Everything Is Relative – Apparently Even Hysteria

As long-time readers of this blog already know, Magdalena Ribbing is the unchallenged queen of Swedish etiquette. Her column in Dagens Nyheter has a large following and she dishes out advice on everything from how to write proper thank-you notes and dress for a formal function to how to behave in general.

I’ve already written about her advice on how to deal with a situation where one is forced to directly address fellow commuters on a bus here.

Some time ago, I read a letter to Ms. Ribbing from someone who complained about the trend of mega-weddings that apparently is sweeping through Sweden. The letter writer deplored the hysteria that surrounds weddings these days. Why is it, she asked, that it’s impossible to tie the knot today without spending no less than SEK 60,000 on the festivities? And why must one have so many guests – sometimes as many as sixty people!

I was reminded of this poor Swedish wedding planner on my way home from a wedding in Jerusalem on Thursday evening. (Ok, technically it might have been Friday morning.) It was a very pleasant affair and a great time was had by all – not only by the grooms.

In Israeli terms it was a rather intimate wedding, with a mere 150 guests or so. It’s not uncommon with at least twice that many people attending – friends, family, colleagues, friends and family of colleagues, your dog-walker and her friends, family and colleagues. You get the picture.

I obviously don’t know anything about the budget for the particular nuptials that I attended, but judging by the generosity with which exquisite food and drink were lavished on us all, I have no doubts that it dwarfed the Swedish mega-wedding of NIS 30,000. 

The Ultimate Whipping

Yes, yes, I know. Already last time I wrote about it I said that I had whipped this dead horse for the last time.

Consider this article the ultimate whipping, the very last crums of my piece of the pie — the one last all-inclusive summary of the whole Aftonbladet affair.

At least until something new comes along.

Mayor of Malmö: Jews to Blame for Antisemitism

The southern Swedish newspaper Skånska Dagbladet has recently published a series of articles describing the precarious situation of the Jews in Malmö. Families leave the city, either for Israel or Stockholm since they don’t feel safe bringing up children in Malmö, a teenager relates how other kids in his school threatened to “halal butcher” him, and the Malmö police confirms that the number of antisemitic hate crimes rose drastically last year.

On January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Skånska Dagbladet interviewed the Mayor of Malmö, Ilmar Reepalu and asked him for a comment to all this.

In the beginning of the interview, Mr. Reepalu says all those things that he must say: he denounces racism in general, in all its forms. Fair enough, but then — when the interviewer asks him to relate more specifically to the issue of antisemitism — the shit hits the proverbial fan.

Mr. Reepalu does indeed denounce antisemitism specifically, but his choice of words is interesting, to say the least:

– We don’t accept Zionism nor antisemitism. That’s extremes that put themselves above other groups and think that they are worth less.

He then goes on condemning Israeli violations of human rights and abuse of the civilian population in Gaza. When asked by the reporter if he can’t do anything at least to reduce the antagonism against those local Jews in Malmö who aren’t involved in Israeli actions, and don’t wish to be responsible for it, he says:

– I wish that the Jewish community would distance itself from Israel’s violations of the civilian population in Gaza. Instead they choose to arrange a demonstration on the Main Square, which can send out the wrong signals.

How are the readers supposed to understand this in any other way than that Mr. Reepalu thinks that the local Jews in Malmö, at least to a certain degree, have themselves to blame for the growing antisemitism in the city? That as long as they don’t share — and declare — his positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they must count on being attacked?

Those who are interested in reading the whole interview with Mr. Reepalu can do so here.

For some amateur footage of the demonstration that annoyed Mr. Reepalu so, see this clip on YouTube of a mob chasing away the Jews and other supporters of Israel with bottles, eggs and fire crackers.

For an excellent summary of the Swedish debate on Mr. Reepalu’s statements, see Jonathan Leman’s blog.

UPDATE: Mr. Reepalu’s statements are also reported in the Israeli media. Both Yediot and Haaretz carry articles about it today.

UPDATE 2: Jamal el-Haj, member of the Malmö City Council for Mayor Reepalu’s Social Democratic Party, says in a comment today that he wishes that more people would “show the same courage” as Mr. Reepalu, and that it’s “regrettable” that Jews choose to leave Malmö, but that the Jewish community could “help a lot” to improve the situation by condemning Israeli actions. The whole interview with el-Haj can be read here.

Frum Flight Fright

Do you remember the good old days, when you could board a plane without taking off your belt and shoes, could keep a convenient pair of nail scissors and a bottle of contact lens fluid in your hand luggage, and could transfer at a stop-over air port without fretting over whether someone would demand to throw away the duty free booze you bought at the original port of departure?

I know, it’s starting to become a faded memory belonging to that lost world of one – state-run – TV channel when Europe was still divided between East and West and unicorns roamed the land.

Following the attempted Christmas bombing of a Denver-bound flight, where someone tried to detonate an explosive devise that he was hiding in his underwear, security levels have been raised even further. Now, apparently, you’re no longer allowed to conceal your groin with a blanket on transatlantic flights, and soon we will all be forced to undergo body scans before boarding.

In America, the paranoia recently caused a pilot on a flight from La Guardia to Louisville, Kentucky to land his plane as soon as he possibly could since someone in the cabin reported that a suspicious looking kid was behaving weirdly — probably trying to set off a bomb.

I can only imagine how this deeply embarrassed teenager must have pleaded with a stewardess, trying to convince her that he wasn’t actually out to kill them all — but just wanted to put on his tefillin.

Read more about it here.

Grip Needs Tightening

CBN, the Christian Broadcast Network, seems worried that Sweden is “in the grip of Islam”. They sent their reporter Dale Hurd on a tour of Malmö, and he returned with this slightly alarmist report about how the Muslims are taking over Sweden’s third largest city.

I don’t have the energy to point out all the flaws in the report, but I would like to draw your attention to a point 01:22 into the clip. My question to Dale is quite simply:

If Sweden is really in the grip of Islam, why in Allah’s name is there a poster advertising ham-in-a-tube on the billboard in the background?

Count on Me!

I’ve written about gematria before here, so I really shouldn’t have to explain it to you again. But since there might be one or two new readers out there I’m going to do it anyway. Basically, it’s a way of using the Hebrew alphabet to assign a word a certain numerical value and then believing that all words with the same numerical value are somehow connected, or share common qualities or whatever.

Some of you might find it less than convincing, but if you want to try it, I recommend a site I recently discovered called Khochmat Hagimatriyah. Here, you can type in any word and see what other words or phrases share the same numerical value.

I typed in my own name – מיכאל טוסבאינן – and these were some of the results I got:

מבין באופנה גדול

חי בסרט

?מי כאן אוהב פסטה

סקס באמבטיה

אידיוט גמור

and my personal favorite:

גבלס צדק

Convinced? Those of you who find these findings inconclusive, can try for yourselves here.

Sweden 2009: An Overview

There are a few fixed highlights in the world of rhetoric – speeches delivered at set intervals where important people have the chance to give their view of the world while the world is listening. The President of the United States has his State of the Union, the Pope’s got the Urbe et Orbe, and the Queen has her Christmas address.

And then there’s me.

A few weeks ago, I gave the annual lecture on antisemitism and anti-Israeli sentiments and activities in Sweden during the past year. The result can be enjoyed here.

Unfortunately, the Q&A session — where my heretic views on anti-Israeli sentiments not necessarily being antisemitic were called into question — is not included in the clip.

Apples and Pears

This weekend, Channel 2 showed a news item about the forensic institute Abu Kabir, and how organs were taken from bodies that were brought there without the permission of the families of the deceased. All of this happened more than a decade ago, and it’s been known since then. The new angle to the scandal, was that Professor Yehuda Hiss, then head of Abu Kabir has been caught on tape admitting that operations were carried out without the permission of the families — something that he denied during the investigation.

Helle Klein at Aftonbladet, the tabloid that published the by-now infamous article about organ harvesting, has found references to the Channel 2 report (maybe in the Guardian or from AP), and comments on it on her blog. She’s annoyed that the big liberal papers in Sweden, Dagens Nyheter and Expressen don’t give a prominent enough spot to this story.

She then goes on to state that in the light of this ten year old story, the liberal press that accused Aftonbladet of antisemitism should be ashamed today. In other words, she seems to think (or at least wants her readers to think) that this news in some way vindicates her paper.

Well, let’s just refresh our memory, shall we?

On August 17, Aftonbladet published an article by Donald Boström that wanted to have its readers believe that there was a collusion between the IDF and Israeli hospitals, where the army would kill Palestinians so that their organs could be harvested — maybe even sold to the United States through the help of American Jews.

What happened at Abu Kabir under Dr. Hiss was highly unethical – not to mention illegal. When it was discovered, Dr. Hiss lost his position as the head of the forensic institute, which instead was taken over by the Assaf Harofe hospital. However, no physicians — not even Dr Hiss (whom Klein calls “the infamous pathologist”) — asked the army to kill anyone to get their organs, even though they did use organs of bodies without asking the families of the deceased.  Furthermore, not only organs from the bodies of Palestinians, but also Israelis (including soldiers) were used in this way.

Furthermore, in contrast to what Klein implies, both the Guardian and AP point out that this story doesn’t prove what Aftonbladet wrote in August.

I don’t know, but to me it seems that DN and Expressen have made a pretty accurate judgement of the value of this story when they chose not to give it pride of place.

UPDATE: Several Swedish bloggers, like Jonathan Leman and  Stefan Olsson, as well as newspapers like Sydsvenskan also write about this latest turn of events.

From Poland with Love

It can’t be easy to be Polish.

No, I don’t refer to the “sitting-alone-in-the-darkness” bit of it, rather to the fact that almost every time Poland makes the international headlines it’s not for its fascinating cities, tasty beer or rich cultural life, but rather somehow connected to the Holocaust. Just a few days ago it happened again: everyone — at least in Israel — was talking about the theft of the “Arbeit macht frei” sign over the gate to Auschwitz.

Luckily, the sign has been recovered already and today I note that Yediot reports that the suspected thieves apparently were going to smuggle the sign out of Poland and deliver it to someone in — Sweden.

Dividing We Fall

The year 2009 is drawing to a close, and so is the Swedish presidency of the European Union. All the important summits, glitzy conferences and obligatory photo-ops are behind us and it’s time to summarize.

How did it all go?

Svenska Dagbladet asked a number of experts to evaluate the Swedish presidency, and overall the Reinfeldt got a passing grade. David Král from the independent research institute Europeum in Prague is quoted as saying that after the — shall we say “weak”? – Czech presidency during the first half of 2009, Sweden managed to reestablish the credibility of mall countries and their ability to lead the Union.

One of the few points where Král is critical of the Swedish presidency, is the suggestion to make Palestinian demands to divide Jerusalem official EU policy. In Král’s view, this weakened Europe’s role as a broker in the peace process.

The whole article can be read here.