. It appears that situational ethics and situational neutrality go together.
- malahat
September 20, 2009 at 6:30pm