[leewgrant]

Why should Sweden apologize for something in a privately run newspaper? If Israel is that upset it should ask counsel to check Swedish libel laws.

$1:

Israel outraged over Swedish article

A diplomatic row between Sweden and Israel deepened in Jerusalem Monday over a Swedish newspaper article, which alleges that Israeli soldiers harvested organs from Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers.

The article in the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet last week implied, without evidence, that there was a link between charges of organ theft from Palestinians and the recent arrest in the U.S. of an American Jew suspected of illicit organ trafficking.

The article unleashed an avalanche of condemnations in the Israeli media with accusations of anti-Semitism and commentators and politicians comparing the article to medieval accusations that Jews killed Christian children for their blood.

On Monday, the paper published an editorial denying Israeli claims. "I'm not a Nazi," Aftonbladet editor Jan Helin wrote. "I'm not anti-Semitic."

Rather than an apology, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is demanding the Swedish government condemn the article.

However, Sweden is resisting the demand, citing freedom of speech. The refusal has launched an online petition calling for a boycott of Swedish furniture chain Ikea's Israeli branch, which claimed to log more than 4,600 names.

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said that if Sweden continued its refusal to condemn the Aftonbladet story, Israel might cancel a visit by Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt scheduled for next month.

Sweden currently holds the European Union presidency.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/08/2 ... ow024.html

[Praxius]

Unless you're suck-holing Israel and complimenting them all the time, they'll have an uproar over anything and call anti-Semitic on this and that.

Maybe if they stopped overblowing their reactions all the time to everything, people might stop thinking the claims are true.

[Akhenaten]

Praxius Praxius:

Unless you're suck-holing Israel and complimenting them all the time, they'll have an uproar over anything and call anti-Semitic on this and that.

Maybe if they stopped overblowing their reactions all the time to everything, people might stop thinking the claims are true.

Agreed. Isreal needs to take a few courses in STFU 101. That's why Russia gets away with anything. Generally they keep their mouths shut regardless of who's bitching about them.

[ridenrain]

Absolute rubbish. The only proven organ sales were from China.

$1:

In Sweden, silence is golden - just ask FM Carl Bildt
By ILYA MEYER


Silence is golden according to Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, the government official who insists his country's ambassador to Israel must refrain from expressing an opinion on virulent anti-Semitic accusations in the Swedish left-wing tabloid Aftonbladet. Accusations intended as a blood-libel against all Jews and Israelis everywhere.

The article's author Donald Boström freely admits that he has no evidence of any of his allegations but says it is up to Jews and Israelis to prove themselves innocent. An interesting if not entirely original twist - Jews are guilty until they prove themselves innocent. The basic tenets of democracy do not appear to be familiar to either Boström or Aftonbladet.

Much of the material in Boström's article came from a book he published in 2001 Inshallah which was jointly financed by the Swedish Foreign Ministry and various other government-backed organizations.

Here is what Boström writes in the acknowledgements section (comments in brackets are my explanations): "Thanks to Diakonia [90% government-financed Christian aid organization], Forum Syd [government-financed aid organization], Graphics Industry Union, Stockholm Graphic Workers' Union [part of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation, co-owner of Aftonbladet], the Swedish Christian Study Center, the Brotherhood Movement [Christian branch of the Social Democratic Party], the Swedish Palestinian Solidarity Movement [partly government-financed], Trade union TCO and the Swedish Foreign Ministry for their financial donations."

A worrying pattern emerges of governmental, church and trade union involvement in officially-sanctioned demonization of Israel.

This is no one-off phenomenon. Rampant Swedish media distortion and the tacit and blatant anti-Semitism expressed in various Swedish governmental and quasi-governmental organizations can be charted with the utmost clarity in an NGO Monitor report "A Clouded EU Presidency: Swedish Funding for NGO Rejectionism."

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.

And despite the millions that he takes from Swedish citizens to give to Palestinians, Bildt deliberately chooses not to condition these payments on the Palestinians' release of the only Jew in the Gaza Strip: the young Gilad Schalit who was captured by Hamas 1200 days ago and has since not been allowed contact with his family, legal representation or visits by the Red Cross - itself a gross violation of his human rights.

Bildt has every reason to be tight-lipped. Talking would put Sweden's decades-old policy of selective silence in jeopardy. There's too much at stake if people start asking questions. Swedes might start demanding that some of their tax money be spent on their own welfare rather than on Palestinians.

[xerxes]

Israel has every right to be pissed off in this case. This is the kind of rubbish you'd espect to find in a Turkish or Egyptian rag not from a Swedish paper even if it's the Swedish equivalent of a daily shitrag.

[Zipperfish]

Israel is outraged? Really--that's new.

[Freakinoldguy]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Israel is outraged? Really--that's new.

Not really, but you gotta admit that if some tabloid newspaper in America claimed that Canadian Soldiers were harvesting the organs of the taliban they killed, we'd be more than a little pissed off and likely to have our government screaming bloody murder about it.

Isreal should just sue the shit out of them and build more nukes with the money they get.

[BartSimpson]

I will say that if Israel is protesting so much about this then maybe there is some truth to it. It's not like them to give a rip what some fishwrapper has to say about them so I'm left to wonder if the accusation hit close to home?

[Zipperfish]

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Israel is outraged? Really--that's new.

Not really, but you gotta admit that if some tabloid newspaper in America claimed that Canadian Soldiers were harvesting the organs of the taliban they killed, we'd be more than a little pissed off and likely to have our government screaming bloody murder about it.

Isreal should just sue the shit out of them and build more nukes with the money they get.

I can't really say it would bother me what it said in a Swedish newspaper.

I heard Israel is going to ban meatballs and hot blondes.

[Freakinoldguy]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Israel is outraged? Really--that's new.

Not really, but you gotta admit that if some tabloid newspaper in America claimed that Canadian Soldiers were harvesting the organs of the taliban they killed, we'd be more than a little pissed off and likely to have our government screaming bloody murder about it.

Isreal should just sue the shit out of them and build more nukes with the money they get.

I can't really say it would bother me what it said in a Swedish newspaper.

I heard Israel is going to ban meatballs and hot blondes.

Their loss.

[xerxes]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

I will say that if Israel is protesting so much about this then maybe there is some truth to it. It's not like them to give a rip what some fishwrapper has to say about them so I'm left to wonder if the accusation hit close to home?

Because this is the kind of hateful libel that helped inspire numerous pogroms throughout European history.

[Thanos]

xerxes xerxes:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

I will say that if Israel is protesting so much about this then maybe there is some truth to it. It's not like them to give a rip what some fishwrapper has to say about them so I'm left to wonder if the accusation hit close to home?

Because this is the kind of hateful libel that helped inspire numerous pogroms throughout European history.

Word. I suppose those who think that this is funny and that the Jews are over-reacting are probably too lazy to go to Wiki and look up what the "Blood Libel" actually means. Nothing helps the spreading of neo-Judenhaas quite like disinterested or self-righteous bitching more about the victim than about the perpetrator.

[Lemmy]

Thanos Thanos:

Word. I suppose those who think that this is funny and that the Jews are over-reacting are probably too lazy to go to Wiki and look up what the "Blood Libel" actually means. Nothing helps the spreading of neo-Judenhaas quite like disinterested or self-righteous bitching more about the victim than about the perpetrator.

Double-word. In Canada, this is exactly the shit-shack that exists between Natives and Non-Natives. The 'victim' card has its limits.

edit: re-wording for rum-finger typing

[Thanos]

Lemmy Lemmy:

Thanos Thanos:

Word. I suppose those who think that this is funny and that the Jews are over-reacting are probably too lazy to go to Wiki and look up what the "Blood Libel" actually means. Nothing helps the spreading of neo-Judenhaas quite like disinterested or self-righteous bitching more about the victim than about the perpetrator.

Double-word. In Canada, this exactly the shit-shack that exists between Natives and Non-Natives. The 'victim' card has its limits.

I also like the part where we got to read a couple of "well maybe it's true" responses. Nothing like seeing the crypto-Troofers go off on another one of their new fucked-up batshit-insane tangents.

[Lemmy]

Thanos Thanos:

I also like the part where we got to read a couple of "well maybe it's true" responses. Nothing like seeing the crypto-Troofers go off on another one of their new fucked-up batshit-insane tangents.

The "maybe it's true" submission is typically the strongest evidence presented by the tangent-surfers that the internet has spawned. It ranks up there with the "Liar, liar, pants on fire" manner of debate.