The Great Square in Malmö: One Year Later

Ilmar Reepalu is the mayor of Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city. Mr. Reepalu recently gained notoriety for his apparent callousness towards violent attacks against Jews in his city, which have caused Jews to flee Malmö in record numbers. The mayor — when he chose to acknowledge the existence of anti-Semitism in Malmö — attributed the attacks on Jews to neo-Nazis and other mysterious sources that have nothing to do with Islam.

Our Swedish correspondent LN reminds us that the Davis Cup tennis match took place one year ago today in Malmö. The match pitted an Israeli team against a Swedish one, and Mr. Reepalu handled the objections to the presence of Israeli players in the match by banning spectators from the event. However, that was not enough to prevent an ugly mob from protesting in downtown Malmö and next to the tennis stadium.

Our Swedish correspondent LN has prepared a report with a retrospective of last year’s events, and includes more recent information about Malmö, Ilmar Reepalu, Lars Ohly, and other relevant news in the run-up to Sweden’s general election.


Great Square, Malmö, March 7, 2009 during the chaotic “stop-the-match with Israel” demonstration.


AFA, Black Cobra and Islamists went berserk against the police and the on-lookers. Here onlookers mixed with hateful storm-troopers/masses have congregated at the Great Square:


The leader of Sweden’s Left Party, Lars Ohly:


Mr. Ohly is interviewed by whom? Look closely at the microphones: it is the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera, the largest one in the Middle East. What’s more, they almost certainly caught him with the Pali scarf around his neck before or after — and this is no doubt spread like wildfire throughout the Middle East.

But it is ten thousand times worse that Sweden might have to see this man be awarded an important ministerial post (Foreign Minister?) after the General Election in September.

A Swedish minister — a (crypto)-communist and an anti-Semite — who supports a Palestine without Israel, a piece of candy in the mouth for all rabid imams, for all Muslims both at home in Sweden and in the nearby MENA countries.

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Facts

Malmö demo: Video 1, Video 2

More facts may be found at this excellent blog, Ironic Surrealism.

The strange thing is that many Swedish bloggers already wrote about it a year ago — about the complete macabre idiocy of the (crypto)-communist leader Lars Ohly ostentatiously boasting a non-weather justified article of clothing with an image of an Arab Palestine, instead of a picture of the current political / geographical situation while the regular Swedish PC-media world, chose to remain silent about it.
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2010, however, is an election year, and Mr. Ohly’s unseemly article of clothing has finally become hot stuff.

Better late than never, of course, because some day it will be too late. The victims have already been designated — And not just here in Sweden.

The mostly noisy Middle East’s eternal stand-up comic, Mr. Muammar Kadaffi of Libya, has called just now for an immediate jihad against Switzerland.

While Muammar Kadaffi is whipping up an atmosphere of jihad against Europe, Iran purposefully takes the steps required to execute the plan of waging global jihad on the world stage in a new way. Al Reuters writes about Iran’s plans to force the world to its knees.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is obviously not only betting on Israel or the United States, but the whole globe, with Europe as a “first course”.

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Ilya Meyer writes on his blog (English in the original):

Malmö: Wrong in every language

Estonian-born mayor of Malmö Mr. Ilmar Reepalu seems to have an inbred need to disseminate hatred of everything Jewish.

He also appears to have a rather uncomfortable relationship with the truth.

And he seems to have a markedly selective grasp of the English language.

In fact, every time he speaks or writes — whatever the language of his choice — he adds further anti-Semitic hatred to a race crisis he deliberately sparked over a year ago when he attempted to prevent Jews from playing tennis in the southern Swedish city of Malmö.

In his latest diatribe, the Social Democratic mayor of Malmö, more than one-quarter of whose population is Muslim, makes a wildly inaccurate claim about the Community Security Trust (CST), a British charitable organisation that, among other things, monitors cases of anti-Semitism in the British Isles. Ilmar Reepalu writes in Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet:

“The UK saw a record increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2009. The Community Security Trust, a Jewish security organisation, says the reason for this is Israel’s offensive in Gaza. But when I say exactly the same thing, I am called an anti-Semite.”

Here follows a lesson in English, truth and integrity all in one:

Start off with what the CST actually wrote, in its own words:

“The reason for this unprecedented rise in antisemitic incidents lies in the reactions to the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and southern Israel, which led to record numbers of incidents in January and February.”

(Page 10 of the CST report)

And again, more specifically:

“The unprecedented rise in the number of antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2009 occurred largely because of the extreme reactions to the trigger event of the Gaza conflict …

(Page 23 of the CST report)

At no stage does the CST write, claim or otherwise insinuate that the reason for the spike in anti-Semitic attacks in the UK is because of “Israel’s offensive in Gaza“, as Ilmar Reepalu claims.

The CST makes no value judgements as to who did what first. That is beyond its remit. The CST does not state that Hamas started the conflict by kidnapping an Israeli teenager from inside sovereign Israel. Nor does it state that even before the kidnapping, Hamas had fired more than 10,000 missiles on civilian Israeli communities in southern Israel, with the rate of Hamas missile fire actually increasing during a six-month cease-fire.

Nor, for that matter, does the CST say that Israel’s actions are a subsequent response, or an initiated action, or anything else. It simply notes that the Gaza conflict served as a “trigger event“ for a sharp increase in anti-Semitic attacks in the UK. Nothing else.

Mr Reepalu’s misrepresentations do not stem from an inability to understand English.

They stem from his animosity toward Jews.

In Malmö, in the rest of Sweden, in the Middle East and even in Britain.

Several Swedish journalists and politicians have taken the Social Democratic mayor of Sweden’s third-largest city to task for his unsavoury views and his extremist statements.

After weeks and months of highly troubling silence, the leader of the Swedish Social Democratic party, Ms Mona Sahlin, has finally spoken on the subject. Mr Reepalu has previously gone on record as saying that the Jews of Malmö have only themselves to blame for anti-Semitic attacks against them because they did not clearly state their animosity towards the Jewish state of Israel. He has never required that the Muslims of Malmö adopt an equally dismissive stance towards rogue Muslim regimes such as Iran, Hamas, Hizbullah, Saudi Arabia or Somalia, for instance. Disparity in the treatment of two ethnic groups or two religions is recognised the world over as a clear expression of racism.

Now Mr Reepalu’s party leader Mona Sahlin says in an interview with Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet that “Ilmar is not an anti-Semite but rather someone who fights against racism“.

Bearing in mind Mr Reepalu’s track record of animosity towards Jews, this has been perceived as a rather extraordinary statement.

Ms Sahlin had more to say: “Jews deserve strong support but it is also necessary never to confuse the issues of anti-Semitism and Zionism“. Some analysts in Sweden see this as advice to the country’s Jews not to cry “anti-Semitism“ every time Swedish Jews are attacked by Islamist and left-wing mobs demonstrating their hatred of the Jewish state by attacking Jews in the streets, Jewish places of worship and Jewish cemeteries. It calls into question Social Democratic party leader Mona Sahlin’s judgement and credibility.

Ms Sahlin, who hopes to win the general elections in Sweden this September, did, however, concede that “Ilmar did make some rather unfortunate statements“.

That might go down in the history books as the understatement of the year. And this is still only February.

Links to articles and blogs condemning Ilmar Reepalu for racism (in Swedish):

• Gulan Avci: Are Jews worth nothing to the Social Democrats?
  
• Matthias Sundin: Reepalu is Responsible for Increase in attacks on Jews
  
• Swedish Dagbladet: Big debate in the media following SvD’s editorial about Reepalu
  
• SvD article: Ilmar Reepalu should resign
  
• SvD article: The Jews flee Malmö as Ilmar Reepalu watches
  
• Sydsvenskan: An unpleasant picture of Malmö emerges

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Thoralf Alfsson writes on his blog (translation by LN):

Ilmar Reepalu’s Lie

In an article in Svenska Dagbladet, which addresses anti-Semitism in Malmö, Ilmar Reepalu says

“I have not been sufficiently informed about the serious situation in Malmö. So said the Malmö Socialist mayor Ilmar Reepalu after meeting with people from the city’s Jewish congregation.”

Mattias Karlsson, the political secretary of the Sweden Democrats in Malmö, has written a very good blog post revealing how Ilmar Reepalu is utterly lying open about his so-called “ignorance”. The Sweden Democrats on the Malmö City Council have filed (1) a motion and (2) two simple questions about the widespread anti-Semitism in Malmö.

I guess mayor Ilmar Reepalu is participating in the debates in the municipal council of Malmö and thus should be very aware of this.

Ilmar Reepalu is probably not interested in these issues, which is shown not least by his handling of the Davis Cup match a year ago. At that time Ilmar Reepalu decided that the match between Sweden and Israel should be played before empty stands!

NSK [the daily Norra Skåne, Kristianstad] has an entirely “wonderful” article on the anti-Semitism in Malmö where the Christian Democrat Mats Odell criticizes Ilmar Reepalu. But in not one single word in the article is the true reason for the growing anti-Semitism suggested. By simply not mentioning which groups lie behind this anti-Semitism, the whole problem is swept under the carpet.

A very striking example of media’s terror of touching Muslims. They are, as we know, so easily offended — a simple “ham sandwich” is capable of turning nearly the whole world upside down.

Sources for information and images used in this post:

• Politiskt Inkorrekt
  
• Suomen Kuvalehti
  
• Ironic Surrealism
  
• Snaphanen

Update: Correction made. Thanks, Robin Shadowes.